Immersive Scenery
During my time at Disney I assisted in the creation of a prototype of an immersive park experience. Unfortunately I cannot show any pictures of this, but I can talk about and show some parts I worked on.
My main contributions to this project was designing a repeatable floor pattern, which was then casted in a clear polyurethane. I also lead the production of these tiles, which were used as an overlay for the LED Screen Flooring of the experience.
Another part of the project I was in charge of were the wall facades for the giant LED Screen Walls. I never worked in such a big scale, so I thoroughly enjoyed this part. I also lead the assembly and installation of these walls.
Drafting/Ideation
My supervisor Sam Ho (Imagineer), shared with me some sketches and concept art for the type of wall facades she wanted for the interactive art space. From her files in sketch up I was able to interpret general dimensions and proportionally and created three distinct walls. I created the designs for the walls in Adobe illustrator, the tricky part of this project was working in such a large scale. The actual design of the walls were about 8 x 20 feet, which I then broke up into puzzle pieces in order to fit the 8 x 4 feet panels they were to be cut on. The different colors on the design represented the different layer heights for the wall. One important thing to note was the difficulty of the third wall, which required a 3D component in order to hide all the stage electronics.
Prototype
Because this project was constantly changing and very early in its prototyping stages, I took onto myself to create a small scaled architectural model of the walls and scene. My supervisor was very pleased with this and we even later tested different spraying techniques on the model. The walls were made with foam core and acyclic using the laser cutter, and had magnets on the base in order for the scene to be modular and movable.
Build Process
After all my designs were approved and double checked they were sent to a vendor, who used a water jet cutter, in order to cut the 600+ Pieces. It took around 30: 8 x 4 feet 1/2 in foam core sheets in order to make these walls. After all the sheets arrived I led a small group in the organization and labeling of all pieces, then subsequently the construction of the walls. Although I have experience in set design already, this project was unique in the material choice, and this was the first time I was solely in charge of the design and production of a stage piece.
