Disney Internship: Star Tours

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At lunch time I would on occasion take a walk through Disney MGM Studios to do a sketch. Star Tours was a motion simulator ride that gave me motion sickness. Don’t get me wrong, it was an awesome ride but I left feeling queasy.

The best way to ground myself was to sit down and do a sketch.

On this day in the internship, we watched Singing in the Rain in the break room and listened to renowned animator Mark Henn as he analyzed a walk.

We were working on an assignment that involved building a story around Goofy. We had one last day to finish the assignment. I should have saved some of those drawings, but anything we created at Disney became the property of Disney in this universe and any other universe. It always felt good therefor to step out and do a drawing for myself.

Disney Internship: NYC Street MGM Studio

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By October, I was starting to feel rather burnt out form all the inbetweening drawings I had to do to finish each animation scene I was working on.

On lunch breaks I would walk around the MGM theme park to fins a place to sketch. Just having a chance to sketch on location helped ground me.

On one occasion I was sitting on a bench in the New York City like in this sketch and A woman walked past me. She looked over her shoulder at me while she walked away. She came around a second time and stopped in front of me. She leaned forward and asked, “Are you an animatronic?” If I wasn’t so surprised, I could have acted mechanical and messed with her but I simply said, “No, I am very much flesh and blood.” People don’t sit still in theme parks. They are always in a rush to get on the next attraction. Children get cranky since their tiny little legs can’t keep up. Artists function on a much slower pace, to take the time to look.

Disney Internship: It’s a Small World After All

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By the start of October, I was working on animating a run. It was a challenge working with such broad movements so I stayed late. leaving my desk about 11pm. I was the last person in the building.

The following day there was an 8:30Am breakfast meeting with the mentors. My mentor was Bryan M. Sommer whose specialty was clean up and inbetweening. That was helpful since that would be my roll if I started working on the next film. He taught a seminar right after the breakfast. Bryan had some amazing hidden talents. After the Florida studio closed, he effortlessly did some amazing Australian theme park designs that I wish had been built.

 

Disney Internship: Harbor House

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With my jump animation assignment finished I took time off on the weekend to explore Disney MGM Studio. This was essentially where I worked but I was in a trailer inn the back lot parking lot and never saw the park while busy sketching at my desk.

I felt that many of the rids at MGM were rather corny but I guess that is what people want. Some of the attractions were worth the effort of standing in line. MGM can be seen in a single day. The larger theme parks might take more time to explore and sketch.

Columbia Harbor House is in the Magic Kingdom. It is an American seafood counter restaurant which mostly served fish and chips style meals. It is seafood with a serious slathering of breading and oil, along with fries and slaw.

After a while I decided to go back to my desk in the animation studio and do three more inbetweens on my assignment to slow down the ending of the scene. The scene was of a locust jumping and i had him perform on the animation desk which was new to me and therefor worth sketching as a background.

The internship was not a 9 to 5 work situation. Some artists never left their desks but I tried to keep to a set schedule to stay sane. The experience was a pressure cooker to see who thrived and who crumbled under the pressure. I paced myself and one steam valve was the ability to go into the parks and sketch on location. It calmed my nerves.

To this day, I still sit at my Disney Animation desk all day long and then, when I can, I venture out to sketch in the real world.

Disney Internship: Merry-Go-Round

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I spent a solid day exploring Disney World and sketching. This was a merry-go-round at Disney World. Late in the internship I would use a merry-go-round as inspiration for some story boarding I did.

I had already finished the second animation assignment which was a jump. I was feeling guilty that I finished so fast. So I started a second jump but abandoned it since I like the first animation better.

For some reason I had been given a Snow White poster and I wanted to give it to my niece Nikki. I was also given an Aladdin tape and I probably still have that packed away in some box somewhere.

Disney Internship: Inbetweening

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All the Disney Feature Animation interns gathered around Sam Ewing‘s animation desk to watch him point out the mechanics of inbetweening. In an animated scene you often have tow key drawings which show the extremes of a motion.

Sam has Mickey on his desk, so I will use him to explain. If Mickey throws a baseball you will have the arm pulled back anticipating the throw and then you will have the hand extended forward at eh moment the ball is released. The inbetweens fill in the gap between the tow extremes.There are 24 frames of film for every second so it take 24 drawings for a one second movement. It is often possible to get away with 12 drawings and holding each drawing for two frames each. In any scene more that 3/4 of the drawings are inbetweens. in a 2 hour movie that means there are about 172,800 animated drawings that need to be done. That is why a small army of artists are needed to complete an animated film.

After work I walked around the empty MGM theme park with several other animators. The park was closed but the music was still playing. It felt eerie. The whole Disney experience was kind of eerie.

Disney Internship: Going to Epcot

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I went with a group of the Disney Feature Animation Interns to Epcot. I explored a bit with the group but eventually branched off to sketch.This is a sketch of the Sensory Fun House with its audio and interactive screens. I sketched this since I knew people would sit still for a moment while they watched the screen or listened.

