Artist swings from rock to rollercoasters

Amusement park rides served as local painter's canvas

Special to view photoRichard Guerrero airbrushes paint on the title character from the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.

For six years, Richard Guerrero got up at 1:30 a.m. to go to work as an artist at Disneyland.

It was his job to paint the robotic characters in the attractions. Now that he's moved to Las Vegas, he keeps busy painting murals for homeowners and businesses.

Guerrero grew up in Anaheim, in the shadow of the happiest place on Earth. As a child, he was always doodling. In high school he took art classes and got to design his school's jacket. But his formal art training took a detour after one year of college.

He and three other guys formed a rock band called The Menn. They were so good they cut a record and were scheduled to open for the Beatles in Seattle until that deal fell through. But they did get to open a concert for the Rolling Stones.

The Menn might have made a real name for itself and Guerrero might have furthered his art studies in college had it not been for Uncle Sam. He was drafted in 1967 and sent to Vietnam where he became a machine gunner. He was hit by some shrapnel, which led to a Purple Heart and an Army Commendation Medal but not a ticket stateside. When a superior asked for three men to take on a new assignment, Guerrero was ready.

"I volunteered because I couldn't imagine anything being worse than what I was already doing," he said. "He pointed to three of us, said, 'You, you and you' and then he said, 'You're going home.' It was like winning the lottery."

When he was discharged, more good luck came his way. Guerrero got a job as an artist for the EPCOT Center and WED (Walter Elias Disney) Enterprises, a separate company owned by Walt Disney.

Guerrero was sent to Japan for about a year where he worked with artists to create a new theme park, Sanrio Puroland. Later, he worked as an artist at Knott's Berry Farm for three years.

When a position opened up at Disneyland in 1997, he jumped at it and found a mentor in Joe Denton. Guerrero credited Denton with completing his art studies on-the-job and he worked there six years.

At Disneyland, all the repair work had to be done in the wee hours of the night before the park opened again. The art director went through each attraction with a flashlight to spot anything that needed repair. A list was left for the Guerrero and his co-worker when they came on duty.

"The figures deteriorated because of the robotic mechanisms. Like the faces of the Pirates of the Caribbean, they'd get oil on them or a spring would go bad causing excessive jerking and that would tear it. We looked for things like that. Or sometimes we'd find gum stuck on them or somebody had thrown soda on them."

For the most part, the faces of the robotic figures were made of something called hot melt, which Guerrero referred to as rubber. The rubber masks required urethane paint as it was the only kind of paint that attached well to rubber. But it didn't attach all that well. It took nine coats of paint -- and nine drying sessions -- just for the base.

Guerrero quickly learned the mechanical components, even when detached from the body and sitting on a work table, had a mind of their own.

"When I first started, I was working on a Pirates of the Caribbean head when it moved," he said. "Sometimes there would be air pockets in the lines and it made them blink. After a while, you got used to it."

Disneyland made sure its park characters always kept their intended look. The art department had big books filled with the characteristics of each figure -- what color paints to use where, what their costumes had to look like.

Most of the figures were simply referred to as "the rope climber in the Indiana Jones display" or "No. 28 in It's a Small World's Greek section." A few earned names of their own. Long before Guerrero arrived at Disney, someone named the stegosaurus Steve. The crocodile in the Jungle Cruise was called Smiley for his expression. And then there was Bertha.

Bertha was the elephant under the waterfall and Guerrero's least favorite figure.

"I hated working on her," he said. "She was all slimy and we had to clean her constantly. Then if you used a pressure wash, it could make the paint come right off and you had to start all over again. It was cold at 4 o'clock in the morning so we'd be out there with blow torches trying to get the paint to dry."

He proposed making a second elephant, identical to Bertha and put them both on a lazy Susan contraption so one could be worked on behind the scenes while the other was seen by patrons. The idea was never acted upon.

Guerrero and co-worker Jim Shepard usually had to complete repairs in one night. But when a figure had to be removed from an attraction for multiple repairs, they got more time. Disney hid the character's absence by simply filling in the empty spot with stacked baskets or some other design element.

Guerrero had one word of advice for those awed by actor's feats of superlative strength.

"Anything that has to do with movies or amusement parks, it's not real," he said. "You see people picking up big boulders and hefting them up onto their shoulders, like the boulders in 'Ben Hur.' It may look real, but it's all fake."

He did his own part in deceiving onlookers, like airbrushing fur on tigers and painting wrinkles on elephants. Those things are not apparent unless you see them up close.

At California Adventure, another theme park under the Disney umbrella, he worked on bringing the Muppets and "A Bug's Life" characters to life. He said Hopper, the grasshopper in the latter, was his favorite character.

"It was new," he said, "It didn't have those chunky movements to it like the old Disneyland characters. This moved, it was more real."

While airbrushing the character, he overheard one of his bosses tell someone, "You could buy two houses for what one of these figures costs."

In between his night job and raising a family, Guerrero took on freelance work like murals for preschools, restaurants and other businesses as well as interiors of upscale homes. His murals include everything from realistic animals to whimsical angels to underwater scenes that follow the style of the famous artist Wyland. It is interior work he plans to concentrate on, now that he's semi-retired in Las Vegas.

"I just can't do Mickey Mouse for people or anything like that," he said with a laugh. "Those are copyrighted."

Guerrero can be reached at www.a2020Publishing@aol.com.