It was over a year ago when I made this pose of Elsa for our publicity department. I remember spending a little more time on this pose to make sure she looked good from every angle in hope that one day it would be used for a possible maquette, and not only for a publicity image.

After Frozen wrapped, I was thrilled when the production decided, like previous productions, they would be making maquettes of the characters available for studio employees, however there was a request to use a different Elsa publicity pose I had done based on the amazing Brittney Lee’s demure Elsa painting, because it was a better fit with the complete line up of characters.

A little bummed but still excited we were making maquettes, I cleaned up the requested demure Elsa pose, making sure it too looked good in all angles.

Even though I love the demure pose, on the day we reviewed all the character maquette poses, I made a plea that we use the dynamic Elsa pose. I showed a turntable of the CG model and pointed out that it would still work as a maquette even though she was standing on one leg because we could use her cape as support, and and and… because it would be awesome!!!

Thankfully Mike Giamo, the art director on Frozen, was in the room and loved the dynamic pose with long cape as well. I’ll never forget his response to not making the dynamic pose… “Can’t we make both?”

And that is how on Frozen, there are two Elsa maquettes!

Because the dynamic pose was outside of the standard set, we were able to work with Gentle Giant a little longer on iterations to refine it. The guys at Gentle Giant were great to work with and did a stellar job building the maquette.

Yesterday, the finished artist proof arrived, and I couldn’t be happier.