as some may know, YC had our very own musical production for the christmas week (a huge success) and the highlight of it for me was what i as tasked with.

Initially I was suggesting to do simple illustrations of either the cast or the set or little ones that can be used in the flyers or program sheets if any. Something that was still manageable given my schedule. Then Caris asked me to join her deco team, and put me in charge of grafitising/dirtying/painting/decorating a huge piece of canvas to act as a facade/back alley/backdrop when the office in the show was not in use. shouldn’t be too hard?

After discussions with the commitee, they decided to have a shop front instead. So i had to put a little bit more effort into it, as the intensity of work/commitment escalated. I had to do research, on the look, the shop name, so it would look as authentic as possible. It was both exciting and stressful at the same time. I worked out a 3D schematic, drew over it on tue night, making changes on the shop name a few times. Transferred it onto a transparency, grabbed an OHP and my tools, and went to where the 4 m by 2 m canvas was hung. BY then it was about 10 or 11 pm.

Using my trusty conte, a ladder and some metal rulers, i painstakingly traced the projected image from the OHP onto the canvas alone, keeping watch on the time, trying hard to balance myself as i drew over the words on the top. By the time I finished it was about 2 am. Caris had promised to send me home after her meeting.

I came back the next day after work, prepared to stay over. Assuming that the canvas was more or less painted by whoever was there during the day to help, i went in only to realise that only the main shop sign had been painted. Needless to say there was much more work to be done. Thanks to April mei, Aaron, Rachel, Ernest, Junice, Dawn, Jing En, Ben Wu, May May, and (some others I might have left out) I finally manged to complete the canvas on Thurs evening, (a few hrs after my given dateline)

After figuring out how to put it up (and make it unfold naturally), we were ready for business!

Here’s a quickie look at the creation process.
3D schematic to nail the perspective
schematic.jpg
sketch transferred onto transparency
canvas-sketch.jpg
Final Product (photo cred = gracie)
canvas-photo.jpg

have to say am pretty proud of it, given that this is the first time I’m working on such a large scale, with little reliance on the digital format. After this project I’m definitely more confident of doing banner-sized projects (with enough assistance of course). (More photos of it are floating around facebook, many ppl were posing in front of it after the show.)