SATURDAY SIX Artist Spotlight: The Theme Park Artwork of Bunny Wars

This week the SATURDAY SIX Proudly Presents: The Theme Park Artwork of Bunny Wars! To coincide with Disney’s Festival of the Arts, each February the SATURDAY SIX spotlights artists in the theme park community. Each of these artist spotlight features gives us a chance to appreciate an artist whose work uses characters, attractions, or any other part of the Disney or Universal theme parks. We began this annual tradition in 2021 and have continued each year (you can find previous artist features by CLICKING HERE.) The class of 2023 kicked off with Marie Catano (@draw4theworld,) followed by Savannah Hamilton (@savaemazz), and today we shine the spotlight on Bunny Wars (@bunny_wars.) Over the years this series has been filled with talented male, female, and non-binary illustrators, but Bunny is our first ever furry artist…

Howdy howdy! I’m Bunny Wars, a US-based furry artist who loves Epcot Center, especially Wonders of Life! Art is not my actual career, but I love to use my drawing skills to show appreciation for and bring attention to the subjects that capture my heart and brain. I’m honored to be featured alongside so many talented artists.

As for who I am and why I am Bunny, it all started when I was a kid and I saw Space Jam in theaters. Little did my unsuspecting parents know, the sight of Lola Bunny playing basketball on a giant theater screen set me up for a lifetime of pondering one question: Do I want to BE Lola Bunny, or do I want to be WITH Lola Bunny…? I am now a card-carrying Big Adult, and the answer is still unclear. Like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie-pop, the world may never know. Maybe if I draw myself as a bunny 1,000,000 times, I will figure it out!

# 6 – Disney

Now then, something that I like to ask folks when I first meet them in order to break the ice is: “What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream, and your favorite Disney movie?”  because it turns out people have pretty strong opinions about the two subjects. Many of my pals have a favorite Disney character that speaks to them. How wonderful it is when you know someone who loves a character and when you see that character pop up somewhere, you think immediately of your friend. I regularly have folks tag me in anything that features one of my favorite guys and they always have such excitement over having spotted them and getting to show me. “I saw this and thought of you”, in any capacity, is such a small gesture that means a whole lot.

Here are some drawings and commissions I’ve made for various people in my life of the Disney characters that they love.

Here are some of the characters that I personally adore. There’s a good chance you will see a pattern. In fact, if you or someone you love was voiced by, or inspired by a character voiced by Bill Thompson, you may be entitled to financial compensation. Some of the voices he has done for Disney over the years include Professor Owl and Birdbrain from the Disney Sing-Along-Series, White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and the entire pirate crew from Peter Pan. I have an infinite fondness for these kinds of goofy, clumsy, bespectacled nose-guys. Ranger Woodlore in particular does not get enough attention from Disney, I feel. Smart, kind, polite, and a friend to all—total husband material. I’m so happy he made a recent reappearance in the Mickey Mouse tv series!

# 5 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

While deep in the misery of the first covid lockdown, my husband (Mr. Bunny) and I had the idea to watch any Disney movies we had never seen. First on the list was Snow White! What better way to start? Even as an adult seeing it for the first time, there was something about the film that reached directly through my skin and bone and touched my little bunny heart directly. I was so overwhelmed by the artistry of it all. I kept looking back at the date it was released, calculating how long it had been…1937?! 1937!! It seemed so impossible! The fact that the movie happened at all felt like such a triumph.

I spent many weeks of the lockdown doing research. I read any book I could find on Snow White’s production, pored over model sheets, studied sketches and animation cels, paused the movie to take screenshots, played it in slow motion to try to understand the animation…my best friend watched it over Discord with me several times, and we rewound back to Grumpy getting kissed over and over, both of us as grown women just so full of joy.

While the world outside my front door was sick and the future of the world as we knew it was uncertain, I wanted, so badly, to just go live in a little woodland cottage like the dwarfs. I longed to eschew my real-world responsibilities– my Outlook inbox, my mortgage, my fake customer service voice when I answer the phone—and instead, live a simpler life where I was free to bake pies, make music, pick flowers, and burst into song at any given time.

