Hi everybody, my name is Trent Correy, and I'm an animator at
Disney Feature Animation in California. And I've been here
since 2012. Actually, Frozen was the first film I worked on
the very first one and since then I've worked on Big Hero 6,
Zootopia, Moana, and Frozen 2, and I was very lucky on Frozen 2
to get to supervise two of my favorite characters right here,
Olaf and Bruni and the wind spirit Gale. So today, which I couldn't
have Gale here, I can't have a pile of leaves here, what am I
going to do? So, today we're going to learn how to draw Bruni
and I'd love if you drew along with me, this is for all ages.
And really, we're just going to keep this fun. We're going to
draw light with a red pencil, I'm going to draw digitally so
you can choose to do that too. And then we're going to clean up
the drawing together. This is all about fun, especially with a
character like Bruni. He's just cute. We just want to make him
cute, have a good time, so that at the end of the drawing, we can
look back at it
and just smile a little bit. So Bruni is a great such a fun
character, and hundreds of artists at Disney worked on
this character. This is not just me by any means this is
hundreds. And that goes from the designer of the character
through storyboards, and then modeling rigging, and animation,
which is when we move the character. And then there's a
whole bunch of other departments, especially for
Bruni, like effects and lighting that were so important. So
remember, this is such a group effort. And today, we're just
going to try to channel that cuteness and just have some fun,
drawing Bruni, so how about we get started, and we'll go slow. And
really, this is just about having fun. So let's draw this
cute little fire salamander together and so we can have
something to look back and smile at. Okay, let's get started.
You can see I've already chosen red. I always like to draw with a red
under color. It kind of helps you keep loose and if you're
using a red pencil, just try to draw it
real light. As you can see here, I'm starting with the head of
Bruni, which is kind of like a D shape. I always think of it as
a D, kind of on its side. It's a very simple shape. And again,
just be really loose with the pencil. You don't have to press
too hard. And I'm going to start to draw the eyes and ears. So I
usually like to put the eyes so that the top of the head kind of
goes to the center. And really with Bruni, the bigger the
eyes, the better. Go for cuteness, these eyes are
hilariously big. And when they're looking up at Elsa,
that's just my favorite thing ever. So draw them nice and big,
I actually drew them a little too high here. I'm gonna lower that
a little bit. There we go. Okay, but the great thing about
drawing around being loose first is that if you make little
mistakes like this, it doesn't matter because you're gonna
clean this up later. These are all just kind of guidelines and
you really want to draw through every shape. So let's go ahead
and put the pupil in there. I like to do this right away even
though it's a detail
Just because then it looks like Bruni's looking back at you.
And then what better way to draw Bruni than to have these cute
eyes just looking back at you the whole time.
This is all for
fun. So just be loose, have fun. And let's make Bruni as cute as
possible. So really, that you know what a circle is one of the
hardest things to draw. So take your time with that be loose. I
usually draw these little lines down from the pupils. It kind of
helps to tell me where the neck line goes here. So the neck,
he's got this very long neck when he perks up. And it's just
such a fun shape. Designer Bill Schwab just did some amazing
shape language here that was really fun for the animators to
play with. So I've got this and it's kind of a weird shape that
goes into his body. You know, you have this, this long neck
and these big eyes and then this cute, cute little body and kind
of flat along the bottom there. If you squint it actually kind of
starts to look, doesn't it kind of look like a boot or something?
You know, I can almost imagine
Someone just putting that on there, like if you, don't draw
this, but if you put little laces in here, then you have a
little boot with Bruni's head on it and like at the top of the
boot here, you know, like a little sock. So yeah, please
don't draw this all in but just you know think simple shapes.
That's how I remember drawings and, and how to put the
character together. So I'm going to go ahead and just go back to
the head here for a second and just put the smile on. Now the
smile's just a fun big smile. And this is where the centerline
really helps you can kind of arch the top of the lip up there
and just curl around the eyeballs. And now the top of the
corners kind of align with the pupils almost they go right up
to those cute little cheeks at the top of the D. So here we go.
