A day in the life of a Disney character designer

MICKEY MAGIC

“Mickey and the Roadster Racers is a new animated series at Disney. The show follows the adventures of Mickey and his friends as they race around Hot Dog Hills — and the world. It’s the perfect mix of Mickey Mouse and cars, so it’s the perfect show for me. It’s two of my favourite hobbies — although it’s always fun to see Minnie, Daisy, Goofy and Donald have their own crazy racing adventures, too.”

WELCOME TO WORK

“I am a character designer on Mickey and the Roadster Racers. What does that mean? Whenever a new character is needed in a show, a character designer will design that character — but it has to fit into the show; it can’t be a random drawing. A lot of thought and effort goes into the creation of everything you see on screen — and it’s a very fun job. My working day starts at 10am at our offices in Burbank. I always enjoy going to work.”

DOODLE BUG

“As soon as I get to work, I usually head downstairs to doodle. That’s the first thing I do when I get handed a new script. I’ll look through the story in the script and I’ll find out about all of the characters that need to be designed for the episode. I’ll grab an orange juice and I’ll immerse myself in the show and these new character designs. I’ll usually doodle for up to an hour or more. It’s a great way to start the day.”

A SPOT OF RESEARCH...

“When I return to my desk, I’ll load up my computer and check my emails. Then I get to work researching the different characters we need. Let’s say we need a cute panda in the show. I’ll go online and I’ll look up pandas. I’ll look at lots of different pictures of the animal, especially baby pandas because they are cuter — and then I’ll start to draw. We try to make characters look as cute and adorable as possible to fit into the show. If it’s a girl panda, I’ll make sure she has big eyelashes to make her eyes pop — just like Minnie. She’ll have big eyes and her face will be very round.”

MEETING TIME

“After lunch, there’s usually a meeting or two. We head into one of the big meeting rooms in the building, which are covered with lots of pictures from the show. Whenever we create a new character, we send off our design to be turned into a fully 3D design. In these meetings, we usually look at each of the new 3D characters and check if they are exactly how we want them to be. We are sent short movies of the character turning around so that we can see them from every angle.”

GRUB’S UP

“I’ll take a break from my desk in the afternoon and grab a snack, There are lots of places where we can take a break in our building. There’s a cereal bar, which has all of the cereals you can think of. There’s a popcorn machine, or you can grab some snacks. There’s even a billiards table downstairs! I like the cafeteria the best. That’s where I usually have lunch because it’s really open and there’s a lot of natural light down there. I can sit there for hours and people watch while I doodle.”

ROAMING AROUND ROME

“The fun part of my job is drawing, but I also really enjoy all the research. When we get a script and it says that our main characters have to dress like gladiators for an adventure in Rome, we have to get researching. We’ll head online and learn all we can about Rome and the Colosseum. What do you think of Minnie’s gladiator outfit in this shot? We had a lot of fun coming up with it.”

GAME ON

“It’s exciting to see the Mickey from our show transformed into toys like this. Mickey took us a long time to redesign in 3D because he’s such an iconic character. A lot of people gave feedback on his look and his new outfit, and we had to make sure he looked perfect in our show. Mickey looks very easy to draw, but that’s not true. If you draw his eye off to the side a little, it doesn’t look like Mickey any more. In total, it took about a month or so for us to come up with Mickey’s final look. Once he was designed, it was a lot quicker to create Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Goofy. Goofy is the easiest to draw, although Minnie is easy, too. You just take Mickey’s head and make it a little smaller. Then you add cute eyelashes and a bow — and it’s Minnie.”

WORKING WITH THE BEST

“It’s a dream come true to work at Disney. When I was six years old, I told my mum that I wanted to work for Mickey Mouse — and here I am. I’ve worked on other Disney animations, including The Lion Guard, but I’m really enjoying my work on Mickey and the Roadster Racers. It’s such a fantastic show. I work with these two guys: Rob LaDuca, the executive producer and Mark Seidenberg, co-executive producer and supervising story editor.”

DO THE LOCA-MOTION

“This is Cuckoo-Loca, who is Minnie and Daisy’s friend in the show. I always enjoy drawing her because she’s such a fun character. Cuckoo-Loca isn’t a real bird; she’s a toy from a cuckoo clock. Whenever we put an outfit on her, she always looks really cute. If you’re into art, why don’t you see if you can draw her? She’s basically a bird with a bow. I’ve written DREAM BIG underneath because I think that’s what all wannabe artists and animators should do. Keep drawing, keep practicing your art, have fun and dream big. If you want to be an animator, you can do it.”

— As told to David Tusing, tabloid! Editor

Don’t miss it

Mickey and the Roadster Racers airs in the UAE in both English and Arabic every Saturday at 11.30am on OSN on Demand and streams on OSN Play.