I am very fortunate that I am able to materialize my daydreams through art. I decided that I was going to create a bunny character in the style of the movie, and apply what I had learned from my studying. All of my sketches were done in Procreate for iPad.

It was a fun exercise in style-matching, and I learned a whole lot. I encourage anyone who finds themselves enamored with a piece of media to try to figure out just WHAT it is about it that activates your neurons! For me, with Snow White, I felt envious of the dwarfs and their simple, happy life. I also felt envy toward Snow herself, who faces great peril and hardship, but is then taken in and cared for by a group of sweet, nonthreatening strangers who treat her as one of their own. I understand we want to teach little girls to be independent, but at this point in my life, I was scared! I looked around for an adult and then realized, with horror—I was the adult! It was a huge comfort to lay my head down at night, stop worrying about covid for a while, and instead fantasize about my adventures as a little bunny woman who is taken in by her new group of dwarf friends.

 

# 4 – EPCOT

I visited Epcot briefly as a teenager and longed to return, falling to the same siren song that anyone with a slightly funky brain hears when they stand in the shadow of Spaceship Earth. I finally managed to convince my husband (Mr. Bunny, who was not too big a fan of Disney anything) that we should go to WDW for our honeymoon. He was hooked by my assurance that going to Disney World was like stepping into a cartoon or video game environment. I laid in our hotel room bed the night before we left, filled with excitement that I was going to trick him into drinking Beverly the next day at Club Cool and see his reaction! To my complete and utter disappointment, he did not spit the cup of Beverly out in disgust, but just blinked a little and remarked, “Well, this is kind of bitter.” Better luck next time I suppose. Fast forward to today and you can now find Mr. Bunny rope dropping Living with the Land on any day we find ourselves at Epcot. The transformation was a success!

While I try to stay positive as I can about the current state of Epcot, as with most fans, I am saddened by the loss of original characters in the park. I have done quite a bit of art of these characters, whether it be for myself or for someone who loves them. It’s been decades since some of these guys appeared, but they are appreciated all the same. The more weird and obscure a character is, the more exciting it is to see art of them!

When “Baby Yoda” first appeared in The Mandalorian (How long has it been? It feels like he’s been around forever!), I proposed a baby Figment. While merch featuring baby Figment does indeed exist, it did not quite satisfy the urge I had to see a sweet newborn baby Figment. I’m pleased I was able to capture the vibes of “the puppy that almost didn’t make it” scene from 101 Dalmatians.

Continuing on with the idea of Figment as a baby…I was delighted when the sleeping Figment plushes were released in the late 2010s. Figment, the mischievous little ball of energy with no off button, is always portrayed as such, and being able to hold him (a stuffed version of him, that is!) in your arms as he slumbers just felt so special. It’s like when you are chilling on the couch at your friend’s house and their cat falls asleep on your lap—you have been chosen. This little creature trusts you enough to rest on top of you and be at peace.

I also love the character of Dreamfinder very dearly, and really wanted to portray a quiet father-and-baby moment. Whether you feel yourself wanting to be Dreamfinder in this picture, or you’d rather be Figment, either way—you are valid.

When I first drew this, I was not able to attend the RetroMagic event where Ron Schneider was signing autographs. My friend @DreamfinderGuy had my drawing printed out and presented it to Mr. Schneider to sign, and he was purportedly very captivated by it! He asked if he could speak to me somehow, and ended up messaging me on Facebook, where he thanked me profusely and said my drawing would have a special place in his collection. The highest honor.

I had this picture below printed out and ready to be signed at the last RetroMagic, but when I found myself in the vicinity of Mr. Schneider, I felt my face go hot and my hands started to shake with nervousness. I didn’t know if it was just too weird to approach a man and ask him to sign a picture I drew of his pants getting pulled down by a little dragon. Mr. Schneider, if you read this—is this too weird?

