010. Mushu

Mushu appears in Disney's animated feature 'Mulan' as the sidekick and self appointed guardian of Fa Mulan, after he accidentally destroys the great stone dragon. Having originally been demoted to the disgraced position of gong ringer,  Mushu's aim in the movie is to help Mulan become a war hero in order to be reinstated as a guardian spirit.

I've decided to recreate this pose for the model as I really love the stance and I think it shows his overconfident nature really well. Getting the model to balance right will probably be the biggest challenge but I think it will be a really awesome addition to the collection. I've already modeled his gong and stick and am planning on incorporating these by having him hold the gong itself in his downward facing hand and the stick in the other. The gong will also be part of the Mulan inspired zen garden I'll be releasing throughout next week. 

Character trivia is below, I've already started working on modeling his head so the WIP post will be out on the page at some point later tonight or tomorrow. 

• Mushu is named after moo shu pork, a popular Chinese dish 
• Eddie Murphy could not reprise his role as Mushu for Mulan II due to a clause in his contract for Shrek 2. Because of this, Mark Moseley replaced him. Coincidentally, Moseley has also filled in for Murphy by voicing Donkey in the Shrek video games.
• Joe Pesci was originally cast as Mushu, but after a few voice tryouts, the animators didn't think that he was right for the role. 
• In the Disney Princess franchise, Mushu is one of the sidekicks of a Disney Princess to have a more significant role than the love interest along with the Seven Dwarfs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Jaq and Gus in Cinderella.
• In deleted scenes for Mulan, Mushu had his own song called "Keep 'em Guessing".
• In the Disney Junior Encyclopedia of Animated Characters book, it says that he seems to be the only one who understands Cri-Kee's speech and often translates the little cricket's chirping.
• In Kingdom Hearts, Mushu produces his own copy of the original Kingdom Hearts manga and is annoyed to discover that he does not appear.
• In House of Mouse, we learn that his favorite foods are Kung Pao chicken and freshly roasted nuts. Drinking iced water prohibits his ability to breathe fire for a little while.
• In the early concept of Mulan II, Mushu was originally going to have a love interest in the form of a female dragon that looks almost identical to him. This dragon in question would have also presumably served as either Shang's confidant or family guardian.
• He does not appear in the 2020 live-action version. However, his role is replaced by a red-and-yellow phoenix due to cultural appropriation. Despite not appearing and being replaced, the phoenix itself bears a similar color scheme to Mushu.

See you in the next post for updates on the Mushu model!

Harley