♪♪ [Daniel Adams] It is kind of like just playing it by ear.

It's more of a scumbling process.

So, I'm doing more type layering.

Oh yeah, I like that, and then I'll go ahead and use more of it.

Maybe give it sort of a sunset effect maybe.

Yeah.

I think that will look good.

♪♪ [Daniel Adams] I call myself an all-around artist.

Some people would say it's a figure artist, a portrait artist, a landscape artist.

I sort of fit all of those at different times of my career and my life.

It depends on what show I'm trying to enter.

If it's a landscape show, I'm a landscape artist.

That's what I do.

(laughs) [Daniel Adams] It's more of an exploration of a greater process.

It's a journey.

It's really an artistic journey that I'm going through.

♪♪ [Daniel Adams] When I started working with Disney it was back in 1971, opening day of Magic Kingdom.

So, I was there.

This was a pop-up thing that I made in 1971 for the opening of Disney.

And it was a good experience because I'm drawing a good eight hours a day, working on my line drawings, learning color and everything too.

So, it was really a lot of on-the-job training.

That was pen and ink drawings on an overhead projector so lots of people could watch me and had lines out the door.

I mean, quite literally they were just lined up.

And then I think my record at the time in a single day was like 337 people.

In about 1980, Epcot was being built and so they needed artists for Epcot.

So, I transferred over to that and that is where I learned all types of things, sculpting and painting and color mixing and different compounds, different resins, mold making.

[Daniel Adams] This is an actual master front that we used at Disney.

And this was fiberglass.

So, we could actually make a mold of it.

And then from there we would actually pour in the rubber so it would be a flexible skin.

So, the mouth would actually open.

There were teeth.

[Daniel Adams] And so eventually worked my way up and became the head artist and the senior artist there for the Magic Kingdom.

And so, I was in charge of all the key aesthetic elements of the park.

[Daniel Adams] This is the Disney dollar, this is one of my ideas that actually created money.

Kids could then go out and spend it there in the park.

[Daniel Adams] I was actually named employee of the year there out of 50,000 employees one year and that was a nice honor to get.

We have main engine start.

[Daniel Adams] A few years later, the Challenger accident happened.

And liftoff.

Liftoff of the 25th space shuttle mission and it has cleared the tower.

[Daniel Adams] I think anybody who was alive then remembers where they were at that moment.

Kind of like when Kennedy was shot.

You remember that moment.

(explosion) Velocity 2,900 feet per second.

Altitude 9 nautical miles.

[Daniel Adams] And so I wanted to do something to contribute to that effect.

So, I developed the license plate for that and thinking about that.

And they kept it for like ten years, so thousands of them and it raised over $50 million for the Astronaut's Memorial Foundation.

It wasn't for monetary value of it, that wasn't my purpose.

That was just an act of humanity wanting to come forth and say, that's my small part.

♪♪ [Daniel Adams] The county flag, that happened pretty much around the same time.

They actually had a competition.

So, I submitted my design and eventually that is the one that won.

That flag flies at county buildings, all the schools and fire stations and police stations.

And there's Robert Fisher, who is an astronaut, so he lived there and they presented him with his own copy of the flag.

He took that flag with him on his own space shuttle mission.

So, my artwork has made it out of this world.

It has gone around the world.

They told me to really go places.

(laughs) [Daniel Adams] This is an old process.

This is developed for the printmaking process for newspapers and advertisements and the artwork itself and they wanted to do reproductions of paintings even.

Let me try and do this in one continuous motion.

It's got lots and lots of pounds of pressure being put on that plate.

[Daniel Adams] There we go.

You can see the pressure that's put on here.

You can see how it embosses the picture even.

And voila!

Yeah.

No Bullwinkle.

♪♪ [Daniel Adams] I get bored doing the same thing over and over and over again.

After about the 100th time, it's like I never want to do that again.

I always want to try something new.

I like experimenting.

I like trying different mediums, different materials.

I'm always trying something different.

It keeps me from being bored.

♪♪ [Daniel Adams] Being an artist, I can live wherever I want.

I don't have to live in New York City.

I don't have to live in Chicago.

I don't have to live in LA.

Actually, as an artist, I can work anywhere, I can get commissions from anywhere in the country and paint it here in Iowa, and not have to put up with all the headaches of the big city.

Good old Iowa.

I didn't know Iowa that much.

I never lived in Iowa before when we moved up here.

The thing I like about Eldora, the Iowa River runs right along it.

We have a state park here.

We have a beautiful courthouse.

A nice small town.

We've got one stop light, which is amazing.

So much in Iowa to appreciate and then a lot of it is subtle.

And that's what I did the first couple of years, I didn't really paint any Iowa scenes to begin with, I was just trying to feel Iowa, really feel what is the vibe.

And I'm doing more plein air type work now.

I'm actually going out and painting live right directly from the subject itself.

I think it's kind of miraculous.

It's been a really nice discovery.

♪♪