Bryan Lewis: 0:29

So today, on Miles from Main Street, I am so excited to present to you my interview with Marcelo Vignali. He spent a lot of time with Disney as an Imagineer and moved on to Disney animation working on many movie projects there. At age four, he knew what he wanted to do and what propelled him to keep doing it. It's an amazing story. I really, really love digging into that with him, and you know he's so inspiring. Take a close listen to what he's talking about here when it comes to Toontown and Roger Rabbit, and you know how that propelled him into his animation career. You'll hear about his success with Hotel Transylvania and some of the things he worked on more recently with Into the Spiderverse. So you know this is a great conversation. I think it was a lot of fun to talk to him and I really, really appreciate him being here.

Bryan Lewis: 1:30

Before I get into it, please go out and share this show with a friend. Let everybody know that they need to listen to this interview with Marcelo and that we have more coming. It would be really great to have you do that. It really helps our show, so let's do it. I'd like to present the interview with Marcelo Vignale. So, marcelo, thank you so much for joining me. It's an honor to talk to you. How are you doing tonight?

Marcelo Vignali: 2:02

I am doing very good. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this podcast.

Bryan Lewis: 2:08

We're very excited as well. So as we get started here, you know, I just kind of want to give people an idea of who you are and where you got your start.

Marcelo Vignali: 2:18

Oh, that's a I guess that's a long story the when I you know it had.

Marcelo Vignali: 2:26

I think it started when I was four years old and my mom took me to go see Fantasia and my head exploded Because it did everything to me. It made me laugh, it terrified me, it had me in complete utter awe and wonder and I remember that after that it was everything. Whatever it was that was Disney, whatever it was that dealt with animation. I wanted to learn about it. When I saw the dinosaurs in Fantasia, you figure I was four years old when I saw that the dinosaurs I thought they were real. I didn't understand what animation was it. Just the whole thing just looked real to me, like it was a real thing. That's incredible. And from then on I was just hooked. So everything in my whole mind and everything just revolved around just trying to understand that.

Marcelo Vignali: 3:23

And there was a show called the wonderful world of Disney that was still on the air Walt Disney had passed away by then, but it was still on the air and they would play cartoons, animated cartoons, like little snippets of it. Sometimes the cameras would go backstage and that was a thing. Look, every Sunday they had this Every Sunday I was glued to the television set because it was like this people into this world that I wanted to be a part of and that was it and that sort of sent me on this trajectory throughout my life and I would have to say it's kind of been my North Star, that I always knew where I wanted to be and how to guide myself because of that tremendous experience. To say it was it inspired me would be an understatement. It would have to be that the movie traumatized me and I think that sometimes, when you think of different people, that their whole lives end up changing or they're forever transformed after a particular event. That's what that film did to me.

Bryan Lewis: 4:35

That's I mean to know what you want to do at the age of four. I mean that's pretty awesome.

Marcelo Vignali: 4:41

It gave me that clarity.

Bryan Lewis: 4:45

Having kids of my own and having them starting in college and trying to decide what they want to do with it. It must have given you quite a bit of relief to know that you knew exactly where you were headed.

Marcelo Vignali: 4:57

You know, I think that there is there's something to that, and I sometimes joke around that, you know, you know people like, oh, you know, you're so gifted, you're so talented, and they assume this aspect of me and I and I joke around and tell them well, I felt as though I wasn't cluttered with different options. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, I knew who it was I wanted to be and I wasn't distracted for by all these other things. Now, there was a short time that I was distracted, when I was a teenager and I started boxing and I tell you that, you know, during the time that I was boxing, I wasn't drawing as much. It was not. It was something that really did hamper my, my goal of going after this.

Marcelo Vignali: 5:47

You know, this artistic person that I wanted to become Once, that, once I put that behind me and from then on it was a straight line and it was a focus to do animation, to work in animation, to do illustration, to develop this aspect of myself, the cinematic aspect of making art, and I really do think that it was that lack of distraction that allowed me to really focus on my career. A lot of people, they're very talented, they're very smart and because of that they have all these and sometimes it gets distracted with all these other options and and it doesn't give them the clarity and focus that I had. And for me it was sort of like I know it sounds foolish, but I'm just putting all my eggs in this basket. I am going to be an artist and I had no plan B. This was it.

Bryan Lewis: 6:41

Well and it's, it's worked out. I mean, gosh, I just looking through your Facebook has been a treat. I'm so glad you're putting that out there and, and you know, like everything you see it that you've been putting there is just kind of like how is that that you're drawing that? Just not being an artist myself, I had. I'm always wowed by the art. But back to like that drive and that focus, like was there somebody there guiding you along the way? Because I know a lot of people as they come up in that stage of their life, there's usually somebody helping them keep that clarity.

Marcelo Vignali: 7:20

Yeah, you know it that guiding light that forced that mentor was Walt Disney. It's, you know, crazy is that seems it really was Walt Disney that was the guiding light. My mom worked in factories, my dad was a bricklayer and then later turned to working in body and fender fixing cars. So my family and were immigrants also my family come over from Argentina and so they didn't really have the expertise in art or the experience or exposure or anything like that to guide me and so I didn't have any real direction. I remember thinking when I was younger that I just wanted to be a really good artist and I didn't know any good artists. I didn't know, didn't understand it, I didn't understand the industry or anything. So I remember thinking like, well, I want to be a good artist like Michelangelo. That was it and that was how simple my understanding of the art world was. But it was the films of Walt Disney that really made me sort of appreciate and and gave me that clarity of focus that I wanted to use my artwork to to inspire other people. I wanted to use my artwork also to tell narratives and that was the the focus.

Marcelo Vignali: 8:42

Now I had a really interesting experience. It was the first time I I actually encountered an artist and I don't even know the name of the artist. This is because so long ago and I'm thinking I was about, oh gosh, maybe seven or eight, something like that, it might have been some somewhere around there and I, my family, comes from Argentina and there was, we were living in Maryland, baltimore, maryland, and there is Baltimore. Maryland is just one big giant. The state whole state is like one big giant harbor, and this in this state actually surrounds that harbor, and and a ship was coming in from Argentina that was bringing in merchandise or whatever. I don't know what they were, it was a cargo ship, and so I don't know how they worked it out, but my parents had gotten in contact with these people that that you know you should have. There was no internet Like the 70s, there was no internet. There was no way to get in contact with these people. I don't know how they did it, but somewhere along the line they'd gotten in contact with the ship and they knew when the ship was going to be coming in, and when the ship came in, we went, we drove to the harbor to meet them, because in Maryland in the early 1970s there were no other Hispanics or no other people that spoke Spanish and here in California it's a it's a very diverse culture. There's a lot of people coming in from from Central and South America, but in Maryland around that time there wasn't and it was more or less it was just our family. That's the only people that we knew that that spoke Spanish and then had this connection with South America. So this other, this other group of people were coming in and we had to meet them. We knew the ship was coming in, we had to meet them. So my folks drove out there and we we got on the ship and the captain was taking us and giving us a tour and it was.

