The Wiz
July 23, 2009
Hey guys,
For the play poster assignment I decided to do The Wiz. I’m not trying to base it off of the movie, but rather the play/musical that was produced first in 1975; sans the King of Pop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wiz
Basically I wanted to represent the Tinman, Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow as African masks (like a fantasy) and Dorothy (plus Toto) as a real person. Creating a swirl around her that flows into Emerald city. My execution will probably be a mixture of colored pencils and pen & ink.
Let me know what you guys think.
peace,
Mike
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July 27, 2009 at 7:19 am
Hey Mike!
Thanks so much for posting! I’ve been crazy sick and not very inspired lately for a variety of reasons, but I feel Arterie stirring in me again now that you’ve posted.
This is going to be a really cool image. I particularly love the African masks idea. From the sketch, I can tell they are masks, but I don’t immediately think African masks…I’m sure there are plenty of varieties of African masks, but for me I usually would think of a more elongated face with bigger almond shaped eyes.
I really really like this masks idea though, so I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say…why not make Dorothy’s face a mask as well? You could arrange them in a grid (two above the other two). The three masks are all the same size and are already almost evenly spaced in a grid. With the swirling motions, dorothy/toto, and the emerald city, there is too much going on in the composition that takes away from the mask concept. Masks by the virtue of being masks have this really satisfying eerie feeling to them, which you could maximize by focusing on them straight on.
If you decide to stick with Dorothy as a human figure, composition wise, I think she would work better if she was lower in the bottom right corner. Right now she’s too bunched up with the masks. Even in this case, I think I’d move the scarecrow underneath the tinman to give it more of an organization.
Alternatively, if you’re going for the super dreamy chaos feeling, you might totally want to destroy the organization and even rotate the masks and make them truly swirl. Otherwise I’d go for the more rigid eerie feeling by making the composition more organized. Right now it’s sort of in the middle.
Very cool! I hope this helps.