Also during the covid lockdown, I joined the parks-related online book club, @WEDReads. To draw attention to the club and garner more interest, I drew several different park characters happily partaking in DEAR time—that is, Drop Everything And Read. My goal was to give them the appearance of old school scratch-and-sniff stickers that you’d get on tests handed back to you as a kid. Here we have Figment, Mr. Eggz from Kitchen Kabaret, Orange Bird, Horizons Butler, SMRT-1, Expedition Everest Disco Yeti, Mr. Toad, Sonny Eclipse, Buzzy from Cranium Command, Mr. Broccoli from Kitchen Kabaret, and the Dreamfinder! What are they reading? And what would they smell like if you scratched them?! It’s up to you!

# 3 – Food Rocks/Kitchen Kabaret

I love Food Rocks. “B-But Bunny!!!” pants some Epcot fan, running into the article to interrupt me, “Food Rocks is BAD! It was a terrible show! It was an embarrassment!” I dooon’t caaaare! Things don’t have to be “good” to be enjoyable and entertaining. Look at the success of “The Room” by Tommy Wiseau! Food Rocks definitely didn’t live up to its predecessor, the lovingly crafted opening day attraction, Kitchen Kabaret, but it’s fun, plain and simple.

Food Rocks to me is like when you’re at a restaurant with your dad and you’re about to leave, but your dad excuses himself to the bathroom as he always does, then comes out wiping his wet hands on his jean shorts and declares, “Let’s rock n’ roll!” It’s cheesy, it’s stupid, he says this every time—but it’s your dad. You come to accept, and even love, his embarrassing cheesiness. Food Rock is “Stupid Dad Jokes: The Attraction”, and personally, I’m here for it.

I just love Pita Gabriel. Pita Gabriel existing is just hilarious from start to finish. I am probably a little biased because I love Peter Gabriel, and Sledgehammer is legitimately my favorite song of all time! The parody of it in Food Rocks makes no sense, and it is only made better by the fact that voice actor Jess Harnell apparently flies into a rage if someone mentions him having voiced this character.

Recently, from a picture of a piece of sheet music at an auction, we found his name was originally Peter Edible. PETER. EDIBLE!

In Kitchen Kabaret, my favorite character is Mr. Eggz! Did you know he is voiced by Frank Welker? He probably leant his voice to a cartoon villain from your childhood and there’s something appealing about characters who exist only to gleefully annoy others.

It would be a shame if I neglected to mention Ms. Bonnie Appetite, who holds the distinction of being one of the few original IP women of Epcot Center. She has a variety of cool costume changes, a lovely singing voice, and I wish she was appreciated more!

In my day-to-day life, I live by the philosophy: “If something bad is going to happen, I hope it’s at least funny”, and that’s the case with Food Rocks and Kitchen Kabaret. I love them, I know they’re not the best, but they make me laugh! If that’s good enough for Jessica Rabbit, that’s good enough for me.

# 2 – Wonders of Life

This may sound shocking to some who have heard me on podcasts such as Retro Disney World talking about the Pavilion, I only became interested in Wonders of Life in the past few years. To set the stage—There I was, minding my own business, sitting on the plane next to my dear husband as we returned from our honeymoon to WDW. We had completed a single day at Magic Kingdom, and then a single day at Epcot. While reflecting on our trip, I suddenly thought of a post I saw years before about an abandoned Epcot attraction… the delightfully controversial Food Rocks, which got shuttered behind the walls of Soarin. Trying to remember what I had read, I consulted my good friend Google, and up popped the infamous “Buzzy’s been stolen?!” thread on WDWMagic.

Into the rabbit hole I fell! I remember pulling up that so-cherubic-it’s-creepy photo of the Buzzy animatronic and placing my phone into my husband’s hand while saying, “Look! Someone stole this guy from Epcot!” We laughed, not knowing that laying eyes on this cross between a cabbage patch kid and the character Radar from MASH was going to change the course of my life forever. I began to research my little ole cotton-tailed heart out. I’m an ADHDer, so when I take an interest in something, I research with the fervor of a little old man spending late nights at the library, pouring over medical textbooks to find something, anything, that could help save his dying wife.

