Written by Ashley Wehrs, Photos courtesy of Bryan Thombs
Walt Disney Imagineering Senior Creative Director Bryan Thombs led the THEDscapes Mentors Series panel, “Digital Media In Production Design (for Theme Parks)” on Oct 9. Thombs has worked at Walt Disney Imagineering for nearly nine years and recently completed the creative direction of Hong Kong Disneyland’s interactive attraction, “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Nano Battle.” As a multi-talented creative, Thombs shared his innovative passions, career journey and advice for those interested in learning his specialties.
An Indiana Jones behind-the-scenes clip jump-started the magic that would come from Thombs’ career. As a sixth grader, his mind was quickly made up. “I absolutely knew that’s what I wanted to do,” Thombs said, “[I spent] every waking moment trying to figure out how to get into filmmaking and special effects.”
Thombs sent out many VHS demo reels, comprised of his miniature and modeling work. He spent four years at Helium Productions and the following four with yU+co, managing animation teams, creating CG elements, robotic camera arms and title sequences.
When Thombs left yU+co, he had heard about an upcoming movie adaption of “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.” He sought out the production company, sent his reel and secured the job.
Thombs’ career continued to propel forward, accumulating credits for “Fantastic Four”, “The Last Airbender,” “The Green Hornet,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and one of his personal favorites, “Fast 5.” “[“Fast 5”] was really fun because we knew we wanted to create this hyper-stylized
kind of video-esque look,” Thombs said. Through the connection of XBOX video game controllers and Maya software, the team was able to record the motion of cars in real time.
In January 2012, Thombs started as a freelance VFX Supervisor and Senior Concept Designer for Walt Disney Imagineering. His evolution to Senior Creative Director was highly influenced by his passion for innovation and pushing boundaries in digital media. His talents have brought projects in Disney’s Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Anaheim and Orlando resorts to life.
In his themed entertainment career, Thombs gravitates towards projection, mapping and lighting. “I love lighting on set, I love lighting for photography, I love lighting CG. Lighting is a very emotional part of this process,” Thombs said, “Until you get the lighting to come in there, you just don’t know what the tone of your scene is.”
While crafting his expertise, he has started to innovate within these fields. “There was a lot of struggle at the beginning because you’ve got 14 projectors creating this scene,” Thombs said. The scene in question would go on to be the same surface, with the same textures, but appear as
completely different settings: a room, temple and grotto.
Thombs strived to eliminate the challenge of figuring out how individual projectors would combine to a surface. “You don’t need to work on one projector view, you can work on it holistically: It’s like you’re working on a panoramic image,” Thombs said.
For students interested in learning projection mapping, Thombs suggested trying TouchDesigner, Hippotizer, After Effects, Modo and Houdini.
