A Pagemaster Pitch

There was a prompt on the PureImagineering blog to create a pitch for a ride based on non-Disney animated movie. That inspired this.

We enter an old, dusty, seemingly abandoned Library and queue around it for a while as a storm continually gets worse outside. We hear a voice of an elderly librarian reminiscent of Olivander calling us back to a research room. When we enter the room no one is there (aside from a helpful but aloof “assistant” that directs us to board a Library Cart and hands us our Library Card with some ominous warning about keeping it handy – for the Library is always there for people that need it. They leave us in the room alone where we sit, unsure for a moment what is about to happen when we hear the voice of the Librarian calling to us once again speaking of the wonder of books. A bookcase on the opposite wall of the room we entered slides open and golden light pours into the room and our library cart moves towards it down a row of bookcases as the voice of the Librarian speaks to us. The storm rages outside. “Ah”, he says”, “the storm is frightening but the worlds of stories can help us learn to fight the fears within: – Horror, Fantasy, Adventure: they’re waiting for you.”

With a grand musical flourish we enter the grand rotunda of the Library flooded with light from the sconces but the storm rages outside in the dark night of the skylights above.  Just then we look above at the gigantic mural on the ceiling. It starts to drip paint onto us and around us. The paint pours off the ceiling and turns into a technicolor ocean around us! Books are falling all around us: the subjects of their contents coming to life. A giant squid swirls out of 20,000 leagues under the sea and threatens to crush us in its grasp before the book slams against a shelf and closes. To our surprise there is a rustling in our cart as we’re swirling down the rapids and the books Horror, Fantasy, and Adventure pop out and tell us, “Not to worry, We’ll get you out of this”. They’re riding on the front of our cart, but alas it’s too late.  We’re spinning all around as the waves morph into a terrifying paint dragon in the middle of the rotunda. It rears on its hind legs towering above us – then lunges and swallows us whole.

Darkness. All is quite for a moment and then in the distance we see it – like a beacon shining out to us through the fog. The exit. A neon green sign floating in midair. Horror, Fantasy, and Adventure exclaim “The exit! That’s how we get out of here! This way!”

Portals open and Each book takes us through their world and the pages of Horror, Fantasy, and Adventure come to life. We briefly enter a decrepit mansion: Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, Pirates at sea and and Moby Dick, before we hear a deep rumble. “Oh no, we’re still in the belly of the beast! We’ve been in the world of Fantasy this whole time!” Fantasy casts a spell and we shoot out of the dragon’s mouth with fire chasing us. The exit sign is floating above a mountain in the distance. We’re almost there! We fly towards it as the dragon chases us left and right. We’re not going to make it. We hear the page masters voice “The library is always there for people who need it!”. Of course! The books tell us to pick up our library cards and as we do they start glowing. There’s a blast of air and laser light as books rise up all around and the characters we’ve met reappear to fight the battle and with one last roar the dragon is vanquished! A portal opens up and we’re all thrown spinning into the tornado. Until all comes to a quiet stop. We’re in a dark room, the exit sign is glowing in front of us. The page master materializes in front of us in full merlin garb (he’s the librarian!)- we’re at the legendary round table of the Arthurian legend. He tells us we’ve done well. We’ve fought our fears and our forever changed. That is the power of books. He disappears and the room around us transforms into the research room we started in. The exit sign continues to glow in front of us, where it was the whole time – we just didn’t pay attention on the way in. The panel beneath it slides open and we walk out underneath its reassuring glow….

…into the book gift shop.

Stay tuned to this…if I have some spare time I might develop this further.

Theme Park Musing #3

You know it’s ironic…modern ride systems give you the ability to time vehicle movement and scene interaction to the microsecond giving a supremely individual experience and yet…

This ability is actually a trade off. The more control you exert over the specific Movement of the ride vehicle and scene elements the less control you have over the actual amount of time spent in any one scene.

Think of it like this: in an omnimover, or freefloating boat ride the vehicles are essentially a chain moving at a constant speed. Because of this the scenes play on loop – meaning that it doesn’t matter when a vehicle enters or leaves the scene. A scene can be as long or as short as you wish because nothing has to reset for the next vehicle.

Now look a ride with individual cars and scenes that are specifically triggered for each vehicle. While it’s an oversimplification, essentially each scene is limited to being exactly the duration of the dispatch interval between vehicles – because the vehicle has to leave whatever scene element in time for it to reset and be triggered by the next vehicle.

