The sun is shining, temperatures rising- time for the summer season to get started!  

This year, the three outdoor shows will be sharing a common Scenic Designer, Michael Giannio, as well as a common main setting with changing secondary elements.  The main set is supposed to give the flavor of a stylized forest.   When the doors to the inner above and inner below slide away, however, a realistic forest is revealed.  In order to achieve this effect, we are painting pieces of the actual Elizabethan stage as well as pieces special built by our shop to look like pieces of the Lizzy.  

The first step to making this foliage is to start creating layers beginning with our darkest colors and working up to our brightest. 


Here, you can see the brown leaves we painted to get the layers started.  

Next, Amanda assesses the renderings and finds the trunks and branches.  

Next we start to make shapes by adding areas of green leaves around the branches.  












Below, Thayne adds highlights and shadows to the leaves.  

That was the easy part.  Now it's time to fill out those branches!



The light coming through the branches is added at this time to retain it's brightness.  Clumps of brown dead leaves are added as well as bright bright  yellow greens fading into the white of the sky.  Any branches closer to the viewer are added or punched up.  We also use this stage to differentiate one group of leaves form another. 

This is where we really make the flats look like the renderings.  

Sometimes there's even something a little unexpected.  

Here's our forest!

Streetcar is really coming together in our shop.  We've seen the wallpaper go up, the plumming and waterworks being put in, grand spiral staircases, and even a real claw-foot tub.   Last but certainly not least, the biggest scenic element to this show has been completed and is being installed.  The detailed window was quite a process, but with Thayne and Amanda on the job, it was cake.  

In a previous episode, we showed you how we projected the design onto the paper covering the plexi and then cut them out as in the picture at left.  

The picture at right shows the painted plexi as the frisket is removed by lead scenic artist, Thayne Abraham.  

Now, the carpenters work to frame and gasket the window as well as rig the water effects.  

Here, our scenic technology intern, Alex displays the bottom section of the window, completed and framed and put on a cart to go to the theater!

Last week, we opened our new musical, The Unfortunates.  So , we needed to put the final touches on a few of the props.  Namely the hands.  The Unfortunates employs two sets of hands for Big Joe.  Our awesome props artisan Annette Julian sculpted and cast giant realistic fists out of silicone.  In addition, a set of fists that open into hands needed to be made.  A tall order, even for us.   But luckily, Annette, our local genious, came up with a fantastic solution: a mechanical robot armature that allows each finger to flex and release with the pull of a handle inside.  Unfortunately, the flexible armature of the fingers could not be covered with the same silicone material that the palms and fists were due to their need to stretch and retract.  Annette used a stretchy foam witch worked great but didn't match the texture of the silicone.  The task was given to me to make these two very different materials look similar under stage light.  

The most obvious difference between the two surfaces were their textures.  So, the first thing I tried to do was make the transition a little more fluid between the two materials.  I used a clear, flexible texture gel to fill in some of the holes of the foam while softening the edge of the silicone.  

Next, I mixed a color to match to flesh tone of the silicone palm, and painted the texture paste, blending it into the rest of the foam a little bit.  



Now we have two surfaces with a common base.  The next step was to shade the skin similarly on both materials to make them blend into one.  

Below, you can see the final result.  A natural looking hand- and you can barely see the transition between materials!  

Every year, the scene shop has a party for the whole company.  It's a big themed blow out with costumes, drinks and food, dancing, karaoke and activities.   As I mentioned in this blog before, a new production building is in our future.  It would be an understatement to say that we are SUPER excited about our new building.  However, it will mean a big and permanent change to she shop party.  It will be the end of the shop party as we know it.  In honor of this sentiment, this year our theme is: "Arma-Get-it-on:  the Great Shopocolypse."

Above is the poster I designed for this year's party.  I'll be painting a mural with the same theme on the paint shop wall, so be on the lookout for those pics to come later in the month!