178. Imagineer Jaime McGough on Digital Sculpting for Theme Parks

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When I think about sculpting figures for Disney’s theme parks, my mind goes to Blaine Gibson. The photo of him and Walt examining Abe Lincoln’s head remains ingrained in my memory. His incredible work on attractions set the stage for everything that followed. But the process has changed dramatically since the work of Gibson and Valerie Edwards. Artists now use digital tools to design the intricate figures and settings. A perfect example is the work of Jaime McGough, a creative director and digital sculptor. The process may have changed, but the skills are similar today.

Jaime is my guest on this episode of the Tomorrow Society Podcast to talk about his background and 12 years at Walt Disney Imagineering. Nancy Hickman saw something in Jaime’s work and hired him in 2009. We talk about his early projects including New Fantasyland and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at The Magic Kingdom. Jaime also explains how he got interested in digital sculpting and helps describe how tools like ZBrush support the designs for theme parks.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge involved so many small details and was perfect for Jaime’s skills. He worked on the sculpt for Lieutenant Bek, a Mon Calamari character who plays a key role in Rise of the Resistance. He also sculpted the Nuna “space meat” pictured above for Ronto Roasters. It’s a good reminder of how much we take for granted from these complex spaces. We close the podcast by talking about the latest technological advances, key mentors for Jaime’s career, and his advice to aspiring designers. I really enjoyed the chance to talk to Jaime and learn more about his story.

Show Notes: Jaime McGough

Check out Jaime’s artwork, including ZBrush digital sculpting, on his ArtStation page.

Watch a video of Jaime’s digital sculpting process making Christmas ornaments.

Support this podcast through a one-time donation and buy me a Dole Whip!

Transcript

Jaime McGough: I was always that guy. I would give the tours actually towards the end in Imagineering, which I loved. But I would get that question like, well, how do you end up where you are? And I’m like, I’m the guy that tells you I was in the right place at the right time. And I hate to say that, but to act like it was this grand scheme and that I made this happen on my own is just would be a lie. So I think the hard work and being kind to people and being as genuine as I could, serve me hopefully to get me halfway there. And then the other half was people who helped me along the way.

Dan Heaton: That is Imagineer at Jaime McGough, who’s a digital sculptor who’s here to talk about his work on attractions like Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, New Fantasyland, and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, and a lot more. This is going to be great. You’re listening to The Tomorrow Society Podcast.

(music)

Dan Heaton: Hey there, thanks for joining me here on Episode 178 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton. Thanks so much for listening to this episode. I’m really excited to bring you this interview with Jaime McGough. He worked at Walt Disney Imagineering for about 12 years, and what I find so interesting is I haven’t talked to that many people that are involved in more the modern technologies that are used to create the figures and landscape and everything else involved with theme parks. Jaime is an exception.

He’s a digital sculptor, and I found it very interesting to learn a bit more about how this process works because I easily could walk around Magic Kingdom, Universal Islands of Adventure, wherever and just appreciate what is there, but not always think how was that rock work put together, or Lieutenant Beck at Rise of the Resistance.

What went into creating that figure? And I think Jaime’s got a very interesting story about how he ultimately joined Walt Disney Imagineering in 2009 and then some of the projects he worked on. I particularly enjoyed talking about the Nuna Space Meat at Ronto Roasters, just as much of an example. One because it’s kind of silly, but also two, the example of all the small touches. And by small I just mean things that you could miss, but plays such an important role in your experience at theme parks where everything matters.

It was really cool to get to talk to someone that’s so closely involved in making that happen and also just shaping what we see through some really cool technology. And it was awesome to learn a bit about Jaime’s story and what he’s been doing at Imagineering and then currently what he’s working on right now. So I hope that you enjoy this interview, which was a lot of fun for me. And let’s get right to it. Here is Jaime McGough. Jaime, thank you so much for talking with me here on the podcast.

Jaime McGough: Thanks for having me, Dan.

Dan Heaton: Oh, it’s awesome to talk with you. I know, I mean, just the type of work you do. I haven’t really dug too far into on the show, so I’m really excited to learn a bit more about digital sculpting and how that works. And of course a lot of the projects you’ve worked on during your time when you were at WDI. But I’m curious upfront too, when you were growing up, I mean, what got you interested in becoming an artist and getting involved in the work that you do?

Jaime McGough: I had many people, there was somebody in my life that sort of started me down that path, and it was happening to be my neighbor who just was a really skilled comic book artist, not professionally, he was only a couple years older than me, but he would always draw superheroes and really do such a good job for, he was probably only 10 years old, I think at the time.

I just saw what he could do and I was like, wow, that is just amazing. And even though there was an age gap between us, he really took the time to sit down with me and let me sort of just sit and draw with him and he would give me drawings and I just loved it. I had liked drawing. A lot of people do when they’re growing up just casually. But it was seeing what he could do that really turned on the light for me where I was like, wow, this is so fun.

My family could see right away that I would sit down and try and even just copy what he had done and I would just be sitting for hours doing that, which sitting for hours is not something I did hardly at all as a kid. It was very high energy, still am, but this is the stuff that always helps me sit down and just focus and it’s easy for me to focus on it. So that was really kind of the get go was just seeing what he could do. And then as the years went on, just continuing drawing, going, gosh, I was a decent student, but this doesn’t feel like work when I’m doing this.

So I kind of got that inkling and I actually have this framed thing from a journal from 1997 that my mom framed. Of course all our moms do that. It says, hopefully I can do something creative one day and maybe I could even work for Disney and do something that would entertain other people. Clearly early on I had some idea that not only did I see this as something that I can enjoy doing, but that other people might get something out of it too.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. Well, I mean it sounds like this pretty early on was something like you said you wanted to do as a career. So as you were going to school and deciding, okay, what do I want to focus on and everything, were you interested in working at Disney or themed entertainment? You mentioned that there, but just in general, was that something you were striving for or did it seem like so far beyond, I wouldn’t even say a pipe dream, but something that you didn’t expect you could do?

Jaime McGough: Yeah, I didn’t really know. I mean, I definitely didn’t have any aspirations of being an artist, like a painter or a sculptor doing something what important people do, I guess I would say, which is a kind of funny way of putting it. But I didn’t think I was important in that manner. But I did see Disney movies and the theme parks. I grew up in Denver, Colorado, so we weren’t near the theme parks, but we went to Walt Disney World when I was, I believe 10 years old, and then a couple years after that to Disneyland. And I had been to Disneyland really young, but not that I can remember.

