Digital desktop artwork released through the official Disney Parks Blog between 2011 and 2018.

The official Disney Parks Blog didn't always have as much polish as it does today, with its slick design and well-curated content. In its early days, it was a more traditional, text-based blog educating fans on upcoming events and activities at their two domestic theme parks in California and Florida.

When content releases were light, they enlisted the help of contributing artists to produce digital wallpapers for desktop and mobile devices. Disney Artists like Jason Ratner and Ashley Taylor were called upon to create beautiful works of art that Guests could download for free. In 2011, I was added to the stable of contributing artists when I was asked if I would like to create a digital wallpaper for Disney's Aulani Resort in Hawai'i.

While the 2024 redesign of the Disney Parks Blog forced the company to archive most of the articles and wallpapers that were released previously, I am presenting them here as part of my portfolio.

It's said that everyone experiences their "15 minutes of fame" just once in their lifetime. I would say that I was lucky enough to experience it twice. The first time being when the official Disney Parks Blog asked me if I would like to be a contributing artist and recognize me in the posts by name. The second time would be when I would be invited to serve as a featured presenter/artist for the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts.

You see, it's long been a tradition at Disney that "the name on the door is Disney". Individual contributors were part of the greater whole unless you worked on something like a film or television show where credits were an avenue for public recognition. I'd say that started changing in the mid-2000s and more artists, designers, and creatives involved with online content and theme park design were being publicly recognized by the company in posts and other online content.

On the heels of having my creative name (Tiki T) mentioned in Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom as the game closed in 2007, I worked on developing my Adobe Photoshop skills. I watched a few tutorials, read a few articles, and tried some new techniques. In 2011, remembering an interview I did with their internal Cast Member magazine, Eyes and Ears, the team reached out and asked if I would be interested in creating digital wallpapers for the blog that could be released monthly.

It was meant to be a temporary arrangement for just that year, but in the end they continued to allow me to contribute on and off for the next seven years. In the end, I created twenty-three digital wallpapers with artwork covering a variety of attractions and events. I also designed temporary logos and a few infographics that could be used as they expanded onto Instagram.

I was given great freedom for how I would express myself in the artwork, and so I used each new piece as a means to try out newly learned techniques. If you look at the collection as a whole, you'll see that while there are similarities in style from wallpaper to wallpaper, there's always some very speciific quality that separates each from one another. In the beginning, it was all about shapes and gradients. Towards the end of my time as a contributing artist, I was experimenting heavily with shadow and light to create realistic dimension.

I look back very fondly on my time as a contributing artist for the Blog and consider myself very fortunate to have had this guest-facing avenue to share my artwork.