Youth Theatre Poster Project.

We were given a brief, by a local theatre, to illustrate a poster for an up-coming youth theatre production. This was quite a short project turn-around: with the gap between being given the brief and meeting the client for the final time being only about two weeks long. Therefore, I needed to come up with a simple solution to the brief with an outcome that could be easily be manipulated to the client’s specifications if need be. This is why I decided to make my final product a digital image. A digital final outcome would also be appropriate as we were told the chosen design would be printed on both a small (magazine/ programme image) and very large scale (roadside banner).

It was suggested that the illustration would make reference to:

• Youth Theatre
• David Garrick – the 18^th century theatre
• Zombies
• Hereford
• Humorous/Fun

I decided to leave out the Hereford theme as it was just too much going on. I tried a few designs including some reference to Hereford, but found them too messy and confusing. Luckily, in a meeting with the client, she made it clear that this wasn’t a problem and Hereford was only an optional, suggested theme if the designers had decided to approach the brief from that angle.

I, however, concentrated on trying to make a simple poster which would appeal to young people and reflect the fact this is a youth production. The strongest idea I tried to convey visually was Zombies at the Theatre! I also tried to work in details which would create the mise-en-scene that this zombie-theatre activity was occurring in the 18^th century.

The brief itself came attached to a lot of mid-late 20^th century style zombie/ horror posters to give us an idea of the kitsch, over-the-top yet harmless gore they were looking for.

In addition to this, I gathered visual information concerning the 18^th century theatre:

And fashion, here are just a few of many examples:

In the end, my designs did not include very detailed representations of the ornate 18^th Century theatres as it did not work with the simple-silhouette design plan I had come up with. However, I was able to work in to period hair and hats into the crowd, subtly.

I also looked at the real-life characters portrayed in the play, but only actually included David Garick himself in my final design:

I also looked at very simple posters such as this one:

.... Created by Lloyd Stas for the humorous, recent zombie film Shaun of the dead (i felt this was a good move as this film was constantly referred to as an inspiration during our first meeting with the client). This is the image which confirmed my sentiment that using simple silhouettes would work well for this project.

And finally, in order to make history seem appealing to young people and adults alike, i looked at the Horrible Histories books I enjoyed so much as a child:

Using the light humour teamed with historical reference of these illustrations I hoped to create a simple image which conveyed history, horror and entertainment all in one. Below you can see one of my development sheets where have tried to depict David Garrick with the gentle humour used by Martin Brown, who illustrated the Horrible Histories...

I created my final images by hand drawing them first and then manipulating them on Photoshop.

When developing my ideas, I tried out colours using pencil crayon:

...it soon became apparent that this was not the appropriate medium for such a project. I didn’t think the pencil-crayon texture would scale up very well and was also slightly too childish. I found the worksheet (above) visually appealing, but felt this medium would be better suited to a brief not so concerned with horror. This was a step too far away from the zombie posters from the 70s-era originally attached to the brief. Block, digital colour was the way to go:

I also tried using the scanned-in texture technique I used for the Poetry Project, but I found this made the images too confusing and robbed them of their simple, almost cartoon-like clarity and humour. I left the texture on my marginally more serious image as an extra option for the client to view, but left it off the more humorous image I developed of Garrick peeking through the theatre curtain at the 18^th century zombie hoards. This second, simple, light-hearted image was selected to be used as an image to be to illustrate the cast listing, which I was very pleased about.