I think it was the Walt Disney World trip that I was sitting in Tomorrowland and looking at everything and realizing that people made this stuff. And I don’t remember if it was I had said it out loud or somebody had said it to me and my family, but I just thought, that’s really crazy that somebody makes all of this, these people, there’s all these people working here, but this comes from somewhere.

So I peripherally knew about Imagineers in some respects. I think it was sort of just philosopher as a distant term. I didn’t know philosophers specifically; I didn’t know Imagineers specifically, but I knew of Imagineers. And so even as I progressed on into school and in my years in high school, which luckily there was a computer graphics class, which was sort of unprecedented for a public school to have a class that was allowed us to try out Bryce and Poser and early Maya and some of these different programs that were being used often, but just not super available, especially for a general curriculum, I had an understanding of like, okay, well this is a world maybe I could get into.

So I was more steering towards movies and maybe video games and maybe I could do that. But the idea of being an Imagineer was just really something that I thought that’s something that once you are so overqualified for every other job in the industry, that’s when they’re like, okay, he’s ready. And then they open the doors and they’re like, okay, you are now so qualified for every job that you can’t work anywhere, but now you can work here. You’re qualified to work here. So that’s really the reverence that I had for Walt Disney Imagineering. So yeah, it was kind of like through school I decided to go to art school and the way I decided to go to art school, I went to the Academy of Art and University in San Francisco, and I really just did drawings on my own.

I didn’t gravitate towards art classes or anything. I thought a lot of the work they did was kind of just these categories of art that these classic painters would do cubism or art deco or these just different styles that just weren’t appealing to me. And I was just clearly in love with doing kind of fun, cartoony comic booky art, and for whatever reason, I never guess those, I don’t know if I just didn’t share that enough, but those art teachers never saw that in me.

So they probably would’ve been very surprised to find out that I wanted to go to art school. But luckily, the Academy of Art University is sort of an open enrollment kind of school where they are, you don’t have to have a portfolio. And I had a coworker, I worked at a plant nursery, and he sort of said all the people that are at my school that are doing animation and graphics and all this stuff, they are getting jobs for, they’re even graduating, they’re getting hired right out of the gate.

Which job security was a big portion in my mind of taking this leap because side story, but there was in Florida one time, I think I actually was, when I was there going to Walt Disney World, I saw this guy selling little paintings of flowers on tiles and they were quite good, but he was just this skinny, tiny little guy.

I could just see, I was like, this is a starving artist right here. And I could just see that and I’m like, okay, if I’m doing this art thing, I can’t be that guy because I don’t have the heart for it. And obviously that’s just not the most appealing thing. Seeing somebody, oh, he’s selling them in a Dairy Queen. I don’t know if I mentioned that part of the story. So just not killing it exactly in terms of success, what you would hope for in terms of a successful career.

But they were actually really good. I think that was also why it was disheartening just seeing his talent and that it wasn’t really going anywhere. So I knew that I wanted to do something in the commercial industry. I thought, well, there’s some security there. When I went to the Academy of Art, I was really gearing my mentality towards commercial art, animation, and then really, but focusing on the traditional aspects of art, so drawing and painting and figure sculpture and all these things.

And luckily at the Academy of Art, it’s really just mostly people who work in the industry. So they’re not really professors so much as people who are kind of in between jobs. So in that they have a really good perspective in terms of letting you know like, Hey, if you want to make it in this world, you got to step it up. They were kind of brutal about it, but they were sort of telling you, once you get in this world, you’re going to be competing with me because I may be out there competing for the same job.

And so it was very motivating to really work hard and thankful. I was thankful that they were so smart to and experienced, obviously to tell you, don’t worry so much about the technology side of things. Just hone your craft and if you are a skilled artist, then you can use any tool to get there.

So really that was the long and short of my career in terms of getting through school. But the thing that they don’t tell you also a lot of times is you may graduate from college and you may have worked really hard and have a nice portfolio to show, but it doesn’t mean that somebody’s going to open their door to you and say, you’re amazing. Come right in and work for me. We’ve been waiting for you. It happens to be an incredibly competitive industry, and many people in it are like me where they are passionate.

So it attracts a lot of people who are passionate and they work really hard when they’re passionate, so you’re competing with all of those people for those jobs. So it was a couple years of working retail and being a retail manager and just kind of going through that struggle before I decided maybe I should move down to Los Angeles and try my hand at just seeing what the industry is like down there.

I was up in San Francisco and it was very competitive, more video game oriented. Like I said, luckily I got the opportunity to show my work to an employee. It was like an agency. So they basically said, hey, if you have some work, it was a friend of mine who worked for that agency and she said, you should pass your work along and maybe if something comes up, I’ll let you know.

So at that time, it was probably a few months later after I’d given my portfolio to them that they reached out and said, Walt Disney Imagineering is actually doing this sort of artist showcase. Do you have a portfolio to show? And luckily because I wanted to make it in the industry, I did. So just by working very long hours, I made sure that my weekends were filled with time showing my portfolio or not showing working on my portfolio.

And I said, yeah. They’re like, okay, well it’s in a week. And so I just went crazy just trying to put all my stuff together and got invited to showcase my work and what’s called the web room at Walt Disney Imagineering was just in there with a lot of other artists and happened to meet the head of the model shop, Nancy Hickman. She was just a delightful person and still is, and really got lucky and had a bunch of people who actually had seen my work going through and they were like, oh, that’s the lady you need to talk to right there.

She’s going to be the one person that you really want to talk to, so make sure to talk to her. And actually, Jim Clark, who I know has been on the show, he was one of the very first people that I met, which I mean was such a blessing. I just thought just the perfect person honestly, to meet first at Walt Disney Imagineering. I think he’s just such a tremendous representation of the entire spirit of Imagineering. So to meet him and kind of get his coaching a little bit before that was terrific. So yeah, that was kind of my whole journey from childhood to up to how I got into the doors of Imagineering.

Dan Heaton: Yeah. Well that’s great because yeah, I can envision that how you were thinking you have to be so qualified or all of a sudden Joe Rohde steps up and says, now is your time or something, but for you to be able to find a way because yeah, like you said, you were able to get there, but so ultimately then you meet Nancy and Jim and others. What’s it like when you are eventually join and then that atmosphere and what were you doing early on when you joined and were working in the Model Shop and everything else at WDI?

Jaime McGough: It was surreal, really surreal. So the only reason I even got past that point was they invited me to this afterwards, I think through Nancy, this Blue Sky project, which is much like Imaginations. They were trying it out as a way to bring people on, but instead of college students that they would be bringing on as interns, they were seeing if they could use this as a way to hire on artists.

