A bit about me:

I started out as a professional cartoonist in my home town of Ottawa back in 1978. My first regular stint was illustrating a humourous column called "Brown's Beat" in The Ottawa Citizen, which I did for about 6 years. During this time I was fortunate enough to meet some of the artists who worked at Walt Disney World in Florida, where I vacationed once every year or two. They liked my artwork and put me in touch with Disney's Canadian licensing office in Toronto, recommending that I approach them to seek work. After setting up an appointment to show them my portfolio, I started getting freelance assignments from them on a regular basis. Six months later I was offered a staff position in their art department and so I moved from Ottawa to Toronto to work with Disney for the next six years, illustrating Disney character licensed merchandise.

Several years later, one of my friends from the Walt Disney World art department called me to let me know they were looking to replace one of their artists who was transferring to the new animation department. He knew I was still interested in working down there so he said he'd help push for that to happen. After a year of collecting enough material to make a strong case for U.S Immigration, they were successful in getting me a work permit to join them. I worked on-staff at the WDW Marketing Art Department from 1990 to 1994, illustrating the Disney characters on everything from restaurant menus to vacation brochures to magazine advertising spots. Also during this time, I was approached by Disney Publishing in California to accept some freelance jobs illustrating children's books. I was doing so much book illustration and liking it so much that I ended up giving up my day job and returning to Canada to pursue a career in freelancing again. Since 1994, this has been my prefered way of working and I have thankfully been quite successful at it. To date, I believe I have illustrated about 40 books for Disney and its licensees.

At this point in my career, however, I am looking to vary my artistic diet by pursuing more non-Disney work to satisfy my desire to engage in my own personal cartooning style. It is with that desire that I present a sampling of my artwork here for the perusal of potential clients as well as all fans of cartooning!

Most sincerely,

Pete Emslie