Process

Included on this page are both low-res versions of paintings, as well as screencaps from various media. No infringement is intended from displaying these; they are examples of things I pulled visual or thematic reference from during the research phases of various designs.

The Threepenny Opera

My design idea for this production of the Threepenny Opera was to combine the aesthetic (especially the color palette and heavy ink work) of expressionist painters such as Ernst Kirchner with a classic Hollywood Western aesthetic. The themes of early westerns, as well as the common casts of characters, resonated with the Threepenny Opera in my head, and the expressionist tendency to show life not as it is but as it feels seemed appropriate to the over-the-top and blatant plot devices of the Threepenny Opera.

Expressionist Works

Old West

Hollywood's Old West

Screencaps and promotional pictures from Annie Get Your Gun, Blazing Saddles, Back to the Future Part III, Wild Wild West (both the movie and the television show), Zorro (likewise), and Gunless.

Rough Sketches

Stage Blood

A show about a mediocre traveling theatre company's production of Hamlet, including themes, characters, and even scenes from Hamlet in the play. Originally written in 1974, I chose to set the play in an ambiguous time period, roughly contemporary but with many 70s influences. However, a large inspiration for the overall look was the New Romantic look associated with glam and new wave in the 80s.

The costumes for the production of Hamlet within the play are set in an even more ambiguous period, drawing elements from as late as the early Baroque and as early as the late Medieval into a roughly Elizabethan silhouette. As the company is supposed to be poor and not very good, my research includes infamously bad Halloween costumes for a very "costumey" look.

Los Santos

A tale of Mormon missionaries in Buenos Aires.