It's it's this little curvy shape almost like a W that's
just kind of stretched out and you really get that cute upper
lip. So as you can see starting to take shape. We've got that
nice long neck and just gonna draw he's got this little
pattern in here where his neck goes
Just kind of draw these pieces in. Remember, we're going to
clean this all up later. So don't worry about being too
clean, you can draw through shapes so that later we know
where the pieces are going. So his legs are just these chubby
little things are so cute. It's got these like little S curves,
we call them it's the shape of an S and you can see where I
just drew that circle that's like his pudgy little forearms.
So I just I just love the way these look. And you know, when
the animators are animating, these are like little squishy
things. And it really his, his toes are just these like little
I think of them as like little pizza slices, little triangles,
and they're just the cutest little thing I loved when the
animators would squish these and then you show the bottom of his
palm and, and, and then in sound, they just added these
cute little sounds as he walked around and just all these
details just make Bruni such a cute character. So again, I'm
just gonna draw that leg on the other side here. Let's just
think of these little cute little finger pizza
slices, you can see actually like curved off the bottom of
the boot there just to just to give them that chess piece but,
you know, I'm drawing through all these lines so that later on
when we clean up we kind of know where everything connects. So
it's okay to just kind of keep those under drawings. You don't
have to erase anything right away, just be loose and we're
just trying to get the feeling of the character. Again, these
little pizza slices all these little things that you know, in
Frozen 2, Bruni just had to be cute. I mean, that's one of his
biggest moments, you know, right after, Elsa chases him down as
the fire just really important that they have a connection.
And, and it was just such a fun sequence to animate, to have
these big eyes staring up at Elsa, and have this little tongue
come out and catch the snowflake. But really we just
wanted the audience during that moment is to see Elsa's
connection with nature and just really fall in love with this
character Bruni. Okay, let's go ahead and throw his tail in
there. His tail, you know, I usually put it up I think of it
like a dog wagging his
tail a little bit, but just a really simple tail to
show that he's happy. And it's got a really simple curve to it.
He's starting to come together here. We're starting to see
Bruni and just be real rough here. I'm gonna draw the under
belly of his tail here. And you can see I'm just drawing through
the legs there because you know, we're going to go clean up and
choose the lines we want to keep clean later on. Okay I'm just
gonna sometimes I throw his eyebrows on here, not for my
rough sketches, I tend to leave them out because his eyes just
look so cute. above the head there. I'm probably gonna regret
drawing those in later but let's keep them there for now. And
then his little nose we start to add in the details. Those
nostrils are actually like pretty small nostrils. Again,
just to really emphasize a smile in his eyes. His we kept his
nose pretty small. He's got these little design patterns on
here. Now all these little designs on his back and his head,
they're actually little designs for the fire. Okay, as I said, I
regretted those eyebrows.
Okay, we'll leave this for now, we'll come back to that and
clean up. But here we go really simple shapes. And as you can
see, while I was drawing, always start with the big, simple
shapes, and then we kind of work down to the detail, you know,
just really quickly sketching these little diamond shapes on
his back and, and on his legs just to indicate where they
might be during our cleanup. Let's just recenter here. Now I
do like working digitally sometimes because I can do
everything in the spot. And if I need to just, you know, change a
proportion, or scale something that's it's really quick to do.
Let's just choose black here for the cleanup. And I'm already
noticing that you know, I feel like I drew his jaw a little big.