Marcelo Vignali: 10:35

It was a very small, wasn't like a very big cargo ship, was a small cargo ship and I guess it had a crew of maybe five or eight people, not very, not very many people. So you had a couple of people doing the engineering stuff, other product person steering the ship, and they probably had some other people that were helping with the cargo because they use the longshoremen once they get to the docks. The longshoremen are ones that are that empty all of the merchandise. You don't have to bring all this crew. So anyway, it was a very small crew and as he, as he's taking us through, knocks on the door, open up the door and it was one of the crewmen and inside his very, very tiny little quarters there were drawings taped all over the walls and they were like Western drawings, like he was a comic book artist, and they were. They seemed looking back, they were sort of like Mobius inspired, you know, like you had these beautiful, like landscapes with these monument Valley kind of rock formations and cowboys and horses.

Marcelo Vignali: 11:48

And I remember I just I blurred it out, I just said I'm an artist too. I didn't know any artists and he was the first one that I had encountered and I just blurred it out and he looked at me and he smiled and he says oh, you are, huh, well, come here. Come here, show me what you can draw. And he got me a piece of paper and a pen and I sat there and I started drawing. And then the tour, like well, we're going to keep going, but we'll leave you there. And so I stayed with him in his cabin and I was drawing with him and that was so much fun. And when I look back that was you don't really realize it at the time, but that was the seminal moment that made me believe that I could be an artist. It was. It was a wonderful moment, because up until then it's all a fantasy, right, you don't really think these things are capable.

Marcelo Vignali: 12:42

You know that you're capable of becoming this. And I don't even know if he was a professional artist at all, but in my eyes he was. He was the only artist I knew, he was the greatest artist I knew, and when he invited me to come draw with him and he opened up this opportunity, I felt welcome, I felt inspired, I felt, you know, it just made a profound effect and a difference in my life.

Bryan Lewis: 13:10

That's an amazing story. I love that. So you, I mean you took this and you obviously propelled yourself to quit an amazing career. And when you got going with Disney it correct me if I'm wrong, but the first project you were on was with Muppets, right, yeah, it was Muppets, and you were doing that out at Hollywood Studios, down at Disney World, or at least that's the project that you were working on.

Marcelo Vignali: 13:37

That's where it was going, but I did all the work here from California in Glendale at the imaginary office.

Bryan Lewis: 13:44

Yeah, and I, you know I've looked at some of the stuff you have on Facebook but it seems like that was quite an awesome time for you as well, Like it kind of fortified what you were doing with Disney.

Marcelo Vignali: 13:58

Yeah, you know, it's an interesting thing because when, when I was going to art school, the the entertainment industry was in a state of collapse. Today, despite the fact that it's struggling and these things are happening, you know, like with the strike and everything that the industry struggling, the industry exists, and at that time the industry was in a state of implosion. You figure that in the early 1980s that Warner Brothers had stopped making animated movies, hanna-barbera also had stopped making all those films. You remember like they were making all of these tremendous shows. It was squiddly, diddly, it was Lippy the Lion, they had all of these characters and it was a war movie after that, and they created this film glut and then the entire studio seemed to just like a star that went supernova and then it collapses in on itself. And this is what was happening in the industry. Even Disney. Disney ran into trouble. They had put out the movie Black Hole. It didn't perform as well as they had hoped, and then they had these other films, like the Black Cauldron, that also performed really poorly. And then so the studio was in the state of contraction and they were deciding whether or not they were gonna abandon animation altogether. As a matter of fact they were talking about selling off the animation division. It was gonna be sold separately from the studio. This is before Eisner came on board and he had brought this idea of how they were gonna try and monetize the studio.

Marcelo Vignali: 15:34

But when that happened, I'm in art school. So this dream of mine of working for Disney and working for in animated films or even something like the theme parks, that was gone. It didn't really exist, because the industry doesn't exist. And I remember I was doing my artwork and my artwork looked like it came out of an animated film. It had this sort of Disney appeal because that's what I wanted to do when I was pouring that into the drawings, because that's how I was measuring success. And I remember my teachers and it was more than one of them. They were trying to dissuade me. They could see that I had talent. But why are you wasting your time drawing this stuff? You shouldn't be doing this. You should be doing this other thing. You should be making this, doing more adult illustration as opposed to what looks like kitty drawings.

Marcelo Vignali: 16:29

And I was so stubborn and I was so set and I can tell you there was no plan B for me and I thought you know what I am gonna work in this wheelhouse of Disney, wonderful entertainment. I'm gonna work at this. I'm gonna do this for a living, whether there's an industry or not. And so when I started in animation, I got out of school and started in animation in 1987. In 1988, the Roger Rabbit comes out and in 1989, the little mermaid comes out, and suddenly this whole resurgence happens, not only for Disney but for animation and entertainment.

Marcelo Vignali: 17:12

And I was at the right place at the right time. I was, my portfolio was ready, I was cutting my teeth as a professional and then suddenly everything opened up. And then just to go from 1987, where the my teachers are telling me there is no industry, what are you doing? You're wasting your time To. Just to 1990, I'm working with Jim Henson at the Disney studios and I'm designing the rides for them. And so you think, in that just that very short span, just a span of four years, I was already living my dream. It was really amazing. I couldn't believe that I was living this life.

Bryan Lewis: 17:54

Yeah, I mean to hear you talk about working with Jim Henson, like that was. He was always a big character, I guess, in my life, Like I loved watching them up its, and I so wish that the amount of stuff that was planned for Hollywood studios could have been finished.

Marcelo Vignali: 18:14

He was our Walt Disney, because since Walt Disney he passed away. Just it was a little after I was born. He had passed away. I think he passed away in 1968. And I was born a little bit before that that we never had that where we could listen to him talk or he was doing a presentation or we went somewhere and Walt Disney was there and we didn't get to see that. But we did get to see it with Jim Henson.

Marcelo Vignali: 18:45

With Jim Henson it was about watching Sesame Street when we were growing up. It was about watching the Muppet Show when the in that heyday of the Muppet Show and seeing all of these characters. And he was introducing these characters. You've never seen it before.

Marcelo Vignali: 18:59

Like the first time you see Bunsen, honeydew and Beaker and you're like, oh my gosh, that is so wonderful, I gotta see these characters again. And then he's introducing all the and then Gonzo with the chickens. We'd never seen that in Sesame Street. These are all new characters and he was so creative and he really it was like he had his finger on the pulse of our age at that time and I was. I just felt that it was such a tremendous privilege to work with somebody like that, and then also with the artwork that I was doing to get noticed by him, and that was always. That was something that was really special, that I got a chance to be part of it and, as a matter of fact, I even have this and I know it's not a, it's just gonna be dialogue, but you can see it.