And it was a paid project where it was sort of a proving ground, and I worked with a guy named Mike Segawa who’s an illustrator. I ended up quitting my job on the spot, just I knew I had to take the chance and it was horrible. As anybody who has had to quit a job to follow a dream, it’s really tough to do that and know that you’re a lot of times leaving people high and dry, but you kind of have to go for it.

And we, suffice it to say, did really well. They hadn’t really had an intention of hiring people. I think from that, I think it was a test run and both Mike and I were brought on, and I think I got asked to start that following Monday, which was just crazy, but really fortunate for me considering I had actually quit my job for that project. So I didn’t really have anything else going past the three weeks that we had to work on that, so really fortuitous. But yeah, I started that Monday and I really didn’t know what I was doing in terms of work. They just said show up. And I knew it was the Model Shop, but I was like, am I going to be sculpting? Am I going to be working on models?

I wasn’t even sure exactly how I had gotten there. I remember having a conversation with Nancy on my first day and not even realizing or being too sure that it was actually her who had brought me on, which later on I was like, of course it was her, you dummy. She runs the Model Shop. But they were working on the Aulani model at the time, which was so cool. And it was three quarters of the way done. So I was incredibly intimidated and I really hadn’t done model work. I was mostly a 3D modeler. I had sculpted a lot at school, but it was like I thought it was going to be kind of more character oriented work. A guy named Brian was the guy who I first met and he goes, oh, so have you done model work before?

And I was like, yeah, which was not really true. It’s like, yeah, I’ve done model work like anybody who builds does cars and airplanes and buildings from a kit, not professionally. So they were so gracious though, and I think they could tell I was very new and it was actually during the holidays, so it was kind of a slow ease in there wasn’t that many people there.

And a guy named Dave Emery just he was like, hey, let’s take a walk. And we’re walking around the Model Shop and just going into all these nooks and crannies and Ls and all these places where I was seeing stuff that I recognized or concepts that I knew were probably from something and my mind was just blown. I’m like, just in these dusty boxes and lofts hold these treasures just from years and years of incredible models and theme park designs and all that. So it was all very surreal and I was trying to act like I belonged there, but I am pretty sure I didn’t do that great of a job, but hopefully that was endearing enough where people were very nice to me and they really took me under their wing overall. So it was awesome.

Dan Heaton: So as you got more comfortable there, and I mean I’m still trying to get over the fact that you were able to see so many cool models. Aulani, I was able to go there, incredible resort to work on that model or at least be involved with it right up front. But as you got more comfortable there and ultimately got involved with sculpting, particularly digital sculpting, how did that come together? Were you ultimately found your niche or found the area that you were going to be working on more as you went forward?

Jaime McGough: So I was working actually at Creative Services for a little while. I had done some foam sculpting on Cars Land, which was really awesome, and that work sort of ran out and I was sort of sitting there going, well, what can I do? And I asked Nancy, I said, Hey, I will push a B brimmer out if I can be here, it doesn’t matter.

There was an opportunity to work in Creative Services with Neil Jones and Brian Crosby, his office was in there and he had started in there, which I know he’s been on the show. And Josh Shipley was in the printing department. They were both kind of early in their careers as well. So Jim Clark, I interfaced a lot and Ethan, and so all these guys were coming in, Ethan Reed, sorry, all these guys were coming in through Creative Services. And Neil Jones, who ran the department at the time, he used to always say that Creative Services is the eyes and ears of Imagineering, which I think is so true.

You get to see all these wonderful concepts before they’re pitched to the bigwigs. So it’s really kind of a neat place and you run into a lot of people.

But in one of the times, Ethan Reed, he came in and we had met and talked a couple of times and he found out that I did ZBrush Sculpting and he knew about it and was kind of talking about how he was pushing for more digital and just a way to shorten timelines or just you’re not working with hard materials with digital sculpting. And so he encouraged me. He pointed at the wall, Neil Jones as a huge Haunted Mansion fan. And so the Hatbox Ghost was just a poster up on the wall and he goes, why don’t you sculpt that? And I was like, okay. I really didn’t have much concept of the design of the Hatbox Ghost.

I didn’t really even know anything about the Hatbox Ghost at that time; I thought that was just a concept that never made it in. Little did I find know that Hatbox Ghost had all this lore and it was this thing that was installed and taken out and all this mystery around it. And so I sculpted a Hatbox Ghost, which was kind of my take, which I’m sure a lot of people would not like because it was very untraditional, but it was good enough I think for Ethan to feel like he could kind of shop it around and say, hey, I know this guy that he sculpted this thing and it would be really cool to get into this a little bit more.

So I think because of him, that sort of started getting people thinking about it. And I know in the Model Shop, they were sort of talking about it a little bit more, and that introduced me to a lot of people who were already doing digital work, just not digital sculpting.

There was a lot of model work happening digitally and on the computer, just more laser cutting. They hadn’t got into 3D printing yet. I was still way, way new, or maybe they had barely had started, but it was all very new. So it luckily kind of opened that door, and I think a lot of people were a little apprehensive at the time. There’s a lot of really talented traditional sculptors there.

So I’m sure there was a little bit of a feeling of, oh yeah, this new young guy’s going to just come in and just make everything digital and take away, but I sort of reassured them like, Hey, I am actually more of a traditional guy myself, and I sort of learned this because I thought it was good to learn. Maybe we can all do this together. I know a little more than you, but maybe we can all learn some of these ropes and I can show you the way through.

And a lot of the guys really learned on their own, but they took to it pretty quickly because as my teachers had always said, it’s like, really, this is just a tool, and they were already had all the skill. So once they kind of got used to the tool, it was really great. I’m proud to say that I think that one of the images I might’ve had online or got online of me working on social media and pointed it out and were like, what is he working on?

Which I thought was so funny because it had nothing to do with the return of the Hatbox Ghost. This was years prior to that. But I like to think that kind of helped with a little bit of the momentum and people were kind of saying like, oh, this guy’s working on it. I was like, no, that was just my dumb little model to try and prove my worth in the industry.

Dan Heaton: You did. It was all you.

Jaime McGough: Yes. Yeah, I’ll take the credit.

Dan Heaton: So ZBrush and just, I know there’s a lot of different tools, but you mentioned that one. Could you talk a little bit more about that if people aren’t that familiar with that tool? And I mean you don’t have to get really technical, but just how it varies and really what maybe are some of the big benefits of it?

Jaime McGough: Sure. Yeah. I mean the beauty of it is, I think it is the opposite of technical in many respects. I mean, it is a little bit hard to wrap your head around at first. So people are used to, there’s programs like Maya had been around for a very long time, and that is a little bit more of a technical modeling program.

