Davison and Brock were both in Beauty and the Beast. Lori worked props, and I took most of the show off, jumping in the last couple of weekends to help with lighting off some stained glass windows. No concessions posters, but we did a lot of lobby posters, all of them in a stained glass window style.
The next set of posters was the castle staff who play key roles in the musical. I worked on this set for quite a while trying to come up with a poster concept that hi-lighted both the human form and the enchanted form of the characters. I tried some face-swapping but it always ended up as pretty ludicrous.
So, the concept that worked out was having the background represent the enchanted form, and then a silhouette of the human character. A frame overlay was created by generating an appropriate frame graphic then removing all un-framey parts. The other two layers were then the stained glass background and the black silhouette of the person in question. For the silhouettes, I used the PS Express app on my phone for the cutouts of the silhouette. I used somewhat extensive (maybe too much) feathering, which gave them somewhat of a hazy silhouette
Babette in her enchanted form is a feather duster. This image probably isn’t the featheriest image, but it I liked it.
Cogsworth was a mantletop (maybe some other sort, I’m not too big on B&B lore) clock. I enjoyed the roses as part of the clock, as they came out a lot elsewhere in the pictures. The feathering (as mentioned above) did a great job highlighting the human form, but didn’t fare as well with his staff/cane. It took a while to come up with a human silhouette that I felt fit the picture.
Lumiere was a candlestick in his enchanted form. This ended up being more of a torch along with some roses. The human form probably ends up looking more like Freddie Mercury than I would like, but I wanted to portray a male dancer, as Lumiere was sort of the dashing sort.
Madame de la Grande Bouche (Grande being the French word for large, Bouche being the French word for mouth) was a wardrobe in her enchanged form. The wardrobe here looks nothing like the Disney version, but it’s sort of elegant and does have some clothese in it.
Mrs Potts was a teapot. This wasn’t quite the teapot scene that I had in mind, but after a while you just pick the best that you can and move on with it. It is a nice teapot, maybe a little bit too tal – but these were tall posters, so you don’t want a little squatty teapot.
Chip was a chipped teacup in his enchanted form. This is my favorite poster of the household servant series. I liked the vibrant teacup (and I did add a bit of a chip to the far side). What I really like is the exuberance of the child, as if he is jumping out of the tea cup.
On to the villain – Gaston. The Gaston poster took a look of work trying to come up with a character that was muscular, haughty and Gastonish. I had all sorts of permutations pop up, including one playing a tuba (which I didn’t have in the prompt).
And not only was one Gaston enough, a request was made for Gaston holding a foamy beverage that could be used by the concessions table, which didn’t serve the same type of foamy beverage, but if I recall correctly did have a “bar-ish” sort of menu.
And there were a bunch of other posters as well. The theater lobby had a lot of glass block walls and we did are best to make them not look barren.
It’s not Santa Claus (or Ben Huber), it’s Maurice inventing stuff in his workshop.
And that’s it for the Beauty & the Beast posters.
