The Neverending Story-- The Poster!

This summer, I have been taking the SMFA's Intermediate Illustration course. It was an intensive class that ended up being quite rigorous and much of my creative energy has been put towards classwork for the last six weeks or so. Thanks to interesting assignments and helpful feedback from my instructor and fellow classmates-- who were all incredibly talented-- I made a lot of work of which I am very proud and my next post will cover more of what I did for the class. As for this post, I wanted to share some exciting news!

Whenever this illustration class is offered, one of the assignments is a project in conjunction with the Harwich Junior Theatre on Cape Cod. The illustration students design posters for the show that HJT is putting on that season, then the folks at the theatre choose one of the student designs to use on their posters. It is a great collaboration that gives the students a real-world illustration assignment and gives the theatre creative artwork to promote their shows.

This season they are putting on a stage adaptation of The Neverending Story. Being a fan of the film, I was excited to get the opportunity to submit a poster design. I spent quite a bit of time painting our hero Bastian Bux as he discovers that the dusty old book he found is coming to life-- the warrior Atreyu and Falcor the luck dragon magically fly out of the book. I am happy to tell y'all that the Harwich Junior Theatre chose my design to use for their official posters!

I wanted to make a couple of notes:

I had help from my instructor with some of the photoshop elements, primarily text placement and the addition of HJT's logos in the bottom left corner. This won't be the final version. There are a couple of tweaks still to be made with the text, but I was excited to share this news and I wanted to post it right away!

Also, a note about Falcor: anyone who remembers the film probably remembers Falcor as being more like a giant flying dog, which is so iconic of the movie, but the original book The Neverending Story describes Falcor as being similar to a traditional Asian dragon with lion-like features. The play follows the book rather than the film and so I stuck closer to the book's image of Falcor.

I am really proud of my poster and honored that it was selected by the folks at HJT! I'm sure it will be a fantastic production!

And now, just for fun, I leave you with this video clip of Falcor from the 1984 film:

Enjoy!