Speaking of Anniversaries...

One year old today!

Designing a Fantasmic Dragon

The original Dragon's Head model sculpted by Rich Collins, 1991.

"Now you will deal with me, and all the powers of my imagination!"  During the most exciting sequence of Disneyland's Fantasmic!, Maleficent, the evil fairy from Sleeping Beauty, transforms herself into a 45-foot dragon, emitting a fiery blast that practically melts off our eyebrows, and sets the "Rivers of America" ablaze.

Twenty years ago this very night, the dragon made her first grouchy appearance on the southern tip of Tom Sawyer Island, and for twenty years since, Mickey Mouse has never failed to "imagine" her away. 

But materializing her into existence in the first place took the imaginations and talent of many creative and resourceful people. Not only would Maleficent, as a dragon, act out a dramatic scene while belching real fire, she also had to rapidly appear and disappear from view.  In spite of all our well-made plans in the design phase, the final dragon still had some issues, including torching its own head off a week before opening night.  But that's a tale best left to the Theme Park Operations and Tech Services people to tell... 

Throughout the planning stages of Fantasmic!, I was closely involved in the show's oversized creatures, working on the three-dimensional prototypes and planning out each of their performances.  

24" stop-motion animation model.

The dragon, as we originally envisioned, had a fully fleshed-out body, complete with arms, claws, and flapping wings (although the monster kept getting "hacked away" until she was virtually just a dragon's mechanical head on a boom lift, with lengths of non-flammable fabric hanging down to imply body mass, concealed in thick fog to encourage the viewer's own imagination to fill in the details.) Getting a bulky dragon to quickly exit the stage at the end of her big death scene was the greatest challenge for everyone.

An articulated scale model was built by Vladimir Petrov, with a jointed wooden armature covered in a flexible foam rubber skin, to help us figure out the puppet's movement.  I took the model home with me over a weekend and filmed a brief animated test on a folding table in the middle of my apartment.  With lighting clipped to the backs of chairs and a gridded background to define the range of motion, Maleficent was put through her paces, first in profile and then in front view.

If you have ever tried doing stop-motion animation, you know what a painstaking process it is.  Each frame of film is clicked off one at a time, as you adjust all the pieces and parts in small precise-measured increments.  In a minute and a half, you will watch something that took 30 hours to produce.  I got a little giddy halfway through the ordeal, as you'll see.

And now, drumroll please...
Prepare to be awed by the never before seen, original animation test for Disneyland's Fantasmic Dragon!

Breakdown of Profile Animation

0:17 -- Appearance of the Dragon

0:21 -- Dragon notices the audience and reacts with surprise.

0:28 -- Dragon's evil laughter.

0:33 to  0:44 -- Dragon throws tantrum, and blasts fire toward audience.

0:45 to 0:47 -- Second fire blast.

0:50 -- Third fire blast, interrupted by Mickey's magic.

0:53 -- Dragon rears back "in pain."

0:58 -- Dragon is defeated.

Breakdown of Front View Animation

1:09 to approximately 1:20 -- Dragon enjoys a snack.
1:26 -- Surveys audience.
1:37 to 1:42 -- Fire blast.

Yes folks, this was made back in the dark ages, before computers ever existed in the Disneyland Art Dept.  This was shot with a wonderful antique Swiss-made Bolex 16-millimeter movie camera on 100 feet of black & white Tri-X Reversal Kodak film.  It's what all of us artsy-fartsy indie film makers used in those days.  I hope you're impressed.

There were several other dragon models, too, including a pair of hard resin-cast figures sculpted by Rich Collins.

Rich Collins

Rich was a super talented model-maker who later went on to sculpt cool toys for Mattel.  He was also a big healthy guy, a serious body-builder who microwaved broccoli everyday at lunch, and brought me containers of "Max Muscle" protein powder because I was such a pathetic weakling. (It didn't help, by the way.)  Rich had a goofy sense of humor that I liked, though not everyone did. (Rich, if you are somewhere out there and reading this, please contact me!  We somehow lost touch over the years.)

Me, with nerdy goggles and dust mask, and the one and only Rich Collins.

Fantasmic! turns exactly twenty years old tonight.  Hard to imagine, huh?  If you're at Disneyland today, I hope you stay and enjoy the show.  If you're an Annual Passholder, Disneyland is hosting four special events honoring the show's anniversary on Monday and Tuesday of this week and next (May 14, 15, 21, and 22.)  If we're lucky we'll bump into each other at one of the showings!

