IMS Design Studio

Here's a link to a subject relative to the Gnomes;

IMS Design Studio

Theatrical Game Plan

  The theatrical production of The Gnomes of New Hope has been the ultimate goal since it's inception. Publishing the Illustrated Storybooks was originally intended as a means of building an audience for the stage show. Of course, the books have become an entity unto themselves, but the intent for the musical still exists as the purpose.

   This leads to the fact that once the books are fully put into play (meaning published and distributed) then the focus of attention will return to completing the score for the musical. 

   The Libretto is written sufficiently to work off of and begin building the show. We are considering painted drops vs an LED backdrop. The LED can be used for other film projects on the Sound Stage.

   The Musical Score is partially finished and needs to reach the point of publication. Although, all of the musical numbers have MIDI files outlining the melody lines and the majority of the arrangements. The last section of (maybe seven) songs still need to be arranged. There are a total of 70 musical numbers in the piece, that includes bridges and backdrops. The Overture is only sketched out at this point. Once the Illustrated Storybooks are finished and being distributed, then return to work on the music will occur.

    The Technical Manual for the show is started, but that cannot practically be fully produced until we are in production. Some portions of that can be set-up in pre-production, which will happen as we progress.

 

  Ideally, I would like to partner with other producers who work on Broadway. I prefer not to attempt that arena, simply because I have been involved in the development arena and have been away from that level of production for too long. 

   I have been building the tools, equipment and facilities to mount a try-out production and I have the video and film capabilities to create visual aids in mounting a larger production. Ultimately, I feel as though the larger professional endeavor should be implemented by a larger organization that is already steeped in the First Class Theatrical environment. That goes for the First Run Cinema as well. I think the project would be best served by that approach.

   I can and will continue in the Development process in-house and potentially into the Try-out Scenario, but advancing into a Try-out Tour will be contingent upon Licensing the First Class Production before doing so.

   There is an overall plan that involves conducting the Try-out Tour based on four wall contracts, meaning the First Class Contracts will not be tied to any third party agreements.

More later, AG

Artwork for Illustrations

   

    These binders contain the watercolor paintings that are finished and await being installed into the books. There are a dozen or so more paintings to be included in these binders, but that is it for the illustrations (actually there turned out to be another binder about 1/4 the thickness of these). I have eleven more binders like these, containing the all artwork that has been used in this Illustrated Storybook Collection.

 

   Installing this artwork involves;  first defining the sketches requires, then once they are composed properly, scanning the sketches and filing the scans away properly, then opening the digital sketches in Photoshop and proceeding to prepare the digital copy to be painted (cleaning up the extraneous lines, fixing rough edges and lines),  then printing the digital B&W sketch out on watercolor paper.  The sketches are then painted with watercolors, rescanned, cleaned up again, removed from the background, and processed to enhance the color, brilliance, contrast & exposure.  Then the individual drawings are assembled into a composite illustration, that illustration is reduced and inserted on the appropriate page.

    Whew! It's a lot of work !

   Just taking a wild guess, I'd say each of the 768 pages of the collection uses, on average, six paintings for the illustration, often times more than that, sometimes many more.  That's at least 5,000 watercolor paintings that cost around $500 a piece to produce.  In other words, the paintings used in this collection of books has cost approximately $2.5m and around fifteen years to produce.

   I better sell a lot of books to make up for that expenditure!

   When the books are finished and published, we will be moving to convert these paintings (of the characters) into 3D files for animation.  

   To say nothing of the stage production!

   Does it ever end ?  I hope so, I want to work on my cars.  AG