You know you’re talking to a fascinating person when they tell you their grandfather invented the mood ring, and that isn’t even in the top ten most interesting things about them. Lorcana artist Whitney Pollett comes from a family of talented and industrious artists, and like her grandfather, has leveraged her creativity in a number of fascinating and lucrative ways.
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I sat down with Pollett at last weekend’s Disney Lorcana North American Continental Championship, pulling her away from the endless queue of fans lined up at her autograph table to talk about her background as an artist and her experience as an early contributor to what has become the iconic style of Disney Lorcana.
The Long Road To Lorcana
Like most working artists, Pollett has had a wide range of experiences in the commercial art world. After finishing art school, the first choice on her career path was a difficult one: she could take an internship at Disney, or take a job at a DVD menu design house. “My mom was like, ‘Oh, an internship isn’t going to pay as much as this DVD menu thing.’” Pollett protested, but her mother’s pragmatism eventually swayed her into taking the higher-paid job.
“I took the DVD menu job reluctantly, and we all know how that business went,” Pollett explains. “So I called the recruiter immediately and asked if that apprenticeship was still open.” It turned out the internship was just about to start, and Pollett was able to get in just in time. “My whole life changed,” she says. “I have just been so grateful for the Disney team, it’s given me so much.”
Pollett always thought she would be going into animation at Disney, but her strengths as an artist took her on a different path where she eventually discovered her love for toy design. The internship was on the character art team for Disney consumer products, and, after learning how to draw all of the characters on-model, a friend recommended that she would be a great fit for toys.
“I discovered how beautifully complex toys were,” she says. “You’re working with filmmakers and showrunners and you’re making sure the beautiful story they’ve created is being told through the play of the toy, in an instant, on the shelf.”
When you talk to Pollett, you can tell how much she loves all of the elements that go into designing a toy, beyond whether or not it looks fun or nails the storytelling aspect. “There’s also the materials,” she says. “Is it safe? Is it going to hold up? Will it break? Then you learn the psychology of children, how are they going to play? What play patterns does this toy have? It’s this really amazing, challenging, and rewarding career that I’ve fallen into accidentally, and I absolutely love it.”
“When They Asked, I Did A Backflip”
But when Ravensburger reached out to her to create cards for Lorcana, she saw it as a chance to take a break from the complexity of toy design, and an opportunity to focus her energy on creating beautiful images that will resonate with people who have the same passion for Disney characters as her.
“When they asked if I’d be interested in working on this, I did a backflip,” Pollett says. “I grew up obsessing over Magic: The Gathering because I thought the artwork was so profoundly beautiful. Then I’d see the little name at the bottom and I’d just think, ‘What do I have to do to be an artist on one of these card games?’” Pollett says getting the invitation to work on Lorcana was a dream come true. “I just couldn’t imagine a better fit. Are you kidding me, yes! Of course I’d love to do this, this is going to be huge.”
The first card Pollett worked on was Elsa, Ice Surfer from The First Chapter. “I’ve worked on Elsa before, and there are a lot of eyeballs on Elsa,” she explains. “It’s important to make sure you never compromise the integrity of the original character, you want to make sure the storytelling is consistent. But with Lorcana, you’re taking liberties. At the beginning of Lorcana it was about figuring out how far we could push it.”
Pollett says there was a lot of back and forth and iteration in Else, Ice Surfer’s design. She did so many different compositions of the character in different poses, outfits, and colors that she can’t even remember now. After numerous explorations, Ravensburger took Polletts concept and handed it to artist Alice Pisoni, who did the final rendering. “She brought it to life and made it the card that it is today. I was so excited to see how they interpreted it, and now how this collaboration has turned into what this entire card game has become.”
Pollett does a lot of concept work for Lorcana, helping to establish the look of different characters and cards before they’re eventually given to other artists. She’s done fashion explorations for Tinker Bell and she worked on Mother Knows Best. The first card credited entirely to Pollett is the Enchanted version of Azurite Sea’s Yzma, Conniving Chemist. “I did this Enchanted, which was all mine,” she says. “That was really rewarding and an awesome experience, I want to do more.”
Pollett calls this project a dream come true, and says she was drawn to the idea from the initial concept. “I loved the brief,” she says. “It was like a field journal. It’s sketchy. It’s on tattered sepia tone paper. I thought, ‘What a different execution. What a totally different direction creatively that will make so much sense for the storytelling.’” Pollett loves line work and sketching, and says Da Vinci was her favorite artist as a kid. “I’m so honored to be part of that collection and I’m now addicted to finding all of them, which is a problem.”
A New Kind Of Fandom
Pollett says being at the NACC is a full-circle moment. “To see it blow up the way it has and everybody enjoying it so much, and also to see that the people who gravitate towards it are so kind and sweet because it’s a Disney community, it’s the best.” Pollett is no stranger to convention appearances. She’s been to San Diego Comic-Con ten times, and attended WonderCon, DesignerCon, and lots of tech events. She says these kinds of events aren’t new to her, but meeting this type of fandom is.
“I’ve met so many really lovely, charming, and darling parents of like… six children,” she says. “They come here with their kids and they play, and they’re so happy to have something to bond over. It brings me to tears, I’m so moved when I meet these people.” She loves seeing the confidence that young kids who compete in Lorcana have, and was delighted when I told her Lorcana kids tend to be the best trash talkers. “They’re spunky!” she says.
In both her role as a toy designer and a concept artist for Lorcana, Pollett is comfortable working behind the scenes. But, she says, that won’t stop her from pursuing more of her own Lorcana cards in the future. “I would like to do more villains,” she admits. “I’ve worked on so many cutesy patootsie characters and I would just love to get greedy and get bad, do something that feels a little naughty. But not too bad, just like those eight-year-old trash talkers.”
Disney Lorcana
Lorcana is a trading card game developed by Disney and published by Ravensburger, featuring iconic characters, settings, and more from the studio’s long history. As an Illumineer, you must build your deck and help protect Lorcana.