Mike Gabriel

From the world of Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, this set of four illustrations by Mike Gabriel were prepared by artist Mike Gabriel during the pitch process to transform Tim Burton’s 1984 live action short into an animated feature.

Gabriel was contacted by Frankenweenie’s executive producer, Don Hahn, to join the project. Reflecting on the process, Gabriel recalls:

“Don gave me a month to do as much as I could. I never had more fun in my career than doing these fun takes on what an animated Sparky would possibly look like. Tim was an old friend and getting to work on one of his films was a dream come true. But the challenge due to his insanely inventive design sense was to try and not draw with my usual Mike Gabriel fast fat n' splashy designs. Go where I have never gone before. Slowly. Use a delicate line with bold shapes.”

This lot features an early character design for Sparky—Gabriel remembers:

“I wrote ‘appalling and appealing’ (albeit misspelled) to keep me focused on designing what Tim might like to see and not falling back to being too comfortably Disney.”

With Gabriel’s drawings in hand, Hahn’s pitch to Burton went swimmingly and the agreement to turn Frankenweenie into a feature was made.