This led me to Distwitter, and eventually, to my research partner @DreamfinderGuy, who shares the same folie-à-deux passion for our dome sweet dome, the Wonders of Life pavilion. Together, we run @WoLArchive, a digital archive of top to bottom photos, concept art, source audio and video, press kits, magazine and book coverage, internal documents such as operations manuals and training materials, merchandise, blueprints and schematics, and more! We regularly reach out to and interview anyone whose hand had a part in the making of the Wonders Pavilion and its attractions.

I know what you’re thinking…why Wonders of Life? What is it about this golden dome that has caused DFG and I to dedicate so much of our time to its history? Speaking for myself, I love Wonders of Life because it existed as a monument to the experience of being alive. MetLife wanted the message one got from Wonders to not simply be cut-and-dry, boring medical information…the goal was to bring an awareness and appreciation to the things your body does just so you can open your eyes each day! This concept was, and still is, very touching to me.

The pavilion itself has had a long and turbulent history that, prior to our work, was not well-documented. DFG’s reasoning for his half of the archive work is simply that he does not want someone else to go through all the trouble we’ve had to in order to find any information about it! I have created a bunch of Wonders-related art for our archive’s social media, which I’m happy to share with you here!

The Making of Me  – If you are not familiar with Wonders of Life, prepare to learn a very interesting fact that you can definitely use to break the ice at parties if you’re willing to get some weird looks: there used to be a sex education film that played at Epcot in Walt Disney World! It was called “The Making of Me”, and while it was very sensitive and sweet in its handling of the subject matter, one can only imagine the horror of going on vacation to Disney with their parents as a kid and ending up having to have The Talk because you watched a movie of a bunch of cartoon sperm fighting over a sexy egg cell.

The Making of Me also featured footage of a LIVE BIRTH! The first time I showed the film to Mr. Bunny, he recoiled in shock at the sight of the freshly-birthed baby. “Why does it look like that?!” he squeaked. “Look like what?” “Why is it all purple and covered in slime?!” I quickly realized Mr. Bunny had never seen a real newborn baby before outside of movies or TV, and he received an impromptu biology lesson. I can only imagine how this went for the kids of the 90s and early 2000s! I love the Making of Me. It handles the subject appropriately even with the innate awkwardness it brings. I love its message and how it ties into the overall theme of Wonders of Life—being alive is a miracle!

Body Wars! This “high-speed thrill ride through the human body” has you shrunk down by Miniaturized Exploration Technologies and injected into a person’s bloodstream in a state-of-the-art body probe. Once you arrive to float among the red blood cells, you meet Dr. Cynthia Lair, an immunologist played by Elisabeth Shue, who is studying how white blood cells repair the wound caused by a splinter. Suddenly, disaster strikes, Dr. Lair is swept away into the rapids of the bloodstream, and it’s up to YOUR SHIP (gasp!) to speed on through the body and rescue her!

I love Dr. Lair and appreciate her as another rare female original IP Epcot character! Elisabeth Shue is beautiful and I really wanted to do her justice.

DFG and I recently uncovered a clean source version of Audio Antics—an attraction from Wonders of Life where you sat down inside a giant pair of headphones, put a smaller pair of headphones over your ears, and listened to some novel-at-the-time spatial audio. It also tried to trick the listener into thinking what they were hearing was actually something else. This may be the only attraction that you can emulate 100% in the comfort of your own home! You can listen to it by CLICKING HERE.

I wanted to design a YouTube thumbnail for when we uploaded our find. I did a few VERY rough sketches of various characters listening to headphones, and DFG chose this one of Dr. Lair and General Knowledge from Cranium Command (more on that attraction later).

This character below Captain Cortex. He is from the original scrapped version of Cranium Command that was produced by (Colossal) Pictures. I really enjoy making my art look physical when it’s actually all digital, so, for this, I used a photo of a vintage Pluto sticker as my base, layered my drawing on, offset the colors, added a little distressing and, viola! A nice “vintage sticker” that fooled lots of folks on Twitter.

