Long time Disney artist, Joe Rohde loves to draw! He enjoyed making this sketch on the deck, looking down at the garden below the Honeymoon Suite of the DragonFly Ranch and he kindly scanned it in to share it with all of you. Joe and his joyous family got stranded in Hawi when a flood prevented them from returning one night. They found that exciting! But they left just before the earthquake, missing out on that thrill for a minute.

(click to enlarge the picture)

Original View.

Credits : The DragonFly Ranch

Here is a very good interview found on the Times Online Magazine, where we learn a lot of things about the typical day of an imagineer...

"The job of an imagineer is to create the illusion of reality in the minds of others. We conceptualise, we design, we build — we see that a project gets done. The power of illusion first struck me as a child, growing up in Honolulu. My father was a film-maker and worked on any film that went through Hawaii in the late ’50s, early ’60s. "

To read the whole interview, follow this link !

Joe Rohde was the keynote at SIGGRAPH 2006, here is a review by John Jenkins from Motionographer.

"The keynote is a highlight of SIGGRAPH. In the past, SIGGRAPH has attracted many prestigious members of the computer arts industry to deliver the keynote address. Previous speakers have included: science fiction author and technologist Bruce Sterling and the Jedi Knight himself, George Lucas. This year, the keynote was given by Joe Rohde, Executive Designer and Vice President at Walt Disney Imagineering. Rohde is currently in charge of the design and development for Disney’s Animal Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. He has led conceptualization, design, and production for Disney’s Animal Kingdom since its inception in 1990.

Mr. Rohde began his address by stressing the importance of storytelling in any design and establishing a theme for your story/design, which all aspects of the story/design must relate back or stand up to. There can be sub-themes under this main theme, said Rohde, but it’s imperative that all the details relate back to the main theme in some way. In the case of the Animal Kingdom, Mr. Rhode led the development and production of Expedition Everest, the new roller coaster thrill ride. The overall theme for Animal Kingdom is the "intrinsic value of nature." Once it was determined that the new thrill ride would be based in a Himalayan location, they needed to figure out how it could be believable that a roller coaster would exist in this environment. After some historical research, it was discovered that trains had transported tea from Nepal to the areas of greater China, which then provided an authentic reason for the roller coaster existing in the Himalayas.

After further research by Mr. Rohde, they learned of the myth of the Yeti, a great beast that protects the foothills of the Himalayan mountains against the encroachment of civilization. The Yeti would provide the conflict of the ride. The train must traverse the foothills to deliver its tea and the Yeti protects these foothills. The ride is thus consistent with the theme—the intrinsic value of nature. Mr. Rohde attributes the great success of the ride to the effort to keep all elements of the design consistent with the strong theme of the park."

Inside joke in the imagineers team from Tokyo's Tower of Terror, it seems that Mr Harrison Hightower looks like Joe Rohde !

Look at these pictures from JTCENT...