And as for our old friend the Dragon...

"Heading" north on the I-5!

Not very long ago, the original "head on a stick" Maleficent was retired and Fantasmic! now boasts a super-awesome, new-and-improved fully Audio-Animatronic creature - complete with arms, claws, and flapping wings, just like she was originally designed to have.  She still gives the same fire-in-your-face performance, though, so make sure you cheer her on.  The original head (well, technically the second one if you count that one that burnt up) is right now being towed from Anaheim to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley for a spectacular Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives exhibit opening on July 6, 2012.  The show will run for 10 months so you'll have ample opportunity to gaze into those sulfurous yellow eyes for yourself and ponder all the spines they've tingled over the past two decades.

Come back soon for more fantasmic memories.

The Twenty-Year-Long Nightmare

A crocodile swims in an Anaheim parking lot, 1991.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of a little nighttime show that ignited a long tradition of "water and fire spectaculars" at the Disney parks around the world.  Back in 1992 I was a young theatrical designer beginning my fourth year in the Disneyland Entertainment-Art Department, building scale models for full-sized stage sets and parade floats.  Among my particular specialties were miniatures and puppets, and prior to Fantasmic!, I had designed three-dimensional elements for several Disneyland projects, including the "Party Gras" Parade (1990).  It was a fun place to work, surrounded by talented people who became my friends.  I had a lot of wide-eyed enthusiasm back then, and learned how to fabricate all kinds of neat stuff just by doing my job.  My career in the Disneyland Ent-Art Dept lasted eleven years.

Art Director Tom Butsch and a young model builder in 1991.

Fantasmic! was designed by Tom Butsch, one of the nicest art directors I've ever had the pleasure to work with.  Tom is a mild-mannered guy from Minnesota, who had designed for live theater and TV sitcoms, such as "Different Strokes," before coming to Disney in 1988.  He storyboarded the whole show - multiple permutations of it - with gouache and colored-pencil on big black boards.  Many of his original drawings were published in promotional materials and magazine articles when the show was first being advertised.

He was once a little green ball of plastilina...

During this time, I led a group of model makers at the off-site Entertainment-Art Warehouse on Olive Street, a mile northeast of Disneyland in the historic Anaheim Colony neighborhood (Oh, the stories I could tell about that place... Great, great memories.)  The first models I built were the barge/puppets for Ursula and the Crocodile.  Vladimir Petrov, Jackie Gonzales, Rich Collins and I made a multitude of other miniature pieces, including various fire-breathing dragons (more on that later this week...)

Ideas for an outdoor show on Frontierland's riverfront actually began in the late 1980s including, I recall, a Haunted Mansion-themed "River Haunt"with ghosts rising from the mansion and appearing to fly over to the island, a la "Night On Bald Mountain."  That evolved into a short-lived concept called "Fantasia Live!"consisting of projected film clips on three enormous movie screens accompanied by an orchestra on a floating stage.  In the above photo (taken at a seminar for art students), one of the earliest renderings, by artist Scott Sinclair, shows the tip of Tom Sawyer's Island engulfed by a trio of "drive-in movie" type screens.  It wasn't until an outside French company came up with a method for projecting film onto water mist, that things began to fall into place.  For a year, production went forward under the title "Imagination" until it was determined that the word could not be trademarked.  Director Barnette Ricci suggested a made-up word "fantasmic" - which sounded silly to us designers at first - but the new name stuck.  Nevertheless, the show's musical soundtrack still begins with "Imagination" sung on the recording.

Fantasmic! (don't forget that exclamation point!) was originally expected to run for five years.  Now, even at twenty years, the show still seems to me like a "new thing" at Disneyland.  Or maybe I'm just in denial.

With the legendary Tom Butsch at his retirement lunch, October 2011.

More fantasmic memories coming this week, if I have time to get them posted. Stay tuned.

Happy Wedding

A paper cake topper for my friends Michelle and Roy, who got hitched yesterday.  Congratulations, kids!

In the Shade of the Sunshine Tree

Fresh orange paint, and he's ready to go!

As today is the dreaded Tax Day, here's a 'sunny thought' to help make everything better.  This morning Disney finally returned the Orange Bird to Walt Disney World, and I'm very happy about that!  Hooray, I love the little Orange Bird!  He's so cute -- and he's so orange!

