Mystery project unveiled!

Guten tag, tout le monde! I'm sure all of you have been carefully watching the awesome blog that is the Ghost Relations Department and have thus already seen the mystery project I spent the last two months on. ;) If not...well, what are you waiting for? Head on over and read the June 29th, 2008 post right now! That'll explain what the project is and allow you to view complete renders such as the wallpaper at the left and these:

And they're all up on my Flickr photostream for your viewing pleasure, just like ALL the renders of the entire Disneyland model. But today I'm going to share with you something that you didn't see in the GRD post. These are work-in-progress renders from various points during the process of building this model. Since I didn't post these as I was working, the way I normally would, I figured I ought to share them now. So, without further ado, here's how I re-created Sam McKim's haunt that never happened.

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This was the very first render of the project. I was just trying to rough in the exterior walls. Already some roof elements and corbels are showing up on the octagonal tower, but this is just the beginning.

More roof elements appear, as well as the top portion of the tower and some windows. The dilapidation has begun here with that front window on the tower; the shutter is hanging at an angle from its hinges, as per McKim's front elevation. You can also see I made the executive decision to cut off the themed portion of the side wall of the show building, adding a more classic show building look toward the back, where guests wouldn't be able to see.

More details are showing up. Notice the odd exterior staircase around the tower. Brandon and I pondered its purpose (or lack thereof) for some time. Perhaps it would have been there for cast member access to a storage area or break room or service area in that second floor. You can also see the left side yard forming.

Ventilators show up on the roof. Funnily enough, these are actually one of the few backstage details in Sam McKim's concept, so I could hardly deny them the right to exist in my model. A backstage door has also showed up on the side wall, along with themed doors (and windows) on the front. Not one of these boarded-up openings is the attraction entrance, however. No, the entrance is actually the passage along the side of the house, appearing as a dark hole beneath the berm in this render. You'll see that I later changed the design of that area; McKim's aerial illustration is very ambiguous in that spot. Back behind that, however, is an area that never changed; I decided to add a retaining wall to separate the hill of earth from a backstage walkway next to the show building. Watch yourself, it's quite narrow. ;)

This imposing view shows the developing detail on the right side of the mansion, including the cellar door through which guests exit the attraction.

Ah, textures! Note also the new backstage details, such as load-bearing elements along the show building walls and roof access ladders. I decided to make some additions for the sake of realism on the roof—the white ventilators are much like those seen on the roof of the real Haunted Mansion show building. The dark traffic pads don't show up in McKim's art either, but realistically, they'd be added sooner or later to the roof in real life in order to prevent damage by maintenance crews walking around up there. As part of the texturing project, I even created a fake aerial photo of the roof by clone-stamping parts of real show building roofs together, painting appropriate grime around the ventilators. That smaller structure to the left is probably a "gatehouse" through which guests would enter the grounds.

Here's a first look at the backside of the show building, which is detailed entirely from my own imagination and knowledge of how these sorts of areas often look. I can't claim to bring to the table the sort of knowledge an industrial engineer or the like would, but I do have a rather good idea of what you typically see here. The walls that form the edges of the grounds are also showing up.

More work on the side yard...

This rooftop view has been superseded by this one, but it's interesting to look at because I hadn't yet added some of the details, and it also reveals that I was originally planning to make this backstage wall a cream color, not green. I decided to change it when I realized it'd briefly be partially visible from the Jungle Cruise; no-see-'em green fades into the foliage a lot better than light cream.

I created the shape of the queue and exit paths mostly from my own imagination, based on the real-world Haunted Mansion and on the amount of space available. McKim indicated where the fences were, but not the short walls that delineated the queue itself. This was my educated guess.

Work was wrapping up on the mystery project, so I added a couple of proto-NOS buildings that also showed up on McKim's aerial illustration. I didn't bother adding all of them, but I did add the ones that were closest, including the one with a wall that forms a boundary of the left part of the queue area.

The very last step was to texture the ground plane. I actually used Google Maps' aerial photo of Tokyo DisneySea as a photographic basis. (Normally, I use Live Search Maps, but Google happens to have incredibly high-resolution imagery of the Tokyo resort.) I did lots of clone-stamping, using the path textures from that area of TDS. This allowed me to create textures that spread across the entire ground plane, colorizing and slightly blurring the part that corresponded to backstage to create an asphalt look. I then painted simple white lane lines on the asphalt. And this was the very first render of the complete project! From this point on, the Ghost Relations Department posting is what you're looking for. I will, however, link you to one last treat you won't see there—a new YouTube video providing a virtual tour around the facility. Enjoy!