Captain Cortex is a bit of a Schrödinger’s character—he both exists and yet doesn’t exist. A lot of Cranium Command content was released before and after opening with Captain Cortex as the main character due to last minute changes. We’ve researched our tails off on this version of Cranium Command, and there’s no way to sugarcoat it…it sucked. Bad. It sucked so bad that Disney executives used expletives to describe it! Disney paid (Colossal) Pictures an enormous kill fee and thrust the project into the very capable hands of one Mr. Jerry Rees, for which we are all thankful.

The demo audio can be listened to by CLICKING HERE, but be cautious—it’s very difficult to listen to. If you’d rather read the script than subject your ears to a lil’ torture, I have transcribed it HERE.

I had drawn Captain Cortex previously, in the piece above comparing his design to that of Buzzy (who I love to draw with his bare animatronic hands he had following the theft of his gloves). Despite Captain Cortex’s smarminess and rude cocky attitude, I am quite fond of him. Due to my inability to shut up, many of my followers and members of our Discord channel also became enamored with this little lost brain pilot, and there has been a sharp uptick (i.e. more than just me drawing him) in FANTASTIC art of him which can be seen on @WoLArchive.

With that, we have reached the last section of the article…it’s finally time for me to talk about the true love of my life…

# 1 – Buzzy!

I love Buzzy. If you have ever interacted with me in any capacity, you know this about me. This is a core defining Bunny trait. This is my catchphrase I say when I’m transformed into an action figure and you press the button on my back.

For those who don’t know, Buzzy is the main character of Cranium Command, an animatronic theater show that opened with the Wonders of Life pavilion in 1989. In the animated preshow, we are introduced to the concept of Cranium Commandos, which are a military-style fleet of tiny men and women who are assigned to pilot the brains of normal-sized human beings and handle their decision making. The commanding officer, General Knowledge, is a huge mountain of a man who screams and berates the troops, Full Metal Jacket style.

Smack dab in the middle of his lecture, he is suddenly interrupted by the littlest cranium commando, the least-imposing recruit, looking quite lost in his oversized glasses and jacket, having arrived late on his very first day and nervously trying to find his seat. General Knowledge is incensed at the interruption– we see his eyes go bloodshot with rage and veins pop out of his neck! He jams his finger into the face of the hapless man who ground his momentum to a halt and orders he get up onto the stage with him, RIGHT NOW!! General Knowledge demands his name, and Buzzy stutters it out. A brand-new recruit, straight out of training class, who, after being grilled by the General, willingly shares, in front of God and everyone, that his mother still picks out his clothes for him.

Despite looking like Rick Moranis getting zapped with a cartoonifier ray and having the overall physique of a lollipop, Buzzy is extremely confident in his abilities, and stands tall(ish) through being screamed at and humiliated, forced to do pushups, AND getting trampled by a stampede of other commandos. How could you not fall in love with this little guy! The ultimate underdog of (of course) succeeds in the end.

You may have realized that I really enjoy making parody art. Here, I wanted to draw the infamous Sonic Adventure game cover, but with Buzzy. This is a rare clear sketch of mine.

You’ve read the stories of my previous trips to Disney, but let’s fast forward to today. I’ve spoken to almost 50 people who worked on Wonders of Life in a variety of capacities. I’ve been consulted for books and even a documentary. I’m responsible for a huge amount of the Pavilion’s history being uncovered and subsequently documented. I am very glad to be regarded as the person to go to with questions about the attraction, because I love to talk about it! It’s just… my favorite thing. The culmination of my combined research and art skills finally occurred late last year and I scraped up enough free time to finish a huge project I’d been working on for years—a Buzzy Field Guide!

This guide documents every major design change Buzzy went through, from concept art to stolen animatronic. I had been wanting to create something like this since my early days posting on WDWMagic in their Buzzy threads, chattering to myself in posts about different things I noticed in various photos, noting that the figure had changed over the years, speculating on what it all meant. I never thought anyone would care beyond me, and I’m so glad to have been proven wrong.