Marcelo Vignali: 19:51

But I have here this watch that was given to me by Jim Henson. Now this is, it's a watch that other people have. You can buy this, you can buy a version of this but this was the gift that they would give people at the Henson Studios Like there's some relationship that they want to cultivate and it was given to me by Jim Henson himself and I just and I look, I still keep it in the little plastic and I get it out on such occasions and put it on, but it's just such a special thing and you're absolutely right, I really wish that we could have made that project or that that project that the deal was was perhaps a little bit more set and it wouldn't have fallen apart. But it was at the time where they were still in negotiations, when we were working on it. So when he passed away, negotiations weren't set and part of what Disney wanted was they tried to hire Jim Henson, but it wasn't that they were hiring or that they were trying to option the Muppets Like you would option Marvel or something like that.

Marcelo Vignali: 21:04

They wanted to option the Muppets but they wanted to bring Jim Henson on board to provide that creative leadership, because the studio understood that since Walt Disney had been gone, the studio didn't really have creative leadership. Now Eisner knew that he brought this leadership of marketability, this consumer products kind of mindset of being able to monetize the studio. But he didn't have creative leadership and he understood that. So they tried to bring Jim Henson on board to provide that. So naturally there was one deal that they were trying to make with Jim for that reason. But when Jim out of the picture, then suddenly the value of that relationship changed and that's when everything sort of fell apart, unfortunately.

Bryan Lewis: 21:57

It's really too bad that that is what had happened. I think having Jim in with Disney would have been a really neat marriage to have seen, and we still see the effects of that today, where they now have the Muppets and they're still kind of trying to figure out what to do with them.

Marcelo Vignali: 22:17

Yeah, that's a shame. And I'll tell you this, when we were dealing with the Muppets, obviously the Muppets were gonna be going into Walt Disney World, but there was also talk about putting the Muppet Theater where Tombtown is right now. That's where the Muppet Theater was going to go and they thought, like well, we could open that whole area up, and but it wasn't as big as Tombtown is today, but they were talking about putting it in that space and I thought, oh, that's kind of a wonderful idea if we had something like that. But then what ends up happening is, when that deal falls apart, the idea of opening that area up stayed. And then when we were negotiating as to like how we, where are we gonna put Tombtown?

Marcelo Vignali: 23:10

So Tombtown, the idea of Tombtown, kept getting bigger and we're trying to figure out, like, where this is gonna go. There's the theater right across from the little train station and then there's the area that goes directly where Tombtown is today and there was a debate as to where Tombtown was gonna fit. And then there was also it's interesting, we were also thinking of that Tombtown would go there and the theater would be taken out and that would be turned into the Hundred Acre Woods. So you would have Winnie the Pooh, this Christopher Robin world, then you have the train, and then go underneath the train and then you would have Tombtown, and then that we just ended up with Tombtown, of course.

Bryan Lewis: 23:53

Wow, I didn't know it. That Winnie the Pooh thing would have been cool to see as well. Yeah.

Marcelo Vignali: 23:58

Anything we could have loved. They eventually made Winnie the Pooh, they did the Winnie the Pooh ride, but that came many years later.

Bryan Lewis: 24:05

Yeah, yeah. But so now you were working on a Muppet movie ride and did that. Do you know if that idea kind of shifted into the movie ride that they ended up is now gone, the great movie ride, or was that kind of something that was happening at the same time?

Marcelo Vignali: 24:26

It was Jim and his writers. They loved parody yeah, we were. It was kind of a nod to film because it was going into the MGM Studio Grand that they had in Florida and so that's where this whole thing was gonna go, and so we thought like it has to be sort of film related, and so that's what that was. So it's the Muppets version of that storytelling, right? So you've got the, you know, let's say, dr Shivago, and then you have the Muppets version of it.

Marcelo Vignali: 25:06

Or there's like that one drawing that I did, that you saw on Facebook, which was the it's sort of like an Indiana Jones, where he's rescuing you know, Kermit is rescuing Miss Piggy from the waterfall, and it's this really sort of exciting thing and the way it's shot and everything. And we see the film and then our ride vehicle takes us past the film and then we go backstage to see how it's made and that was the joke. So the joke was always it was like a two panel gag. One is that we get to see the film as it was presented in the theater and then we go backstage and see how they made it, and that was the joke. And that was the contrast between that. So it was always it looked believable in the film and then when you go backstage it's just Muppet mayhem. And that's where you can see the drawing that I had, where just, oh, chaos is just breaking out.

Bryan Lewis: 25:55

And yeah, I can just picture that, because I don't know how many times you see gags like that with the Muppets, where in the movies, even like you flip around the set and it's just craziness behind and yeah, I love that gag. Well, let's shift over to Toontown a little bit. You had brought that up and I know that you posted an excellent little story about how Toontown is probably the biggest project, that means the most to you, because you got to work on it at every single level and yes, yes.

Bryan Lewis: 26:35

As you said, yeah that's not common within the industry.

Marcelo Vignali: 26:40

No, the thing is, as professionals, the business is more compartmentalized. In animation, you can see it where there's a background designer and then there's a background painter, then there's the animator and then there's the person that does the. In between, there's another person that inks and then another person that does color for the characters. So there's all of these different disciplines that come together in order to make some of these films. Well, theme parks is very similar in that way that you have people that there's an illustrator, there's another person that's coming up with concepts, there's another person that's doing the animator concepts, there's another person that's doing the ride or another person that's doing the layout for the land.

Marcelo Vignali: 27:20

But I feel like I was very fortunate that I just had an opportunity. The opportunities kept presenting themselves and I kept taking them. These things were presented to me and I was. I think my skill level has always been such that it is allowed for those opportunities to open up for me, and I think there's also another advantage that happened is that you know how is it? You know I was, I was 20, I was 25 years old and the studio had trusted me to be one of the four principal designers for the toontown project 25 and I'm one of the four principal designers of the toontown project and then I become the lead designer for the Roger Rabbit ride and they gave me a budget of 40 million dollars to create this ride for them.

