With the New Year came D23’s introduction of the Official Disney Fan Club’s 2020 Gold Member Gift. With every new gold membership subscription and renewal to D23, an amazing gift package is delivered a (what may be obligatory) certificate of membership and a membership card. Disney then plusses things by assembling it into a whole gift package of exclusive (I’ll say generically) stuff. For the memberships processed in the calendar year 2020, they have put together the D23 Fantastic Worlds Adventure Kit.
One small part of the kit which I contributed is a map.
You may read about the entire kit at D23.com
Of course, that’s where you can learn about the club itself, it’s events, offers and other Disney news.
If you, for example, renewed your membership this last Christmas, then you’ll be receiving the 2019 gift of beautiful enamel pins.
To keep the map an exclusive surprise, I won’t be sharing detailed images here on my blog, Instagram or other social media branches until later in the year. I will, however, tell you a behind-the-art tale of making the thing.
Fantastic Map-ortunity
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| “Where’s the Matterhorn on this thing?” |
Mid July 2019, a Disney colleague pitched my name to work on part of the 2020 Gold Member Gift. The D23 group wanted new designs for a map, a set of enamel pins, badges and postcards with room for more stuff budget allowing. At this stage, the package was forming both creatively and budget-wise. My colleague said that I’d be specifically perfect for creating the map, based on a few past projects in which my knowledge of Disney came in handy. I suppose that I’ve also demonstrated the willingness to put in the work on big art projects.
At this early stage, the “wish list” brief consisted of maybe 20 well-known Disney, Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel places. I doubt that anyone really had a clear idea of how a map could depict houses, cities, countries, moons and planets in a comfortable scale. Some of the inspiration examples that they sources were very simple and graphic, and along those lines perhaps scale wasn’t a limiting factor. The D23 group did imply that maybe the Star Wars and Marvel parts were still “maybes”, that they might not be part of the map of “Fantastic Places” as they were then calling the whole package. At this pitch stage, the size of the map hadn’t been dictated except for knowing that everything would have to fit inside the gift box no large than 35 cm (14-inches).
I accepted with that loose description. With so little known, it allowed my mind to make up the rest. I decided that the map would have to expand to represent hundreds of different movie and television properties and draw inspiration from the classic “Disneyland Fun Maps” that were sold in decades past. It would have to be 36-inches long (91 cm).
Fun for All
The Disneyland Fun Maps were artistic representations of the one and only (at the time) Disney theme park. It may not have been at true scale, but it did function like a real, printed map. It was folded in a specific way as to display in a shelf pocket in the Main Street Emporium showing a section with a legend and quote of Walt Disney’s opening day dedication, all tell-tale signs that the object wrapped in cellophane was a folded map. It had every attraction, shop, restaurant, restroom and phone booth indicated in their rightful spots. Many versions would have “future attractions,” some that would come to fruitions and some that remain a dream to this day. Curiously, the Fun Maps existed along side of the free, pocket-sized guides/ pamphlets which featured the same information.
Disney Imagineering legend Sam McKim designed the original Fun Map at larger than printed-size, with the final piece being about 45-inches (114 cm) wide. The map would be updated periodically. I’m told that in the pre-digital age, this would be done directly on the original McKim drawing, with bits whited-out, re-drawn or covered with pasted on parts. The printed map would shrink to about 36-inches. There are versions that are entirely new and separate drawings by different artists.
This was my inspirational target.
Latitude Adjustment
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| Pitch sketch in blue pencil. |
On a piece of letter-size paper (28 cm x 21 cm) I sketched a concept layout and relayed my plans.
My contact and who would become a good supporter, Justin, said that they’d get back to me. You see, they were thinking that it could just be a not-folded, 13-inches (33 cm) card. Waiting on a response, I thought that maybe they were right - after all, they were the client. The next day, they said, go for the full 36-inches plan.
