I've had four briefs recently to create artwork with a Disney-Esque feel to it, but without actually copying anything directly from Disney. I looked at a lot of Disney posters to try to work out what gives us that 'Disney' feel. For me, it's a feel of nostalgia and cuteness with a sense of grandeur. Disney title treatments often take classic, trustworthy-looking fonts, and give them a slight twist to add a sense of fun. The colours are bold and warm. The first project was Alice in Wonderland - I wanted to give it a slightly quirkier feel than Disney's Alice, so I gave her quite sharp, pointy features as opposed to the soft, cute features you'd expect. I wanted to stick to the relatively 2-D appearance of early Disney art in order to retain a vintage feel, but adding some subtle shading and textures.
Disneyana is an album cover for the official theme tune of a Disney fan club. I went for a ball serif font and extended the 'y' to inject a bit of fun. I wanted to hint at the Disney castle without actually copying it, so I opted for a vector drawing of a castle to give a hint of the famous castle without coming too close.
Love Birds is a sweet, quirky musical by Robert J Sherman. I had the pleasure of listening to the soundtrack in order to acquaint myself with the show - it's full of cracking tunes, and it's really very funny - very reminiscent of the Sherman brothers' Disney music. The tricky thing here was to get the macaw looking 'sexy' in a human way - she needed to look like a showgirl, but in parrot form. My solution was to give her a relatively human shaped eye with a drowsy lid, complete with glittery eye shadow, and to make her beak much rounder and snubber than a real macaw's would be, in order to make her look cute and feminine.
Aladdin was a challenge, partly because I've done three Aladdins in the last two weeks! This one is based on the Disney film, so I wanted the characters to have a disney feel without being a copy. It's also a children's show, so I decided to give the characters more childlike body shapes, rather than the sexualised curves of the disney illustrations.