Here’s the third Disney Family Museum sneak peek. Also, the official website is now up (a few days earlier than planned).
The success of Mickey Mouse let Walt Disney expand the newly renamed Walt Disney Studios and improve the quality of Studio animations, so he embarked on a series of ambitious projects, including the “Silly Symphonies,” one-reel shorts that let him experiment with images, music, and story lines. In the following years, the Studio created the first Technicolor cartoons, introduced a multiplane camera to create the illusion of depth in animated films, and developed distinctive styles of movement and personality in their characters. Also in this period, Walt and Lillian’s family grew to include daughters Diane and Sharon.
The continuing success of Walt’s cartoons led to a revolution in the art and technology of animation. Vintage artifacts, animation art, character merchandise, and family photos chronicle the creative explosion of the 1930s, Walt’s sudden world fame, and Diane and Sharon.
Today, I decided to give Twitter a try. I wanted some way for everyone to be kept up-to-date on what I’m doing . . . mostly. I obviously can’t be too revealing. That would make my family, friends, and clients a bit uneasy. But, you can definitely see how things progress or fall by the wayside.
On the News sidebar (left), you can see what I’m doing. For more updates, or if you want to follow me, you can visit my Twitter page.
For those of you who are dying for a model update, there has been a ton of progress. Yesterday, I logged a solid 11 hours of work! I had the spare time, so I took advantage of it. There are a lot of custom graphics that have to be created, so it takes some time. Plus, everything has to line up just right, or it looks haphazard. All-in-all, I’d say that I’m 75% of the way through the graphics, then I can start printing and building.
Walt arrived in California in 1923 hoping to find work as a director. But when he received a contract for his own work, he launched Disney Bros. Studio with his brother Roy. By the end of 1924, Walt was focusing on story development and directing and was no longer working as an animator. After several business setbacks, Disney created Mickey Mouse, which established Disney Bros. Studio as the leading animation studio in the country. With the third Mickey Mouse film, Steamboat Willie, Walt joined the vanguard of the talking-picture revolution by creating an animated film with synchronized sound. Both Walt and Roy Disney married during this period, Walt to Lillian Bounds, a studio inker.
Original artwork, including the earliest known drawings of Mickey Mouse, will illustrate Disney’s sensational success with his character. Other exhibit highlights include business correspondence between Walt and Roy, the move to the new Hyperion Studios, where Disney created four of its great animation features, and Walt’s meeting with and marriage to Lillian Bounds.
Here is the first official sneak peek of some of the things you will see at the Walt Disney Family Museum. This was several days late due to a spelling error in my email address.
Walt Disney was born in Chicago in 1901. In 1906, his family moved to a Missouri farm, where he had an idyllic early childhood and first learned to draw. The farm failed, and in 1911 his family moved to Kansas City, where he rose at 3:30 am to deliver newspapers on his father’s paper route and fell in love with vaudeville and movies. In 1917, the family moved to Chicago, where Walt created cartoons for his high school yearbook, took classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and tried to enlist in the U.S. Army. Rejected for being underage, he joined the American Ambulance Corps and arrived in France as World War I ended. When Disney returned to the United States, he settled in Kansas City and got a job at a commercial art studio. In 1920, while working at an ad company, Walt discovered the fantastical world of animation and immersed himself in the young medium. While keeping his day job, he began making Laugh-O-gram ad reels and animation shorts with artist Ub Iwerks. Laugh-O-grams Films soon went bankrupt, and Walt, at age 21 moved to California.
Walt’s early drawings and mementos from his childhood, as well as cameras similar to those he used in Kansas City, will be highlighted in the Museum’s first gallery.
Well, it seems someone (someone at Disney?) has decided to place me onto a press list for the Walt Disney Family Museum. I honestly haven’t heard of this new museum until now. Since Walt is both a personal and constant inspiration, I’d love to visit it some day. Until then, the photos that have been emailed to me will have to do. Read More
Here it is; the first printed test. A lot of you have been asking for a progress update, so here it is. For a long while, there really wasn’t anything to report, but things got to a point where they quickly moved along.
Here, you see a printed test for the roof tiles, which means that I’ve moved onto doing the graphics in Photoshop. In total, there are 71 printable pages, and a grand total of 693 model pieces. The model also had to be scaled down just a tad, so it will not be as large as originally estimated. Read More
This set contains 10 icons: Pirates of the Caribbean Bateaux, Disneyland Sleeping Beauty Castle (backside), Disneyland Dedication Plaque, Pirates of the Caribbean Gun Powder Barrell, Hollywood Tower Hotel Sign #1, Hollywood Tower Hotel Sign #2, Pirate’s Lair Map, Mermaid Lagoon, Enchanted Tiki Room Attraction Poster, Fantasmic! Attraction Poster.
Back in 2005, I had this animated splash screen up to celebrate Disneyland’s 50th anniversary. Many of you have asked for it, so I’m posting this bit of nostalgia.
The audio is from the Remember . . . Dreams Come True fireworks show. The castle photo is one of my own, although I did have someone try to claim it as their own.
A few weeks ago, George Peirson contacted me about using Illustrator for my paper model design. He is a software trainer and has his own set of instructional video CD-ROMs available from his website, How To Gurus. As a personal “thank-you, ” George sent me a complementary set (8 discs in all!) to help me learn all about Illustrator.
A week after our conversation, I started checking the mail for the package. It finally arrived on a Saturday, and I was anxious to begin watching the videos even as tired as I was (I like to check the mail late in the evening). To my dismay, all but the last two discs were for a different version of Illustrator. They had the correct packaging and labeling, just different content. I emailed George right away, and within a couple of minutes, I got an email back. Not only was a new set mailed out the following Monday, but I was allowed to keep the other set in case I ever upgraded the software. Now that’s service!
The instructional videos are choke full of information. For programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, I’ve always preferred watching videos. Manuals are fine, but are more suited for things like HTML, CSS, Javascript, etcetera.
Here’s the third Disney Family Museum sneak peek. Also, the official website is now up (a few days earlier than planned).The success of Mickey Mouse let Walt Disney expand the newly renamed Walt Disney Studios and improve the quality of Studio animations, so he embarked on a series of ambitious projects, including the “Silly Symphonies,” one-reel shorts that let him experiment with images, music, and story lines. In the following years, the Studio created the first Technicolor cartoons, introduced a multiplane camera to create the illusion of depth in animated films, and developed distinctive styles of movement and personality in their characters. Also in this period, Walt and Lillian’s family grew to include daughters Diane and Sharon.
The continuing success of Walt’s cartoons led to a revolution in the art and technology of animation. Vintage artifacts, animation art, character merchandise, and family photos chronicle the creative explosion of the 1930s, Walt’s sudden world fame, and Diane and Sharon.
Today, I decided to give Twitter a try. I wanted some way for everyone to be kept up-to-date on what I’m doing . . . mostly. I obviously can’t be too revealing. That would make my family, friends, and clients a bit uneasy. But, you can definitely see how things progress or fall by the wayside.
