One of my favorite clients is Children’s Stage Adventures run by Rob and Lorrie Gray. They’re based here in New Hampshire, and they travel throughout New England and Eastern Canada conducting one-week theater residencies. They coordinate with local schools, community groups, and summer camps.
In short, they give kids a taste of theater, and a chance to perform in a real live show. They’ve been making kids and parents happy for 20 years now, and it’s a pleasure to be associated with them.
They’ve asked me to create “logos” for a number of their shows. They use the term “logo” to mean: a single illustration that summarizes the story; one they can use on their website, on posters, for newspaper ads, and on merchandise (souvenir tee-shirts).
They asked me to create a logo for their latest production: an adaptation of Mark Twain‘s famous The Prince And The Pauper. There were quite a few steps involved, and I thought it would make a fun and informative case study.
Theater means costumes. They’re a big part of creating the right look for a show. So I started by doing some online searches.
I found some great stills from the 1937 Errol Flynn movie version.
I knew from past experience that the logo needed to include the title, with “Children’s Stage Adventures” underneath.
One idea: two heads wearing a single crown.
The next step was trying out various fonts for the title.
(No need to experiment with fonts for “Children’s Stage Adventures,” which has always been Comic Sans MS Bold.)
two of the above ideas, and asked that “Children’s Stage Adventures” span the width of the drawing.
Years ago, I used to do finals from scratch. And they always lost something. They’d look stiff, forced. And I’d be frustrated.
I finally figured out that my roughs (which tend to be fairly complete) had a certain energy, a spontaneity, because I do them quickly without worrying about every last detail. I lose that energy (and the art is poorer for it) when I try to recreate the rough from scratch.
What I do now (in most cases) is clean up the rough: I correct mistakes, redraw certain things, and try to retain as much energy and spontaneity as I can.
And that’s what I did here. If you study the drawing below, you’ll see that stray lines have been erased, the crown is different, the pauper’s cap is larger (more proportionate to his head), I redrew the pauper’s foot, the lines on the bishop’s mitre are more evenly spaced, the street urchin to the bishop’s right is hoisting himself up with his feet slightly off the ground, etc.
You may have noticed the pauper’s cap was rather smelly, with a couple of flies buzzing around it.
Rob and Lorrie weren’t sure they wanted that much “realism.” They asked to see the cap “with no smell and
bugs, and one with fewer,” so they could do a compare.
Which led to this amusing series of roughs:
If you look closely at the sword and stick lines in the above drawing, you’ll see that they have contrasting weights: a heavier line, and a thinner line. Rob asked to see them with equal weights.
Here’s the thinner version:
the pauper’s arm was uneven.
Here’s the final:
