SATURDAY SIX Artist Spotlight: The Theme Park Artwork of Phillip Weatherford (AKA The Horizoneer)

Every February – to coincide with EPCOT’s Festival of the Arts – this fine blog series presents a series of Artist Spotlight features that focus on individual artists within the theme park community. We have done many articles on some incredibly talented artists; including Hayden Evans, Brian Cooper, and Jess Feldman, but they all have one thing in common, their main form of artistic expression is drawing.

“Art” is so much more than just drawing though, and in fact it includes an almost infinite amount of ways that people express themselves creatively. So it was high time that the Artist Spotlight acknowledged that, and there is no better way to kick it off than by shining a spotlight on Phillip Weatherford, a person whose amazing creations I gush about consistently in our Theme Park Enjoyment Index.

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Hello there! First off, I want to say how grateful I am to Derek for reaching out and incredibly honored by his offer to create an entry in an Artist Spotlight series that is filled with a wildly talented and innovative lineup of creatives, and even more so to be among those that I’m lucky to call my friends.

My name is Phillip Weatherford. Much like Peter Quill, there’s another name you might know me by that’s infinitely less cool when said out loud – The Horizoneer. Stemming from my admiration of EPCOT Center’s Horizons and the imaginative + engineer naming convention which led to the title of Imagineer coined by Walt Disney himself all those years ago, little me came up with an adaptation that ended up sticking around.

I’m a multidisciplinary artist in Orlando, Florida specializing in themed entertainment design! As you’ll soon read, I’ve had an affinity for theme parks for as far back as I can remember, with my goal quickly becoming to contribute in any way towards creating the same joyful optimism I was fortunate enough to grow up with for future generations!

To say growing up two hours away from Orlando’s theme park capital of the world influenced me greatly would be an understatement, with many of my childhood memories being rooted in the stomping grounds of beloved theme park attractions that have resonated with so many! Recoiling in fear from the Xenomorph on The Great Movie Ride (with a scent I remember to this day), seeing the Energy dinosaurs tower over me while my dad fell asleep in an empty moving theater, and flying on a bicycle with E.T. himself after hearing how much my mom loved it despite forgetting to mention his terrifying Green Planet friends. It’s very possible that being lucky enough to live near theme parks is what led to this version of me not being a lawyer or doctor, but chances are we would’ve ended up here eventually!

When I wasn’t reading online about obscure theme park lore and defunct attractions, I spent a high percentage of my childhood building with LEGO. I was happiest cobbling together makeshift versions of Disney Parks iconography with every color brick I had, whether it was it’s a small world’s clock tower or The Hollywood Tower Hotel featuring horribly cut out paper decals! Falling in love with both original themes like Atlantis and Monster Hunters and licensed ones like Toy Story and Star Wars, it opened endless possibilities for my humble LEGO theme park recreations. Fast forward a decade and a half, I posted a microscale version of the Worldwide Engineering Brigade from Avengers Campus on Twitter and didn’t think of it much until a familiar spark of inspiration hit me…

# 6 – Ride Vehicles

For me, an attraction is only as good as its ride vehicle! Despite every attraction having the purpose of getting riders from Point A to Point B, themed ride vehicles have become an integral and inseparable part of both an attraction’s theme and storytelling. What would E.T. Adventure be without the flying bicycles or Dinosaur without the CTX Time Rover?

Growing up, I would always be disappointed that models of ride vehicles would be few and far between, with only a handful of die cast replicas being produced sporadically. This led me to starting out a passion project of designing all of EPCOT’s ride vehicles in LEGO form!

Above is the first LEGO post I made that *really* gained attention, and it was surreal to me. I’ve learned tons since then and have even gone back to redesign the Living with the Land greenhouse boat twice, but I’m still happy with how the Spaceship Earth time machine and Nova Corps Starjumper looks!

Straight from Captain Jake’s Amity Boat Tours, here’s the JAWS: The Ride vehicle – easily at the top of the list of defunct theme park attractions I’d love to experience, it’d be a dream to visit its counterpart in Japan someday!

 

Hold onto your boats. Jurassic Park River Adventure features one of my favorite Universal ride vehicles of all time, and I made sure to include its incredibly heavy shared lap bar in this model!

 

Don’t worry, you don’t have to pedal while building this ride vehicle. Thanks to the E.T. minifigure released in 2016 through LEGO Dimensions, E.T. Adventure’s flying bicycles can be brought to life!

Now let’s take a look at the evolution of designing a ride vehicle like Living with the Land’s, with some of the steps taken to make sure it’s as accurate as possible!

This first prototype of the greenhouse boat dates back to August 2022! Starting out by soaking up as many reference pictures and videos as possible before placing the first brick, this was a vignette of a microscale boat floating by the plants seen in the greenhouse. A few months later, I gave a proper shot at a minifigure-sized Version 1!

As you’ll see, this first version is much rougher with exposed studs and a flat bottom! Some of the colors are mismatched and not fully accurate to what you see on the real thing, and the roof was way too wobbly! Even though there’s great features like stability/connectivity simulations, a big challenge of designing LEGO models digitally in Bricklink Studio is not having the benefit of tangible bricks in front of you to prototype with.

Fast forward to Version 2, and we can start to see some of these issues being smoothed out like a totally redesigned roof trim, color swaps, and an actual bottom this time!

Third time’s the charm, and Version 3 was made another few months later – this time with different railing, ANOTHER roof design, and elevated bottom to make the boat look more like it’s floating!

After this year’s D23 Expo, it’s clear that Dinosaur is about to become “extinct” to make way for an Indiana Jones themed attraction. My love for Dr. Seeker and the Time Rover will live forever.

To see more ride vehicles I’ve created over the years (including ones for Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride), CLICK HERE.

 

 

# 5 – Epic Universe

Whether you’re a casual park goer or intensive theme park enthusiast, chances are you’ve probably heard of an upcoming theme park coming to Orlando next year in the form of Universal Epic Universe. I’ve been looking forward to exploring these new worlds for a long time and was instantly inspired to work on designing scale models of both the Chronos itself and each world’s respective entry portal as soon as official concept art was revealed.

Continuing with ride vehicle models, here’s the Stardust Racers Comet! This is the first ride vehicle I’ve designed to have a display base (plus mini version of the attraction’s comet) and section of coaster track in order to properly display such a stunning design!

If there was a singular design I’d say I’m happiest with so far, it’d have to be this scale model of Mine Cart Madness’ Golden Temple simply due to how nicely it translated to LEGO and looks sitting next to its titular ride vehicle!

Not too long later, my bias got the better of me as I rapidly shifted focus to the hauntingly beautiful iconography of Dark Universe, from The Burning Blade Tavern to Frankenstein Manor itself!

Here’s Monsters Unchained: The Frankenstein Experiment’s ride vehicle – also known as a Catacomb Navigation Unit. Featuring five rotating articulation points and working restraints, it’s ready to go underneath Frankenstein Manor and beyond!

Speaking of Frankenstein Manor, it’s the most complex singular scale model I’ve ever designed at over 1,800 pieces and still a work in progress based on shadowy concept art offering a glimpse of what to expect in person!

An adaption of the iconic Haunted Mansion attraction poster, I wanted to make a piece welcoming the new monsters coming to town featuring Frankenstein Manor and the monsters’ original film counterparts. Both Universal Classic Monsters and the Haunted Mansion are deadly dear to my heart, and this is easily a personal favorite that I’ve illustrated so far!

# 4 –  The Muppets

Anyone that knows me knows I firmly believe that Muppet*Vision 3D is easily a top ten theme park experience ever built, with its combination of audio-animatronics, strong visual gags, and blend of in-person and on-screen effects being the quintessential way to bring The Muppet Show to life. Jim Henson’s messages of love, acceptance, and general empathy for those around you shined strongly through his work, and the world is a much better place because of it.

The Muppets snowballed into my life as I grew up, with The Muppets Take Manhattan being the first Muppet movie I saw with Muppet*Vision 3D being a highlight of my childhood theme park visits! I would put on makeshift Muppet shows for visiting relatives with Kermit puppet in hand, a theater made from cardboard and shirt rag curtains, and a printed-out repertoire of what same six songs viewers could expect. Rewatching 2015’s The Muppets (ABC) countless times (and highly recommending anyone reading this to do so) quickly led to frogs, bears, chickens, and whatevers becoming my muses and creative inspiration – I hope you enjoy this salute to all LEGO scale models and illustrations, but mostly Muppet themed ones!

My personal favorite for emotional reasons, I’ve wanted to create a vignette of Kermit’s most iconic scene for a long while but knew it needed to be knocked out of the park to do it justice – building organic environments with LEGO and making sure artificial foliage is secured to its surroundings can be a hard task, but I love how the swamp trees frame the scene!

Another defunct experience that I kick myself for never seeing in person is the Muppet Mobile Lab. An incredibly cool concept part of the Living Character Initiative which also featured Wall-E and Remy, I brought back its LEGO counterpart to the same spot in EPCOT even though a lot has changed since!

Incredibly proud of myself for using the life preserver/hot dog/scissor combo for the ornamentation in this piece of Statler and Waldorf from Muppet*Vision 3D.

