In the latest episode of “We Call It Imagineering,” Disney revealed several exciting details of the upcoming “Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away” parade, including the news that the parade will feature original animation.
Disney Starlight Parade Features New Animation of Jiminy Cricket
As we first reported yesterday, the latest episode of “We Call It Imagineering” was focused entirely on Disney entertainment. After briefly discussing “Tales of Magic” at Disneyland Paris and the 20th anniversary entertainment at Hong Kong Disneyland, the rest of the episode focused on “Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away.”
Imagineers revealed that in addition to the updated lights, music, and costumes, “Disney Starlight” will also include some original animation. Specifically, there will be an animated version of Jiminy Cricket from “Pinocchio” featured prominently toward the end of the parade.
The designers specifically chose Jiminy Cricket for the end of “Disney Starlight” because they wanted to reference the previous nighttime parade, “Spectromagic,” which had him waving goodbye to guests at the end of the parade. The Blue Fairy, who appears at the beginning of the parade, is a nod to the “Main Street Electrical Parade.”
The designers started with the idea of making Jiminy’s body out of starlight to match the theme of the parade. To begin the process, they started with a rough idea of the movement they wanted to create.
The Imagineers then revealed they took the initial ideas to legendary animator Eric Goldberg for refining. Goldberg helped them improve the animation, and “he did it traditionally, pencil-to-paper. We scanned those pencil drawings and gave him a nice, smooth animation.”
The next step of the process included adding the starlight effect to Jiminy’s body, since they wanted him to be made of shimmering stars instead of his usual animated figure. The designers first analyzed the appearance of substances like starlight and Pixie Dust, drawing inspiration from Tinker Bell in “Peter Pan,” the Blue Fairy in “Pinocchio,” and the movement of objects like stars or fairies in “Fantasia.”
Finally, designers had to add the starlight effect to Jiminy Cricket. They admitted “this was a big challenge” because “this is a 2-D cartoon animation that was trying to mimic the environment lighting.” They ended up breaking down Jiminy’s body into 72 individual pieces to help guide the effects.
Additional news from this latest episode includes a first look at several of the main parade floats, the reveal of an original character made specifically for the parade, and a glimpse of the new glowing costumes.
“Disney Starlight” is set to be the first regular nighttime parade at the Magic Kingdom in nearly a decade, following the conclusion of the “Main Street Electrical Parade” run in 2016. It is scheduled to run nightly at 9:00 p.m. and again at 11:00 p.m., with exceptions for the nights when there is a ticketed event such as Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. In expectation of heavy demand following the parade’s debut, Walt Disney World will start requiring Annual Passholders to make a park reservation for Magic Kingdom no matter the time of day.
Watch the full episode below:
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