A while back in my life, I got a call out of the blue from the toy company Hasbro. I was told that someone had recommended me to do some concept work for some kind of movie, which was a nice surprise. I wasn't told much about the project because Hasbro wanted to be as secretive as possible. I didn't even see a script or story outline. I was just told that there were some monsters and a lead character that had to fight these monsters. Oh, and the characters were toy action figures. Living action figures.
The person (whose name I cannot remember) told me that Hasbro was trying to explore various approaches to the characters they were assigning me to work on. "Go wild", I remember hearing. I was clued into the notion that the characters were soldiers of some sort.
This was a helpful hint, as the project it turns out I was working on was Dreamworks Studio's movie Small Soldiers.
I did a number of sketches of various kinds of characters, none of which were being received so well. I kept hearing comments about how things were generally "not what we're looking for". This was frustrating, as I wasn't getting a whole lot of direction. The development team at Hasbro literally was in the initial phase of exploration, and they quite literally didn't know what they were looking for until they saw it.
I ended up taking one of the scribbly sketches that were faxed to me, and I concentrated on developing that. I went with a more futuristic soldier theme, and added some tech to his body armor. I basically started designing what I hoped would be a cool-looking action figure that I would have liked to play with when I was a kid. Okay, or even then at my age...
I had sent this one in, and I got a huge reaction out of it! I was told that this design (the first one posted above) captured the essence of what this character was all about. I was very happy I had achieved this for my clients, and was looking forward to doing more design work.
A few years later when I was working on GI Joe: Spytroops at Reel FX Creative Studios, there was a huge initial project meeting where bigwigs from Hasbro flew down to Dallas from Rhode Island, along with original & longtime GI Joe scribe Larry Hama (who gave me my first mainstream comic book assignment while editor at Marvel Comics) who flew in from New York City.
I sat in on the meetings for the whole day, and when there was a lunch break, I walked up to Steve Drucker, (Vice President of IP Development at Hasbro) and introduced myself. I asked him if he was involved with developing Small Soldiers, and he said he was. I showed him the illustration designs I did for the movie. His face lit up with a smile and he said, "Wow, it's really nice to meet you!" He told me how my soldier design was pivotal to the development to the lead toy character (voiced by Tommy Lee Jones).
I was stoked! It's really great to hear that kind of stuff being said about my work from someone like that. I had a great time working for and with Steve Drucker on GI Joe: Spytroops, and GI Joe: Valor vs. Venom. Steve is one of those people that if you're able to be around him for even a short time, you learn a lot from him about how things work in the toy & film industries. It doesn't hurt that he's a very nice person, too.
Unfortunately, after I had done the soldier design that got such a great reaction, I was assigned to work on the monster characters. After what I had designed (in the second picture posted above), they again said things like it was "not what we're looking for".
But abruptly, my assignment ended. Just like that. No explanation. I was told this happens a lot, and since then I've discovered that it truly does. Just one of the really annoying aspects of this kind of business.
It was a very short and wild ride. But at least I was able to get confirmation that my soldier design had a significant effect on the development of the lead toy character.
