Todd McFarlane is a comic book creator and entrepreneur. He is best known for his work on Spider-Man and the creator of the horror-fantasy franchise Spawn. However, after 1998, he began focusing more on building his efforts in business, founding the entertainment division, Todd McFarlane Productions. Two subsidiaries, McFarlane Toys and Todd McFarlane Entertainment, are the best known of the company.
Involvement with the Shrek franchise[]
Around 2001, McFarlane Toys struck a deal with DreamWorks to release action figures to promote the movie Shrek. Besides the toys, Todd McFarlane was also in charge of character and set designs for the Shrek X-Box game. This caused the art direction of the game to almost deviate from the more pseudo-realistic look of the film-- going for a dark, slightly twisted style. Most of his designs were also pitches for potential characters to be featured in the film. While his art direction would be praised, the game itself would be poorly received. Some critics noted how dark the game looked, which could be traced to his art style not leaning well to a 3-D game with distinct lighting and textures. Some of his designs would carry over to the GameCube port, Shrek Extra Large, but he would have no major involvement.
Trivia[]
- He personally sent a prototype of the Duloc Mascot figure to Shrek director, Andrew Adamson. Upon removing the Farquaad head, Adamson quickly noticed that the figure was molded after his likeness, which greatly pleased him.