Thursday, October 22, 2009

Clue: The Poster II

I have pretty much completed Clue: The Musical poster for The Ilion Little Theater Club. The director seems pleased. Now all I have to do is add the copy and send to printer per approval. Sometimes that seems like the hardest part.
I started this project with a more comic book feel to the illustrations. After sketching and re-sketching, I felt that I wasn't approaching this as a poster "design". I love Saul Bass' film poster designs and I always like illustrating in that accidental geometric style. So, I felt a more retro-designed look would be more fitting due to the overtly-symbolic elements throughout the play. Below is the breakdown of the process:

I have a bunch of saved stock reference images I like to use. Mostly for blocking the weight of the elements on the page. Get it? "Blocking"? A term used in stage direction. So funny I forgot to stop typing. Now, on to the more accurate sketch:

This is after I decided to go more geometric in style. I am really pleased where this is going at this point. Now to trace my sketch with Adobe Illustrator:

There. Initially, I had Miss Scarlet's knife cutting behind the 'u' and Mr. Green to the bottom right, but that left some weird space at the top right. This works better for weight distribution as well. I also think the colors work better in this order.
I left Mrs. White out for obvious reasons. Primarily because of the white I used as the trim and outline. Also, Peacock seems to always have grey/green color associated with her rather than a vivid color, so I used that as the background for the title logo (I didn't think that using every weapon was necessary, either. I left out what I feel are the least design-friendly tools of death; rope and lead pipe. On second thought, the rope COULD work but I like how these weapons look on page).
One last thing: Mr. Boddy, being the dead guy that he is, is represented by the background. After all, dead men always wear black.

1 comment:

  1. I really like this final design for the poster. Quite dynamic. By the way, your performance as Mr. Body was by far the best performance. I was the volunteer who picked the murderer, weapon, and room for Saturday night's (11/21) show.

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