So even though in the latter case I can control exactly when the thing will trigger, and can control exactly where the vehicle is, what I can’t do is really have any control of how long the scene is.

Now my background is as an editor – telling stories with pictures and audio over time. And one of the most crucial storytelling tools is the proper use of pacing – imagine how handicapping it would be if every shot or every scene in a movie had to be the exact same length – that really affects your ability to use rhythm and pacing to affect the audience – instead resorting to how fast the shots move or how many things happen within a certain amount of time.

It’s a well known criticism in the theme park community I think that many modern attractions really struggle when it comes to pacing – things often continue to get thrown in your face one after another with no downtime. More attention should be paid to it….and while that can be done without going completely back to looping scenes, I do wonder if perhaps the reason that so many of the old grand attractions resonated so well is they were at great liberty to vary the pacing, vary the size and duration of scenes to their hearts content – much more able to tell the story with the use of space itself. I’m not sure, but I’m leaning towards yes.

Of course, then the question becomes, how do you get the best of both worlds? How do you get precise control of vehicle speed, position, and triggering of effects but retain the ability to make scenes as long or as short as you wish? I think there are probably ways to do it, and perhaps we’re starting to see it in small places, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind.

Actually, this is probably why the omnimover is such a great ride system – you get full control over the duration, and scale of scenes by having looping scenes but also get precision storytelling through the use of triggered audio and narration within the vehicle.

Note: this is really more a discussion about triggered scenes and events, vs. non-triggered scenes than it is ride-systems. And a discussion about whether you’re aware of other riders and becoming aware of their perspective of the show or not. They just tend to be related.

But it’s all FAKE!

In the Back to the Future sequels there’s this motif of scenes that occurs. Inevitably, events will be moving right along and then someone will say to Marty, “What? Are you chicken?”

Time stops, brakes squeal. Marty is halted in his tracks as the words send an electric shock through his body.

That’s how I feel every time someone says, (cue exasperated valley girl accent) “Ugh but theme parks are so fake!”

Forgive me, but, what is your point?

Seriously, what is your point? Are you offended that Caesar isn’t actually stabbed on stage? Is it a problem for you that Oz was built on a soundstage? Will you not go see The David because it’s made of marble and not a rotting corpse? Please tell me, what are you trying to communicate when you feel the need to point out that there’s speakers in the trees, that the castle isn’t real stone, as if real [read worthy] entertainment is dependent on silent compressed dirt. When you feel the need to point out that we’re not really in Hogsmeade were you somehow under the impression that ever was the goal?

For the love of Walt people, OF COURSE IT’S FAKE.

Continue reading “But it’s all FAKE!”

Theme Park Musing #2

What’s your take on the frozen ride at epcot?

I actually like the Frozen ride at Epcot, especially considering they had to adapt an existing ride track to a completely different kind of story. The animatronics are jaw-dropping, it does a good job at capturing some of the feelings and emotions and beats of the movie (and songs) while still being original enough to offer some novelty. In short, it gets right pretty much everything Mermaid gets wrong. There are some bits of weirdness since its an overlay. The backwards portion, and final drop are somewhat unmotivated and the lift hill being the “climb” to the mountain is a good idea that feels a little forced. And a viking longboat is probably not the vehicle you’d have chosen if you were designing from scratch. But those are pretty minor issues, what they deliver in a fun experience overshadows their lack of narrative necessity – perhaps largely because the bones of the previous ride layout beats were well constructed to begin with. And I love that they combined load and unload to give 2 new scenes, and that new scene post drop. Definitely a stroke of brilliance there. In short, it’s probably one of the best D tickets around.

My issues with the attraction all come from a more aerial perspective. For starters it was downright idiotic to give a property as popular as Frozen to a ride with as limited a capacity and small a queue space as Maelstrom. That ride was designed as like a D ticket in the freaking 80s. Frozen could easily eat up the capacity of Universe of Energy and Flight of Passage combined for the next decade. So that was a dumb, shortsighted move presumably motivated by a desire to make it happen as fast and cheap as possible. Or perhaps it was brilliant move, factoring in what Epcot will look like in 2030. I don’t know if I want to give the company that much credit though.

