Wild Ride

Still playing catch up…

Somewhere around two and half years ago, I received a Facebook message from my friend Jeff's wife Lisa. She’d seen pictures of my work and wondered if I could make a Disney-themed piece for Jeff’s birthday. A Disney themed piece for my first commission? Doesn’t get much better than that!

The first hurdle was determining which character from the vast Disney lineup would be right for the project. Jeff had made numerous references to Mr. Smee from Peter Pan in his Facebook posts, so that was my first pitch. Then in the course of conversation with Lisa, he mentioned that his favorite character was Donald Duck. While searching out some Donald Duck reference images, I came across the cartoon short Bee at the Beach (1950) and thought it would be a perfect fit - Jeff and Lisa are big beach people, proponents of the beach life attitude and year-round residents of Oak Island, NC. While I was working on some early ideas, Lisa continued brainstorming and came to the conclusion that maybe something based around one of Jeff’s favorite attractions from Walt Disney World (WDW) would be better, something along the lines of The Hatbox Ghost piece I had made for myself. Maybe something from Pirates of the Caribbean or better yet, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride:

“Jeff loved that ride. His parents took us for a week after we graduated college. They hung out with his sister and left us to ourselves. We had an amazing time one particular day, and it ended with us getting the Mr. Toad car on our last ride as the park was closing. Made Jeff's day. The teenager running the ride thought his excitement was a little weird, but he had fun.”

That was it, we had to do Mr. Toad. Of course, there was a problem -

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride closed on September 7, 1998, and was subsequently replaced with The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. (Wikipedia)

I had to recreate something that hadn’t existed for about 15 years. While the attraction still exists at Disneyland, the exterior looks much different from the defunct WDW incarnation. 1998 was still squarely in the pre-digital age and as such, I had to rely on people’s scans of  their “old” photos they had posted to the Web. Luckily, I was able to find enough old photos (and even a 3D VR Rendering) of the entire ride to make a reasonable attempt at recreation:

  

(Some of my reference pictures)

After looking through all the photos I could find, I decided that the best way to capture both the essence of the ride and Jeff’s attachment to it was to make the outer mat layer represent the attraction’s entrance pillars (complete with Medieval Faire canopy) and have the main center layer show the Toad Hall Exterior queue area. Finally, I would have silhouettes of Jeff and Lisa sitting in one of the ride vehicles heading into the first room which would make up the back layer. Here is the sketch I put together sketch for Lisa:

As you can see, the sketch is remarkably close to the final product, except that we eventually changed the tag line to “The Wild Ride Goes On”  and changed the silhouettes from Early 90’s Jeff and Lisa to 2013 Jeff and Lisa (which really only entailed giving Jeff a bit less hair .)

 

Process Pictures

The picture with Mr. Mole gives you a scale idea of the detail I used.

Detail Pictures

Unfortunately, what you can’t see is that the fireplace is fully realized and there are miniature, hand drawn versions of the “Modern Art” painting of Mr. Toad hidden by the car and figures. I didn’t get a chance to photograph them before I had to put it together.

Each and every stone is hand drawn and hand cut, as are the wooden roof shingles

 

This was a really fun project made all the better because it was for friends - there is just something about knowing your art is hanging in a friend’s house.