So here's something neat and when you work digitally, you can
just kind of squash that up a little bit there. And you know,
sometimes when his chin gets a little big it takes away from
his cuteness. So let's just bring that back down. This is
definitely you know, there's pros and cons to working
digitally and on paper, I love working on paper, it keeps you
loose and I hope you're you get to try both here but digitally,
just speed wise I can move a little quicker. So as we start
to clean up, Bruni, you know, we've drawn all our basic shapes
there. And we're just going to kind of soften that D shape a
little bit, draw the top of his head here. Yeah, just just try
to keep that flat and graphic. I love the simplicity of Bruni,
just keeping things really, really clean and simple. And
just letting those eyes do all the talking. Now at the cleanup
phase, you're still not just drawing over the red lines,
you're still making choices that are going to kind of inform the
drawing, here's a circle, so it's so weird, the circle is the
hardest thing to draw. I always have a hard time with it. It is
such a simple shape, but to draw such a perfect circle, you see
look how many little strokes I'm taking. It's a good thing to
keep in mind that even when Disney animators are drawing
characters, it's not perfect every time. So your drawing does
not need to be perfect every time. Take your time. Put it
together. I know when you see stuff on the screen or drawings
in books, it looks like, wow, these people can draw so easily.
No, I mean, every drawing is hard work. And we put a lot
of time into this stuff. So take your time, doesn't have to be
perfect the first time. And as you can see this, I take my time
with these circles, they're not easy.
But we're going to keep that I usually you can see the top of
the circles, I usually darken a little bit there, just to kind
of emphasize the top lid.
So yeah, I've got the little circle. I put it even like a
little bottom eyelid there just to clean it up a little bit. And
now I'm going to draw his pupils. Again, I like to start with the
eyes just because we put the most time into it. And if I get that
right and the character's looking back at me, it's kind of like
the character saying, hey, draw me right.
Okay, here we go. Got the big black pupil in there. So he's
looking back at us.
Yeah, and these, You know, I might even scale these up afterwards
because, really, I mean, those eyes, they're there, they call
them the window to the soul. And when Bruni's looking back at
you with those big eyes, you want those as cute as possible.
So okay, I have a kind of dark roughed in here.
Okay?
And they're just these really cute big black pupils. Okay, and
I am going to try just scaling them up a little bit. Again,
another another neat thing to, working digitally. You know, you
can do this on paper too, just by filling that in a little
bigger, but, but I do like the ease of this. So here we go. We
get this big pupils. And like I said, we're still making choices
during the cleanup phase, to just really make this drawing feel
and look like Bruni. So again, let's go back to this W shape.
Just really trying to soften the lines.
Really trying to let that mouth follow the contour of, of that
circle there, put his little cheek corners in there, just
adding these little details that that all come together to make
Bruni. I'm actually gonna lower his nose a little bit, it's a little too
high and put those little nostrils in so cute. You can see
in the movie when he's breathing heavily those little tiny
nostrils, the animators actually put little breaths in there,
which was so neat and cute to see those tiny details. Okay, and
as we connect to his neck, we're just going to soften that shape
a little bit. When that when that D shape kind of goes down
to that straight line, it does get a little too graphic. So
just gonna soften those neck corners and follow his chest up
here and just kind of make those little choices that make Bruni
who he is. Here's another thing that's hard to draw: straight
lines like that.
It's the simple stuff that's really complicated.
For some reason, so drawing a perfectly straight line is
tough. But again, none of this has to be perfect. We're just
trying to have fun and draw cute little Bruni. So
now I want to talk a little bit about the character here. When
I, when I saw Bruni in one of the first screenings of Frozen, I
just fell in love with the character, and I was beyond
excited to learn that I'd be able to help supervise the
character. Now, we had a team of animators that work on this
character, and in fact, it's a whole team of the studio that
works on this, you know, from modeling and rigging, design, and
then story artists, everybody, there's look artists, there's
lighters, there's effects artists was a big component of
this character. So it's really not one person that works on
this character. It's it's more like 50-100 I mean, hundreds of
people could work on a simple character like this, who's only
in the movie for minutes, but a lot of hard work goes into a
character to look and feel the way it does. And I'm really
proud to be part of the team that kind of helped to shape
him. Okay, so you can see here I'm just drawing those legs
shapes in. Now, Bruni was just such a fun reveal in the movie
too. If you haven't seen the movie, you should probably see
it. But, you know, it's on Disney+. And it was such a
fun reveal to see this fire kind of chasing down Elsa. And to
learn that Bruni's kind of this was just kind of this scared,
anxious fire spirit, and you know, not not evil or mad at all
just just kind of scared and when she corners him, that's
really what we kept in mind, almost like a scared animal.
