Charlie Athanas here. WildClaw wants to expose as much of the creative process as possible on this site. Much more will be revealed after the play closes, but we think we can talk about the creation of the poster at this point. While we worked together to come up with an iconic, striking image for the poster, the play's director, Charley Sherman, was able to sort through a lot of his own concept thinking for the play as a whole.

The following is a series of blog entries that happened during the making of the poster for The Great God Pan.

THE MAKING OF THE GREAT GOD PAN POSTER

August 29, 2007

One of my favorite things to do is create posters for the theater. I am currently working on one for my friend Charley Sherman's WildClaw theater company. It is an adaptation of the seminal horror classic, The Great God Pan. Here are some sketches showing some progress towards the final piece.

After reading the script (but before I spoke with the director/adaptor, Charley), I took a stab at an image that would capture the essence of the play. These elements seemed to be a Victorian leading lady with creepy monsters. The sketch is a lady with her face in partial shadow and monsters creeping from beneath her skirt. After showing this to Charley, we discussed the play and realized this image was wrong for many reasons, including possibly giving too much away. Plus, it wasn't a "grabber".

The next thought was much more "Alien" chestburster. More movement and more possibilities with composition. And Charley liked that it read HORROR play much more than the first.

Charley was wondering if we should place some monsters into the scene, as they would be in the actual play.

We wrapped up our two and a half hour discussion confident that I had a handle on several ideas for the poster. One issue was trying to find a POV for the lead character in the poster. Should she be looking straight at the viewer? I gave that a stab here to think about it. I don't always sketch the whole poster, just the part I want to play with.

It wasn't quite working, so I went back to thumbnails of the whole design and settled upon a centered image of the woman wrapped in monsterous tentacles that are reaching skyward. At her feet would be the other monsters in shadowy silhoutte

I drew a larger version in pieces on tracing paper. This one is about 11" x 23". The proportions are off for the typical 11" x 17" poster, but it gives me the elements to play with. I took the monsters out, because they drew your attention away from the dynamic attention of her reaching up towards the title of the play.

I like this sketch and so does Charley. I think we're on our way.

October 9, 2007

I wanted to flesh out the central figure first and build around this character. One aspect I wanted was a translucent Victorian nightdress that allowed the character to be sexual, yet clothed. Strategically placed tentacles would aid in making the poster erotic, but clean enough to be shown almost anywhere.

It was then time to build the tentacles. I placed each one on it's own layer in Photoshop to allow me the freedom to change their arrangement later on in the drawing.

There are going to be major tentacles and then little ones filling out the negative space.

October 10, 2007

While great progress is being made, it sure looks like it is turning into a mess. Don't worry, there will be order in this chaos as soon as I can get some sleep. More tomorrow.

October 11, 2007

Okay, we've got all the major monster tentacles.

At this point I am abandoning the idea of additional smaller tentacles, because it is just going to clutter up the image. One rule of thumb that is always in the back of my mind with these horror posters is the request made by Steve Pickering on the original "In The Flesh" poster. Charley and Steve were interested in getting another audience to come see "In The Flesh". They wanted the young, urban teenager who had never been to a play before, but loved horror movies, novels, and comic books.

So the goal was to create a poster with a single, powerful image that could be seen from across a busy city street and it would give you the vibe of the play. Simple, yet scary and memorable.

October 12, 2007

While still not polished, the poster is taking darker, more iconic tones.

It is time to draw a clean strong image of the face, as I am not happy with the one currently in the drawing.

October 13, 2007

Okay, time to cleanup the image some more. I'm happy with the overall piece, although it will help to get away from it for a bit to see if my eyes have just fogged over. After taking out the rough spots, I will incorporate the logo with some hand drawn lettering. Hope it turns out.

October 24, 2007

We are closing in on an image that is close to the intent of the play. Charley didn't like the new face I had drawn and felt the poster was to "light" for the tone of the play. I took out the back lit spot and applied some filters to put the image back into shadows.

I like the feel of it now in relation to the play, because it is more like a dark, Italian, Dario Argento poster at this point and I like that.

October 25, 2007

Thank goodness the director, Charley Sherman, speaks his mind. We got to a good place in this poster for the play. Up until now we had several posters, but none of them were quite right for this upcoming production nor the style of the theater company. A change in background, fonts, text placement and we were able to fit everything in and capture the mood of the play.

The change that dramatically altered the mood of the piece was repositioning the play's title to below the drawing. This created an open space above that allowed the drawing composition to breathe and move more to the sky.

The change in font styles also helped, giving the play a more serious feel and moving away from horror campiness, which is the very thing we wanted to avoid.

*************************************************

And that is how we came up with the poster for The Great God Pan.

- Charlie Athanas, WildClaw graphic artist

OWN YOUR OWN THE GREAT GOD PAN POSTER

You can buy a large or small copy of
The Great God Pan advance poster
(like the one to the right)
from Burning City, Inc.'s CafePress store.

All proceeds go to support WildClaw Theatre productions.

© 2008 WildClaw Theatre

All images and content belong to WildClaw Theatre.
If you want to use something from the site, please ask us or you may find the Hounds of Hell at your door.
And maybe some slimy tentacle demons of the Old Ones.

WildClaw Theatre is dedicated to bringing horror, science fiction, and fantasy works to the live stage.
We believe the fantastique holds intimate power in the realm of live theater and we aim to put it there.