Silhouette illustration: Final

Final illustration for the Misalliance play flyer. Overall, I think it turned out well. I played around with the colors and stroke weights of the image, but I like this version best. Click on the image for a larger version!

Silhouette illustration: Proof

Click on the images for larger versions.

This is another step of my silhouette illustration project; I have previously discussed my concepts and style inspirations. To make this proof, I first positioned the plane reference image in Photoshop and drew the smoke cloud, sketching the letters in by hand (using a tablet). Then I took my scanned sketches of Victorian objects and traced them in Photoshop by hand and then auto-traced it in Illustrator. Everything was put into Illustrator as vector images, and I positioned and tweaked all the objects into place and copy was added.

My favorite is the first. The second and third both have outlines around the cloud; the former has the objects in black and the latter has the objects in a larger stroke.

Silhouette illustration: Concept

This is the concept sketch for the silhouette illustration (see brief and inspiration). A major event in this comical play is when a plane crashes, so an old fashioned biplane is shape of the major silhouette with the play's name Misalliance coming out of the plane as smoke. I think additional copy will appear at the bottom of the flyer, since it's complicated to do all do by hand. The silhouette of the plane will be made up of Victorian style household items and men and women's accessories (marriage is another theme of the play).

The silhouette of the plane will be made up of Victorian style household items and men and women's accessories. Sketches of these are shown below. I will outline these in Illustrator and then arrange them in the program (much easier that way).

My reference image of the biplane silhouette, from iStock, is shown below. The reference for the Victorian items were mostly from an episode of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett--I watched it for inspiration and drew the images by sight, so there are no references images for those.

Silhouette illustration: Inspiration

In researching different silhouette styles, I came across the work of Sarah Coleman. I really like the intricate pieces of the little drawings that form a larger picture. So, I think I will emulate this style in my piece.

Here are some more examples of festival posters that use the silhouette style I am interested in. I like this style because from far away, you can see a shape or word, but you can also tell that there is something more going on in the illustration. Thus, the style forces you to lean closer and examine the image in more detail; it makes you examine the flyer for an extended period of time. This makes the poster effective in capturing the viewers attention.

CMA Music Festival 2010, by Alex Pearson

SPARK Animation Festival 2008, by Simon Oxley

Cornwall Film Festival 2009 poster, by Matt Hocking and Darren Whittington

Silhouette illustration: Brief

Client: Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (Champaign, IL)

Project: Silhouette Illustration

Specifications: Create an illustrated event poster for a festival. The client can be a producer of any kind of festival (music, art, theater, dance, film, food, etc.). The art must be 100% vector and be created in the style of silhouetted illustrations.

Reproduction: The art will be printed in black and one PMS color at a size of 11x17 inches.

Justification: I love plays--my parents took me to several as a kid and I also worked in the scene shop all through college. I looked at the Krannert website for an upcoming play that I was familiar with, but there were none, so I decided instead to do a flyer for a play I had already seen. I picked Misalliance, by George Bernard Shaw, which I saw last year.

Although it was written around 100 years ago (1910), the comical play has some very advanced ideas concerning marriage and women's independence. The important characters of the play are a young, restless woman who's engaged and an independent Polish acrobat who arrives unexpectedly in a plane crash. I decided my concepts will probably center around the plane and juxtaposition of these two women.