Well that was a thing that happened.
Erin had retweeted that Disney had some recruiters coming up here. On a whim, I pulled together a little disposable portfolio and went down to see them. I ended up talking to two people – a guy who described himself as the “career counselor” for the effects department, and a lady who’s involved in Actually Drawing Stuff.
The guy? I think I made a new fan, he was all “wow your art is gorgeous, I want to buy a copy of Rita.” The lady? Basically, my stuff’s nice, but Not What Disney’s Looking For. And most merchandise art is appraently done in-house, by people whose love for the material is pretty obvious in their work. Which… well… I’m a WB/Fleischer girl with occasional Pixar flirtations, not a Disney girl, you know? She said she could really see Rita as a web cartoon, and thought I should do a Kickstarter to raise funds to hire animators and make that happen. Which… sounds like it would be a GIANT LEARNING EXPERIENCE for me, which is to say a total nightmare. Especially given that half the reason I burnt out on animation was realizing that I’m really not satisfied with anything but very full work.
Though I’m wondering if I should have mentioned that drawing of Cruella bathing in the blood of puppies when she said that I’d probably want to draw some Disney princesses when looking for merch gigs. It didn’t pop into my head on the spot. It may be good that it didn’t. I might throw some kinda mini-portfolio towards the appropriate tentacle of the Disney kraken anyway.
I left the portfolio and a copy of Rita behind. I don’t expect anything to come of this but hey, what the hell, right? Sure ain’t nothing gonna happen if I’d just stayed at home. And now I’ve got a new fan who works at the Mouse. And got some work done on the next page of Rita while I was waiting my turn, too.