Bel Benavides
Real Time Artist + Visual Designer

Hero : Disney Destiny
Immersive Experience

Client: Walt Disney Imagineering + Parallax Studio

Role: Unreal Generalist

Software:

Unreal Engine, Blender, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop An immersive experience blending real-time art direction and branded storytelling.

This project involved creating large-scale, real-time visuals for the Heroes Stage, an immersive experience developed by Walt Disney Imagineering in collaboration with Parallax Studios. The visuals were designed to run continuously on a 24/7 LED installation aboard Disney’s newest cruise ship Disney Destiny.

As the main Unreal Artist, I managed multiple Level Sequencers, coordinated shot continuity, and refined in-engine lighting and color grading to align with Disney’s visual direction. I developed stylized environments moments controlled from multiple sequences using Niagara Systems, custom shaders, and animated environmental elements.

Working closely with the creative and technical leads, I helped translate the client’s concept into cohesive and visually compelling stage environments that balanced technical precision with narrative-driven art direction.


Previsualization showing the Heroes Stage in context within the cruise ship interior.

The challenge was create  special moment within the environment  that drew inspiration from iconic Disney brands and transform into easter egg animations for the audience, while transforming the aesthetic from the original product to fit into this forest.


This immersive experience was designed for the Heroes Stage aboard Disney Destiny, a large-scale venue within a cruise ship environment. A key challenge was designing environments that felt expansive and magical at architectural scale, while remaining intimate and readable from a human point of view.

I was responsible for designing a series of “environment moments”: small, narrative-driven interactions embedded within the larger stage world. These moments activated elements of the environment and brought them to life, creating brief, discoverable experiences for the audience. I designed and developed moments such as the Lantern Moment, that marks the transition from day to night as an event itself, shaping their visual language and the feeling they conveyed within the space.

Another kind of moments implied “activating” certain elements in the forest and design brief animations that would make the forest feel alive. Sometimes, it would be acoopanied by some iconic character’s animation. The challenge was to keep Disney’s recognizable style of aninamtion and its tempo .
Another requirement was to design environment animations that would be active during the sequences in order to make the forest look like an animated painting.
Projects:

        Hero (TBA)  
        Shiver
        Liminal
        Opium in the Clouds    
        Gaia X  
        Common Comforts  
        Park Psychedelia    
        Andean City    
        Fig. 43  
        Guano Carpets: The Project