Speaking of Muppet*Vision 3D…

This faux ad below is a tribute to one of the most iconic lines in show.

The only restaurant in the world themed specifically to The Muppets (ABC), PizzeRizzo and its rat pizza has quickly gained a cult following!

Inspired by the minimalistic whimsy of Mary Blair and the colorful new worlds she created out of thin air, I had to make a tribute piece (slice?) to PizzeRizzo in a style adapted from it’s a small world, with a familiar sun being a direct callback!

Inspired by the classic advertisements for The Mickey Mouse Club and the moment in the Muppet*Vision 3D pre-show where Rizzo appears dressed as the big cheese himself, I had to make a hybrid poster featuring Rizzo in various iconic Mickey outfits throughout the years!

I’ve also made some illustrations reimagining classic Disney iconography with Muppet-y flair, like this piece featuring Miss Piggy and Kermit as Rapunzel and Flynn Ryder on a soundstage as Gonzo tries to keep the scene going!

# 3 –  Attraction Posters

One of my favorite parts of the classic Disneyland experience that is often overlooked nowadays is the striking gallery of attraction posters as you walk underneath Main Street Station into the original Magic Kingdom. It’s both the theme park equivalent of seeing posters for upcoming movies at the theater and works of art in their own right that condense an entire attraction down into one illustration! Since I was little, I would fixate on wherever these works of art would be found, whether it was in-universe midway game posters in Toy Story Mania! or even old photos of murals sprawling the load areas of EPCOT Center.

As I got older and became more educated on what exactly I’d like to do when I grow up beyond “designing theme parks” (and the overwhelming task to find where I would fit into a massive themed entertainment industry), I learned about how the art of screen printing brought all of these fantastic designs to life in vivid color. By challenging myself to work with limited color palettes like the artists at the height of silk-screening in the 1960s, my goal quickly became adapting the colorful feasts for your eyes that have become synonymous with your favorite theme park attraction! A great recent example of this is the phenomenal EPCOT poster series by Eric Tan and Stacey Aoyama, which has served as a major inspiration on the authentically timeless attraction poster art style of that era I work hard towards conveying.

In the lead up to the opening of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, I thought it would be fun to take a personal shot at an attraction poster inspired by the art style of Almost There’s musical sequence!

One of the more obscure pieces I’ve done, I illustrated a love letter to the atomic age with a convention poster for X-S Tech – the fictional alien corporation created for The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. Populated with both iconic and obscure 90’s science fiction characters spanning theme parks, tv shows, and movies, can you spot them all?

An adaption of the World Celebration poster seen in the EPCOT poster series mentioned earlier, it featured the gone but not forgotten original plans for the Festival Center – with this variant adding CommuniCore Hall and Dreamers Point in its place.

A tribute to the in-universe pavilion name of Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, I wanted to do a World’s Fair inspired poster featuring pavilions throughout EPCOT’s history!

Another poster in the styling of the EPCOT poster series, I wanted to see what one for Luminous would look like, with callbacks to EPCOT Center’s pavilion icons and the World Showcase skyline in the distance.

One of my personal favorite attraction posters of all time is the one created for the Walt Disney World Monorail System, with this version advertising the novelty of the monorail system when first created along with its famous stops on Lake Buena Vista!

# 2 – Star Wars

My first exposure to Star Wars was through the original Star Tours right before the last flights to Endor departed. I instantly fell in love with that world, and it only solidified when my dad showed me the original Star Wars shortly after. The first LEGO Star Wars set I got was Luke’s Landspeeder (8092) because I only wanted the C-3PO and R2-D2 minifigures to make my very own Starspeeder 1000! I even created the ship on Minecraft because I couldn’t stop thinking about the ride.

Starspeeder 3000: Unlike the rectangular box of rainbow bricks I made all those years ago, I did make a mini Starspeeder 3000, a diorama of it in the original queue’s maintenance bay, plus what the ship would look like in the Microfighter style with Captain RX-24 in the cockpit!

Droids: Speaking of Rex, RX-droids are my favorite obscure Star Wars design, and I knew I had to make myself a Rex and his two G2 droid companions, G2-9T and G2-4T!

Vignettes: Here are some vignettes of iconic Star Wars attraction moments over the years, featuring the Star Tours cockpit old and new and the Rise of the Resistance’s AT-AT encounter!

 

Travel posters: I’ve also made some illustrations paying tribute to the vintage travel posters seen as you walk out of the attraction, inspired by Bespin and Seatos!

