Projection Illustrations
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Something I never thought I would ever do dropped into my lap Fall 2016 during Spring Awakening and was briefly mentioned during The Tempest. The director of She Kills Monsters, Jeff Parker, approached me one day and asked me if I would be willing to create what he had originally called comic book pages for the fall production of She Kills Monsters. That was the only information I received sometime in April 2016. I was not given more information till part way through Spring Awakening rehearsal process.
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I was brought into the production meetings for She Kills Monsters as a student illustrator at Mr. Parker's request. This allowed me easy interaction with those I would be working closely with: projections and costuming. Going in I had not realized the magnitude of the project till I was neck deep in images.
The director had this fantastic idea of projecting images throughout the play, a play based on Dungeons & Dragons. He wanted images to be projected at key parts during the performances as if the characters had rendered themselves as some D&D players do. The number of images I was tasked to creating was larger than any number I had to ever create before a deadline. When it all fell together, I ended up producing nearly 30 images in less than three weeks. How I managed to get it all done still astounds me to this day. There were quite a number of nights where I was drawing till I couldn't see any more and getting what few hours of sleep I could before classes the next day. I never thought myself one to produce so many images so quickly. I do not produce images quickly. It takes me three to five hours to render people out and multiple people only slows down the process. I certainly learned how to pick up speed with a number of them but even then, those sleepless nights dogged my step till the night before opening. |
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Beyond the challenge of just producing the large amount of images in such a small time frame, I got the opportunity to collaborate with others making this project a large learning experience. Mr. Parker requested - if possible - for the images to look as much like the characters on stage as possible and I did my best to do just that. This meant, though, that I had to coordinate with costumes to get images of finalized costumes as soon as they were available. This meant that, while I may have had lineart done on a number of illustrations, I didn't have correct coloring nor detailing. I was left with three days to finalize all images before opening after dress rehearsal where I finally got full view of all the costumes with wigs and makeup. Not the best scenario but the final products were well received. Mr. Parker was beyond excited to see them as I made progress throughout the weeks and he was overjoyed when he saw the final products, making all those late nights so worth it.
The images I created were projected on massive flats tied to the overhead grid system in the studio theatre. Some images were mirrored between the flats to keep the focus in the center of the stage while others were kept proper due to their layout. The vs. images were animated to the words of the narrator so that when the given character was stated, the character's image would slide into the vs. screen, followed by their opponent when the narrator introduced the opponent. The path on the map was even animated to go along with the text of the script, illustrating the way the character was describing. I am not sure I would ever do such a project again. The amount of stress that came with it was daunting and, while the final products were worth it, part of that came with who I was working with. I knew the cast and crew rather well and had worked with Mr. Parker before in The Tempest, making taking on this project a lot easier than if it had been with a cast and crew I did not know. If it was half the images, I would consider doing this again.
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