Guest Artist: Ron Pardini

We are pleased to announce that Ron Pardini will be joining our class Sunday October 22 through Monday, October 23. Ron is a special effects artist who has been working in the entertainment industry for 29 years.

Some of Ron’s more notable accomplishments include; creating many of the guns for “Men in Black”, creating the “hero” skeleton pirates for the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride for Disneyland California’s 50th anniversary, and producing/creating “The Haunted Vineyard” haunted house in Ontario, California. He even spent six months in Seoul Korea as lead sculpture/art department head for a ride rehab at Lotte World. Ron likes to refer to his title as “the art guy” since his specialties include fabrication, figure finishing, scenic work, tooling, and design.

He earned his Bachelor’s degree at Whittier College where he majored in Biology (which he hardly ever uses) and minored in both Art and Drama (which he uses pretty much daily). He spent his senior year running back and forth between his classes and the special effects studio SPFX where he did an internship which opened the door to the world of movie making. He spent the next ten years hopping from shop to shop (sometimes even working in his own shop) creating special effects and custom props for the Motion Picture industry.

He then switched gears and spent the next ten years hopping from shop to shop (sometimes even working in his own shop) creating static and animatronic figures for the Theme Park industry. He currently is working once again in his own shop CIFX where he tackles projects that vary from movie and theme park work to creating sets for a church VBS and providing custom props to various party planning companies. His work has been featured in Indi and Feature films, is prevalent at both Disney and Universal Studios theme parks, and at public venues such as Rose Hills Mortuary’s annual “Day of the Dead” celebration.

While Ron has loved having the opportunity to be part of so many fun projects and really enjoyed being a Disney Imagineer, he is most proud of his title of Dad.