Uh oh. 36 isn’t just 2.76% bigger than 13, it is 7.67% larger in area. Firming up the plan to concentrate only on Disney and Pixar film and television properties, they gave me an expanded list and the freedom to add to it. Uh oh, again.
Early on I hoped to draw it smaller than life, and scan it digitally at a high resolution. Maybe I could just draw some thing cleaner over my conceptual sketch?
Working Too Hard Can Give You a Cartography-Attack-ack-ack-ack-ack
My actual process was this:
- On a large sheet of white banner paper off a 24-inch wide roll, I designed, sketched and inked the art at planned actual, printed size.
- I sketched with a red pencil. As I’ve described of my work process in the past, when digitally scanned, the color red appears nearly white in the red channel of the RGB file. In that way, I don’t erase much, and therefore I don’t spend precious time erasing much.
- Rather than bringing the entire piece of art to a full sketch, I concentrated on smaller areas, one section at a time. I scanned each newly sketched section and pasted them into a full sketch version that never existed.
- I inked with a black micro or ultra fine roller ball pen, directly over the red pencil. In the same manner, scans of newly inked patches were added to the growing “final” inked art.
- I added color in the digital file on a layer beneath the layer of inked lines.
- Most of the revisions were sketched and inked on a separate sheet and added to their corresponding digital revised versions. Meaning that in sketch form and in inked drawing I have a so-called “original” version and a “final” version. There’s only one final color version.
The border mimics the design of a few Fun Maps replacing portraitures of Disney characters with 23 key landmarks taken directly from the map art and recolored monochromatically. The border also features longitudinal and lateral grid indicators for what was intended to match up with a legend of points of interest.
Map-dition and Subtraction
Thankfully, D23 was encouraging with every successive update which sketched out form three weeks, to four, to let’s say six. From roughly shaping the continent coastline, I began in what I refer to the metropolitan district the the lower left corner, and worked up and to the right. To my logic, an area nearest to the viewer could best accommodate tiny shops and buildings. As the map progresses farther away (up the map), towns, then cities, then kingdoms and countries could exist in an acceptable scale.
With so much of the map blank for so long over the weeks, of course there were suggestions for adding this and that. In some instances, things were removed. But at least they existed on the map at one point. Some of the things on the wish list weren’t included- for reasons.
Everybody Wants to Make Rules for the World
The selections of things was loosely guided by my made-up rules:
- First, it must be Disney or Pixar sourced.
- It has to be fantastic and not a real place or bit of architecture. Sorry, no Eiffel Tower (The Aristocats), no Notré Dame Cathedral and no Bulldog Café (The Rocketeer).
- It has to be visually distinct. Sorry, Metroville (The Incredibles) looks like a city of a bunch of grey blocks.
- Disney Theme Park icons are okay if they’re park originals and not recreations of other things. Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion - yes. Cars Land - no, but Radiator Springs - yes.
- If the thing or place is in the name of the movie or television show, it’s at least worth considering.
- If the thing or place has never previously been shown or depicted, it’s a candidate for being cut from consideration. Hey, let’s not start making up things.
- That’s a considerable amount of road work and water ways, let’s include some vehicles (i.e. here’s a way to include a movie that doesn’t have a distinct building).
- There’s room for Disney history.
- There’s room to break the above rules. (i.e. the client is always right).
Now all that remains is for the gift packages to ship and get in members’ hands and then folks can dive into the map and see what they can find.
“D23 Fantastic Worlds Map – Unfold the magic with this epic map, depicting more than 250 places, vehicles, and characters, representing more than 150 films, television shows, and theme park locations– all created by Disney and Pixar! You could spend hours looking at all the individual surprises– including 23 hidden Mickeys, a ‘Hidden Oswald,’ and so much more! Designed just for the D23 2020 Gold Member Gift by Disney artist Bryan Mon, the 24-by 36-inch map lovingly pays tribute to the ‘Fun Maps’ of Disneyland’s past.”
Happy exploring!
