Day 9: Rhapsody in Stripes

Ok, so I'm still on my cartooning stint from yesterday.  Probably because I have summer camp on the brain, and I've been digging through all of my old lesson plans and demo projects to bring with me and teach the kids.  I came across my breakdown for designing a cartoon character.  Now, as I think I mentioned in a previous post, I am a big fan of animation, mostly Disney, but really anything, and all movies in general.  I wanted to be an animator as a kid, and I minored in Film in college.  I've watched a lot of behind-the-scenes extras on the Disney movies, in particular the way that the characters were designed, stylized and colorized for the movie Aladdin.  The artists on that film were influences by one of my favorites, the late great Al Hirschfeld.  He really wasn't a cartoonist, more of a caricature-ist, but his work is some of my favorite, just the same.  Apparently, the Disney artists felt similarly about his work, and proceeded to use his line quality and the use of shapes into the production of the film, as well as a segment for Fantasia 2000 done to Rhapsody In Blue (I highly recommend that you watch it, it's awesome! click the link here.), which Hirschfeld served on as an advisor. 

Now, my cartoon character sketch for my art lesson really came about because of my love for 'backstage Disney' trivia, as well as both mine and Disney's appreciation for Hirschfeld's work.  My cartoon character doesn't really show a Hirschfeld influence, but I don't know, maybe I can't see it......can you???