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Do you mind sharing an example of what it takes to get a chracter designed for a Feature Film? 

Animation Character Design: Designing Lotso from Toy story 3

As a professional art director working on animation character design for Pixar and Disney, I have found my job to be a very challenging and rewarding process. It's not always as glamorous as it may seem to work for a major studio, but it never fails to deliver an immense sense of joy and satisfaction. At the end of a film, you know that you have helped in a small way create something that will live on forever and bring joy to the world for generations to come. When we design characters for a studio, we have to understand that we are not creating them based upon our own tastes, but that we are creating new and unique characters according to the director's vision of what will best support the story. So many times before, I have gotten caught up in trying to create the most unique and compelling character designs, trying to "stylize for style's sake." I have to remind myself that it is most important not to upstage the story with my designs, and instead to support the story in any way that I can. The story should drive the style of the film, not the other way around.

I helped design some characters for the films Ratatouille, Up, and Wall-E for Pixar, but most of my early work was centered around set design and props. It wasn't until Toy Story 3 that I had the opportunity to devote all of my time to character design. What a dream come true it was for me! The whole reason that I wanted to work for Pixar in the first place was, like so many others, because of Toy Story.

My first task when I got onto the film was to work on a pink bear that smelled of strawberries named Lots-O-Huggin Bear (Lotso for short). At the time we had no idea what he looked like; all we knew was that he needed to be appealing and to not represent anything else that already existed. There was already some great design work of Lotso done by production designer Bob Pauley, so at first I wasn't sure where to go with it. I began drawing bears that reminded me of the ones I grew up with, and other bears that I felt looked sweet and appealing. We played with the idea of him wearing a little vest, or even possibly a tie.

My first task when I got onto the film was to work on a pink bear that smelled of strawberries named Lots-O-Huggin Bear (Lotso for short). At the time we had no idea what he looked like; all we knew was that he needed to be appealing and to not represent anything else that already existed. There was already some great design work of Lotso done by production designer Bob Pauley, so at first I wasn't sure where to go with it. I began drawing bears that reminded me of the ones that I grew up with, and other bears that I felt looked sweet and appealing. We played with the idea of him wearing a little vest, or even possibly a tie.

A lot of people don't realize how much time is actually spent on animation character design; designing Lotso took months. After a while, it felt like there was nothing left to explore. I was out of ideas. There were some designs that director Lee Unkrich liked, but it still seemed as if we didn't have anything that he approved of.

Film Noir

One day in my office, my roommate Robert Kondo (the sets art director on Toy Story 3) and I talked about Lotso's design possibilities after another unsuccessful weekly art review. One of us suggested giving Lotso a big nose, since most of the designs we had already done featured the same small button nose seen on many classic teddy bears. After this discussion, I did a few drawings of Lotso with a big nose and different head and body shapes. That's when one of them hit. I showed my sketches to Lee in our next art review a few days later, and he found one that he loved. From there, we developed Lotso's character each week until we eventually narrowed down his design to a few drawings. We were feeling like we finally had something!After arriving at a design that we were all happy with, it was time to show executive producer John Lasseter our progress. This is where the real test is; at this crucial stage, characters are either approved or sent back to the drawing board. Fortunately, John loved the direction we were taking and his only comment was to keep going! From there, we were able to begin a sculpt with our sculptor Jerome Ranft. For the first time, we would be able to see our character in 3D, and see if the design was working or not.

Old Cowboy

After months of designing Lotso, the time had finally come to model him in the computer. I was super excited, because for me it was the first time that I had gotten a character approved from the conceptual phase. I remember how excited I was to see this big fat pink teddy bear that I was so tired of drawing finally in a model review. Of course, there were still many things to figure out: how he was going to walk since his legs were so short, how he would turn his neck since his head went right into his body, how his facial expressions 

After many more months of test models and animation tests, we finally had a new classic Toy Story character designed, talking and moving! I, along with many others, will forever have made a contribution to it. Since working on Lotso's design I have worked on many other original character designs, but I will never forget my first major project, when I got to work on this pink lovable bear.