DISNEY’s MAGIC SHOT 3D REdesign

Magic Shots are a foundational part of a magical visit to the Disney Parks. Custom art combines with Guest photography to embed our visitors into Disney’s beloved stories, and enhance their park memories with a little touch of what Disney does best: Magic!

A major part of my role on the PhotoPass team consisted of redesigning these Magic Shots in 3D, for greater photorealism, flexibility, and creative control.

Team: Disney’s PhotoPass

Contributions: Initiation of 3D pipeline + all 3D work

BALLOONS

There are few Disney photos more iconic than Mickey balloons on Main Street. For a lucky few, Cast Members will gather up their Mickey balloon bundle and let Guests take hold for a photo; a photo that is joyful, magical, and distinctly Disney.

While very few park Guests get a chance to take part in a physical interaction like this, our Mickey Balloon Magic Shot makes it possible for hundreds of Guests per day to take home the photo memory of this timeless experience.

Our original art asset for this deliverable was simply a 2D, digitally painted balloon bundle. A lovely painterly style, but limiting in its ability to be recolored or customized to park campaigns or holidays.

Starting with a need for an Easter-themed seasonal balloon overlay, I modeled a new Mickey Balloon bundle in 3D, and pitched the resulting render to the team.

As you can see below, the 3D approach was quickly adopted, and Mickey Balloons quickly became a go-to offering for holidays, park campaigns, and evergreen Magic.

Expanding upon existing relationships with our film partners was another major motivator in adopting 3D into our pipeline at PhotoPass.

Being the resident 3D artist meant leveling up our synergy opportunities with Pixar, Marvel, and LucasFilm partners, being able to ingest film-ready 3D models and prep them for rendering for Guest photos.

Previously a 2D asset, our confetti art used to be placed and painted (lovingly), one piece at a time, season by season and campaign by campaign.

The Confetti Magic Shot was the perfect opportunity for a 3D redesign. I built a flexible 3D rig in Cinema 4D, that allowed artists to easily swap out confetti art and colors, (while retaining the trademark metallic sequin texture) and to quickly generate endless variations of confetti placement.

The rig was also animated, allowing the resulting render to benefit from physically accurate in-camera motion blur.

I had the joy of presenting this 3D redesign of PhotoPass’s Magic Shot library at the 2025 Disney Design Summit with my colleague Jerry Heberly, with this presentation yielding the highest attendance of breakout sessions at the Summit.