Marcelo Vignali: 28:16

And when you think about it like they, they trusted a 25 year old with that. Yeah, how did that opportunity happen? And what happened was that the studio Wasn't that excited about a toontown, because there were other things that were happening. They were working on this thing called Westcott, which eventually ended up becoming California Adventure, but they were thinking of creating an Epcot in California, where where the California Adventure is right now. So they were busy trying to create what that was going to look like and it was beautiful and elegant and they had all these ideas and all these designers were were Fighting to work on this project. And then there was the other project, which was the Indiana Jones land. It wasn't just an Indiana Jones ride, it was a whole land that they were going to open up and it affected the jungle cruise. There was gonna be a roller coaster ride that Was like the you know little mine car rides from. I think it's the second Indiana Jones, and so there were different things that they were doing in that area that was gonna open it up. I think they had. They were re, they were going to redo, so they had the ride. They had they were changing the jungle cruise ride, they were adding the roller coaster and I can't remember. I think there was something else that they were. I think they did something with the tree house. So all of this was gonna be all in the Indiana Jones land and Everybody had no idea and everybody was excited to work yeah, project, and they were. It was a tremendous. It had a tremendous budget. Just think the, the Indiana Jones ride, just the ride alone. The budget was almost the same as it was for all of Toontown, including the Roger Rabbit ride. Wow, and so you imagine it. For many people it was the idea of Toontown was sort of like. It was like the kiddie pool you also had. At the same time, that was being developed was the Tokyo Disney Seas, and so it was gonna be a new Disneyland park in Tokyo that they were. They were going to be developing the, a Theme park centered around the ocean, and so it was all high tech and it had all these wonderful things and these Submarine rides and all kinds of crazy things. It's absolutely stunning, beautiful. So when you look at the panoply of all these different projects that they had in their roster and then you look at Something like a Toontown Toontown wasn't that exciting for a lot of the people there? Okay, and it, and it afforded a 25 year old an opportunity To work on this project. And, look, I couldn't be happier. I was very happy to be working on this. Why? Because I love animation, I love Disney. I I love the, that whole Whole vintage. Look to the animated buildings and the characters. That's what I wanted to do, and here I was, I was giving that opportunity.

Marcelo Vignali: 31:20

Now, granted that, we started out with a big budget and then, halfway through the, the studio, there was sort of like a, a collapse of the economy at that time and it and it happened right around the time that we were. We had already started development. So everything got pulled. The west cut got pulled, the I think the Tokyo Disney Seas was pushed back. They also took the. What's the other project that they were working? Oh, the Indiana Jones land turned into just the Indiana Jones ride. So they cut all of that stuff out and and in the in order to make the Roger Rabbit ride. They, they, they have our budget. They cut our budget in half, so we had to do everything for half the budget that we were, we were set out to. But even still, look, we, we had, we had a really good, strong idea. We had a really good crew and we worked to be as frugal as we could and make really good, sound decisions. That made for a really wonderful park.

Marcelo Vignali: 32:27

And I got to work. So I got to work on the land the initial lamb, the concept of it, what it was going to be. I, I, I did the initial sketches for the tree house. I did the concept for Goofy's bounce house. I Also did the. I did the train station, or, yeah, the little train station that's out in front of the land. I designed the fire station with a little fire truck that sits out in front of the. You know, just as you come into the park it's like one of the, the center pieces for the land, and and and.

Marcelo Vignali: 33:01

Then, after oh, and then, I designed Not just the buildings but then also the ride vehicle that goes up and down the land. And again, it's usually they separate those disciplines right. And here I was given an opportunity to design the trolley, the toon town trolley, and Then I started working on the interior of the ride because I could draw characters in animation, animated characters. I have a hand for that. Have you worked in animation? Okay, it was a natural for me to become the designer for the Roger Rabbit ride, and so I worked with a, with a fantastic crew, and I was in charge of leading what that was going to look like, and that's that's what I did. I led that crew and, and we did the the all of the interior for the Roger Rabbit ride.

Bryan Lewis: 33:50

Now you you said the budget was cut in half and you guys are very frugal about it, but like, what does that do to you when you are in the middle of a project and they've cut your budget? Now you need to figure out how to do what you want to do with half the money.

Marcelo Vignali: 34:06

You know what? I tell you the I Think the best version of the ride was the ride we built, because what happens is that when you, when you've got a bigger budget, you're not, you don't have to be as careful Because you've got this big budget enough to be as careful, but when you have a smaller budget, you have to be frugal, and you know this with yourself. Right, like if you know you've only got a certain amount of money and you wanted to go out with some friends and you, you're very specific about what it is that you want to do. It's like well, I'm saving this money because I know that we're gonna, we're gonna go to the theater and afterwards we're gonna get coffee, and so you, you make sure that that you're doing that, as opposed to, before you go in there, you go into a bookstore, you're buying books, and then you go to the theater, and then you come out and you go get some dinner and then you go get coffee. No, you're very, you prioritize things. This is what I want to do.

Marcelo Vignali: 35:07

Well, we did exactly the same thing in the ride. We were figuring out okay, these are the things that are important, this is the best way to do that. And then we, we tried to build out those things that we wanted to see and then use flats to Like, let's say, the bull in the china shop, to use these flats. That would give us a sense of dimension Without creating dimension. And you know what that did? That allowed us to make those rooms smaller so that our track had a bigger show to run through, okay, okay, because if not, then we would have, we would have made these Dimensional spaces and we would have filled it with things, dimensional things, and I don't think it would have made the show better. As a matter of fact, it would have eaten up more real estate, so we would have actually seen less. But because we were being more frugal about what it was that we were doing, that we had, that we had to understand, like, where we were gonna spend our money.

Marcelo Vignali: 36:04

All right, we know and here's an interesting thing, we we had that they were planning to build this Roger Rabbit, and this Roger Rabbit was an audio animatronic Roger Rabbit and they took us to go see it and the, the, the skull of the Roger Rabbit, would shoot up his tie, would start the pinwheel and you know, because he would end up with this gigantic mouth, kind of like a tech savory cartoon, and the tongue was flapping and his eyes would bug out. But sure, when we saw it, I watched it and and it and it hits and it does this whole thing. And you're seeing this several seconds as you're watching this and and and I'm like I I'm not exactly sure where we can see that, because in our ride we're spinning, I, it has to be a quick read. I don't know that we have enough time to set up the gag and then see all of this audio animatronic. And then they gave us the budget or they gave us the price tag on this thing and it was a budget buster. And I said, you know as much as you, r&d had been developing this thing with these latex eyes and they were pushing out all of you know to get the big, you know cartoon eyes. But I told them, I said I can't put that in the ride. Not only is it too expensive, it's going to break our budget. We're going to end up with one effect, but I'm not even sure the audience is going to see it. You know, when he's getting electrocuted, I'm not sure, because everybody's laughing and spinning. All they need is a quick read. And so that's what we did.

Marcelo Vignali: 37:38

I told my friend, andrea Favilli, who was working on the ride, and I told him. I said you know, I want to do this scene, but we can't use that figure. How can we do it? And he said you know what? I know? A friend of mine is magician. He makes the best magic tricks for, like David Copperfield and all of these other people, like Zigg, freed and Roy, he builds all of their effects, their stage effects. We should talk to him.

Marcelo Vignali: 38:09

So I went over there and I told him. I said well, you know, I've got this idea for what I want to do with this and that, and why don't you tell me these, how to make these effects? And he said no, it doesn't work like that. I said, okay, well, how's it work? And he said you tell me what you want to see and I'll figure out a way to do it. And I said, okay, well, you've got two effects, one of them. One of them is going to be that the Roger Rabbit gets electrocuted and we see his skeleton and oh, and you know what's the other thing in this audio-animatronic figure?

