Artist of the Day: Scott Watanabe

Scott Watanabe works as a visual development artist at Disney. He received his first screen credit for Disney’s Tangled, on which he started as a trainee.

Scott’s main role on Tangled was “texture referencing the environments,” as he describes on a post containing examples of his work. Occasionally he got the opportunity to design props, environments, and “Moment Paintings and ideation sketches” such as the concepts for a jackalope head prop and a tavern scene below.

When a film needs meat, somebody has to design the meat. Scott designed these meat props with warm, textural washes that give them the visual-flavor of classic cartoon meat:

More recently, Scott participated in the Pen to Paper project in which children wrote stories about imaginary characters and professional artists illustrated them. Scott’s contribution is above, with more here. Some information about the larger project is at the GR Works website.

To see more work from Scott including his sculpture and paintings, visit his blog and portfolio.