But ZBrush, it started showing up at the end of my college career and it was just for people who are, their idea of creativity is not clicking a mouse, it’s sitting down with a tool in their hand and working. It’s the closest to that that had existed by a landslide. I mean, it was like the difference between pulling points around to form a face or a character versus using a pen. And this, it’s like you’re working in two dimensions, right? You’re still on a screen, but when you’re essentially kind of drawing and these different brushes you use kind of pull or push the mesh, and it’s very much in the way that you’re forming a piece of clay, but there’s no boundaries.

You can make the clay as big or as small as you want. You can actually pull in other tools, you can save iteratively. That’s one of the beautiful things about working digitally is I’ll have 50 versions of something that I’m working on.

And if I sometimes will go through those and I’ve gone too far, which happens, you’ll overwork something, you’ll find that the one that’s three quarters of the way through is actually better, that you’ve gone too far and you’ve lost some of the life that it had. So you can go back to that version. The fact that there’s no hard materials that you’re working with is just so nice. But the thing that was kind of a challenge in, and I know I think Albert the Monkey was the very first digital sculpt, which Ethan was pushing for that, and a guy named Steve Cotroneo, a brilliant sculptor.

He sculpted him and they had him milled out a foam full size, and when he showed up, there was a lot of stuff that just didn’t look the same on the screen as it did in real life. So we discovered, oh, we should really have a small version of these things represented, which luckily shortly after that 3D printing was becoming more and more of a thing, so we decided, oh, we should make a maquette. Hello maquettes are a thing. There’s a reason they’re a thing.

This is really just pulling us back into some of the more traditional methods, which have always worked. You always started with a drawing and then a maquette was the next step really after that, once you had a concept finalized. So creating a digital or a 3D printed maquette made a lot of sense because you could actually see it in the real world, and these are all going to be existing in the real world.

Obviously, Albert the Monkey in some respects, he would go back and forth, but most of Albert was in the real world, so they brought that in and it was amazing to see just that process happening where I was kind of seeing a little bit of history. I’m like, this is the first digital sculpt that is born digitally and then being brought into the real world. So it was pretty amazing.

But just in general with ZBrush, it’s just gotten better and better. And it’s one of those things that, as I mentioned, it brings you back mostly to realizing that the traditional methods are really stronger, actually in many respects. So it’s just another tool. But if you have those skills and you can work in clay than you can work in there and then you can kind of go back, it’s sort of this back and forth that really works, I think with working traditionally in, or dimensionally, I should say, in the real world versus working digitally all the time,

Dan Heaton: Right. Because regardless, I mean, there’ve been many different tools that are used, but this is the next evolution. But like you said, you’re still, it’s never just click a button and it’s created. There’s still all the, you need to be really good at your art and craft to be able to do it. It’s using something different to show the art and make the theme park areas shine basically.

Jaime McGough: Yeah, definitely. And it’s kind of a neat thing too, because depending on who you’re working with, I worked with some incredible art directors. Like Larry Nikolai was a great mentor and terrific artist in his own just in general, overall incredible body of work or Tom Flowers who I don’t think he’s in the industry anymore, but it was a wonderful guy, Ted Robledo, all these guys that are just really good, strong artists themselves. They all have different kind of working methods though.

So I worked with some art directors who would actually use their finger to point at the screen and be almost pushing with their finger, and then I’m using the brush to actually push the model out of the way. So they’re getting to sort of sculpt in a way as well on the screen. And then others are a little bit more sit back and watch you do it and then kind of take some notes or have some notes and it kind of allows malleability in the process.

That’s really neat that I think if you really had somebody sit down with a sculpture or an art director start picking away at a sculpture, I mean, because it’s hard material, I think that would be pretty hard for most sculptors or artists to deal with that, which I’m sure has happened. You just would have to just take it because the art director, but there’s nothing about this. It’s digital clay. There’s nothing there.

There’s nothing lost. So there’s sort of a freedom in knowing that you have all these different versions and you can zoom way out and see the whole park. I mean, there were actually parts of the process where I did a lot of rock work during my time. Rock work is sort of just a generic term that they use not only for rocks, but a lot of landscapes and things like that because these things have to be produced out of the rebar and plaster, and they start by from a model that’s scanned, and then oftentimes you kind of go to a bigger model.

But through that process, they would scan them and then work on the digital scan, updating it, getting the architects involved, getting show set involved, and they’re putting their tools in that they need to design the ride vehicle, the flume or the ride path is going in there. So there’s all these aspects, but because you’re able to zoom out and you can literally look at a whole land sometimes if you have it all loaded in, it’s also scary because you could move, and I’ve done this, and you become very careful.

You can actually move entire face of a mountain with one brush stroke and not realize it until you’ve gone back. And then you notice like, oh my gosh, that mountain face moved. So with your just one brush of your arm, you’ve literally moved thousands of pounds of plaster and steel that would eventually go and turn into that. The chip and tab system is quite accurate that they use. So you can actually see from the digital model, a lot of these models really end up exactly like they are sculpted initially. So you have to be very careful and mindful of that while you’re working on these things.

Dan Heaton: Oh man, that stresses me out just thinking about it.

Jaime McGough: Yeah, it’s a lot of weight and luckily that mistake never really followed through with something caught, but I could see that being a real problem if you got six months down the line and realized that you had moved a mountain six feet over without realizing it.

Dan Heaton: That’s where it’s staying. That’s it! We’re not moving it back. So I want to ask about some of the projects you worked on. I know one of the big ones fairly early on was a lot of work on the Fantasyland expansion, mostly called New Fantasyland and including Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. And then I know you did some work, which I know was sort of before that, but with the Little Mermaid attraction, which was added there, but also in California, I’d love to know because there’s a lot about new fantasyland in particular. You mentioned rock work, but just a lot of landscaping and it’s big, so there’s a lot of things you could have worked on. So I’d love to know a little bit about your experience there, especially because you were still fairly new to Imagineering at the time.

Jaime McGough: So I think the very first thing that I worked on with Fantasyland expansion was some of these, gosh, I can’t even think what they’re called at the time, they’re essentially for the castle, the Beauty of the Beast Castle, there was these waterfall troughs that we had to manipulate the rock work in order to make sure that the waterfalls would operate properly, so they all had to be working so that the water would follow the path. So I think those were the very initial things that I was working on.

And then shortly thereafter, snow White Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, the interior scene was a big portion of my time placing projectors and just slots for them to go in the right place. There’s a lot of really kind of finicky work, just getting even a rock work to terminate at the right place and be kind of blend into underneath where the ride vehicle is going to go, and you’re sort of just working on seam.

