Theatre Background Design

Bear Music Limited is a Children's Choir company which I joined years ago as a kid. They have their own musical very year to let the members have a chance to do some drama, practising both acting and singing. After I left the choir, I still go back now and then as a volunteer to make props and settings for the musical in Summer. Last Summer I thought it would be better if I could work on the animated background which they usually have at the back of the sets. Luckily they allow me to have a go therefore I had a precious chance to learn from the professionals and could actually collaborate with him! 

Frankie is the freelancer who has been working with Bear for a long time. He received jobs from Bear all the day and he is capable of a lot of thing from poster design to zine making for the show. It might be essential to know more skills then just animation if I want to survive in Hong Kong and it is almost like a must for the creative people to know all those stuffs he told me.

He also said that he uses flash quite a lot and has a very simplistic style that is very easy to copy in order to match all the scenes that we decided to do separately.  We had meetings in McDonald's' and sort out the schedules and who is in charge of which scenes. In total, there are 8 scenes and both of us are doing four. I am surprised how he trusted me so much on this but I have no experience on this before. Thrilling but also so excited to know that I could be in charge of so many scenes!

Before we start sketching out ideas, we know that the background should be simple, not over shone the actors, the style is like the ancient fables that kind of fairy tales, to match the sets. Since I was still making the props at that time so I had a better understanding of what style is the best and so engage to the show through the whole Summer. 

The scenes I in charged were: A sun shinning, A moon shinning, A castle scene and A Master scene for the whole musical. It is important to do lots of research and so we did!

I preferred using photoshop instead of flash because I felt more comfortable and confident using them. Frankie agreed and as long as producing mov. there should be no problem how I got through that. 

Initial Ideas

But I allow tested it out on illustrator which I rarely touch. I believed that it produce better quality of shapes and pictures than photoshop and many professionals use it. I slowly approached to the final product, testing and experimenting at the same time. It is always hard to learn a new programme but I think I was doing well. I like how thing turned out and I gave the moon an eye using photoshop so that it could blink.