1970s snapshots of the original figure sculpt, WED Imagineering, Glendale.

Folks enjoying their frozen Citrus Swirls at the newly renovated Sunshine Tree Terrace in Adventureland can once again see the original Orange Bird figure above the counter, this time not in a tree but perched on a fruit crate.  The figure was long thought to be lost but I was able to provide a tiny bit of assistance to the Disney Archives in their identifying the figure through some photos I had kept in my files.  Apparently the Orange Bird had been taking a decades-long nap in a drawer at Imagineering right under everyone's noses.

The only known vintage image of the Orange Bird in the Sunshine Tree,
from a color slide taken in 1980 by Stacia Martin. 

 Thanks to our friends at WDI and the W.D. Archives, for restoring a wonderful bit of nostalgia for a new generation!

It's Just Like Being on a Roller Scoter

Hey friends, I'm taking a little vacation.

See you soon.

Art in Anaheim: Sculpture Finally Gets Some Love

A splashy comeback for artist John Edward Svenson's sculpture.

Last summer I wrote about the "Child on a Dolphin" sculpture in front of Anaheim's Chase Bank. Back then, the bronze sculpture, which had originally decorated the bank's fountain since 1970, was sadly in need of some love. Dead plants and litter filled the basin, and generally things weren't looking too great at the corner of Harbor Blvd and Lincoln Ave.

Well, as you can see in the photo above, things have changed. Chase Bank cleaned out the basin, installed a watering system, and planted fresh flowers all around. Not only do the boy and his trio of dolphins look happier, the entire intersection feels classier. I applaud Chase Bank for finally taking pride in their property and the neighborhood, and giving a piece of public art the respect it deserves. Three cheers for Chase!

The sad situation back in August 2011.

Keeping our neighborhoods nice and beautiful begins with all of us. Pick up litter whenever you see it and throw it away. You've got two hands and it only takes a second, so get yourself into the habit. It doesn't matter if you weren't the person who dropped the litter in the first place - be the wonderful person who makes it go away. I'll admit that before I took the photo at the top of this post, I had to pick a Starbucks cup and a Fritos bag out of the flowers. Yes, I grumbled about it for a second, but then the trash was gone and I felt great. Remember, ugliness breeds more ugliness, and by making an effort you can make a big difference in your neighborhood.

Smile A-While To-Day!

I'm the kind of guy who wants to believe that everything in life happens for a reason. To acknowledge that life's little ups and downs are largely beyond our control is a concept that doesn't sit too comfortably with me. Furthermore, when life's "downs" occasionally happen, I think it would be nice if there were always some straightforward lesson to be learned to help us avoid them happening again.

A month ago I had a mishap on my bicycle (my beloved bicycle!) that resulted in ten broken bones and a punctured lung.

My lung is practically healed now, but the bones, including a broken shoulder and collarbone, still have a way to go. Truthfully, it sounds a whole lot worse than it actually is, and I'm relieved that things have been improving so quickly since that first week. And although I haven't really learned anything important from this episode (other than the fact that Hydrocodon will make you insanely thirsty), I've become aware of something that was already present in my life but just needed this opportunity to become more vivid --- and that is the love I feel for my friends, neighbors and family. Thank you for your overwhelming support, happy thoughts, cards, emails, and, for some of you, cooking! I am filled with gratitude, not just for LIFE in general, but for the amazing people around me who make it worth living.

Here's to healing, to time passing, and to you!

Player Piano Sing-A-long!

"Save Your Sorrow For Tomorrow" 1925

Walt Disney's Secret Characters (Part One)

Tommy Mohawk and his little pal, Chatter!

We recently acquired a stack of rare television commercial model sheets created by Disney artists in the '50s. When these animated ads were produced, Walt was looking for ways to earn extra money to keep his studio afloat and help finance Disneyland. The characters you see here for Mohawk Carpets were drawn in 1952 in the traditional Disney style.

Here's Chatter the Squirrel, looking suspiciously similar to another famous nut-loving rodent in the Disney firmament. Apparently his oversized headband would sometimes cover his eyes, causing him to trip and run into stuff.

And this sweet Indian maiden is Minnie (short for "Minnehaha"). There were eight Mohawk spots produced in all, with the following descriptive titles: Tommy Tests Carpets, Tommy Supervises Weaving, Tommy Plants Carpet Seeds, Tommy Designs Carpets, Tommy Falls for Minnie, Tommy Gives Animals Sleeping Carpets, Birds Use Waterfall for Loom, and Tommy Harvests Carpets.