Like a squirrel or, or a dog that was just kind of cornered.
But but just super cute. And when we do that, that chase and
it's scary and it's intense. And then we reveal that it's
Bruni, it's just one of my favorite parts in the movie. And
you know, but a team of probably
about seven or eight animators animated that section and just
just brought the cuteness, the snowflake, the licking the
eyeball the little walks and the little head tilts. I think
people had a lot of fun with that area. So as you can see,
I'm just choosing the little details to clean up and, you
know, especially Bruni's legs here, you can see the under
drawings in red underneath. And, you know, when I draw the bottom
of his belly here, you know, you can kind of see when those lines
connect, which is why you draw through those shapes in your
rough so that you just kind of have a guideline to see where
everything connects. And I'm just roughing in the shapes
here.
And I'll do the one on his back here. Now if you look closely,
the vis dev team I think was Brittney Lee did did a lot of just
great designs for the four spirits. You know, Bruni is one
of the four spirits and he represents fire and all these
little designs
have just these amazing unique
designs within them. So, take a look in the film they're in the
crystals, they're in Elsa's dress. They're just kind of
everywhere and it's a really big theme in the movie. So I'm going
to just draw those in the tail here. And look at that we have
our Bruni starting to come together. I did a little zoom in
zoom out there for you for some reason, here we go. Boom. Okay,
so you know what, just gonna clean up a few things here. I
always like putting this little white speck in his eyeballs,
like the light is hitting that corner there. Just kind of helps
to, to bring that cuteness. There we go. Okay, so we have a pretty,
pretty clean drawing here. And you know what, you can do this
at home if you like if you have color pencils or markers or if
you are working in Photoshop. But, you know, Bruni is
really only three colors. So I'm just gonna really quickly throw
some color in here. And what I love about Bruni's color, is
that it changes in the movie. So when he is
on fire, and kind of anxious and scared, he is one color. And
then as he starts to cool down and the fire leaves his back, he
changes color. And I just, I just love this. And, you know a
lot of people put a lot of hard work into that. And again, just
the effects on this, you have to go back and watch that section
to really appreciate it. But everything from when Bruni gets
angry, and there's little sparks on his back, and later on, when
he just nuzzles in Elsa's hand and cools off in the fire goes
down and you see him change color, just all these little
details that, again, maybe 100 people put into this character,
and work collectively is just one of the greatest things about
Disney Animation, the collaboration, the efforts from
every department, to help make Bruni a character that's
memorable and and has all these unique things about him. So you
can see
Here, and again, I'm not a color person, it's a very
simple color for Bruni. The animators really just focus on
motion and, and someone else will light and do the look and
the scales on the on the character.
But I'm just going to throw these really basic color shapes in.
Now this this light blue was really helpful for Bruni's
smile, see how that, it just connects to his bottom lip there
and you can really clearly see a smile now. So color is a big
component to making the character read and we even, you
know, it goes across his underbelly, but it's also in the
little pads under his feet. So when you see him walk, you get
to see that contrast and color from the dark on the top of his
foot to the light underneath. And I really thought that little
detail just added this this great like clarity to seeing as
his little his little paws touch the ground. Okay, I get some
little purple in here
and just just playing around with color. But that's our
friend Bruni.
I just loved this character I loved working on him
and and I hope you enjoyed seeing Bruni in the movie
because what a joy to work on and, and just the cuteness and
just everything. I wish there was more Bruni. Maybe one day
there will be, but for now that's our Bruni from Frozen 2
Thank you so much for coming to draw with me. Remember, take
your time, have fun, and draw Bruni in lots of different
poses. He's a fun character, have him running around, have
him licking snowflakes, have him on fire, kind of scared or
a little angry, and just have fun with the character.
Okay, that's it for now. Check out the other how to draw Disney
characters online. And thanks for drawing with me.