There’s more to being an Imagineer than just coming up with great ride ideas. Anyone who’s worked in a company knows that thinking up great ideas is only half the battle – from there, you have to sell your idea. That, friends, is the hard part. Everyone has good ideas, but not everyone is able to package and sell their ideas well. And, even if you’re able to do so to your coworkers and bosses, that doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily be able to sell that idea to your customers as well.
This holds true for Walt Disney Imagineering as well – it’s not just about creating amazing attractions, it’s also about communicating your vision to others. That’s where concept art comes in.
Most Imagineers know how to draw and design at least nominally. Some, however, are truly gifted artists, and the concept drawings they create to convey the emotional truth of their projects can and should be considered works of art on their own.
Great concept art can transcend its purpose, not only giving you a sneak peek at an upcoming attraction, but also taking you on an abbreviated version of the emotional journey you’ll undergo when you finally enjoy the real thing. And when concept art can do that, it truly becomes something more.
So, let’s take a look at some beautifully rendered concept drawings of now-famous Disney attractions – all of which are worthy of gallery space in a museum.
5. Matterhorn Bobsleds
This piece comes from an advertising supplement printed with the L.A. Times in 1959 announcing the opening of a handful of attractions at Disneyland, including Submarine Voyage, the Monorail, and, of course, the Matterhorn Bobsleds. You can view more of that supplement by clicking here.
Unlike the other works on this list, we don’t know exactly who produced this particular work, but there’s an awful lot to like about it. In addition to capturing the wonderful dichotomy of the snowy roller coaster and the Southern California sun, this rendering evokes a Norman Rockwell-esque sense of Americana – a kind of wayback machine to a simpler era of attraction design and family entertainment. It carries that soft and bright look of Rockwell’s iconic Saturday Evening Post covers, complete with a bit of mid-century schmaltz.
Unlike a lot of modern Disney concept art, the focus here is on atmosphere and movement rather than gizmos and gadgets – you look at it, and you immediately have a sense of Walt’s intent with this attraction: A thrill ride, sure, but a family-friendly one that could be enjoyed by everyone together.
4. Haunted Mansion
There are plenty of pieces of concept art available for the Haunted Mansion, but this Sam McKim version from 1958 is probably the best of the lot. Considering the Haunted Mansion itself is a real work of art, it shouldn’t be a surprise that its concept drawings carry equal gravitas.
There are a few reasons why this specific image rises above the rest, however. The first is that it is, essentially, an exact replica of an actual house that once existed in the real world. Seriously.
The second is that this piece of art pretty closely resembles the final exterior of the fully-realized attraction out in California. Unlike other concept drawings, some of which are really only there to inspire excitement rather than provide any actual sense of what an attraction might look like, this picture captures the essence of what the Disneyland Haunted Mansion would ultimately look like.
But above all, the reason McKim’s work stands out is that it is a truly foreboding image. It’s spooky, it’s grim, and it captures your eye in such a way that it’s hard to pull yourself away. Its swirling lines trap you inside and only add to the creepy feeling you get in looking at it – a perfect feeling to convey for an attraction that hits all those notes (and more) with the finished product.
3. EPCOT
Alright – let’s take a second to talk about Imagineer Herb Ryman, because from here on out, we’re sticking with his work.
Ryman began his career with the Walt Disney Company as an art director for such iconic films as Fantasia and Dumbo. But it was in 1953 that he tackled what might have been his most important assignment:
Walt took him aside and asked him to put to paper some ideas that he’d been thinking about. He described his grand plan to create a park where children and parents could play together, enjoying three-dimensional attractions that told the kinds of stories he had to that point only told on film. Two years later, Disneyland came to life after originally being dreamed up on Ryman’s easel.
A decade after that, Walt again recruited Ryman to help put a new grand idea to paper – only this one was far, far more ambitious than Disneyland. Walt was trying to design a community for the future – one in which technology and progress defined the community’s ideals. He was looking to build EPCOT.
What you see above is an image that perfectly captures what EPCOT was meant to be, as Walt saw it. The theme park we have now is really nothing more than a tribute to those ideals – the true EPCOT was meant to be an inspirational city of the future. And, Ryman captured that perfectly in his grand rendering of the entire community.
It looks simultaneously dreamlike and real, with a soft-focus that keeps it perpetually locked away in the land of could-have-been. It’s impossible not to stare at it and think about what the real Progress City might have looked like, and what we might have seen developed there. And, if you feel even slightly more inspired to create when looking at it, well, Ryman did his job.
2. Spaceship Earth
Alas, when Walt passed away in 1966, the plans for Progress City and EPCOT were shelved – only to be resurrected somewhat as a new theme park for the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando in 1982. This new park would be largely inspired by the visual aesthetic of Walt’s EPCOT, but instead of being a real, working city, it would be modeled as something more closely resembling a permanent World’s Fair.
And so, once again, Ryman was brought in to help capture visually what Imagineers were hoping the new EPCOT Center would look like. And, boy did he deliver.
The image above is of the main entrance plaza – complete with a rendering of the park’s icon, Spaceship Earth – and wow, it really is a breathtaking piece. The most amazing aspect of this work is its mystery: It gives you just enough information to trigger your mind into coming up with all kinds of different stories to inhabit it – everything from the light shining down from above to the families enjoying the park to the Mickey Mouse balloon floating away. Like all great art, it sits with you after looking at it for a while – and, like all great concept art, it gets you excited to experience that attraction and park when it finally comes to life.
1. Horizons
But when it comes to Ryman’s work, for my money, this particular image stands alone.
That is concept art for one of Walt Disney World’s most beloved extinct attractions: Horizons. But what makes it amazing isn’t just that it’s concept art for such a fondly-remembered attraction – it’s really something much more than that.
As much as we love Horizons, and as much as we all love to remember it, if we were able to magically teleport back in time and ride it again, there’s no way it would live up to the version of it that plays on repeat in our minds. Its quaint view of the future, its slow-moving ride system, its delightfully retro score – all of these things are wonderful in hindsight, but would likely feel slightly less magical in the real world.
But that’s precisely why this image hits home so hard. Unlike the photos of Horizons that exist, or the extensive video walkthroughs or CGI recreations, Ryman’s painting captures that feeling of Horizons that we remember. It doesn’t show the plastic and metal reality – instead, it shows Horizons as it feels to us now in our collective memory.
Even the people riding the attraction don’t seem to come from the real world. Who is this businessman at Epcot in a suit with a briefcase? And what are these two sets of twins doing dressed like they’re heading to a French private school? Don’t they know it’s hot in Florida?
None of that matters, though, because this painting isn’t a painting of Horizons as it was – it’s a painting of Horizons as it should be. Ultimately, that’s what separates great concept art from the rest: It reflects the world back at us in such a way as to make us feel something new. And, wouldn’t you know it, that’s what great fine art does too.
