3D Theme Park Guests

One of the necessary evils of designing for theme parks is the need to populate your sketches with "happy guests" wandering around and interacting with your conceptual attractions. I will include people for scale, and to help indicate how a vehicle, prop, or environment is experienced, but I do tend to assume that if my design doesn't appear fun to begin with then no amount of virtual happy people will help it. Still, I have been proven wrong on many occasions by some very talented Imagineers that really have a knack for drawing people having a good time. As I keep working on these skills, I have noticed that one environment completely absent of happy guests are 3D concept models. Grabbing the typically default 3D businessmen just doesn't cut it when it comes to filling a themed space with a happy virtual audience, so I wanted to see if I could change that a little.


I have been playing around with Rigging simple people models to allow me to pose them in a variety of theme park guest specific poses. Although I need to create more variety in my virtual guests there is a lot of promise in being able to pose 3D guests in positions specific to the projects I am working on. This way I can place them throughout a conceptual landscape, in mock-up vehicles, and interactive display that they are playing with. Here are a few of my first attempts to try out my theory.

Update: I have uploaded these models to the SketchUp 3D Warehouse for your downloading pleasure. I have also created a group of female guests as well.