So there’s a ton of that work that is really not very glamorous, but very necessary in terms of creating this holistic image of what this is a real cave. If you have a seam that ends right at the top of the cave, or you have this really obvious projector sticking out where somebody can see it and projecting a light or a projected image onto a cave wall, it ruins the story. So there’s a ton of that stuff that is really not super glamorous, but really an important part of the process.

Then I think I was doing what they were referring to as Go paths, which were actually access points for cast members to be able to go up and do maintenance around the mountain, or I think they were kind of emergency stop portions, but it was very important that the illusion was maintained that this was a continuous rock, so you couldn’t have this path carving into the middle of this big, it’s kind of a big hill. It would really ruin the visual aspects of it and how nice it looks. So you’re cleverly kind of making these sight lines disappear where there would be a path there, but it continues on.

So yeah, that was a whole lot of it. One of my points of pride was actually this access point that there was stroller parking, and then I think it was a handicap access way that I sculpted. It was one of the very first things that I fully sculpted from scratch. They were like, hey, it just needs to be an access way here. The rock needs to come out here, so just make it match. So it was like, oh, here’s some creative freedom I get to actually sculpt this sort of rock passage.

I very proudly went there years later and took a picture next to it. Nobody knows, but I actually, me and thousands of other people, probably hundreds of other people minimum, who actually made the mountain and the rebar and painted it and everything. But it felt really cool to have digitally sculpted a piece of that doing the show.

Dan Heaton: I mean, it makes me appreciate how much goes into every part of the lands. It’s very easy to think there’s this grand idea and there’s a concept. There’s a few people, but I know it’s hundreds of people that are involved with every part of it. And that’s a perfect example. I feel like where it’s really important because if any of those things, like you mentioned with the projector don’t work, then the land doesn’t work. So there’s so many steps to it. It’s kind of mind boggling in a way.

Jaime McGough: Yeah, absolutely. I think it was a benefit to know that I was only a small portion of it because it gave me the confidence long-term to work on bigger stuff because at the time, I was new and as you said, and I hadn’t really done a whole lot, but when you know that there’s going to be a lot of people going down the line working on it, it kind of gives you a little sense of relief.

You’re like, well, if I totally screw up, there should be enough people after me that can actually fix this. And then as more time goes on and more responsibility, you’re like, okay, well I shouldn’t count on somebody fixing this. I really need to do a great job. Always try and do a great job. But it relieves the pressure understanding that there’s so many talented people involved in all aspects of this that you’re like, well, yeah, this is going to come out cool, even if I totally blow it.

Dan Heaton: It’s a good way to look at it. Well, I know you also worked on multiple aspects of Shanghai Disneyland, including Journey to the Crystal Grotto, which has a lot of characters, and we’re able to work on those, including the Genie, which I think is very cool. So I mean, what was it like to actually go in and you’re sculpting, this is a little different to me than rock work, or you’re sculpting characters that people know very well. So what’s that experience when it’s known Disney characters as opposed to something that just, not dismissing anything else, but rock work or some sort of land portion?

Jaime McGough: Yeah, no, I think you’re right on saying that rock work is probably not as recognizable as The Genie or Aladdin. I think you’re pretty safe there. So yeah, it’s kind of one of those things that I think I was fairly far along with doing some of that work. I think Journey to the Crystal Grotto was the first one that I had done a good amount of character work and the digital, I think that was the most character work I’d done digitally for sure. And I didn’t realize, well, so Genie, a lot of models, I should say, I should go back. A lot of these models actually in the benefit of working digitally start from a scan.

So in many respects, you’ll get a scan, a digital scan of a clay maquette, and it’s actually a big relief of a starting point for an inexperienced sculptor or just mean really anyone a lot of times, even if you know can sculpt this character, not having to sculpt it totally from scratch and knowing it’s represented accurately. And then you’re sort of a lot of times posing it or resculpting a portion and you get into this weird Theseus Ship.

I think is the analogy where you’ve sculpted so much of it, you’ve sculpted every part of it. Is it still a res sculpted original character or is it the original character or what have you? So it is kind of odd in that way, but the Genie was the very first one that we didn’t have a scan of one that was something that I could pose or work from. And really it’s because the Genie is so whimsical that pretty much he’s so cartoony. There are hardly any sculpts done that were a static version of him. There’s not a neutral version of The Genie. He is always very theatrical and very, so you would quite literally have to just break apart every portion of him and resculpt it.

Anyway, so they allowed me to say, to go in and do it from scratch model, and I admittedly knew that it was going to be done in foam, and so I didn’t make it super tight at first. I kind of was like, well, this is the kind of general layout. This looks pretty good, I feel. Then I sent it to animation to get some notes on it, and then I got the notes back and I was like, my gosh, this guy is incredible. He knows the Genie. And then Ethan Reed was the one who pointed out to me. He goes, yeah, that’s Eric Goldberg who gave you notes on that guy.

He’s the one who drew the Genie in the film. I was just like, okay, I’m going to just go ahead and take my jaw and my heart and every part of my body off the floor now. Then I just felt embarrassed that I even did anything that was less than my a hundred percent top notch. So that was a good lesson to learn. It was like, well, always, always, always brings your just absolute top notch and not, I guess because I thought it was in progress. I was like, well, if I get part of the way there and then get their notes back, then I’ll get the rest of the point up or the rest of the character really fleshed out.

But that was a mistake, and obviously I was very glad to learn that lesson too. It’s like just bring your best every time. Obviously this is filled with incredible people. You never know who’s going to be giving you notes. So I really gave it my a hundred percent and was happy to say that met his approval to go into the park. That was a really huge moment for me.

Dan Heaton: That has to be a lot with someone like him where just that’s pressure. But I’m glad to hear that it was good and that it worked out. I mean, really looking at the list of things you’ve worked on, there’s just so many of the big attractions from the last 10 years or so, and one that I talked to Jim Clark for a while about is the Beauty and the Beast in Tokyo, which I have not experienced in person, but just looks incredible. One of the real classic, it’s like a classic dark ride, but with new technology. And I know you worked a bit on that with Jim and Chris Merritt and others. So I’d love to know a little bit about that because I find that attraction just so interesting.

Jaime McGough: Yeah, I haven’t seen it in person either. I think that was one of the attractions that I just really felt like, it just really felt like more, I guess what I expected classic old school Imagineering was just because every meeting that I had with those guys, with Jim Clark and Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Joseph, and it was all with the people that were really in it, they really stayed.

They were having big meetings for sure. It was a huge attraction, but it was like I was just able to just interface with everybody so well, it just felt so fluid to, so I worked on animation, worked out most of the characters for that attraction. They were pretty deeply ingrained in their 3D modeling process, and they had these base models, but we were doing parts of it too. So they had actually done the Beast in most of the scenes.

