Animal Kingdom Badge – Discovery Island

I’ve been cooking up a fleet of badges for the 20th anniversary of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I’ve been lucky enough to visit a couple times and always find myself completely blown away by the theming and design work done in the park.

The central area of Discovery Island contains the park’s icon, the Tree of Life. Built using an upside-down oil platform, the 145-ft tree and its roots are covered with 325 carvings of animals. The tree has over 8,000 branches and is topped with 102,000 man-made leaves.

Thanks to @Alex Eiman who inspired me with an awesome set of national parks badges and was gracious enough to offer some type suggestions. Thanks to Joe Rhode and the many, many Imagineers over the years who’ve designed, sculpted, and engineered something incredible. Here’s to the next 20 years and maybe, hopefully, a working yeti?

Stay tuned, I’ll be rolling out the rest of the badges over the course of the week! Follow along over on Instagram as I might share some alternates and process sketches there!