Here's the complete model sheet:

Notice that the Studio stamp at the top isn't Disney's, but reads "Property of Hurrell Productions." Producing commercials for TV in the early days was considered waaay beneath the status of a major Hollywood movie studio, so Walt set up a separate, secret television production studio on the Burbank lot operated by famed glamour photographer George Hurrell...who just happened to be married to Phyllis Bounds, the niece of Walt's wife, Lillian!

George Hurrell, incidentally, had photographed Walt for this famous portrait way back in 1940.

There is one Mohawk Carpet ad posted online (Tommy Plants Carpet Seeds!!)

 
And if you google "mohawk carpet animated" you'll discover this nifty roadside relic in Denver, Colorado:

Disney Storyboards for Kelvinator, 1955

Hey Tomorrowland fans, remember once we traveled back in time to 1955 to see CIRCARAMA and that mind-bending kitchen appliance of the future, the FOODARAMA? You don't remember that? Well, CLICK HERE and go see it now. I'll wait right here....

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Okay, back again? Now check this out. Below are the storyboards for the animated logo seen in the Kelvinator TV commercial above. The animation was produced by Disney, who may very likely have run this ad with the weekly Disneyland TV show on ABC.

Storyboard art like this is a rare find and really cool to look at, so I thought I'd share it with you. The descriptions that accompanied each panel are included underneath the picture... Enjoy!

Kelvintator music with singing (choral group or single voice).

Logo Action - Circle zooms up into scene.

1st bar of letter K drops into circle...

Rest of letter K with remainder of logo shoots in like arrow.

Sparkle flash on contact.

Flash fades. Logo complete.

Dissolve to long shot of Dream Kitchen floor pattern floating in sparkling star

sky over lighted city. Dancer-type girl in sheer flowing dress on floor center.

Appliances pop on completing Dream Kitchen set-up. Girl reacts.

Dolly camera into medium shot.

Dissolve to medium close shot of featured appliance. Singing stops and woman announcer's voice takes over. Girl pantomimes to pitch to display the merits and features of appliance.

I Speak For The Tree...Part Two

Two months ago I wrote a sort of eulogy to a lost piece of art, the original Plaza Pavilion mural at Disneyland, a painting that had sparked my imagination as a kid, and has continued to be a source of inspiration to me in my own work. Since then, that post has received more hits, more "tweets" and garnered more responses than anything else I've written for this blog. Many responses arrived in my email or as facebook messages, and a great deal of them came from within the Disney company itself. Some were from anonymous writers (or acquaintances who requested to remain anonymous). The post seemed to have hit a nerve with many like-minded people, especially people who create art themselves, or hold creative jobs.

Recently Disneyland unveiled their brand new Jolly Holiday Bakery in the Pavilion space, and I have to say it's wonderful. It's truly one of the most delightful and inviting interiors at Disneyland today, and the food is really great, too (try the Waldorf chicken salad sandwich with tomato soup.) The wall that once carried the mural is gone now, but the custom moulding that framed it remains. Disney Imagineer Kim Irvine lovingly handpainted a subtle tribute to the mural with a similar tree overflowing with Mary Poppins references. The week the bakery opened to the public, my inbox was bombarded with cell phone shots of Kim's painting from readers who had recognized the tribute. I highly recommend visiting the new Bakery, which has become my favorite place to eat in the Park.

However, the search for some decent documentation of the original Pavilion mural continues. Incredibly, two people have come through with their own shots of the mural, and granted permission to share them here. The color photos below are courtesy of my friend Greg MacLaurin, a creative genius himself, who snapped these photos in the restaurant decades ago. He could only provide these lo-rez shots, but I assure you they are better quality and show more detail than anything we could locate in Disney's official files.

The color seems close to the original, though the flashy metallic gold background is reading here as mustard yellow. Greg's photos were taken from the serving line and at an angle to avoid his flash bouncing off the surface and back into the camera. I've distorted the frames in photoshop to flatten out the art as much as possible.

Seeing these images, even fragmented as they are, makes me happy. And this brings up a key lesson on historic preservation and the importance of keeping documentation. When a work of art is lost, whether it be a mural, a beautiful old building, or an original movie negative that has decomposed - it can never again be experienced as it was intended. Photographs, if they even exist at all, become the only portal to stepping back in time. To date, the images I've posted are all that we have, and to people who care - like you and me - they're as valuable as gold.

