InfiniteRightEar, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

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InfiniteRightEar, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby PirateSteven » Sun Jun 29, 2014 9:15 pm

On behalf of all of the interested Disney Infinity Fans we asked InfiniteRightEar some questions.

What is your real name? Country?

Hi, my name is Spencer Ferguson, and I like warm hugs. (Southern California, United States)

What is the origin story of your Toy Box submission username?

My dad was a gamer for a long time until I was in 6th grade where I became the family gamer, mainly playing the Halo and Lego series. My dad is from Palos Verdes so he just put his name and an abbreviation of the city (PV) for the Xbox account and voila!

What made you decide to buy Disney Infinity?

The announcement event at the El Capitain theater. Being a lover of all things Disney, Infinity immediately appealed to me giving me a chance to experience the Disney characters in a new light. It also helps that I love it when the Disney characters crossover (like with Hercules and the Arabian Night, the Epic Mickey series, and the House of Mouse TV series) and would love to see a Disney-avengers type movie one day. What drew the most attention was the possibilities of using the toys for my several armchair Imagineering ideas (which is like a fan fic version of Imagineering since I hope to become one some day when I'm older).

What is your favorite play set and why?

Lone Ranger. While Pirates and Toy story did give Lone Ranger a run for it's money, there's one thing that made it better in my opinion, trains. Growing up, the one thing I loved more than Disney was trains (mainly with stuff like Thomas the Tank Engine), and having trains in that playset made it extra cooler to me.

Who is your favorite Disney Infinity character and why?

This is a hard one for me. After much thinking, I'm stuck between Elsa and Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey. Elsa, mainly because of her awesome ice powers and funny comebacks ("Feeling a bit chilly" always gets me) and Frozen is my favorite movie so it seems logical that one of the two characters would be my favorite (I'm still hoping for a Frozen playset). Mickey is because he is my favorite Disney character of all time (second is Oswald) and he's the most powerful character in the game, but sucks when I play online and am not trying to attack my fellow players.

Which character would you like to see included that hasn't already been and why?

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. having just come off of the Epic Mickey series, I loved Oswald so much that I wish he would be used more often. Also having abilities from Epic Mickey that could be replicated into Infinity like his boomerang leg (maybe like Agent P's hat), his helicopter ears (which could work with the new flying mechanic in infinity 2), and his electric remote which could be used to zap your enemies with a bolt of electricity

What is your favorite power disc and why?

Any of the healing power disc, always saves my life whenever I'm fighting and don't want to die.

When you hear of a new challenge, what steps do you take to make your idea for a Toy Box a reality?

I do the Imagineering thing and start with Blue Skying ideas of what I could do. I then factor in the limitations of Infinity and get building.

How long did each of your featured Toy Boxes take to build?

I usually take a day to make those types of toy boxes, but according to the game, I spent 2 hours and 22 minutes to build the Space Mountain one and 2 hours and 43 minutes to build Alice's journey, although it feels like it takes longer

Your Space Mountain toy box was featured in the first Disney Parks toy box challenge. What made you choose Space Mountain? Did you do any research? Please share with us some Inside the Toy Box info on Space Mountain.

I actually did a lot of parks related toy boxes (including a Carsland toy box with a Radiator Springs Racers and Luigi's Flying Tires). I used several youtube videos, google images, the layout model that they used to have in Disneyland, and experience I've had from actually going on the ride to help me design the toy box. While it's not my personal favorite attraction (Radiator Springs Racers holds that title), I still love the ride so I felt obligated to make a toy box based off of it for the parks challenge.



You also have a youtube channel under the name ThomasTheImagineer where you do walkthrough a of the weekly Featured Disney Infinity toy boxes. What are some of your favorite Toy Box that someone else has built?

I have seen a lot of great toy boxes in my time from great artists, but my favorites include the Indiana Jones (it does a great job a recreating the ride), the frozen toy boxes, the Tower of Terror, and the Tron one Disney did at the beginning.

You are a big fan of the Disney Theme Parks. What are some Disney Theme Park elements that you would like to see incorporated into figures, power discs, and/or toy box toys. Give us your top 5.

5. Pins. Would be a cool thing to collect in Infinity
4. Terrain and Sky Dome power disc tied to specific attractions (like Space Mountain or Small World)
3. Vinylmations. Being a big collector of them, it would be cool to have them work with Infinity
2. More toys/set pieces based on attractions and other stuff from the parks
1. An actual ride mechanic that let's you build your own version of the attractions and then can ride them

Your Alice in Wonderland toy box was inspired on the classic Disneyland theme park attraction. What made you choose to theme towards the Alice in Wonderland attraction? Did you do any research? Please share with us some Inside the Toy Box info on Alice's Journey.