Marcelo Vignali: 38:44

they had blow molded all of it in this plexiglass and then they had a neon tube skeleton inside of it that they were illuminating at the same time. So not only did he scream, but then everything would turn off and then he would have this skeleton that would illuminate. It was so incredibly expensive. So I told him. I said I need Roger Rabbit to get electrocuted and we need to see his skeleton. And then on the other one, we have to take a black hole, put a black hole on the wall and we're going to drive right through that black hole.

Marcelo Vignali: 39:20

Now the R&D department had also offered us this other thing, which was how are we going to do this trick? And they said well, we'll project the black hole onto the wall and we or actually we'll project a brick wall over this. What do you call a fog curtain? We're going to drop a fog curtain, project this and I'm like but the fog curtain will move and the bricks will look like they're moving and they're like well, that's what we've got, and we'll project this hole and then the audience will go through the hole. But it's a doorway. And I'm thinking like wait a minute, how do you project a hole, an absence of light? You can project light, you can't project an absence of light. And they're like just that's what we got for you.

Marcelo Vignali: 40:06

So there's two things were unsatisfactory. One of them I didn't think was to be convincing and the other one I didn't think I thought was too expensive. So how do we do this? So he's and this magician, jim Steinmeier, it's his name. He proposed these two ideas. They were so darn clever and I'm not going to divulge how they were done because I've been sucked into this oath of the magicians, where you do not reveal the secret.

Marcelo Vignali: 40:35

But it was so wonderful and it was so simple in how we did that and that was another one of those things that we were able to do something absolutely fantastic and much better than what would have been done had we ended up going with some of these tech solutions. We have something that is absolutely fantastic and wonderful, and when we see Roger get electrocuted, it's a quick read. We look, he pulls, the switch, goes down, he gets electrocuted, smoke comes out and when you're spinning you could even miss it. You might even miss it because you're sitting spinning around laughing with your friends, and that's when we go into the giant explosion scene. But it was one of those things, that, that it just kind of fell into our favor to not go with the tech solution and if we had a big budget we wouldn't have thought about it, we would have. Just, I wouldn't have called Jim Steinmeier, and I think the product, the project, would have been less as a result of that.

Marcelo Vignali: 41:31

But because we had to be frugal, we reached out to this magician and he delivered an absolutely fantastic thing for us, and I'll tell you this also I know I'm chatting your ear off, but there's the other thing is that what a lot of people don't know is the ride used to be a two-story ride, really Okay. And so you. So the building was actually designed to be two stories and our ride vehicle would go up the second story, ride around, pop out one of the little there's the. When you're looking at Toontown, there's like this big platform that's, it's like a balcony area and it's really big and wide. That's where the ride was supposed to pop out. So you were riding the ride and it would go upstairs and you would pop out through that section and you would go back in the building and we planned for it.

Marcelo Vignali: 42:24

So we designed it the exterior building and everything but then we ended up having problems with our ride vehicle, that our ride vehicle did not have the power to go up to.

Marcelo Vignali: 42:35

The second story there were some technical problems that prevented us from being able to do this, especially the fact that we ended up going with tandem vehicles, so we weren't able to do that and so we lost that.

Marcelo Vignali: 42:47

We lost that ability to go upstairs and you think like, oh, we lost all of that real estate.

Marcelo Vignali: 42:51

No, this is a crazy thing, because we had to use this ramp and the ride vehicle isn't a very strong it's not like it can go up a staircase or something that there was a ramp area going up and a ramp area going down and it ate a lot of the real estate on our floor plan. When we yeah, so when we lost the upstairs, we actually gained footage on our floor plan and so it actually gave us more show, more opportunity for show, and it was one of those things where, like just coincidence after coincidence and some of these things that seemed like they were negative attributes, like while our budget was caught and while this other thing was too expensive and we couldn't use it well, we can't go upstairs actually ended up falling into our favor and, like I said, we ended up with the best ride. So by the time that we finished designing the ride, it was, and by the time it was built, it was the best version of the ride.

Bryan Lewis: 43:57

That's such an incredible story because it's so much in contrast to how Walt would operate where it was. This is what I'm doing, roy you go find the money. He didn't care about the budget, whereas it's a different world, a different time, and you have to build within those constraints and it's so interesting to hear that difference.

Marcelo Vignali: 44:19

Well, you know what? I'll tell you this. I beg to differ that he did care about the budgets. He was very smart and although a lot of the people that I worked with at the studio were like those old timers a lot of those old timers they were all gone by the time I got there, there were still a few old timers there and I got a chance to have lunch with them and chat and also would hang out with John Hinch, and John Hinch was Walt Disney's right-hand man. So he brought him over from animation and he knew that he was very intelligent and also somebody who had a lot of ideas and he was very much a doer. And Walt Disney tapped him to come on board and to lead the Imagineering Studio and I got a chance to meet him as an old man and I would go and hang out in his office and his office was Walt Disney's old office. So you figure, walt Disney passed away 1968. And then from that time to about 1990, and this is when I first met John Hinch it wasn't that many years in that span, it was like 20 some years in that span that it happened, but nonetheless he kept everything exactly the same as Walt had it. It was Walt's desk, it was Walt's library or his bookcases. He kept the office as it was and it was so incredible to be sitting in that office.

Marcelo Vignali: 45:55

You could definitely sense that Walt Disney vibe, but he was telling me that Walt Disney never wanted to bury the money. He said if you're spending $100 on the show, I want the audience to see the $100. I don't wanna put, oh, there's $50 that are gonna go into the show system and then there's like another $25 that are gonna be going here and by the time you get to the show, the audience has only seen a $25 show. And he said no, he said we're spending that money, I want the audience to see it.

Marcelo Vignali: 46:32

And in that regard, I think that the Roger Rabbit ride is very faithful, because the money that we spent is the money on the show. You see the show. There's no complicated systems where we had these audio animatronic figures that were budget busting and were spinning and were not seeing it. No, all of the money that was spent was spent on what the audience is seeing and I think that that's why that show has been a favorite for so many, because when you go there it's not only an eyeful, but every time you go on it you see something different, because you're spinning around, you're indexing your car in a different way. You've got somebody with you that you're horsing around with as you're steering this. You can steer your way through it, you can spin your way through it and just engage the ride a different way each time, and I think that that's what makes that ride so unique.

Bryan Lewis: 47:31

It is a work of art, so I'm so glad With this last redo. I'm glad that it remained. Roger Rabbit, I think was a really big piece of Disney history that needs to be kept within the parks as best as they can.