And speaking of that other elephant in the room, there’s the question of whether the ride belongs in Epcot at all. While the course of events that led to its placement in Epcot sort of make sense (it was the park most in need of a new addition at the time, and MK-the logical choice, needs an attendance boost like Joe Rohde needs a bigger earring.) from a creative standpoint it’s definitely problematic. I honestly don’t know where I stand. Thematically, it doesn’t belong in the Epcot of 1982. That was a park focused on adults, on the world, on real life, on culture, on humanity, on education and high-brow entertainment. But Disney has been running away from that Epcot since 1982, arguably even since Walt died, resulting in the schizophrenic park we have today. If Disney has recognized it doesn’t have the desire, or courage, to pursue that (which I think it finally has – the alternatives to reinforce the Disney brand as it stands today are just too tempting to the underlying business) then perhaps it has realized it’s better if Epcot was something different altogether. The Disney of today is a different company than of yesterday, focused much more on cultivating its brand through the use of specific properties and sub-brands rather than more vague ethereal notions of a certain type and quality of experience. Epcot transitions from being about the real world and the places within to the Disney world and the things that happen there. The countries within World Showcase are the backdrop for your own adventures with the characters that reside there or near there instead of being about the countries themselves. And futureworld instead of being about humanity’s optimism about the future and the faith in our ingenuity to solve the problems of the world, is again turned more into a backdrop of just “the future, technology, and such”. The structure of the park, once deeply embedded with its meaning becomes more of a plot device to tell the stories they want to tell. In some respects, perhaps this a better option, considering that the ideals of the original Epcot were always tainted by the pressures of the corporate influence that were necessary to get it built and stay operating. Although, ironically Disney is probably now better positioned than at any time in its past to create that original vision without need of corporate sponsors. And Disney’s current target audience is likely not nearly as interesting in edutainment, learning on vacation, or having a high-brow experience. I am, but I’m also the person that listens to a couple dozen hours of NPR a week and is currently reading Carl Jung. I’d argue that Disney (and theme parks in general) are shooting themselves in the foot in the long run by narrowing the audience they target to such a narrow range, are narrowing the world-changing potential of what themed entertainment can be, but god that is a discussion for another day. Anyway….

Frozen absolutely fits in that Epcot, the new one that is being developed before our eyes. With Ratatouille in France, Poppins in the UK, Aladdin in Morocco, Guardians of the Galaxy and Mission:Space in Futureworld – yes it totally fits. For better or worse, it’s the direction Epcot has been unconsciously headed in for a long, long time from the moment characters started meeting and greeting there. And given that it’s been happening unconsciously already, I’d much rather them start consciously shaping it that way so it’ll at least have the hand of a unifying voice again.

So yeah that’s a lot more than you asked, but you asked me.

Why is Mermaid so Bad?

In the last major essay on this blog I discussed an attraction that is commonly held to be one of the best dark rides ever made, Pirates of the Caribbean, and examined some of the techniques used that make it work so well. Today, I’d like to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction and look at one of the more ‘meh’ examples of dark ride design in the Disney library.

Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid, and in California, The Little Mermaid ~ Ariel’s Undersea Adventure are the long awaited ride adaptations of the classic 1989 animated musical that debuted as part of Florida’s new Fantasyland in 2012 and the revamped California Adventure in 2011. From here on I’ll just refer to them as ‘Mermaid’. For the purposes of this analysis I’ll be focusing mostly on the ride portion of the experiences as these are nearly identical between both coasts. The rides debuted to much fanfare from the Disney PR machine but have had a decidedly negative to, at best, ambivalent reaction among the fan and theme park community. To be clear, the rides are still of high quality and feature some dazzlingly technology, especially when compared to competitors, and many guests still find the experience enjoyable enough. But, I think it is fair to say that for a movie as iconic and beloved as The Little Mermaid the attraction that resulted, even for a ‘C’ or ‘D’ ticket experience as intended, feels underwhelming, and moreover, just off. Even simple dark rides like Peter Pan and Mr. Toad give better experiences. What is it?

Continue reading “Why is Mermaid so Bad?”

Theme Park Musing (#1?)

