Wednesday, July 11, 2007

These don't belong to Disney.

These Aida designs have been surfacing around as development art for a scraped Disney Feature production of Aida but it aint so. This was nothing more than a class assignment given out by Frank Terry when I was at Cal Arts back in 1996. (A couple of the characters were redrawn a few years later but the basic designs remained the same.) Frank brought in a newspaper clipping that Disney and Elton John were going to do an animated musical of Aida and our assignment was to create a line up of the main characters and give them all Disney style sidekicks. We then had the great Chen-Yi Chang come to evaluate the work which was pretty cool. In any case I posted them on my on-line portfolio and somehow they were mistaken for actual Disney development art.


22 Comments:

At 7:06 PM, Blogger Shawn Escott said...

Well, that is a good mistake to have. These are amazing! I can certainly see how that could happen. And you were doing these while still in school!? You've got some amazing skills Ben!

 
At 7:34 PM, Blogger Evan Bonifacio said...

awesome designs man! likin the styyyyyle of the characters.

-Evan

 
At 7:40 PM, Blogger Tapan Gandhi said...

yeah i remember seeing thsse years ago on some disney feature animation list site, and i honestly thought u did development for the project

YEARS AGO!!

 
At 11:39 PM, Blogger Ben Balistreri said...

Shawn- Yah It's an awsome mistake! I'm still dreaming of the day when I could actually do development on a Disney Feature. Still, it seems wrong to let people think that this is something it's not.

Thanks Evan and Tapan! I always appreciate your kind words!

 
At 3:52 AM, Blogger Angeliki said...

Man these are reaaaaaally good...But I guess you already know that:)))

So Disney-ish (and for me that's a good thing;)

 
At 1:59 AM, Blogger Kei Phillips said...

awesome designs! :D

 
At 6:48 PM, Blogger Mukpuddy said...

Yeah I saw these somewhere on the net tosaying the same thing!! Awesome designs, as usual, all the same Ben!!!
Are you gonna be at Comic Con bro? We're making the trek over from New Zealand!!

 
At 3:17 PM, Blogger Shawn Escott said...

I totally agree. I'm sure your time to develop art for disney is soon approaching. These, and all your work, is just amazing!

 
At 4:55 PM, Blogger Tancredo Cortizo said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

 
At 5:01 PM, Blogger Tancredo Cortizo said...

And yeah, it's amazing that you were still in school and already did such a high quality job like this one.

 
At 7:13 PM, Blogger Richard Gaines said...

It's amazing nonetheless!

 
At 9:43 PM, Blogger Patrick Ballesteros said...

I love the shapes and wonderful sense of design in your characters, looking forward to more!

 
At 10:55 PM, Blogger Amy said...

Poor Amneris, her only crime was unrequited love and she's now an eternal witchy-poo ;)

The hawk/owl with the crown is just wonderful :)

 
At 10:45 PM, Blogger Ben Balistreri said...

Thanks everyone!

Mukpuddy- That's great yer gonna be at the con. I'm only going to go for Thursday, but hopefully I'll run to you guys. Will you have a booth or are you just going for fun?

Amy- Wow! You really know your Aida! I confess I don't remember just about any of the story and of course the sidekicks were all just added for fun.

 
At 2:52 PM, Blogger GeeBee said...

Excellent, Ben !
I love the hippo and mummy .

Jean.

 
At 9:13 AM, Blogger Von Kreep said...

Super cool! I dig the mummy and the creepy gal!

 
At 11:43 AM, Blogger Will Finn said...

these are too cool for what was going on at disney back then!

i love the hippo and the mummy "bad girl!"

 
At 4:03 AM, Blogger turcios curriculum said...

fantastic!!

 
At 11:38 AM, Blogger Nathan Lindsay said...

these are sweet designs. Have you submitted your work to Disney? Seems like a good idea...

 
At 10:16 AM, Blogger Urban Barbarian said...

Great characters! Really dig the hand gestures!

 
At 1:09 PM, Blogger Mike Frenette said...

GREAT CHARACTERS!!!

I love the tiny little feet on the hippo and that wide cape on the little pharoah guy. really cool characters. That and I have never wanted to make woopie with an undead cartoon character before. o_o and by woopie of course I mean.. I want to buy her an icecream... wait that doesnt make any sense...sorry. Stop humbling me!! :p

 
At 11:01 AM, Blogger adelasmor said...

Can you please drawn these wonderfull Aida characters in more poses or somethind...or maybe can you make them little difrent now...i know that yoy are made them long time ago but they are beutifull!!!

 

Post a Comment

<< Home