But for the transformation scene, I got to take sort of the original sculpture of The Beast, and then it was a concept sculpture and then sort of mock that up into the pose, which we, over time, and I’m sorry Jim if I’m not supposed to say this, but I think it’s just so funny, we lovingly called it the Beast Burrito, and there was burrito jokes all over the place just because he was The Beast, and he’s sort of in this sheet for the transformation scene, so he is kind of burrito.

But it was just this amazing process where I’m working with these guys at special effects and they’re showing me what they’re doing and they’re inviting me to the meetings. And then Jim’s sitting with me and Ted Robledo and Joe Gutierrez was even art directing some of the stuff he was saying, this is how we want this effect to work.

So it’d be great if the cloth goes like this. So it was just so cool to just have the real meat of all these people just involved in this process and just be able to, it felt like we were 10 people doing this effect when I was meeting, when it was really hundreds of people that were involved. But I guess it was sort of, I think Jim really understands that and knew that making those meetings small that would really kind of make the effects. And I’m sure that throughout the entire process, the effects and the animation and everything, as you said, it’s just feels like a classic dark ride attraction, but with all of this incredible new technology and just very lovingly made. So it was really cool.

And Chris Merritt, I worked with him on the fireplace, which is so funny. I’ve watched so many videos and I try and get a peek at it, but it just fades into the background because it’s not the star of the show, which is so great. Also that we would put all this love, these guys, put all this love into designing this really cool fireplace and letting me execute that. And it’s just not well lit because it’s part of the room, but even the underlit portions of the room still have to get all of the bells and whistles. So it was just really a dream project throughout the entire time, just working with such incredible talent and just everybody who is just really passionate about what they’re doing. It was amazing.

Dan Heaton: Yeah, I think lovingly made just from the little bit, I mean, like you said, I don’t get to see your fireplace, so I know the YouTube videos don’t do justice to the attraction. But yeah, that’s a perfect description from what I’ve seen. And just that knowing the few people I know in that group, like Chris and Daniel and others that are such big Disney fans, I think you can really feel that in the attraction, and I can’t wait to experience it. It looks awesome.

Well, I want to ask you too about a place that has a lot of rocks. I know you didn’t work on that many of them, but Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, which I know you did a variety of characters and other work, including partially working on Lieutenant Bek who is in Rise of the Resistance’s big part. You basically feel like you’re standing right next to him. I’d love to know for you too, how much Star Wars interest you had coming in and then what the experience was like to work on such a massive area and such a big project on the parts that you did.

Jaime McGough: Yeah, that was a pretty huge deal. It’s hard to say when it comes to Star Wars saying you’re a fan just doesn’t, unless 99% of Star Wars trivia, it doesn’t feel right. But I would say I know the movies quite well, and so I’ve always loved those films. So to get to work on some of these, especially, it was great, some of the new characters that they were creating, but knowing that Lieutenant Bek was going to be from a race that existed and very much in the style of Calamari, from what we’ve seen, they all kind of look quite similar.

So to be able to work on them, and actually we started from scans from Shop London, so we had a lot of the movie models and movie costuming and just all these individual pieces that we got really nice scans of the created and we got to see in person, which was a total fanboy moment in itself where I’m just like, holy crap, I can’t believe I’m standing here with this stuff.

This is just really surreal. Then the pressure of knowing, okay, I have to do this justice, then it was like, okay, well this is a new character, but it’s in the realm. So it ended up being like I was trying to leave parts alone of it that I was like, well, this is already perfect. I’m not going to go in here and put my stamp on this. This needs to represent the character in the film, which I think you talked about a little bit earlier too and mentioned, which is always such an important portion of sculpting any character.

It’s like you didn’t create this character, this character. It is not your opportunity to put your stamp on the world, but it’s an opportunity to represent the character as honestly and earnestly as possible. It’s not about you. So make it about really truly representing that character in an awesome way.

And as accurately as possible, we had this scan of Admiral Ackbar. We had a scan of, so working with that, but John Larena, who is the art director, he was like, let’s give him a new paint scheme, which is kind of like a tiger shark, which I actually got to do in ZBrush. And I think that they were able to use a process where they pretty much used what I created as almost like a print to create on him.

I’m sure there was a lot of paint work that was done, but the model that I have and the one that exists in the park, I mean, it really represents almost a hundred percent what I took part in making. So it was just a really crazy surreal thing to be working on. And again, one of those things that on days where I really thought about it, I probably had to go outside and take a little walk, come back to Earth because it, you could get to yourself the pressure of like, am I good enough?

I think every artist, most people have that kind of imposter syndrome. So you get that feeling where you’re like, I’m not good enough to work on this. They’re going to find me out. And so you have to just like, all right, all right, you’ve been here a while, you’ve proven yourself. Just come back to earth and then work on this guy. So it was such a cool part. And again, a very similar process of Beauty and the BEast where really everybody was very passionate about representing this property, and especially that it was going to be its own land, its own planet. So it was our chance to kind of say, well, this is in the Star Wars universe, but this is some place that you’ve never seen before. Made it even easier, I should say, to have the passion to really do it right.

Dan Heaton: You’re not just creating whatever the Death Star or Tattoine or something like that. You’re actually creating something new. And I have to ask you, I saw you noted it that you worked on sculpting some space meat for Ronto Roasters. So is there a point where you’re doing that, where you’re like, this is my job, this is what I do? So I mean, how do you create space meat?

Jaime McGough: Yeah, so Chris Beatty was the Art Director on that portion of land, and he’s from the south, so he was like, yeah, I’ve seen rose pig. We got to do it up, man, don’t be afraid. And it’s a weird thing when you’re getting, so the one I worked on was, it’s from an existing sculpt of these little Nuna creatures that are actually in the animated series.

So I got an animation model of this little guy, and I’m looking at this cute little guy and going, well, now I have to turn him into this rotating on a spit kind of, not gross necessarily, but he’s not going to be the cute little living guy anymore. And so myself and another sculptor named John McDonald who’s like, just make everything beautiful and cute. And I’m like, alright buddy. Now we got to sit here and make this gross crackling to take whatever this thing was and turn it into a lump of meat.

It was really kind of a fun challenge. I think the other thing about the Star Wars universe is it really is an opportunity to do some super crazy, more realistic detailed sculpting, which is just a totally different language than sculpting Belle or sculpting Cogsworth, these characters. There’s just a totally different shape, language, and flow. And in some cases it’s a little bit more freedom because it’s like you can really gunk, there’s just so much detail in it, you can just really kind of go wild with it. But yeah, so we both sculpted those and it’s like, wow, just seeing that in person. There’s our space meat. Telling people we were responsible for the Ronto Roasters rotating space meat was definitely a highlight in my career.

