Disney Artists Are Sharing Concept Art From ‘Inner Workings’

It looks like the artists who worked on the latest Disney short, the Oscar-shortlisted Inner Workings, have been given the greenlight to post their artwork online.

While the director of the film, Leo Matsuda, has yet to share any work personally, at least three artists who worked on the project—Nick Orsi, Mike Yamada, and Jeremy Spears—have posted development work online.

Spears has posted photos of sculptures he created during the film’s development. Matsuda has commented about these sculptures, “At some point, I started doubting myself on how pushed the design of the characters could be but Jeremy proved to me with his appealing sculptures that we could still push more.”

Orsi, who has shared the most artwork of any artist, has posted some very early artwork, including the cutaway drawings he did for the first presentation to John Lasseter and the rest of the studio when Matsuda pitched the idea that organs could be characters.

Having written The Art of Pixar Short Films, I’m intimately familiar with the dedication and effort required to pull off an animated short, and it’s an accomplishment worth celebrating. Even if the shorts don’t always receive the fancy art book treatment, it’s nice to know that the skillful artwork used to develop these films has found a home online.

Jeremy Spears

Nick Orsi

Mike Yamada

All images in this piece © Disney.