Occasionally I write some thoughts about design but not fully fleshed out enough to be an essay. Going to try to post those  here more often then just on the tumblr. I’ve written quite a few, but I think this is the first one here  so I’m gonna call it #1 

I think when designing attractions it’s essential to remember that they do not tell stories in the way that we’re used to. They have more in common with dance or music than movies or books.
Movies, books, and plays tell stories through the use of characters, dialogue, and their interactions. They all essentially rely on the written or spoken word to create their story.
Dance and music are different. To say a ballet gets it’s meaning through the synopsis in the program is ludicrous. It’s a useful tool that gives the dance clarity and context, but the actual story is told primarily through movement.
I think the danger we face when trying to create attractions, especially as time goes on and we try to imbue more meaning and complex, multidimensional stories into them, is that we focus too much on the characters, dialogue, backstory, and story in the traditional, written, sense rather than using the medium at hand. We’re at danger of giving immense attention to songs’ lyrics while giving only marginal attention to the music itself. Lyrics give clarity and specificity to music, but truly good music conveys the essence of that story with just the melody and harmony itself.
@pureimagineering defines Story as someone wanting something badly and something getting in the way. (Paraphrased). I think I’d broaden that definition though and say the essence of Story, and really theme as well is a progression of emotions generally involving conflict and release, that is shared between the storyteller and audience. We usually channel that emotional progression into metaphors of characters, events, circumstances, and themes. Most types of storytelling require the storyteller to assign all or most of these for the audience. Written and spoken language require specific abstraction to relate ideas and meaning. But music and dance don’t. It can help make sure everyone is on the same page but doesn’t really affect the outcome. A truly well written song will convey its story and meaning with or without lyrics. Lyrics just take a song about grief and give nuance about the death of a specific person and guide the audience in interpretation. However it’s worth noting that audiences often strip away details that they have difficulty empathizing with or are irrelevant to their life and insert their own experiences instead. See the popularity of “part of your world”. I’d dare say most people can relate to being a mermaid wanting to be in the human world. In fact, these days, most people probably wish to be AWAY from the human world. The written story of the song acts as a way to give specificity to a broader musical statement about longing and wanting to be part of something. Surely the song wouldn’t function as well without that attached cipher, but I’d argue any similar lyrical statement would work just as well. And the lyrics without the music, or attached to the tune of Yankee Doodle would largely be a footnote in history. Indeed, in musical theatre (and Alan Menken’s work in particular) the “I want” song is a classic staple – often the most popular song of any show, and they tend to have very similar musical features. The same story is being told musically, again and again.
And if audiences are bound to insert their own specifics into a story, then it’s up to us to craft the larger framework of emotion that will direct what experiences they choose so they arrive at the intended meaning.
Anyway, this is all to say, that themed entertainment is a storytelling medium where stories are told through ENVIRONMENTS, spaces, objects, and the progression of those locations. Yes there are characters and setups that can help clarify and direct the intended meaning, but they should merely be channeling the story that’s already around them. It’s insanely important for designers to remember this. To not use the medium at hand is akin to writing lyrics for a song and then slapping them on the first melody that syllabically fits.

I think the comparison in storytelling between books/movies/theatre and music and how that relates to themed entertainment is interesting for another reason too.

Books/movies/plays tend to have a bias towards very dramatic arcs in emotion whereas songs tend to have a bias towards relishing in one particular emotion with a much subtler arc.

In part I think this is due to length. The most popular manifestations of the written word mediums are novels, feature films/long form television, and 2 hr plays. Music’s most popular form is the song. When compared to a full album, opera, movement, or symphony (or to the short story, an episode of a serialized tv show, chapter, or scene)you start to see similar ranges.

But the question then becomes what are the equivalents in themed entertainment? Is a park equivalent to a play or symphony and each attraction is merely a scene or movement? Or is each attraction an entire movie unto itself and the park is more of a library? Or is an entire attraction just a part of a scene, or just a song relishing in one feeling, the land the scene, and the park the whole work?

I don’t really think there’s an answer yet and maybe the beauty of themed entertainment is that we won’t be bogged down by presiding notions of how much time and space a story warrants. Disneyland might function more as a library of self contained adventures that are only broadly related while Animal Kingdom is a much more carefully crafted overall story with each land providing supporting scenes. And they’re both great!

I think it’s safe to say in general that as time has gone on the scope of Story has changed from individual attraction, to land, and it’s leaning towards park now.
I certainly think the ambition though among those of us that see the potential of themed entertainment is to see a truly fractal park. Where the park is a masterwork of Story/theme and each contributing smaller portion echoes that theme and adds to it. And hell in my ideal WDW fantasy the entire resort still creates an overarching idea. (Humanity And Hope for the Future).
But it’s worth noting that this is only one approach, even if most of it see it a bit like the holy grail. A library approach is legitimate too – and when done well (aka organized) might even be a more satisfying experience. I think the interesting thing about Disneyland is the diversity of experiences it offers-not only in themes, but in the arcs of attractions. Some attractions are entire play-like stories. And others are much more song-like. And scale and duration don’t necessarily determine which is which.

