Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Early Man

When I first arrived at Curious George they had a whole different take on what the Man in the Yellow Hat should look like. There was already a design they had in mind. There were no boots, no polka dot tie, the pants had wide flares and he was more humanistic, more fatherly . The catch word from upper management was "contemporary" . In other words, updated, more manly. It was a red herring that would go for about a year and torture the art director Yarrow and designers Shannon and Shane . I was trying to get it to lean/tweak towards the heavily triangular broad shouldered original so I Xed the flares . I tried to get it as some kind of compromise that at least had the subtext of TMWTYH in the baggie pants cinching towards the feet . This is a combo drawing of mine , the amazing Shannon Tindles going over it , a Jun mouth and Lieves clean up :) George is much larger in this and would become smaller and cuter. When Matt came on it he was totally down with the boots the tie and everything the art director , designers and I wanted so within the first month Ted was totally redone and finished. End of story.

2 comments:

Blair Kitchen said...

I think I speak for most, when I say "thank you for the new Ted".

TotalD said...

Thank you but I thank Matt for letting us . To reinvent the man when Rey had already created him seemed odd and I think he recognized that. Most every Ted pose in the expression sheet was based on a Rey drawing as was George.