Marcelo Vignali: 47:49

Yes, it turned the studio around. When that happened, the entire studio was or the entire animation industry and Disney weren't a lot of trouble before that film came out. And that film really turned things around and showed everybody, or showed all of the business people, that there was a tremendous hunger for that sort of entertainment. There was people who wanted to see the animated characters. They wanted to go into this world of imagination and fun. And when that movie came out it opened everybody's eyes and from then on you have all of these investors started to believe in this and then started to support these ideas. And that's where you had this whole string of animated movies and all of these people started getting in on it. It was. You have universal getting in on it, you have Warner Brothers getting back into it, you've got obviously Disney and then DreamWorks came out of that and then you had studios like Blue Sky and studios like Pixar. All of these people started to believe in this entertainment. But all of that didn't exist up until Roger Rabbit.

Bryan Lewis: 49:03

Yeah, so for us, we got our first trip to Disneyland just back in February and Toontown was just starting to reopen. They had just opened Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway there, which is amazing, but they didn't have Roger Rabbit open yet. We got to play around with the firehouse. I have put a bunch of videos out of both my son and my daughter trying to blow up the firehouse and having an excellent time doing it, so that's a very memorable piece for us that I can share with you. But we have plans to go back in June and Toontown in its full glory is on the list.

Bryan Lewis: 49:54

Roger Rabbit might be number one on the list 1A, because Haunted Mansion was in its cleanup stage and we didn't get to ride it when we were there. So we have to do that too. But it's something that, as I watch live streams and people are going on Roger Rabbit, it's one of those regrets that I did not get to go. So hearing these stories and hearing what's gone into it is just going to build it up so much more for me when I go.

Marcelo Vignali: 50:27

Yeah, wonderful, I hope you get a chance to go and the ride will be open. One of the things that you'll notice on some of these other rides let's say a ride that's more complicated they have these audio-animatronic figures or some of the show systems are. The ride is heavily dependent on these show systems. But the Roger Rabbit ride isn't like that. It was specifically designed. Rain or shine, that ride can run Because you've got the scene with the black hole, where Roger puts the black hole in the wall and we drive through it.

Marcelo Vignali: 51:05

That's how that effect works. That effect works whether or not Roger Rabbit is moving. Oh, ok. And then the electrical scene also is one of those things. That's not a complicated. We had such simple solutions. Everything was show action, which is that instead of when you think of the difference between audio-animatronic figure would be a figure, that kind of like a human, it can move a crank, but in a show action it's the crank that moves the figure and it looks exactly the same. So I tried to make sure that whatever it was that we were doing was show action animation as opposed to animation, so that it could run, so that it could run nonstop. We wouldn't have those problems. So hopefully, when you get there, I'm pretty sure it's going to be running and you can enjoy the ride.

Bryan Lewis: 52:02

Yeah, and I'm excited to do that. I mean Toontown being down and Haunted Mansion being down were the two things that really yeah.

Marcelo Vignali: 52:12

That was a one punch right there.

Bryan Lewis: 52:14

Yeah, it was.

Marcelo Vignali: 52:16

I'll tell you what. There was another thing that I had done. Right before the park opened up, we were walking through the queue area and they had all these oil or these dip drums, all these drums with dip that were there, that the audience, the audience, can sit on them. You're going around them as you're waiting in line, and it had a cap on one of them and I turned it and it was open, and I always carry with me a clipboard because I always I'm always drawing, always taking notes, always studying things.

Marcelo Vignali: 52:49

So I had, obviously, I had my clipboard with me and it was open and like, well, they're going to make a final pass and they're going to seal all these things up. Ok, before they seal it up, I'm going to drop a drawing inside there. Oh, I did a Roger Rabbit drawing and I signed it and I dropped it inside one of those drums. I don't exactly remember which one of the drums. I've got an idea about which one it might be, but I've rolled that drawing up. And so just know, as you're going through line now the drums are all sealed up and they won't open it up until the ride is long since gone and somebody prized that drum open. But when that does happen, they're going to find a Roger Rabbit drawing by me inside one of those drums.

Bryan Lewis: 53:38

Now nobody can go and try to open these things.

Marcelo Vignali: 53:44

No, you would have to literally saw the top off of it to get into it, Even if you unscrewed it, let's say, because they would weld them shut. Even if you unscrewed that little thing, you can't get the piece of paper out of that Because I rolled it up and then dropped it inside. So just know that it's inside there and someday somewhere along the line, somebody's going to open that up and they're going to find the drawing inside there.

Bryan Lewis: 54:09

We're always looking for hidden Mickey's. Now there's a hidden Roger that is out there, that's right. So eventually you move on from Disney. With the trajectory of your life and how you wanted to be working for Disney, that must have been a difficult decision.

Marcelo Vignali: 54:32

Now what happened was that it was at the end of the animation cycle. So when I was working over at Walt Disney Imaginary, I knew that I always wanted to go back to animation. So I did At a certain point. This is when this austerity hit and the projects, all the budgets were put on hold and I found myself designing a lot of merchandising spaces and I thought, no, I imagined something different for myself. I wanted to continue with this idea of doing animation, because that was my original goal. I have to remember, there's no plan B, right? So I ended up leaving Imaginary and people thought I was nuts. They're like you're leaving a theme park design, imaginary, and you've already started as a show designer. You became a concept designer and then they made me art director. This is before I was even 30. They had made me art director for one of the lands that they were proposing at the time, and so when I decided that I was going to leave and I was going to go into animation, people were like what are you doing? It's career suicide. Why would you do this? But again, it was one of these things that I had this goal for myself.

Marcelo Vignali: 55:56

I envisioned that I wanted to work and create this lifelong dream of working in animation. So I went on board and I started working on the animated films. I worked on Mulan, I worked on the Kingdom of the Sun, which later became the Emperor's New Groove, then it was the other home on the range, then it was Atlantis. I even had a show, although I don't have film credit on it. I did work a little bit on Fantasia, which was sort of this wonderful life cycle to have become part of that thing that inspired me. It was Lilo and Stitch Brother Bear, and then also I worked on an early version of the movie Frozen, and this is when it was going to be 2D.

Marcelo Vignali: 56:45

But it was right at that time when the industry was changing between 2D animation and CG animation, and it was right at the same time that 9-11 happened and so all of the budgets just were completely they were put on the shelf and they had to stop because they weren't sure where things were going, especially between the industry that was in transition. The dot-com crash had happened just like a year or two earlier, and then 9-11 happened. So everything just got sort of put on hold and Disney, I think, had acquired Pixar at this time and then Pixar was going to be their animation studio, so they ended up cutting my contract and I had a question of well, now that this you forget, I've been so focused. There's no plan B. What is my plan B?

Marcelo Vignali: 57:45

I've already got this tremendous legacy with the studio. I mean working these animated films and then worked in theme parks. What's going to happen for me, and a lot of people that I worked with had retired. Well, I don't want to continue in this business now that the business is changing. But I thought well, number one, I was too young to retire and I thought what I need to do is I need to find out how they're making these computer generated films. And so there was an opportunity opened up for me to go and bring all of my knowledge, all of my wisdom, all my expertise, and go to this little startup company called Sony Pictures Animation.

