My Years With Tink
Hey there! In celebration of the release of the latest Tinker Bell film in the series, I wanted to pay tribute to this most beloved protagonist. Since she has been the center of most of my work for the last 12 years or so, she 's become a very important character to me. So, in the next few posts, I will backtrack down memory lane and share some of the work I have done for this long project: like some early drawings and even some really really rough sketches of this world that never was. Hope you'll enjoy!
Tough as it seemed, I remember "development time" while working at Disney Publishing to be some of the most memorable with my partner in crime, Judie Clarke. She is a brilliant artist, who is actually responsible for much of bringing the Fairies world to life. She fashioned much of the Pixie Hollow world with her beautiful backgrounds. Much of her work made it into the end titles of one of the films as well. I, instead, tended to focus on little character vignettes, making up little scenarios in my mind about their lifestyle. Now, I know these drawings leave much to be desired and there isn't a moment when I look at them that I don't want to redo them or erase them from existence, but they are a bit of history, and like it or not, we all learn from history, right? Still, some of those drawings were important starting points for further development and maybe they also served as little inspiration for something we would later see in the movies.
In the beginning the world we worked on was very different from what later was developed in the films. The Fairies lived in another kind of Pixie Hollow. The concept of Neverland had expanded to Pixie Hollow itself, and as no one grows old there, nothing died in Pixie Hollow... meaning that there were only the seasons of Spring and Summer. Since there was no cycle, there was no Autumn or Winter. No Winter! Yes, that's right... no Periwinkle! No Secret of the Wings! Just Spring and Summer...... ALL the time.
I was actually proud of this last one... until I later realized it was almost exactly like Sue in Pecos Bill. Not so proud after that.
In the first book published, the heart and soul of Neverland had its physical form of an egg. As the author of the book said presenting her work, a tiny drawing of a dove by Judie had spawned the idea of Mother Dove, protector of the egg... and thus, protector of Neverland. Just goes to show you that even the smallest detail can be critical in story conception. So the artist must remember that when submitting development artwork!
Well, this is a good point to take a break for now and meet again in a few days to view some early concept drawings focused on a couple of characters and how they evolved.
Ciao!