Read Online Dream It! Do It! (Disney Editions Deluxe) by Martin Sklar - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Martin Sklar
Tags: Disney Editions Deluxe
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making anything (and everything) work; and so many more. They (and some of the amazing technical talents at the Studio, notably the film, camera, and projection genius Ub Iwerks) were the leprechauns who helped Walt find the rainbow that led to the pot of gold called Disneyland.
The lessons were taught outside of WED’s quarters in Glendale, as well. Without a food facility on the Glendale campus, lunch was always a short walk or drive to a local eatery, where a focused discussion frequently took place about a local theater production, museum exhibition, or travel experience. Often the subject was how to solve that day’s creative challenge, and it was a way for the top Imagineers to stay informed about what each was doing. My lunch companions were frequently Coats, Gibson, Joerger, and Sewell, administrator of the Model Shop and a talent in his own right who had helped create the quintessential dioramas in New York’s American Museum of Natural History in the late 1930s.
One of the preoccupations at these meals was my companions’ observation of other diners and servers. One night in Florida, during the building of Epcot, we were having dinner at a local restaurant. I noticed that Blaine Gibson, our chief sculptor, was totally absorbed in studying the chef, who had come into the seating area to converse with patrons. When I asked, Blaine admitted he was focused on the chef’s huge hands. Sure enough, when we all looked, we realized his hands were out of scale to the rest of his body. For Blaine, they were not just curiosities: he was making a mental note of those hands to use later on one of our Audio-Animatronics figures.
I knew that Blaine’s love of animals, and understanding of their anatomy and movement, came partly from his years in Disney animation. But even more, they were the result of growing up as a farm boy in Colorado. When it came to the human figures he sculpted for our park attractions, my curiosity got the best of me. One day I asked Blaine where his inspiration for human characters in our shows came from—for example, the incredible buccaneers of Pirates of the Caribbean. Reluctantly, Blaine admitted that his wife, Coral, had mastered the kick under the chair at dinner: when Blaine would stare too long at another diner or server, Coral would let him have it. But she had not found a way to stop him from focusing on the special characteristics and features of fellow churchgoers.
“You mean,” I asked cautiously, “that some of our pirates may resemble congregants in your church?” “Yes, it’s very possible,” Imagineering’s chief sculptor admitted. “Walt wanted realism in the pirates, and I found ideas and inspiration in many places!”
Realism in life experiences was critically important to the great illustrator Herbert Dickens Ryman, who drew the first overall concept illustration of Disneyland in 1953. A graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, Ryman had become one of the most skilled artists in the MGM art department in the 1930s, working under the legendary Cedric Gibbons to illustrate scenes and locations around the world for such classic films as Mutiny on the Bounty , David Copperfield , The Good Earth , Tarzan , and A Tale of Two Cities. Then one day Ryman realized he had seen nothing of people and places, and he became a world traveler, spending weeks in China, Cambodia, Japan, and Thailand in the 1930s. Eventually, he visited Europe, Africa, and—as a Disney artist—he became part of Walt Disney’s goodwill tour of South America in the 1940s. (Herb’s sketches played a role in the design of the two films inspired by that trip for the U.S. State Department, Saludos Amigos and Fun and Fancy Free .)
“I used to think I could research everything out of books; that I could trace or copy a horse, an eagle, an oak tree, or a girl on a beach,” Herb said. “I thought it was all in National Geographic. By actually touching ruins, feeling the wind on my cheeks as I walked
The lessons were taught outside of WED’s quarters in Glendale, as well. Without a food facility on the Glendale campus, lunch was always a short walk or drive to a local eatery, where a focused discussion frequently took place about a local theater production, museum exhibition, or travel experience. Often the subject was how to solve that day’s creative challenge, and it was a way for the top Imagineers to stay informed about what each was doing. My lunch companions were frequently Coats, Gibson, Joerger, and Sewell, administrator of the Model Shop and a talent in his own right who had helped create the quintessential dioramas in New York’s American Museum of Natural History in the late 1930s.
One of the preoccupations at these meals was my companions’ observation of other diners and servers. One night in Florida, during the building of Epcot, we were having dinner at a local restaurant. I noticed that Blaine Gibson, our chief sculptor, was totally absorbed in studying the chef, who had come into the seating area to converse with patrons. When I asked, Blaine admitted he was focused on the chef’s huge hands. Sure enough, when we all looked, we realized his hands were out of scale to the rest of his body. For Blaine, they were not just curiosities: he was making a mental note of those hands to use later on one of our Audio-Animatronics figures.
I knew that Blaine’s love of animals, and understanding of their anatomy and movement, came partly from his years in Disney animation. But even more, they were the result of growing up as a farm boy in Colorado. When it came to the human figures he sculpted for our park attractions, my curiosity got the best of me. One day I asked Blaine where his inspiration for human characters in our shows came from—for example, the incredible buccaneers of Pirates of the Caribbean. Reluctantly, Blaine admitted that his wife, Coral, had mastered the kick under the chair at dinner: when Blaine would stare too long at another diner or server, Coral would let him have it. But she had not found a way to stop him from focusing on the special characteristics and features of fellow churchgoers.
“You mean,” I asked cautiously, “that some of our pirates may resemble congregants in your church?” “Yes, it’s very possible,” Imagineering’s chief sculptor admitted. “Walt wanted realism in the pirates, and I found ideas and inspiration in many places!”
Realism in life experiences was critically important to the great illustrator Herbert Dickens Ryman, who drew the first overall concept illustration of Disneyland in 1953. A graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, Ryman had become one of the most skilled artists in the MGM art department in the 1930s, working under the legendary Cedric Gibbons to illustrate scenes and locations around the world for such classic films as Mutiny on the Bounty , David Copperfield , The Good Earth , Tarzan , and A Tale of Two Cities. Then one day Ryman realized he had seen nothing of people and places, and he became a world traveler, spending weeks in China, Cambodia, Japan, and Thailand in the 1930s. Eventually, he visited Europe, Africa, and—as a Disney artist—he became part of Walt Disney’s goodwill tour of South America in the 1940s. (Herb’s sketches played a role in the design of the two films inspired by that trip for the U.S. State Department, Saludos Amigos and Fun and Fancy Free .)
“I used to think I could research everything out of books; that I could trace or copy a horse, an eagle, an oak tree, or a girl on a beach,” Herb said. “I thought it was all in National Geographic. By actually touching ruins, feeling the wind on my cheeks as I walked
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