early designs for ballet teacher

The drawing above and the two below are some of the early character designs for the ballet teacher. They were not actually used in their entirety, but each played an important part in how I arrived at the final design for her. The one above is influenced by the late Al Hirschfeld. He is known for his caricatures and illustrations of famous americans. Their is a quality to his line which can be best described by the word 'flowing'. I was immediately struck by the potential of this quality to represent ballet. This was further reinforced after watching Fantasia 2000, which contains a short film titled 'Rhapsody in Blue' Its based on a lot of Al Hirschfeld own characters, which the Disney team got permission to use directly or re-design. His flow of line and use of simple, yet elusive graphic shapes is an element which I tried to incorporate into my own designs.