Art Direction: Television

As the original book illustrator, I was an art director and script consultant for the Disney Junior TV series Ella the Elephant. Cookie Jar Entertainment optioned the Ella property and produced a demo reel for MIPCOM in Cannes, where the property was picked up by Disney. I worked with Cookie Jar and Disney to create a hybrid 2D/3D style that retained much of the spirit of the original books in CGI form. I was initially dubious about the juxtaposition of 3D characters in a 2D environment, but it ended up working better than I’d imagined.

Here are a few production artifacts and a couple of final promo videos.

3D turnaround feedback. Subtle changes to the placement of facial features brought the character design closer to the tone of the books. I carefully edited their turnaround to better reflect the proportions of the original book illustrations, giving Ella a much higher “cute quotient”.

Sample feedback on environment treatment test

Approval of an environment treatment test

Original MIPCOM animatic reel

Final character designs

Disney Junior TV promo

Final show opening sequence