My work over the years with Disney
I was hired early on to create costumes and accessories for new and existing Disney franchise movies.
Doing new Disney products was like working for the CIA. I had to use extremely pixelated watermarked images to protect the hugely guarded secrets of new movies coming out - under punishment of death if anything got leaked. They never said this, per se, but it was implied.
I always strived to create the essence of new items. I never got samples, so I created custom printed patterns and various fabric combinations, all sourced by myself. This meant working directly with people from Disney and factories abroad to create the perfect item for retail.
Working under Disney as a licensor was interesting to say the least. You would expect huge companies to have fantastic style guides and guidelines set up for all of their products… this was never the case, and a lot of the time, with new products especially, I would actually produce their product style guides, which are probably still being used to this day. Shame I'm not getting any kickbacks from them.