Dan Heaton: The next time I go there, I’m going to look for that though and be like, I talked to the guy that sculpted that. Alright, well, I want to ask you about one more thing because it’s the most recent attraction really, that Disney has released, which is Avengers Assemble: Flight Force, which is in Paris for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. It’s much more than just a little retheme, but I know you worked on a figure for that a few years ago and curious about working on something in the Marvel world and how that went.

Jaime McGough: Yeah, that was a pretty crazy undertaking. I had worked on initially years past for the, is it Hong Kong? My Brain? It’s been so long. The Iron Man Experience ride vehicle under Ted Robledo. He had designed an initial ride vehicle, but that was pretty early concept phases, so there’s a little bit more freedom there. But this was the only other time that I had worked on something.

So it was actually creating the Hulk Buster, which we got the movie model straight from Marvel and holy cow, that thing had thousands of components because these things are made over, I think it was a couple of years that guy was made and they all have to look like functioning components so they don’t slack over there at Marvel Studios, or I think it was from ILM, I should say. And so what we had to do was make this thing be something that could be created in real life and be accurate.

So there’s a lot of just, it wasn’t digital sculpting at all. It was very different than a lot of what I had done, which there’s a lot of technical portions of the job that I had done where you kind of get better just dealing with a lot of components and complex models. But this was by far the most challenging thing I had ever done. And you have to represent the model exactly as it is in the films.

And so you’re just kind of going through, we split it up into the torso and the head and the arms and the legs and all these different pieces, and then just figuring out, well, how can we split this apart to be tooled and created? Most people don’t know a whole lot about tooling, but complex pieces and geometry, and it’s not really friendly to the casting and molding process.

And so you have to really just unwrap your brain and then rewrap it up again to try and get your head around something that’s so crazy. But it’s the elephant analogy. It was a bite at a time. So we just kind of went through each of those pieces, and like I said, splitting it apart. And I think it took us about eight months to really get something together.

I know that one was delayed a couple times, but we got some forgiveness because most people, you’d be like, well, look at this thing and you just show it to ’em. And they were like, well, yeah, okay, we get it. But that was an amazing thing to be able to bring that all together and I didn’t get to see it in person. So many of these things we send these files out to, if they’re getting made by a vendor or our next Imagineer is in line and we just finger keep our fingers crossed that everything goes okay and I didn’t hear anything back. So that was, I think a big victory for us.

Dan Heaton: Well, excellent. Yeah, I mean from what I’ve heard, people seem to be really enjoying it and having another Avengers Campus in Paris, I have not made the trip. I’ve been to Paris, but it was a long time ago, but it would be fun to get back out there. Well, I want to finish with some just overall questions if you’ve got a bit of time about your career and some other things.

Jaime McGough: Sure.

Dan Heaton: Cool. Alright, well first of all, I know that you talked about the early digital sculpting and how you got into that and all that, but I’m curious just for a person like me that isn’t working on it, what are some big advances or things that have happened more recently or maybe even that could happen or they’re going to happen soon that have really impacted the work you do and how things have evolved?

Jaime McGough: I think Ethan, on one of your recent shows was talking about VR and Unreal Engine. I think that’s a huge portion of this work that is you’re just getting such realism that’s interactive. It makes things like the, I don’t know if you’re familiar with The Dish now at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Dan Heaton: Yes, I am.

Jaime McGough: So something like that is, it is kind of like that was sort of the early version of that and it was very intensive on the machines to be able to kind of walk through a model. But with things like Unreal Engine and these other VR capabilities, that’s a huge step.

I think in bringing really most of it is just about not having as much many surprises, I think, in the field. So that and 3D printing, 3D printing was one of those things that a model was like, yeah, it took incredible amounts of prep and the material is really expensive and even the machine that we would have that was very expensive, it had equal parts cooling time to actually printing time, so you couldn’t have a model on your desk the next day. It was like, oh, well if this is a big model then it’s 48 hours just because 24 hours of it was cooling, and now I have two 3D printers myself and I have many times sculpted something and then had it sitting on the desk of the person it was intended for on my own.

I can make my own toys and all kinds of fun stuff and it’s very inexpensive. So just the ability to prototype and just the cost of it being so low just allows more time to be able to get into sandboxing or figuring it out and less time into just execution because execution is often so much of it where it’s like it’s so hard and takes so long to make things sometimes that if you can cut down that time, then you get to really get in there, which I mean, I will say the one thing with digital sculpting that was also a problem too early on was you would have people zooming in on something.

You can zoom way into a model and it’s finer than your eye would be able to see it in real life. You can zoom so far. So you would have a model that you’re sitting and working on or somebody’s directing you and you’re getting a portion of this eye, and then actually it shows up in the real world and that portion of the eye is not even a millimeter in total scale, and so you can’t even see it.

It’s so far away. So you get sandboxing in the other direction where, I shouldn’t call it sandboxing, but it’s directing really where you’re almost over directing unintentionally because there’s so much detail and so much to look at. So I’m sure with all of these new technologies, there’s going to be an ebb and flow where with two steps forward, there’s one step back trying to get it into the pipeline and the process.

And then I think one that’s a very controversial thing, I think right now I’m seeing all over the place is the use of AI and these art generators. It’s a very, I feel the same way where it’s almost like this weird magic where you can just type words and then it gives you four different options that you can choose from and then dial that in and you’re like, gosh, am I just totally obsolete now as an artist? And I think hopefully, as most technologies are, they seem really scary and everybody thinks it’s going to just take over. I think it’ll just have its own use, but it’s going to be very fascinating to see where design goes, and even just the influence of AI in the future.

Dan Heaton: That came up recently, I talked to Don Carson, the same thing about just AI and the unknowns of what’s going to happen with that. So it’s interesting, but I agree, it can be a little, I don’t know how I feel about this, and I’m not even in the industry how I feel about it, but just for artists, goodness gracious.

Jaime McGough: It’s pretty wild.

Dan Heaton: Definitely. Well, I’m curious too, you’ve mentioned already so many people you worked with that were influential, but I’m curious just if there were certain mentors you had that really inspired your career or kind of helped you down the path when you were kind of evolving at WDI?

Jaime McGough: Yeah, I mean a lot of the guys I mentioned, just even those guys early on when they were younger, who kind of took me out of their wing, like Brian Crosby, Josh, Ethan, Jim, Daniel, I love that I’m saying them first name, everybody knows them, but Daniel Joseph, Jim Clark, Ethan Reed, Larry Nikolai was a huge one.

