I won't lie- I've always gushed over Theater Plays and Musicals!
I was introduced to theater at a very young age from Disney on Ice to community performances, to Wednesdays music in the park. I even got to attend a couple live broadways shows of The Lion King and Cinderella before I learned to read properly.
I didn't go to a middle school that offered theater experience or even much of an art experience, so I never got to develop my love for performing arts. Outside of watching the shows, I couldn't even support/volunteer at any place (not even to be a grip!). By High School, the only arts I was doing was photography and I still couldn't support my High school's theater division due to a lack of drama club that I still believe they don't have to this day. Today I am able to pursue visual arts due to my supporting High school teachers who encourage me in the traditional and digital arts.
So you can imagine the joy I felt to volunteer myself to the East West Players. The East West Players is the nation's Asian American theater whose mission is for "raising the visibility of the Asian American experience by presenting inventive world-class theatrical productions, developing artists of color, and providing impactful youth education program"(EWP). Through a volunteering website, I offered my services to them, and happily received a phone call for an interview.
When working on this assignment the goal was to create an illustration for their From Number to Name online production. Their original vision for this was to have a prisoner behind bars with two individuals outside the bars all in a flat person style.
From the reference images my contact gave me, I started with the prisoner first because they would be a major part of illustration.
I wanted to recreate the shadows of the bars in the first reference picture when composing the first draft. I also wanted to show the wear and tear prison can have on it's inmates, having the singular eye appear faded, and the expression worn down near empty.
Draft One
Upon receiving feedback, I was asked to rearrange the draft, as well as to start creating the next two figures. The two figures were based on actors in the performance, which I would recreate from pictures sent over. I wanted to be diverse when creating these other figurers. So after composing their base shapes I laid them out to see which two actors would work best for the illustration. Try out different combinations allowed for mulituple options for the EWP to choose from.
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It was at this point I was informed that it was decided the EWP wanted an illustration closer to another reference picture they sent me.
So back to the drawing board!
The EWP wanted the new draft to be like the reference with the face silhouette being one of the colors from the pallet they sent me. With new instructions, I went about making new variations for them. I first stuck with the orange with the size they wanted I angled the fence at a sharper angle than from the reference. My challenge in this version was creating the barb wire. Initially, had made loops but I believed that gave off a friendlier/cartoonier look. Then I broke it up into smaller pieces. Thankfully, this improved the outlook of the piece.
New Draft 1
New Draft 2
New Draft 3
They seemed to be satisfied with the new drafts and even picked out New Draft 2 as the direction they wanted to go in. Final touches were on the go with request to add more negative space around the face so they could place words, times and information on it (which is why New Draft 3 was out of the running). It also was requested that the features were more defined in the silhouette.
The final drafts were made up and sent out. To my surprise they used the draft with undefined features and the one with the defined features.
I encourage others to check them out for their work and programs on their website.
I am grateful I got the opportunity to work with the East West Players as the Programs Cover Artist.
I wish the best for them in their future performances and would like to thank Xiom Wood for their collaboration on this project!
