In the spring 2010 issue of Disney twenty-three, Editor in Chief Carmen Esquer traveled a few miles north to Glendale, California, to meet with Megan Brain, the daughter of retired Disney animator David Brain (The Jungle Book, The Black Cauldron). Megan, who studied 2D animation and illustration at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and spent some years working in television, is a paper sculptor, a profession she describes as Zen-like. "I love the focus now," she says. "I can get into this great zone where it's very peaceful and almost meditative, where I can just focus on making something pretty."
More than 20 of Megan's sculptures, including Ariel, Sebastian, Alice, Cheshire Cat, and Chernabog, will be featured in World of Color, a spectacular 25-minute nighttime water show that will open this spring at Disney's California Adventure and will combine hundreds of fountains and a kaleidoscope of audio and visual effects. Her finished sculptures have been photographed, Photoshopped and animated on a computer and will be projected onto the water using stop-motion animation. Even though the actual sculptures are projected on a screen that's 380 feet long and 50 feet high, in person, at no more than 12 inches tall each, they are truly remarkable little pieces of art to behold.