I’m going to talk a little bit about the development of this piece, as I really consider it my magnum opus. IIf you would like an even more detailed explanation and original photos of each design here, please check out my Twitter thread about it!

After years of research and many scrapped drawings, I remember finishing this iteration and thinking to myself, “Finally! I’m done!” but a little voice in the back of my head (Buzzy? Is that you?) kept nagging me that something just didn’t look right. I had finished it, it was achieving its goal of representing different Buzzy designs, but…I just didn’t like it.

These three designs in particular I felt weren’t being pushed enough and needed to be more dynamic, so I kept drawing until I was pleased with the results. I wanted to share this as an example that you can draw something and it be successful and serve its purpose, yet still need to be “plussed” somehow.

Alright! These little guys are looking much better! I think this shows off their personalities a little more than the stiff forward-facing Buzzies from the previous art.

Nice crisp lines! As always, this was done in Procreate for iPad. I get a lot of compliments on my lineart, so I shall reveal my secret: I used the inking brushes from True Grit Texture Supply’s Debaser Kit with the stabilization turned way up, as these brushes seem to imitate comic pens better than anything else I’ve tried. (Not being paid to say so, I use these things to death!)

One of the most fun parts of doing art of this nature is drawing it so delicately, making sure everything is perfectly aligned… then messing it up with distressed textures! I wanted this piece to imitate a page from an old book, or perhaps an informative flier that had been pinned to a bulletin board for far too long. I chose a scanned piece of paper with a tear on the corner to add a bit of fourth-wall humor to the section with the missing animatronic. Recently, I showed this art to somebody, and after a minute of observation they remarked, “I can SMELL this paper.” What a compliment!!! I was thrilled that my drawing on a computer screen managed to affect their sense of smell!

I am just unbelievably tickled that other people care about my art of these weird old Epcot attractions! I am beyond thrilled to be part of a community that appreciates my ADHD hyperfixation-fueled efforts and engages with me on them. Dramatic as it can be, I love being a part of Distwitter!

Honorable Mention: Epcot Center Inspired Album Covers

So there you have it: The Theme Park Artwork of Bunny Wars! See you next weekend for the latest installment of the SATURDAY SIX, where we’ll look at something fun from the world of Disney and Universal. If you enjoyed yourself, be sure to check out the THEME PARK ENJOYMENT INDEX, giving a monthly recap of all the theme park news you need to know (and a lot more you don’t need to know, but we’re gonna tell you anyway). You can also follow Your Humble Author on Twitter (@derekburgan).

If you enjoyed this article, you will surely like the following: 

Artist Spotlight Class of 2021: SonderQuest | Sam Carter | Brian Cooper | Sterling Denham

Artist Spotlight Class of 2022: Rob Yeo | Ava Buric | Jess Siswick | Hayden Evans

Artist Spotlight Class of 2023: Marie Catano | Savannah Hamilton

SATURDAY SIX Presents: Artists Inspired by Universal’s VELOCICOASTER

SATURDAY SIX Presents: Artists Inspired by Universal’s HALLOWEEN HORROR NIGHTS

SATURDAY SIX Artists Inspired by HHN Series: Dead Skull

Special Thanks to The Elite Brandon Glover, Digital Maestro Scott Walker, the bio-est of all reconstructs @bioreconstruct, Captain Cruiseline Scott Sanders of the world famous Disney Cruise Line Blog, my personal protege Hunter “Elvey” Underwood, artist @SonderQuest, the mighty maven of merchandise Hedgehog’s Corner, the SAT SIX Fun Squad of Parkscope Joe and “the Dadalorian” Nick, hot shot Michael Carelli, charter member of the Universal Four @Nitro230, the permit princess Alicia Stella, master cartographer Tommy Hawkins, and Hermione Granger’s tutor Megan Stump for their invaluable assistance with this article. Absolutely no help was added by SeaWorld Influencer @SuperWeenieHtJr. The SAT SIX is inspired each week by goofballs Aengus Mackenzie and LitemAndHyde and you Potterheads will  enjoy Meg’s other blog work over at the Central Florida Slug Club.