These were some of my earliest drawings from Horton, drawn in the fall of 2005. We were still in the beginning stages of developing a design language based on the Seuss book. While the final look of the film was a bit more buttoned down than these I think it retained a lot of the whimsy that the original book had. I also noticed that early on I rendered a lot of my drawings in soft pencil. This soon gave way to a much more linear approach. And I think this is because Seuss was so bold in his line work. It’s hard to capture his energy and charm when you drop all the line work. Anyway, fun to draw.

Previously:

A Map of Whoville

The Speck

Jungle of Nool

Horton Props and Transportation

Whoville Concept Art

This next character profile introduces a key player in the Missile Mouse universe: Agent Hyde.

Agent Hyde is a Junior Agent in the Galactic Security Agency. As I mentioned in the Missile Mouse Profile, GSA rank is signified by space suit color. Missile Mouse being a Senior agent with a special “Solo” status is given the colors yellow and red. Junior Agents wear orange and blue. This coloring system may have to do with my countless hours of playing with Lego Spacemen. As a Junior agent Hyde is not authorized to go on any mission alone and must be paired with another agent.

Agent Hyde was born into an upper class family of galactic politicians. Hyde was the last son of a powerful Galactic Union Senator. Overshadowed by zealous brothers all vying for power as future galactic officials Hyde realized early on he could never achieve what they could. He became disenchanted with politics and decided that if he was truly going to make a difference in the galaxy he had to get down to work with his own hands.

My first couple of design passes left him looking too young, and too cute. I decided to scratch these and went ahead and designed the drawing at top.

I’m almost completely done with Missile Mouse: The Star Crusher.  What a wild ride it’s been.  I’ll post more about that later because right now I’ve got a deadline to meet.  In the mean time here’s some more concept art from Horton.  This is some of my interior stuff for Whoville.

I recently did an interview for the blog Soft City. Check it out here

Connecticut Robot

If you have a minute check out the rest of their blog. Lots of cool stuff to be seen.

Of all the chores robot 5drg-773 was programmed to do feeding the dinosaurs was by far his favorite.