Bryan Lewis: 58:30

And.

Marcelo Vignali: 58:30

I was a little happy right, and it was a startup and I went over there and I helped. I brought my expertise as to how we were going to make some of these films and I worked on everything from open season it was Surf's Up, it was Cloudy, with a Chance of Meatballs. I became the production designer for Hotel Transylvania, which turned out to be one of the biggest franchises for the studio at the time, and I worked on the Smurfs and then I worked on Into the Spiderverse, which brought the studio their first Oscar, and then I worked on a film after that which was called Vivo, and then I actually left to go back to Disney and now I'm going back into Disney television animation. So this was a third part of the studio, the Disney studio. So now I had worked at Theme Park Design, which was Walt Disney Imagineering. I worked at Walt Disney Feature Animation and now Walt Disney Television Animation, and again I brought my expertise. I helped write the documents how we were going to be doing development. I hired the team, then I trained the team and we were working to do development. Now this was going to be for all of the product that was going into Disney Plus. So that's what I was brought on board to move to manage the content that we were developing that was going into Disney Plus.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:00:09

But again, it's one of those things that life has a way of sort of moving the game. You think that you're playing Parcheasy and then, before you know it, the game changes and you're playing not and you have to adapt to whatever it is that's happening. That's exactly what happened that when COVID hit, the studio had to lock everything up. They couldn't run their ships, so all of their cruise lines were not available. They closed down their parks, they closed down the theaters, so Disney was an entire studio that was made of social interaction and that's what was shut down. So they ended up cutting a lot of contracts, and that was when they cut their contract with me as well. But still today, the people and the system that I put in place is still being utilized, so it's like I'm still there.

Bryan Lewis: 1:01:08

Well, if I could back up a little bit, I mean, when you went into animation, you were working on some big name movies for Disney and you were doing some character design too right.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:01:20

I was doing a little bit of everything and I think part of that is that for most people they see it as you're doing. Like I said, it's very compartmentalized You're either a character designer or an animator or your background designer. But for myself, because I can do all of these things that they usually put me on the front end of projects to develop them. So it gives me an opportunity to design the backgrounds and design the characters and then paint these things and do all of that all at the same time. So that's the sort of thing that I was bringing to the studio as I was trying to create what that was. So it was a little bit of everything. On a project like Brother Bear, it was mostly character work that I was doing. On a project like the Kingdom of the Sun, which turned into the emperor's new groove, it was a lot of background design that I was doing. The same thing with Lilo and Stitch. It was coming up with these backgrounds, but also not just backgrounds but also coming up with ideas. That was one of the things that I found that I seemed to have a knack for, because for me the drawing is the easier part, for me just executing that and for a lot of people it's a difficult thing, but for me it seemed to come easier.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:02:31

For me I realized that now in hindsight that for me it was more about the ideas. For me it was more about, oh, I would think about something problem, solve it and then apply my talent to it. So, whereas I think other people the task of drawing or designing is so daunting that sometimes they have pre-designed, pre-designed, prescribed ideas of what they can deliver and they work within that framework. And for me it wasn't that. It was well, what idea do I wanna see? And I would visualize it in my head and then simply draw it. So that's where the studio's found you know, whether it was over at Disney, or whether it or Disney features, or Disney television, or even at Sony Pictures Animation it was utilizing me, not just for my ability to draw, but my ability to ideate, to come up with ideas and come up with new ways of seeing things. And that was, I found, like, oh, I think that's my strength is having ideas about things.

Bryan Lewis: 1:03:36

We often talk about CEOs for the company and how they need to get back to Dreamers or just people that have new ideas, and so I'm gonna put your name up there, as we need an idea guy.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:03:50

Thank you, thank you.

Bryan Lewis: 1:03:52

But you know you mentioned Emperor's New Groove and you were saying backgrounds and it immediately hit me like that movie has always been a beautiful movie to me, like just the backgrounds and you know it doesn't get as much praise as it probably should. But you know, fast forward to Hotel Transylvania and you were given some awards on that right.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:04:15

Yes, I was nominated for production designer of the year on that project, that and also Surf's Up. I'll tell you this about Surf's Up because a lot of people you know you see the work and you don't know some of the backstory that comes along with it. When I was working on Mulan, I was working with a really, really wonderful and talented group of people. But that story actually begins with Mulan being a little girl and she has this pig that she has befriended and it's her little compatriot. Instead of having like a little brother to get in the mischief, she has this little round fat pig that gets into mischief. And I remember seeing all of those sequences of her riding her pig, breaking you know doing, creating chaos in Mayhem in her village and getting scolded, for she was that little tomboy that had this relationship and she was just kind of quirky and she had this funny character that she was interacting with.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:05:22

Well, all of that stuff got cut from the film and I thought it was absolutely wonderful. The development they had on it, the heart that it had, that character was so wonderful and so special, and so it got cut and it went away and I was working with Chris Sanders and Dean de Blois on that show. This is Mulan, and I think that Chris Sanders was head of story. Then we're working a few years later. We're working on Lilo and Stitch, and Lilo and Stitch is Mulan. When she was a little girl, all of those concepts about this, you know funny, quirky little girl, even the same little haircut that she had was the same thing. That was on the storyboard.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:06:04

So I believe the character was developed on Mulan and it was such a wonderful and endearing character that she persevered and got her own film, which was Lilo and Stitch, and instead of having the little pig, the little pig turned into a little alien.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:06:22

That was sort of like a robust little character and it was wonderful to see that connection. But then you know, years later we're working I'm working on Surf's Up over at Sony and one of the guys, one of my friends, arman Serrano, came on board that project to work with us and as we're designing the jungle Arman and I'm designing and drawing all these trees and Arman says why don't we just make it look like the work we did when we were on Lilo and Stitch and so on, surf's Up when you look at the design language a sort of flowing design language that you know, this was how I approached design and how Arman approached design on Lilo and Stitch. We took that and then we just went, we fell right back into it and we're working together as a three-dimensional version of what that jungle looked like. So you can see the progression of these ideas and how they inspire these other ideas and this lineage of ideas as it continues to go through, and so you can see that as you thread through those different projects and through the decades.