In the evening, all the Feature Animation Interns got together in my apartment for dinner. I put the pen down for once and relaxed. When we are in the studio all our heads are down focuses on the animation disk. This was a rare moment to get to know everyone. Everyone seemed younger than me and for many this was their first job after college. I thought the Disney animation gig would be short lived, but these people became my family and I ended up staying at Feature Animation for 10 years until the bottom fell out because computer animation had swept its way onto the stage.

Looking back, these were some of the best of times, even if they are only preserved with a few pen scratches on a page.

Disney Internship: Disney University

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As an intern for Disney Feature Animation we all had to go to Disney University for what was called “Traditions.” This was a seminar on how to interact with guests.

As animation interns we never interacted with guests since we spent every waking hour at our Disney animation desks cranking out drawings.

My favorite story from this seminar was from a character actor who was assigned to play Winnie the Poo. The costume is massive and limits visibility and movement. On one occasion he was on his own and a group of high school boys surrounded him and lifted him up and threw him head first into a bush. From that moment I realized it would be much safer to draw the characters rather than play them in the theme parks.

On lunch breaks I sometimes went into the parks to sketch but no one would know that I worked backstage. I never interacted with a guest as a Disney staff member.

Disney Internship: The Ball Bounce

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This is our group of Disney Feature Animation interns listening to a lecture I believe by Sam Ewing about the mechanics of a ball bounce.

I worked closely with Sam when he was the clean up lead animator on Koda in Brother Bear. Among the interns in my sketch I recognize Darren Webb, Peter Clark. He blew me away with the amount and quality of the animation projects he completed. He was an absolute machine. Yes that is a compliment, He was building whole worlds while I struggled with basic mechanics of getting my drawings to move. On Dinosaur, Peter got to shine doing what he does best which is visual development and creating whole new worlds.

I was surprised to discover that Darren Webb went on to work in the the animation department of many amazing computer animated films from Dreamworks like How to Train Your Dragon. I would love to find out his story some day. The main thing I remember about him as a roommate is that he took very long showers. I was in a room full of great artists.

COVID World Premiere Screening Tonight!

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These are the opening shots of the short 2.5D animated film titled COVID, whose world premiere screening is tonight May 19, 2023 at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater, 6pm in the outdoor courtyard as part of the 3rd annual “Film as Visual Art” Fringe event.

Here is the press release about the film:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 Local Artist to Premiere Shocking Film Chronicling Pandemic

Over 200 original artworks detail global experience in four minutes

ORLANDO, Fla. (May 16, 2023) – Central Florida artist Thomas Thorspecken (Thor) who formerly worked for Disney Feature Animation, will premiere his newest project featuring more than 200 original digital paintings in a four-minute film. The premiere can be seen at Fringe’s “Film as Visual Art” event this Friday, May 19, 2023, at 6:00 pm in the outdoor Orlando Shakespeare Theater courtyard.

Since January 2009, as a New Year’s resolution, Thorspecken has created at least one watercolor or digital sketch a day documenting arts and culture in Central Florida for his blog, Analog Artist Digital World, culminating in more than 4,000 individual works of art illustrating the vibrancy of this community and beyond. When the pandemic hit in early 2020, he shifted his focus to creating a daily artistic commentary on COVID, politics, and both the global and local impacts of this devastating and unprecedented time in history.

“From the start of the COVID pandemic, minimizers falsely claimed the virus was no worse than the flu. After more than a million COVID deaths in America and mass infection becoming the accepted norm, minimizers persist,” Thorspecken cited as part of the rationale for his having created the jarring revue. The artist completed the film on May 11, 2023, when the United States officially lifted the COVID Emergency, despite Covid’s persistence. The paintings combat the willful denial and obfuscation of the facts of the past three years. The airborne virus cannot be seen, but in these paintings it takes center stage, a statement that ignoring the virus is deadly.

Inspired by an Artificial Intelligence-generated Tik Tok video illustrating Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” Thorspecken crafted his own AI (Artist Intelligence) generated film to the music from popular local musician, Andy Matchett’s, song “Just Can’t Wait (For the Game to End)” from his apocalyptic rock musical Key of E. Each gripping artwork flashes by, building on the dark time capsule of our shared experience. Though representing a mere fraction of his overall pandemic series, each was meticulously selected and timed to Matchett’s lyrics before being custom depth mapped and animated.

 More information about the making of this film can be found at AnalogArtistDigitalWorld.com. The film will premiere as part of the 3rd annual “Film as Visual Art” on Friday, May 19, 6 – 7 p.m. before becoming available on the artist’s social media channels.

Thomas Thorspecken (Thor), is an artist, Urban Sketcher, animator, and illustrative journalist living and working in Central Florida. He attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, before working as a freelance illustrator designing magazines and publications. Thorspecken relocated to Orlando as an animation artist for Disney. He currently teaches at Elite Animation Academy and the Crealdé School of Art. Thor is always seeking new challenging projects, commissions, and ways to capture local life through art. Follow Thor on Instagram: @analogartistdigitalworld, Twitter: @analogartist, Facebook: Analog Artist Digital World, and subscribe to his blog: www.analogartistdigitalworld.com