Well, hearing about the Alice in Wonderland challenge, my mind immediately went to work on how a toy box based off of the ride could work. But with the ride currently down for a long refurbishment, my only resource for research was the videos. So I had the video on my phone while trying to replicate each scene as best I could. I considered having it be a race like my space mountain one, but I figured it would be more fun to walk through the attraction. I also was hoping to have some sort of townsperson for all the characters, but i ran into the issue that they always ran away and wouldn't stay where I would want them, so I gave up on that, but if u look behind the barrier just after the door scene, you should find a little green man there posing as dweedle dee.



What are some of your classic Toy Boxes that have not been a featured top 5 Toy Box?

I've already mentioned the carsland one that I'm extremely proud of. Another one I would've love to have seen won is a toy box based off of the Kingdom keepers book series where u "go to sleep" and wake up in the parks and have to fight villains in each land until you climb up the matterhorn to fire a cannon at Chernabog. I've also created a Peter Pan's fight toy box where you fly through most of the ride above several sights from the ride and ending up fighting captain hook's crew on his ship before you can exit the ride.

What is your dream Toy Box challenge?

An Epic Mickey challenge. It was my favorite game until Infinity came along and would love to see what people come up with.

Do you place any hidden features in your winning Toy Boxes?

Ive already mentioned the townsperon in the Alice toy box, but I also have a mad hatter townsperson in the ending of the ride. In my space mountain toy box, I actually have the backstage area where they load the vehicles that aren't working and where they store some after the park closes. I also have the exit in the queue that sometimes gets guest confused in the parks.

Your Flying Codfish toy box was selected as a featured toy box in the Neverland Challenge. Please share with us some Inside the Toy Box info on your Flying Codfish toy box.

Well to start off, this wasn't actually the first time I submited this toy box for a challenge, it actually was one of my submissions for the second Disney Parks Challenge but it was obvious that I didnt win that one, and with the peter pan challenge I thought it would be appropriate to submit it again, and it did win this time around luckily. The name "Flying Codfish" was inspired by the ride's vehicles (also since Peter pan's Flight could fit) that are minature versions of hook's ship and with Peter Pan's tease name for hook being codfish I felt it would make an appropriate title. This is mainly based off of the disneyland version since it's the original and I can use my actual experiences to help with the design of it. A problem that I had to face was with the toy box meter filling up around the fight scene near the end, so I had to delete some minor toys to make the finale. A little hidden detail I added was the ride track being above you throught most of the ride.



Share a story of adversity from when you were building one of your Toy Boxes that you had to overcome.

While building my entry for the Aladdin toy box challenge, I was going to one based off of the show at California Adventures in a button hunt form. I'm not too advanced when it come to the use of logic toys so i had to do a lot of practice to get the recorder thing down. Once i had it down, I went to work and built the theater and exterior and would finished it in a couple of days, only to be disappointed when it didn't make the top 5.

Share a funny story from when you were building one of your Toy Boxes.

Wow, this is hard since it doesn't really happen while I'm building a specific toy box, but when I'm just fooling around with friends online, it can be funny. The funniest thing to happen was an epic battle between Elsa (me) and Anna with the Toy Story Midway Mania blaster and it was hilarious dodging and blasting each other and fighting all over the Toy Box Launch toy box.

Do you have any advice for aspiring Toy Box Artists?

Watch the toy box meter, some toys take up alot more space than others so to get the maximum amount toys spawned in the game and have fun
 
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Re: InfiniteRightEar, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby Jazz820 » Mon Jun 30, 2014 1:59 am

Great interview and great toy boxes!!
 
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Re: InfiniteRightEar, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby tangled&tron » Fri Aug 22, 2014 12:15 pm

IMO it is cool that you had your resource vids playing on your phone while trying to recreate the scene in your toy box... very new school. LOL. I'm like super old school when it comes to building in the toy box. =D Haha.

Ooo! And I totally agree about Oswald... I didn't really like Epic Mickey 2 (lol), but I loved Oswald from that game. You're right he would be perfect for Infinity, especially with his powers... his propeller ears could be used just like the glide pack and maybe he could use his remote to take control of bad guy robots or remote fire cannons and stuff. ^_^

Oh... and I loved your playthrough of my Maleficent map when you used Rapunzel and just frying pan spam attacked everyone... including poor Rex. ^_^;; LOL.
 
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Re: InfiniteRightEar, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby crocko33 » Mon Aug 25, 2014 2:05 pm

Really like that idea of somehow incorporating pins/pin trading into Disney Infinity.
 
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