So yeah the medium is new and there’s a lot that hasn’t been conventionalized. I would add though, that if the norm becomes attractions that take 2-3 hours from the moment you enter the queue to the moment you exit then we should really be thinking hard about the kind of stories being told in those attractions. In the past an attraction being equivalent to a song, scene, or movement has worked well – but I’m not sure anyone wants to listen to the same song for 2 hours unless it’s more like an opera.

Why is Pirates so Good?

Theme park fans are an interesting bunch of people. We consist of everything from blue collar vacationers, hipster theatre auteurs, oh-so-serious designers, cosplaying character seekers, internet attached reporters, teenage thrill seekers, retired day-trippers, and every combination in between. And in this diverse group debates rage on pretty often  around themes of what themed entertainment should be, who it should target, and what its ambitions should be. Entertainment? Thrills? Inspiration? Escape? Community? Fun? It’s interesting that in a world that caters itself to so many different niches of preference, that one attraction comes up again and again as a shining example of common ambition. Seemingly almost everyone continually agrees that the original Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland is one of, if not the, best themed attractions ever built. So what makes Pirates so great? Why does it work so well? 

Well, of course no discussion about the excellence of Pirates would be complete without taking a moment to state an obvious reason; the ride is a showcase of technical and artistic perfection. The set and lighting design is wonderful and detailed, the sculpture worthy of galleries, the sound design multilayered, the building comfortably cool, and the acoustics better than even many attractions and theaters built today. Those features are foundational to creating any truly great entertainment experience. It’s tempting to say that that is the reason Pirates always stands out: the scale of the sets, and quantity of animatronics, duration of the ride, effectiveness of the effects, and the overall detail create an immersive environment that just really excels. And while all of that certainly plays a role, I think the idea that lavishness alone creates amazing attractions is a bit of a myopic conclusion: one that seems to be playing an increasing role in the design of new attractions and even more in their publicity. The idea that absurdly grand environments and obsessively detailed story are what make something immersive is true, but is also a limited understanding of the word ‘immersion’.

  See, ‘immersion’ has become somewhat of a buzzword in the popular lexicon – being used to describe everything from the upcoming Star Wars land and groundbreaking theatrical experiments to cell phones screens and restaurant menus. Even in the theme park world, the word can be overused and find generic meaning. Even when it is used to describe experiences that genuinely transport, this is often achieved narratively, architecturally, or with details, props, and backstory. And while there is no doubt that those techniques are crucial they also only get Pirates halfway to being the flagship that it is. So much more comes from the design of the attraction structure itself and the way it immerses the rider into those environments and story. Pirates chooses to immerse you viscerally and emotionally in the way the experience unfolds. It uses the physical space and the progression of that space to affect techniques of hypnosis and patterns of dreams to immerse experientially, not just thematically. And that focus on the experiential story of the audience itself is what makes all the difference.

Continue reading “Why is Pirates so Good?”

On theme and the future

Before today’s Presentation gets underway I just want to throw out some thoughts about Epcot.

Future World was never about the future or technology or science fiction but about Humanity, our interactions with each other and the world, and the history and future history of ourselves.

World showcase was never just about being a world tour of architecture and food. It was about Humanity and our cultures – a giant expansion of the premise in It’s a Small World, outlining a hope for respect, celebration, and curiosity regarding our differences.

The reason the combination of what had been designed as two separate parks worked so well is that together the two halves functioned as a singular thesis detailing the history of ourselves and where we hoped to go.

Joe Rohde has a quote about theme parks fundamentally needing to have a theme in the literary sense – a moral or idea to explore that’s at the center of all the experiences. And I think much of what we’ve seen in the theme park world in recent years, specifically Disney has been a loss or modification of that principle – whether it’s because Disney has lost sight of it or because we’re in a huge period of transition remains to be seen. I honestly think this is what made most Disney parks unique from other parks even if the company didn’t realize they were doing it.

The magic kingdom/Disneyland is about childhood and the shared myths of a country that has influenced much of the dreams of the world. Epcot was about Humanity and our interactions with each other and place in it. Animal Kingdom is about Nature and Humans relationship with it. These deep themes give the parks resonance. It’s revealing that the one park in Florida that only had a subject (movies) but no real theme, is the park that has suffered the most over the years.

