On Wednesday, June 25, Imagineer, Richard Improta, visited the Los Angeles Music and Art School in East Los Angeles to speak to Camp MusArt students about his experience as a designer for Disney Parades and Spectaculars.
Improta spoke of his recent experience as a designer for the all-new Festival Fantasy Parade currently showing at Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Florida. Students had the opportunity to see parade float renderings, Computer-aided designs, and a 3D model of the Steampunk-inspired Maleficent Dragon float from “Sleeping Beauty” that breathes fire!
Students “ooed” and “awed “when Improta shared parade footage that depicted the sheer size and spectacle of the parade floats. Improta’s rendered parade float drawings – drawings of the floats in full color – truly depicted the intricacy and movie-inspired details visible on the floats.
Disney Imagineers develop “the biggest wow we can,” said Improta, as he explained that Disney’s Festival Fantasy Parade is the first new parade in many years. The parade began development in 2011 with a year of concept and story development that included the challenging task of combining Disney princesses, heroes, sidekicks, villains and, of course, Mickey Mouse, into one parade.
Having an Imagineer come speak to our Camp MusArt students and share his experience as a designer was a unique opportunity that exposed our students to professional careers available in the creative arts. Improta was very encouraging and engaging, answering our students’ questions and advising them to use the music, dance, drama and visual art skills they learn at Camp MusArt to audition for parade performers or become parade designers for the Walt Disney Company in the future.
As a special sneak-peek, our students also had first glimpse of the new Frozen-inspired float that will debut next year at the Tokyo Disneyland Park. Improta shared with our students paper models and full-color rendered drawings of the floats that will feature Anna, Elsa, Olaf and Disney touches that include animated snowflakes, a dazzling rotating chandelier, and Queen Elsa’s frozen castle rising from the snow!
With newfound inspiration and excitement, our students returned to their classrooms to continue rehearsals for their performance of Disney’s The Little Mermaid Jr.
Photo courtesy of http://www.wdwmagic.com