Look, there's the frog on the cutting board -a particular source of squeamish delight to me as a kid.

And, check it out! At the base of the trunk, there are little mushrooms growing in the grass; a wonderful touch that I had forgotten all about.

If anyone else out there has a picture (even just a glimpse) of this mural stashed somewhere in a family album from a past trip to Disneyland, please consider sharing it with us. Together we can make sure a small, lovely detail of Disneyland's past won't ever be forgotten.

Anaheim's Marvelous Modern Mobil, 1956

The Mobil gas station that once adorned an intersection near Disneyland was a marvel of mid-century design by architects Whitney Smith and Wayne Williams. With four giant floating canopies balanced magically on spindles, underneath a fire-engine red flying Pegasus, the station was a mid-century roadside masterpiece - even catching the eye of famed architectural photographer Julius Shulman in 1956.

More photos in my post for the Anaheim Historical Society. You can almost smell the exhaust fumes.

Here's where it was...

2012

Every Christmas Card I Write...

I'm a push-over for Christmas cards - specifically wonderful old cards. They're the best ones. We never purchase new cards each year, but instead send out used vintage cards, even if they're already written in. Simply sign your name under the previous sender just like you're endorsing a check. "Season's Greetings from Clyde and Flossie Humperdinck ... but mostly from Kevin!"

After years of mailing beautiful old cards out, never to be seen again (by us), we've begun scanning them first. Our Virtual Vintage Christmas Card File is looking mighty fine right now. I've just shared twenty of our favorites on the Miehana Flickr gallery. Check them out here.

Merry Christmas from Great-Grandma Schmickle - and me!

A-Frame Doll House

A perfect gift for the cool kids on your Christmas list: a miniature mountain lodge you can build yourself! From Sunset Magazine, December 1961.

Both sides of the roof open out flat on the floor, and fold up for storage.

Built of 1/4" plywood, and pine molding, with a sheet of heavy clear plastic for the windows. The roof is painted with one thin coat of brick-red paint, and the shingles are simply drawn in with a soft pencil and a T-square. So easy. I seriously want one of these.

(And you can get the perfect furniture for it HERE... including a teensy Hemisphere Chair!)

Disneyland's Unknown Muppet Parade

"Here Come The Muppets" Parade models, 1990.

With the Muppets' recent comeback for a new generation, I was reminded of my brief brush with Muppetdom in early 1990. "Here Come The Muppets" was the title for a proposed Disneyland parade that would have featured giant inflatable characters rolling down Main Street on floats, similar to the balloons in the Pardi Gras parade (also 1990). Disney had just purchased the Muppets from Jim Henson for an estimated 150 million dollars, and the company was speedily making big (and wild) plans for Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.

Disneyland President Jack Lindquist had an idea of sending Mickey and the other Disney characters  on a year-long "vacation" away from the Park while the Muppets took over for the duration. Some of the concept sketches we saw at the time included draping the Disneyland marquee on Harbor Blvd with a big banner reading "Muppetland", painting the Matterhorn green, and replacing the Mickey flower bed in front of the Train Station with Kermit's face.

Thankfully, none of this came to pass, but the Disneyland Art Department certainly enjoyed working on several Muppet parade models. In the photo above, Kermit, Sweetums, Dr. Teeth, and Animal were all sculpted by Rich Collins. I did Fozzie and Beaker. Miss Piggy was done by Scott Sinclair, and Jackie Perreault sculpted Swedish Chef. One other model I'd started but never completed: Gonzo in his super-hero cape and red tennis shoes.

Beaker and Fozzie sculptures in Plasticine. In the final ver-

sion, Fozzie sat on a steamer trunk full of vaudeville props.

On May 16th, 1990, Jim Henson died unexpectedly of pneumonia. I heard the news on KCRW while driving to work that morning. It was a terrible shock, made even more surreal because of the project we had been immersed in for months. With Henson gone, Disneyland's Muppet deal immediately floundered, and we were told to stop working on the parade. Any artwork that we had done featuring Muppets was packed onto a truck and taken away (possibly to the Henson company?) Maybe there's a warehouse somewhere with all our models packed away in crates. At any rate, I'm glad we snapped a few photos while we had the chance!

TV's "Magical World of Disney" welcomed the Muppets to the family. (1990)