Approach:
This project involved making a theater poster based that expressed a musical of your choice as a metaphor. I chose the opera Hansel and Gretel by Engel Humperdink.
I wanted to express the children’s innocence and the witch's desire to eat them in a cute and playful way which is why I chose to make my poster an illustration. Because the witch wants to cook Hansel and Gretel in the opera, I decided to add them to a boiling pot as if the witch is making them into duck stew. I added bright colors in both the baby ducklings and the candy, but I also wanted to express the dark undertone of the opera as well.
The best way of executing a darker emotion was to choose a font that was destressed and not as cute as the rest of the image. To pair with the distressed look I researched vintage illustrations to figure out how to make my poster feel aged. Adding some textured paper and gain gave my poster the final touches that it needed and overall gave my poster the cute but mysterious vintage aesthetic.
Sketches
Sketching for the project was tons of fun! I enjoyed finding different ways to express the characters and the messages within the story although, understanding how to show something as a metaphor was pretty challenging. First final idea was having ducks swimming in a pond of stew, but the composition of the poster was not the strongest. Having a top view of the pot along with the font make for a much stronger compostion, and added the opportunity to have the front look as though it is floating in the liquid.
Iterations
Mood Board