He was a person that he really saw my passion for it and he took me to the Tam O’ Shanter in Glendale, which is a very old school traditional place where all the Imagineers would go and the animators would go, and then he took me to Walt’s grave. I mean, it was just a really cool thing to just have somebody kind of take me to these places that had a lot of reverence. And then honestly, a lot of the guys that I worked with, I mean most of the people in the model shop are just so talented and so humble.

I was just blown away when I first started working there that they had pretty much every movie I grew up watching, I’d say I’d mention at some point and they’d be like, oh, I made that guy Steve Cotroneo who did Albert the Monkey. He sculpted thud the ball that the boy turns into, tumble down and knock out all the pirates that’s called the thud ball. He had sculpted that and I saw it at a Planet Hollywood when I was a kid, and now I’m standing in front of the guy working next to the guy who made that thing. So I just always felt like I was just surrounded by just these heroes.

The imposter syndrome was real, but they were all such people that it helped ease that discomfort and make you feel like you really belong. So I’m so grateful to all those people and I have to mention Nancy Hickman again because she, without her, I think I was just a nervous kid, just hoping somebody would take a chance and she saw something in me and without her I wouldn’t even be in this field probably so big thanks to her.

Dan Heaton: Some of the names you mentioned that I’m familiar with are just so talented and just really cool people, and I’m glad you got to work with so many of them. Well, finally, I have one last big question. I’m curious for you, as somebody who was an artist trying to get into the industry trying to grow and develop, what is some advice you would give just to someone who’s aspiring, whether it’s to be an artist on films or it doesn’t have to be specific theme parks wherever, but just the kind of approach maybe they should take in terms of a mindset as much as anything?

Jaime McGough: Yeah, it’s hard because listened to many of your podcasts and there’s so many things that have been said that I could just repeat a lot of ’em that people have said diversifying kind of your skillset and just not being afraid to try new things. I mean, I know that was a huge thing for me because I worked in Creative Services. I went over to special effects and R&D for a while; I didn’t stay in the Model Shop the entire time, and that’s helped me in my current situation.

For me, I think taking a chance, obviously looking at, I’m from Colorado, so I had to move away to go for it, but I placed myself in a spot where I could have the opportunity just working. It’s like all feels like the cliche things, but working super hard. I knew that because I didn’t do the most awesome job in academics, especially in my later years.

Early on I was okay, but I knew I wanted to do art. So when it came to that time to do it, I really, really worked hard and I still work hard, and that’s an ethic that’ll always serve you. I guess I would say outside of that, in terms of career advice, so much of it is I was always that guy. I would give the tours actually towards the end in Imagineering, which I loved, but I would get that question, well, how do you end up where you are?

And I’m like, I’m the guy that tells you I was in the right place at the right time, and I hate to say that, but to act like it was this grand scheme and that I made this happen on my own would be a lie. So I think the hard work and being kind to people and being as genuine as I could, serve me hopefully to get me halfway there.

Then the other half was people who helped me along the way. So I think just maybe finding people who are really good people, which sounds generic too, but aligning with people who are truly kind and passionate. That’s a really good thing. I find myself, I’ve actually told this to many people that my superpower is finding great people and somehow I get them to like me. And so I think that I’m sort of standing on the shoulders of giants and having these friends that I have and the people in my life, but I think it’s about recognizing that and recognizing people who are just good and just being good to them. So as horrible and generic as an answer as that probably is, I think what I got.

Dan Heaton: That’s cool. I think that’s all great advice though for a wide range of roles, and I think that’s great. So don’t worry about that. I think that’s good advice, and it’s similar to what others have said, but I mean that in a good way because as I ask the question, I find that a lot of people have similar answers, but more about the theme of, like you said, of working hard and connecting with people and all of that, so excellent. Well, I just want to ask one more thing.

I know I mentioned that you’re working at Theme Fusion and you’re also doing some freelancing, and I know that sometimes you’ve been posting some art online. So I would love to know just what you’re doing now and then if someone wanted to see some of the work you’ve been doing in ZBrush, I know there’s some ways to do so.

Jaime McGough: Yeah, you can check out my Art Station. Well, you have a probably look at this podcast for the spelling of my name and your best bet. It’s just my name on there, so I haven’t posting in a little while, but the last two years was a lot of home time just like everybody else did. So I did a lot of sculpting on there, and I’ve been working for Hamilton Collectibles, which is great because I’m a Creative Director nowadays, so less time was sculpting during the week.

That allows me to kind of scratch that itch. But yeah, with theme fusion, I’m out here in a place called Cleveland, Tennessee. It’s a real small place, but they’re doing themed entertainment work, not on as grand a scale as Disney, but we are doing it for pediatrics and some churches. And then actually, we just did one actually right before I became on board.

There’s Loma Homes, which are doing themed entertainment, sort of an Airbnb where people who go to the theme parks can actually come home, and if they’re on their day off or they’re just exhausted or maybe they don’t have as many tickets for the parks, they can actually enjoy a story in their home. So it’s really cool. Like now with Airbnb and all these other things, there’s even more ways to tell stories and have people enjoy their vacations. So we’re going to be doing more work in the Orlando area, and so you can check us out there, check out Loma Homes, and then check us out at themefusion.com if you’re interested in seeing more.

But yeah, it’s not going to be as grand in scale. But I think one thing that I always go back to is I sculpted this little snail in Star Wars Land, and I saw, I had this moment where I got to see this kid interacting with it. He went up to it and he was kind of tapping at it, and he had this big grin and it was probably grinning even bigger than he was. But it just makes you realize that even if you’re not doing things on a big scale, if you’re making a connection with people, that’s just huge. So I miss the Disney days and what I did there, but I’m just happy to be creating something for anybody, and especially with some of these people on vacation, but also pediatrics is a really cool thing.

Dan Heaton: This has been great, Jaime. So many cool stories and just getting to learn more about what you do has been awesome and what you’re currently doing sounds really interesting. So thanks so much for talking to the podcast. This was great.

Jaime McGough: Thank you so much, Dan. I really appreciate it.

Dan Heaton: I just want to give a big thanks to Jaime for such a cool interview and being so generous with this time. I really enjoyed it and I’m glad I got the chance to learn more about Jaime’s story. Also, want to say thanks to Ethan Reed for helping to set up this show. Ethan has a new little golden book, Santa Stops at Disneyland. It just came out. Definitely check it out. It looks super cute, and I think with the holidays coming up, this would be a perfect gift for any adult or child Disney fan in your life. Ethan did a great job on that book.