☛ The New Yorker: “Higher Calling” by Carter Goodrich, August 3, 1998. © Condé Nast.

Below is the same version of the drawing without the cover design (retrieved from LiveJournal)

The New Yorker cover can also be seen on Carter Goodrich official website: it’s his seventh cover drawn for The New Yorker (Flash is require for this link, without it, use this one instead). As of today, Goodrich has drawn seventeen cover for The New Yorker.

If his artwork seem familiar, it’s most likely because he has done character design for popular animated films produced by DreamWorks, Pixar and Universal Pictures. More recently, Goodrich has done some initial character studies for the film Brave (Goodrich’s illustrations were recently made availble on his website: “Character Design: Brave”, some examples are shown at the end of this post; see also over at Pixar: “D23 2011: The Art of Brave Panel”). Here’s the official biography available on his website:

Carter Goodrich’s career as an award winning freelance illustrator began in 1983, when he shared studio space with longtime friend and fellow illustrator, Buck Lewis, in New York City. His book and editorial work eventually led to the publication of seventeen New Yorker covers, and counting. Carter’s first role in film work came as lead character designer for DreamWorks’ first feature animated film, Prince of Egypt, in 1995. He then went on to work on such films as Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Shrek, Spirit, Sinbad, Open Season, on which he worked as art director/character design, and Despicable Me as lead character designer. His work on these films resulted in four ASIFA Annie Award nominations for best character design in a feature animated film. In 2007 his designs for Pixar’s Ratatouille finally brought home the Annie. In addition to his earlier illustrated books, Nutcracker (1987) and A Christmas Carol (1997), Carter has written and illustrated A Creature Was Stirring (2006 Simon & Schuster pub.), The Hermit Crab (2009 Simon & Schuster pub., a Junior Library Guild Selection), Say Hello to Zorro (2011 Simon & Schuster pub., 2011 Parents’ Choice Award, 2011 Editor’s Choice Award, 30 Best Children’s Books of 2011); and Zorro Gets an Outfit (2012 Simon & Schuster pub., a Junior Library Guild Selection), the second of an ongoing series of stories that feature the two dogs, Zorro and Mister Bud.

On his excellent blog Illustration Art, David Apatoff makes the following observation:

Last week I wrote that animated films are corporate artwork, polished and refined by so many committees that it is often difficult to find the fingerprints of any individual artist in the end product.
But sometimes an individual artist’s voice is so powerful that it survives the corporate de-flavorizing machine. We can still see the impact of Eyvind Earle’s contribution to the film Sleeping Beauty or Mary Blair‘s contribution to films such as Make Mine Music and Alice in Wonderland– films that ended up far better off because of distinctive individual voices.
One of the very few artists working in the field today with that kind of visual strength is the brilliant Carter Goodrich. (see the whole post: “Carter Goodrich”, June 29, 2012)

Bellow are some character design drawings made by Goodrich for such films as Brave (2012, IMDb), Ratatouille (2007, IMDb) and Finding Nemo (2003, IMDb). All images are retrieved from Carter Goodrich official website.

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I first spotted the “Higher Calling” illustration via Martin Klash.