A week ago today, one of the first panels we attended at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 was entitled “Illustrating Disney Magic” and featured Disney Illustrator Rick Law chatting with moderator Jeff DePaoli from the “Dizney Coast-to-Coast” podcast. Below is a brief recap of their conversation.
The panel opened with a sizzle reel covering Rick Law’s Disney work and an introduction by Jeff DePaoli.
Rick Law is famous for having created numerous iconic Disney VHS covers, but his first job for the company was working in the shipping department at Disney Home Entertainment.
Rick talked about how he got a promotion to cover illustrator by drawing Mickey Mouse on a coworker’s birthday card. He also prefers doing single drawings (one at a time) vs. the many repeated drawings required for animation.
They discussed the origins of the VHS cover for The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride, and the research that went into the design for the VHS cover of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad– Rick rode the Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride attraction at Disneyland around 50 times. On the final version of the cover, Law was disappointed to find that Disney had flipped the direction of the film strip, which “makes it look like they’re walking off a cliff.” They also covered The Rescuers Down Under, for which he “had to draw a lot of mice.”
Rick Law’s personal favorite Disney project he worked on was Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, because “Mickey is Walt, and Walt is Mickey.” This cover also had McDonald’s Happy Meal toys based on it: “I went into McDonald’s one day and there they are! I was like, wow this is crazy!”
We saw a video of Rick drawing Cruella De Vil. On the VHS cover for 101 Dalmatians, he was told to highlight Cruella more so she was moved to the middle.
We were shown different versions of the Tinker Bell cover, and then Law’s original Mulan sketch, which was eventually emulated for the 2020 live-action version. On the animated VHS cover, Disney tilted the sword.
Rick also designed the covers for Disney’s Snow Buddies and Space Buddies, though they were replaced by photo references in the final versions.
Commenting on current technological trends, Rick Law said, “None of this stuff was created by A.I., but A.I. does steal my stuff.” He then concluded his panel by telling a story about a question his team once got about whether Donald Duck was right-handed or left-handed. They responded, “He’s ambi-duck-strous.”
Be sure to check out plenty more coverage from San Diego Comic-Con 2024 right here at Laughing Place.