Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland concept art: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch by Bobby Chiu and Jason SEILER


The long awaited release of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland opens today. This was my first time doing any kind of character design for a film, it was a ton of fun to work on and I hope to do it again. I worked with my good friend Bobby Chiu at Imaginism Studios, he did many of the designs and sketches and I then took his sketches and ran with it.

Bobby had done a couple other versions of the Bandersnatch which I thought were pretty cool, but this time around, they wanted to see something a bit more vicious . . . so my instructions from Bobby were to make this thing freaky as all get out. I used all sorts of references, from bears to sharks, even took pictures of myself making crazy faces. I painted him with fur because in Bobby's earlier versions he had fur . . . funny thing is, after sharing this painting of mine with Bobby he loved it but said that they wanted to see a "hairless" version! No big deal, that's part of the gig, so I did a second painting, seen below, this time "hairless" . . . turns out they liked my first version much more and what is seen in the film is rather close to that design, and it is AMAZING seeing it in action on screen . . . very cool.






So here is my second painting of the Bandersnatch. This time around, I painted him "hairless" as suggested, but I also felt like re-working the mouth and face a bit more, trying to think of the animators who are going to have to make this thing live and breath on screen. So I spent some time researching different animals and their mouths and teeth . . . just enough to get a better feel for what I was trying to achieve. I like this version as well, but personally I prefer my first painting over this one, it's much more ferocious, and as said above, they ended up going with the furry version in the end.

I have more concept art from the film to share, so check back on Monday to see more!




Bobby's initial sketch.

I would like to thank Bobby for thinking of me for this job, it was a lot of fun and an honor to work with my friends on this, I'm hungry for more, I really enjoyed working on these pieces . . . anyways, a big shout out to Bobby and Kei for their amazing work on the film!!