WATCH: Local man helps create Chessington theme park ride
FEW artists are lucky enough to see their drawings or models brought to life.
But for local man Steve De La Mare that is exactly what happened when a theme park ride he helped design opened in the UK.
Mr De La Mare is a creative visualiser and much of his work involves creating digital images that are later used as templates for things from room decor to terrifying rides.
While a visualiser is told what to draw, Mr De La Mare said he is given a theme and asked to create something around it.
Theme park rides are just one element of the work he carries out and he has been involved in designing visuals for places such as the Sealife Centre in Nagoya, Japan, the Beluga Whale Sanctuary in Iceland and coming up with concepts for Madame Tussaud’s sites around the world.
After completing A-levels at the Boys’ Grammar School he took a technical theatre course at Mountview drama school in London.
However, he always had a keen interest in art and painting and after a friend who worked for the company that ran Alton Towers said they were short of painters, Mr De La Mare was invited to paint a sky in a room.
‘When I got there, the room was about 150ft long,’ he said.
He set to the task, but after a while decided to add a few birds and other creatures to the work, which came as a surprise to his bosses when they saw it and they demanded to know who had authorised the additions.
Mr De La Mare admitted he had put them in of his own volition and was promptly asked if he would like to paint other rooms.
He ended up creating rooms themed around an array of topics, from Arabian Nights to Cadbury’s chocolate.
His career underwent a dramatic change when he hurt his arm and had to stop painting, so he put his theatre training to good use and spent several years teaching drama.
But after several years he returned to the world of design and became a freelance creative visualiser.
Theme park rides he has worked on include those at Peppa Pig Land and the revamped Collosos wooden rollercoaster at Heide Park Resort in northern Germany.
Croc Drop is the most recent ride to open, at Chessington World of Adventures, and he created dozens of illustrations of how he thought the ride could look, with riders experiencing a 25m vertical drop into the mouth of a giant crocodile, based on the concept of it being a temple to the Egyptian god Sobek.
As well as the rides, Mr De La Mare also comes up with designs for the queuing area to give patrons a chance to get into the mood by learning the mythology behind the rides, such as the Forbidden Kingdom section of the park.
The ride opened on 12 April.
‘It’s gone down brilliantly,’ said Mr De La Mare. ‘People like it because there’s a narrative to it. There’s a story.’
Another tale that inspired one of his designs was horror movie The Wicker Man, which is now an Alton Towers rollercoaster.
Mr De La Mare was invited to have a free ride, but it was not an experience he was keen to repeat.
‘I was terrified,’ he said.
In future he is happy to let others experience the rides while he enjoys seeing his work made real.
