Essay - Joseph Neumeyer - Describes What Model Railroaders Do

 

Solutioneering, Ward Kimball and Model Railroad Design

By Joseph Neumeyer

Condensed and Commented On by Nicholas Kalis

Growing up in Los Angeles, Joseph Neumeyer visited Disneyland every summer and admired those whose job it was to create and improve "The Happiest Place on Earth." Joseph tried to capture his impressions of the world in various forms, even creating his own rides in the backyard of his parents' home. So taken by 2001 A Space Odyssey, he sought to recreate it in backyard miniature dioramas. After seeing Star Wars, he and a fellow model maker concluded they both had the skills to attempt motion picture, miniature special effects. Soon Joseph was building miniatures for films BattleStar Galactica, Raise The Titanic and Buck Rogers in the 21st Century and then full-scale sets and props for Universal Studios and Walt Disney Productions. Building components for Disney's EPCOT Center and Disney Tokyo, was Joseph's first exposure to not only how major theme attractions were fabricated but also how they were conceived and presented to potential corporate sponsors.

Sharing a love for live steam model trains with Academy Award winning Animation Director, Ward Kimball, Joseph arranged a visit at Ward's home, where he presented a portfolio of his train dioramas. After a tour of Kimball's "backyard" complete with full-scale railroad tracks, steam engines, and the station house from the movie Chattanooga Choo Choo, Kimball persuaded Joseph Disney had a need for "concept people" and suggested he consider becoming a "show designer" for its theme park division.

Joseph soon started developing ideas and hiring commercial illustrators to envision new Disneyland attractions. He developed story board art for three totally different attractions, from three totally different periods of time, employing artists with totally different styles and techniques. Joseph explained: "The look of the ride's presentation art should feature the unique theatrical story-telling qualities of the particular attraction being presented. The finished look of the art for each ride presentation, would be as unique as the ride itself".

While “Imagineering", coined at Walt E. Disney Enterprises - represents a combination of imagination and engineering, the theme park industry had a greater need of a service, less well known, called "Solutioneering” - an ability to not only imagineer, but to do so in a way that would ultimately present entertainment solutions to specific, theme park marketing goals.

With Disney executives unable to review Joseph's ride presentation portfolio, he presented it to others in the theme park industry. Soon, Joseph assisted on proposed theme parks and attractions around the world such as Lisbon's proposed Lusolandia to present the 15th and 16th century "Golden Era" of Portuguese exploration. Joseph produced finished renderings presenting the entire facility including illustrations of attractions then not yet conceived. The client wanted only one illustration depicting the overall scheme of each ride or country Portugal had explored. He developed ride concepts for these countries, selected commercial illustrators to produce the renderings, and then art-directed the entire process. Joseph's theme park design career culminated in "Conquistadores" - one of four rides he conceived and developed for a major theme park "Magical Journeys". As a member of an early 1990s design team, Joseph created, orchestrated, and presented a series of original ride concepts to developers of a proposed $2 billion theme park for Kobe, Japan. For over a decade, Joseph worked, in a creative design and coordination capacity with several theme park design firms for world-wide projects working with talented artists, architects, designers, writers, and engineers.

Over the past two decades, the theme park industry shifted its emphasis from theme attractions to thrill rides; opportunities to design the classic "Pirates of the Caribbean" type theme park attraction were few. Responding in 1998, Joseph shifted his priorities as well, founding Joseph Neumeyer's Dynamic Dioramas to create works that give viewers the realistic effect of "being there."

Known as a mock-ups, ride miniatures - constructed to finalize, in three-dimensions, the "story in pictures" developed earlier in the ride design effort - are the culmination of the attraction's creative process concerning architectural exterior and interior show components. What remains is primarily a matter of scaling-up the show and ride components to full size.

A well-designed miniature diorama - and model railroad - is similar to a theme park ride mock-up as both share characters and vignettes, compositional and lighting considerations, etc., combined to create a visual, storytelling tableau. 

An accomplished theme park show designer who masters the art of miniature dioramas is far more capable of presenting his or her creative abilities in either field of expertise. Joseph had this mastery of two complementary fields of artistic endeavor in mind when he started his company. Joseph attributed much of the demand from museums, and theme parks for his work to an essential factor central to all his work: a dramatic compositional and storytelling skill integrating vignettes and various focuses of attention. A BA in Studio Art augmented Joseph's proficiency in both industrial design model making and motion picture special effects miniatures.  In his final year at Arizona State University, Joseph produced decorative sculpture as banquets centerpieces at a four-star hotel. Returning to Los Angeles, Joseph showed photos of this work to those hiring model makers for the movie Titanic. They hired him saying: "If he can build those out of tallow and salt-dough, he can build anything!" He went on to apply his model making skills to such movies as Starship Troopers, Godzilla, and theme attractions such as Star Trek, The Experience in Las Vegas.