# 1 – Themed Entertainment Design

Like many others in the Artist Spotlight series, little me dreamed of becoming an Imagineer someday. My parents got me “The Imagineering Workout (A Walt Disney Imagineering Book)” as a surprise one day and that flooded gasoline onto the spark in my brain that wanted to help make theme parks! I would scribble crayon diagrams of the Dreamfinder’s Dreamcatcher machine, eagerly research about the story of Phantom Manor, and attempt to convince my parents to let me build a themed rollercoaster in the backyard with PVC pipe track despite never being successful on that one.

As I grew older, that dream of working in the theme park industry seemed almost impossible. The days of my Imagineering heroes like Bob Gurr and Mary Blair thriving in intimate creative teams seemed lost to time in an evolving and highly competitive creative landscape.

I’ve worked tirelessly towards that goal especially in the past couple years, whether it was going to themed entertainment industry mixers without knowing a soul there or staying up late every night for months refining portfolio projects. I was going to find some way to be a part of that creative world! When things seemed bleak, I started by reaching out to my friend Rob Yeo, Creative Director on a wide variety of projects (and now, Artistic Consultant at Walt Disney Imagineering!) who became my themed entertainment mentor and British Yoda who gave invaluable guidance to refine my creative portfolio’s personal projects much like his mentor did for him!

One of these projects was a hypothetical marquee design for an Egyptian themed walkthrough show titled “The Scarab’s Curse” – along with the theme paint documentation needed to get all of those little details right.

Believe it or not, paint is a powerful storytelling tool. As a creative project is turned over and finalized, preparing this final paint documentation for theme painted elements is crucial. Whether it’s making sure that the quality of the original is intact for the future refurbishments using the same paints/techniques or matching the designers’ original creative design intent, a design package is the “bible” that keeps your favorite attractions looking as good as they did on opening day!

Another fun one was workshopping effects tests for the personal concept of a temporary walkthrough attraction based on the life cycle of a star – Our Stars Are Born. Combining physical sets with projection mapping to create glimmering nebulas, supernovas, and a 12-foot wide recreation of the Milky Way, it was definitely out of this world!

A couple hundred “thank you for your interest” emails later, something happened. While I can’t say much about it, I *can* say that I recently got to accept a Creative Design internship at Universal Creative starting this fall! I’ve had nothing but welcoming and kind interactions going into this epic adventure, and being able to collaborate with so many like minded, talented people is a dream come true. I can’t wait to share more with the world in the months to come, and am forever grateful for the love and support of my family, friends, and mentors cheering me on. I hope that anyone reading this who wants to get their foot in the door of designing theme parks holds on tightly to their conviction to push forward!

Honorable Mention – LA LA LAND

Seven and a half years ago, La La Land released in theaters and quickly skyrocketed into living rent free in my brain as one of my all-time favorite movies ever since! I listen to the heartbreakingly hopeful score by Justin Hurwitz (and his other musical masterpieces from Babylon and Whiplash) pretty much every day, and it was only a matter of time before I started yearning to explore what a dark ride inspired by the film might look like.

I’ve played around with different ideas for years, but the concept of a trackless dark ride taking you to a jazz festival at Seb’s Jazz Club through whimsical postcard versions of the California locales seen in the movie stuck. With the visual art style of the epilogue sequence’s soundstage backdrops and the whole experience rooted in music, vehicles would be “dancing” in time with each other and mimicking the expressive camerawork as they swirled and panned through each scene.

Earlier this year, I made a hypothetical attraction poster for what this ride might look like, giving a great opportunity to delve into the process of illustrating an attraction poster like this!

Here’s a peek into the design process. It starts out like most creative projects as a poorly scribbled out sketch of a good idea. No sketch is a bad one!

Next up, I do lots of photobashing with reference photos to play around with the concept and get ideas of how the puzzle pieces will visually fit best on the poster. Finding what the most striking line of sight is for the viewer is vital!

 

Possibly the most important step, I go through a ridiculous amount of font testing and color palettes! La La Land is a movie that STRONGLY utilizes storytelling and symbolism with color, and I wanted to reflect that by even using palettes taken directly from shots in the movie by accounts like /colorpalette.cinema!

 

Many hours later with sleepless nights and mild mood swings, the poster is almost done – the last step is finding a digital texture layer that authentically matches a time period or aesthetic, and it’s good to go!

See more of Phillip Weatherford on Twitter (@TheHorizoneer), Instagram (/horizoneerdesign), shopping at his Etsy shop, and checking out his creative portfolio at horizoneerdesign.com.

So there you have it: SATURDAY SIX Artist Spotlight – The Theme Park Artwork of Phillip Weatherford! 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 | Bunny Wars

Artist Spotlight Class of 2024: Jaime S. | Jess Feldman | Bryan Bindman

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: Declan O’mara

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.