The parks in Florida by all accounts have been and are heading into one of the biggest periods of change in the resort’s history, and the parks worldwide and industry have been seeing large shifts in the business model, what attractions consist of, etc. I’m not inherently opposed to change. Change is often difficult, especially when it involves the destruction of something you have fond memories of, but it can also be exciting and an opportunity. There is a trend amongst Disney fans on the internet that become aghast at almost any change and that’s not what this essay is about. As long as theme parks are viewed primarily as entertainment and not art by the public, and as long as their business model relies on people coming back, parks will always have to keep themselves fresh, deliver new experiences, and change to accommodate culture. And frankly the most interesting parks are the ones that have been around the longest and seen these changes mold their landscape over time – a completely artificial reality somehow becoming just as rich of a place as any other.

My only concern is that in this particular period of change there does seem to be the potential for that guiding principle of theme in that literary sense to be forgotten. Change in theme would be hard but forgivable and maybe even beneficial in the long term but a loss of theme results in a fundamentally different experience – a day long experience where all experiences inform each other becomes a day long hodge-podge of corporate branding and it is literally only the presence of that underlying theme, story, whatever you want to call it, that prevents that from happening.

I really am excited about the upcoming announcements and am largely confident about the future of the parks around the world. The beauty of time and history is that even when a pendulum swings too far it tends to swing back. But nevertheless these worries do run in my mind. I worry about the public perception of the company and how that ripples across generations. I worry about how certain trends in themed entertainment design create dogma that excludes other types of experiences from being created – experiences or styles that used to be central to the medium and still have utility. And I worry about the park naive enough to theme itself to all of Humanity and by so doing became a park with the most potential to do something meaningful with the tools of themed entertainment besides just entertain – that it might decide to abandon that potential in favor of an easier end.

The movies we enjoy most are those that tell us something about ourselves – that do more than than just offer fuzzy, funny characters and action sequences. If you can deliver the fuzzy, funny, the frenetic AND the deep meaning, or theme, then you have the worldwide hit. And Disney gets this. They churn out movies with that formula all the time. Here’s hoping they use it again.

Fantasy Fantasyland

I was working with a bunch of people on a fan-made Fantasyland on a Disney fan site and made up this overview and layout based on some of the ideas discussed. I can’t take complete credit for the ideas here, many people discussed them, but the layout is mostly mine and I’m really fond of it – hence my posting. 

Just a quick rundown of the image. The center of fantasyland starts of fun in the castle courtyard which is home to a flat ride or two and possibly a restaurant, some gift shops, the exit to the theater. The courtyard is elevated compared to the rest of the land. From there bridges extend out into the rest of the land – split into the Forest, London, and the countryside sort of mini-lands. Casey Jr train – a sort of WedWay runs throughout the land going above and below grade and running through most of the show buildings encountering glimpses of other rides and exclusive scenes from properties not otherwise featured in the land. 

Anyway that’s the super quick rundown, most of the rest is self explanatory. The project itself has evolved from there but I really liked this layout and selection of attractions. What do you thjnk?

Adventureland – New Aerial View

If you’ve browsed this site at all you may have come across my Adventureland side project. And you also might be aware that I’ve been self-teaching myself art (and also a bit of 3d modeling) for the last year and a half or so. In fact, the first piece of concept art I ever tried to make I drew just a little over a year ago and it was of this Adventureland.

Adventureland Overview 1

I think I’ve come quite a ways since then and made a lot of progress.
It’s easy to lose sight of overall progress when focused on the day to day and week to week work. And I continue to try to improve those skills and acquire new ones. In that vein, (and in part due to a recently acquired iPad Pro), I’ve been slowly approaching the world of digital art. Talk about needing to learn a lot. Eeesh. I’m particularly interested in digital painting, and using a more painterly style because that process of going from vague shapes to more and more refined detail appeals to me a lot as that’s generally how I already think  – linework I find to be agonizing and hindering. Plus it just looks cool. So it’s been something I’ve been wanting to add to my repertoire in addition to digital skills in general.

Anyway this is long-winded way of saying that I recently attempted to redo this piece of art digitally and in that painterly style – no linework. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, the results aren’t perfect, and there’s a lot I found myself struggling to figure out how to figure out. But I also like it. So here it is, the new aerial rendering of my Adventureland.

Adventureland Overview 1 Digital

So what do you think? As always I love feedback. And for more details about the land itself be sure to check out the project page here.

That’s all. Thanks for reading.