Work-in-Progress: Landing Page

I've been meaning to create a portfolio-style Web site for some of my best pieces.  You know, as a way to show off appear more professional to rich benefactors potential clients/employers. So I ended up sketching a few ideas. This one is in the lead.

The Mummy: The Ride

Before Universal Studios built their Mummy attractions, I had designed a facade for a theme park attraction of my own.  The versions of the rides in the States are pretty much coasters-in-a-box.  The one that just opened at Universal Studios Singapore actually looks a lot like this.  Guess I was way ahead of my time.

Resort Camping

As part of a master plan for a theme park resort, I included some high-end "camping."  Here's a few quick sketches of some of the facilities.  Please excuse the terrible scanning job I did on these; they are slanted and messy.  I still need to figure out how to scan better.  It seems like the scanner is a bit too smart for its own good.  It automatically does a number of functions without being asked.  Very rude, if you ask me.

Chamber of Secrets

Long before Harry Potter's World at Universal's Islands of Adventure in Florida was announced, I had sketched a few concepts for an entire Harry Potter theme park.  This is a concept for a Chamber of Secrets floorless coaster.  You enter from the Hogwarts castle, stroll down a stained-glass window hall and then into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, which, if you don't know the series, gets its name from Myrtle's dreary history as opposed to some strange perversion for having intimate relations in the loo.  Once in the bathroom, you descend into the chamber, walk through the serpent entryway, and then enter the boarding area.  You become the basilisk as you board the coaster and then travel through the tunnels of the chamber in a high-speed adventure.

The image is huge if you decide to click it.  I had to stitch together the scans in Photoshop.  Any smaller and you wouldn't be able to see very much.

Beauty and the Beast Dark Ride

Whenever a new Disney movie (the animated kind) was released, I used to imagine what a dark ride for it would be like.  Of course, my dark rides were always 4 times as large as is realistically possible without a show building the size of the Indiana Jones Adventure and $200 million dollars.  I'm guessing I drew this around 1992, back when I was fascinated with the use of a turntable that matches the speed of the ride vehicles to tell an extended piece of the story.  Journey Into Imagination at EPCOT had one, and I thought it was the coolest thing EVAR!

Don't Know Yet

Was thinking of painting something new.  Don't know what.  But I like graphic-y trees and birds as leaves this week.  Next week, who knows.  Might be clowns and robots.

Intergalactic Zoo

While contemplating the future of Tomorrowland at Disneyland, I thought a great attraction would be the Intergalactic Zoo.  An alien corporation partners with Disneyland to bring a whole herd of interesting beasties from planets around the galaxy for the people of Earth to enjoy.

Ranging from the cute and cuddly to the ferocious and deadly, the beasties would roam about custom enclosures that were designed to look and feel like their home planets.  You would tour this zoo in an open-air hover craft.  Sometimes you would enter the enclosure itself and sometimes you would be behind glass, depending on the relative danger to the park guests.  Wink, wink.

I made a quick sketch of the marquee that hints at all the treats to expect inside.

*I spelled intergalactic wrong on the sign.  D'oh!