Bryan Lewis: 1:07:37

Well, now I'm going to have to go watch some of that and see if I can pick it out. I really appreciate that story. That's really cool.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:07:46

Yeah, you were talking about Hotel Transylvania and I went off on this tangent, you know, going. That's okay, we're talking about the, this sort of like how these things come together. But the same thing happened on Hotel Transylvania, where that you know, I had been at Disney Imagineering doing theme park design as we were working out all of these. You know these spaces and I was also one of the things that Disney does on the Disney property is they build these hotels and we went to go see some of these hotels that they have. There's one that's called the Wilderness Lodge and it was this incredible, incredible space. It's just absolutely beautiful.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:08:24

You get a chance to Google that, see the Google the Wilderness Lodge over on the Disney lot, and I remember that when the space is so big that the only way they can really sort of control it so it doesn't become overwhelming but allows you to engage the space, it's the way they lit it and there was one of the people that had done the lighting that I had made friends with and they were talking to me about that. They were saying, like this is how they lit it and everything. And I'm a curious person, I'm a very curious mind and this was something that was very engaging to me. All that information. It just went right into the hopper I'm carrying it around. Fast forward to here. I am working on Hotel Transylvania and I have to design a hotel.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:09:13

Incredible, isn't it the way that all of that kind of just comes together and stitches together. So I have to design this hotel and I'm designing this big, giant medieval hotel. The first thing that came into my mind was the Wilderness Lodge, because it was so impressive to me and how they control the light. So when you look at what was done on Hotel Transylvania how we control the light inside that space, it was 175 feet long. When you look at the length of the lobby, it was 175 feet and I thought that's a really, really big space. How are we gonna make sure that this doesn't turn into an airport like?

Marcelo Vignali: 1:09:57

an airport hanger. It could turn into that very easily. We're just big in the space and it'll be very ugly. And so I started to break things out. And same thing that was done the same knowledge that I had acquired when I was working at Disney Imagineering of how to design a hotel and how to control these spaces with lighting. I broke them up in the very much the same way, inspired by the Wilderness Lodge that I had seen when I was on the property.

Bryan Lewis: 1:10:29

The Wilderness Lodge is one of our bucket list places. I just love going there and standing in that lobby. It's just amazing.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:10:36

Yeah, well, that's the closest you'll get to Hotel Transylvania because that was the inspiration for Hotel Transylvania.

Bryan Lewis: 1:10:46

Love hearing that. That's awesome. Well, you've definitely had, and still are having, quite a career. Is there anything you can share that you're working on now?

Marcelo Vignali: 1:11:00

Unfortunately, no One of the drawbacks of working in development because, like I said, because of my ability to draw different things, draw the characters and backgrounds and paint them and put them in believable spaces, I'm always front-ended on a lot of projects and so I do a lot of development for these projects. But, unfortunately, because that's the most secretive part of the industry, which is any projects that are in development, and everything that I'm talking about right now are all those projects that have already come out, but anything that's in development right now I just can't talk about. So a lot of times I'm sitting on a lot of secrets like, wow, I hope people when they see this it's gonna knock their socks off, but I have to keep my mouth shut. But right now I'm working on a whole variety of different things and it's probably I'd have to say it's probably one of the most exciting times in my career, just the breadth of things that I'm doing.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:12:08

And, again, it's one of those where I started from, with that little kid sitting in that theater, being inspired and traumatized with story, with visuals, with creativity, with imagination, and having this incredible career and having all of these opportunities open up for me and line up and the relationships that I've had like, going from that person that I met in that ship when I was about seven years old, all the way through to the opportunities I was given on Toontown, the opportunity to work with Jim Henson, the films, the way they unfolded for me, and I've truly been so richly blessed and it's hard to fathom how things lined up for me in that way, especially when you consider from that moment of me being four years old, hiding behind the chairs in front of me because I was afraid of Chernobob, when the Night on Bald Mountain sequence was happening. I was so terrified, I was high on it I didn't even want to see it.

Bryan Lewis: 1:13:24

That movie's been big for me too, so I can definitely understand the hiding part. Where can we find you if we want to find some of your work?

Marcelo Vignali: 1:13:35

Yeah, you can see me on my website, which is Vignale studiocom. I have a blog also. I know that a lot of people don't do blogger, but I still have a blog, and if you go to my website, vignalestudiocom, there's a link to it. You click on it and it takes you there. Unfortunately, what happens is I've got it on my computer. It says that, oh, if you click on this link, you could get hacked, but it's simply that my website is linked to it, and so the computer thinks that someone else is linked to it. Well, it is, it's me that's linked to it, but so there's that. And also I have a Facebook page that I update as well, where I post artwork, and then there's also in the professional side for those people that are interested from the professional side of entertainment, and they can find me on LinkedIn under Marcelo Vignale.

Bryan Lewis: 1:14:32

OK, and I will link to some of those spots so that people can come find you and learn more about you. It's been just an honor being able to speak with you and hear about your career and some amazing stories that you told us, so thank you so much for joining us.

Marcelo Vignali: 1:14:52

Well, thank you so much, Brad. Brian, I'm sorry, thank you so much. Brian, I really appreciate the opportunity just to reminisce about some of these ideas. It's funny because for the most part you just go on about your day and then you don't cover all of the history and connect all the dots until you're actually talking with someone about some of these experiences. And you've afforded that for me and I appreciate it.

Bryan Lewis: 1:15:21

What a terrific interview that was. I had such a great time. Thank you again to Marcelo for joining me. This has been an honor being able to talk to him. I hope everyone was able to get so much out of listening to him. He has so many great stories.

Bryan Lewis: 1:15:39

The next time you ride the Roger Rabbit cartoon, spin out in Disneyland, pay attention to those barrels and try to think of which one he may have left that drawing in. I mean, what an Easter egg that is. You can tell everybody hey, there's a drawing hidden in one of these barrels, just just an awesome story there. But at the age of four, knowing exactly what he was going to do, and then getting that propulsion from that artist on the ship, like wow, that was the catalyst I was looking for. And he got that in the strangest of places, but amazing nonetheless. I love hearing stories like this. I always know that there's going to be something that pushes someone to keep going and that really was that foundation for him. And look at what he's done with that Like. You need to get out to his Facebook page and check out some of his work. His drawings are incredible and you're just going to love the stories that he puts with his drawings and see some of the stuff that's going on. You know, one thing that I did mention to him is that Disney recently, at Destination D23, announced the Pirates-themed lounge that they want to put in near the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in the Magic Kingdom. And how cool is that? If you go look at his Facebook page, he has some haunted Harbor Galley drawings out there that he had worked on back in the day Something really cool that he did and it would be neat to see some of that come forward with this new project that is going to be happening in Magic Kingdom At least, I hope it does. I think that it'll be a really, really neat space if they are able to build that. But, marcelo, one last time, thank you so much for joining us. It's been an honor and I appreciate it so much. Go out on Facebook, find us.

Bryan Lewis: 1:17:42

We're at Miles from Main Street. A reminder that Topper has been posting within the Miles from Main Street community group. He has been recently posting some drawings from fellow Imagineers that he has and I got to see that book. It's so cool and he's wondering if you guys want to see more of that. And if you do, please go out there and comment underneath. Let him know how cool this stuff is, so that he knows that you want to see more. I would love to see more, but he hears that from me all the time, so please let him know and find us on Instagram at Miles from Main Street, there as well. As I said, I'll be posting in the show notes links to Marcelo's Facebook and his websites. But, as we like to say, some live close but others don't, so let's talk about it. We'll see you next time on Miles from Main Street. Does anyone want to join us?