PACK POINTS
Creating magic
Four NC State students have been living in a kind of fantasy world for the past year.
But dreams turned to reality when the students traveled to Southern California in June as finalists in the Disney ImagiNations competition. The team’s project, a Disney attraction called “Fantasia: The Lost Symphony,” scored second place in the prestigious competition.
Team members brought diverse skills to the demanding endeavor. Patrick Carroll is a senior in electrical and computer engineering, Adam Newton is majoring in industrial and systems engineering with a minor in creative writing, and Jay Brown and Michael Delaney just graduated with undergraduate degrees in art and design.That’s par for the course at Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative division that sponsors the annual competition for college students. Its workforce — called imagineers — is made up of creative professionals in 140 disciplines, from artists and writers to architects and engineers. Together, they create all Disney theme parks, resorts, attractions, cruise ships, real estate developments and regional entertainment venues worldwide.
The students’ project was inspired by Fantasia, Disney’s 1940 film that featured classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski as the score for a series of animated scenes. They proposed creating a theme park attraction that would allow guests to conduct a new musical score and control various magical effects using their hands.
For the contest, they developed an exhaustive array of materials, including concept art, a storyboard, posters, a PowerPoint presentation, a software program, a scale model and an animation. They even developed a working prototype of a device, a sorcerer’s hand, that could be sold in Disney gift shops to promote the ride.
“I’ve gotten this taste of creative innovation,” Newton said. “Now I want to have a job like that, a job that makes people ask, ‘You get paid to do that?’” 