Special Topics in Design: Figure Drawing Week 9
Final Project Prompt
Students may choose between two options for their final project, due in class during finals week. You’ll also need to submit a printed 3-paragraph statement in which you explain why you chose your subject and how you addressed to the assignment prompt.
Option 1: Advertising Poster for an Unlikely Stage Adaptation
First, choose your text.
Imagine you’ve been tasked with adapting a known media property (a book, film or novel) to the stage. What would make genuinely compelling (or so-bad-it’s-good) theater?
Real life-examples might be Point Break: Live, a staged adaptation of the 90’s action film, which each night features an audience volunteer playing Keanu Reeves’ role (with cue cards provided). Other examples I recall from regional theater around Boston MA include a dance theatre production of Jack London’s novel The Call of the Wild, and a musical revue inspired by ancient Greek poetry titled Dig Sappho! Recent Broadway disasters involving superheroes might also offer inspiration.
Now design your poster.
For Week 10 conference, have your text chosen and 4 small black and white thumbnail sketches (ink, gauche, sharpie or construction paper) in which you experiment with different design concepts.
Make visual reference to the original source material while also suggesting that this staged adaptation is something new and different.
Make strong use of the figure (preferably multiple figures.
Make use of gestalt trickery to maximize graphic impact (think Saul Bass).
Finally: it should appeal to both urban sophisticates and tourists/casual theater goers in its aesthetic. This is in some ways this most difficult part of the assignment. Jaded critics believe less-is-more, but too light a touch leaves the ticket-buying public confused. How do you make something tantalizing without being crass? Informative without being literal? (Or classy without being cold?)
Final poster in color on actual Illustration board (from art supply store), minimum 11” x 17” due Week 11 for Final Critique
Option 2: Fake Production Stills
Like in option one, imagine you are producing a staged event based on a text of your choice (in this option, an existing play or film is fine). A play with a small cast is preferable.
Using your own photo reference, design your cast of characters. They can be drawn from celebrities, personal acquaintances, old advertisements, vintage fashion or any other photographic source. Combine figure, faces, poses and costumes to create composites:
gesture/pose from photo A, the facial expression from photo B and the costume from photo C?
Use the character design principles from this class to transform these composite sketches into new, compelling characters. These techniques include:
“Thesis” shape (or “spirit vegetable”)
Hierarchy of shapes, in which one dominant shape is supported by smaller, contrasting shapes
Hierarchy of Detail, in which line work and small counterbalance larger shapes
Interest through contrast
Jitter, and dynamic silhouette
Force and dynamic gesture
Straight-to-curve, in which
For Week 10 Conference, choose your text and characters, and have photo reference for each character. Each character should have photo reference for that addresses the following:
• Pose/gesture
• Body Type/shape
• Facial type/expression
• Costume/ Silhouette
Be able to explain the source of contrast between different characters.
For Final Critique, you will complete 3 hand hand-painted “production stills” of key scenes from your chosen play in gouache/watercolor/collage.
(This image of familiar Simpsons characters doing a mash-up of costumes from various Stanley Kubrick films is actually a rather bad example of a solution for this assignment; I actually do not want you to simply combine characters and costumes from different plays and films. Instead, I want you create your own original character designs using a range of photographic reference).