Stealthy Lines and Excessive Colour

I finished my Masters Degree in Sequential Design a little while back.  I made a model theatre telling the tale of Sinbad the Sailor the you, the viewer, could tell in your own words and interact with.  I'm going to make a proper web-site all about it soon, but in the meantime here's a few photos of it in action.

Here's one of the many character sheets I drew. This one shows the orchestra that you put in front of the stage whilst doing your play.

Here's a load of the characters cut out and put on to stands.  The stands were magnetic so they'd stick to the floor of the stage and not fall over, which was a fundamental design flaw I discovered in all other model theatres that were available.

Example of a scene set up.  Note - the background is drawn in a style based on the watercolour paintings of Edward Lear from his trips to the middle east in the 1800's.

Here's the final model theatre.  Designed to all fold in on itself so that it becomes a box held in place with magnets. The characters live in a tray located at the back, underneath the stage.  On both sides are booths where you can have audience members clapping / heckling / sleeping through the performance.  In front of the theater is the script - should you feel so inclined to use one - for Sinbad the Sailor, adapted by me to 'rhyme' like a sea-shanty. 

I've been working out ways of telling a narrative via different methods and have become rather interested in toy model theatres. My research into them has meant the making of numerous commercially available models to see how they're constructed. I can then take the lessons learnt from each one and use that to construct my own.

Great Expectations.

Pop out cardboard pieces and held together with flaps.

Edward Gorey's Dracula.

Very simple, but beautifully presented with very high quality print.

Cinderella.

In the same style as Great Expectations.

The Nutcracker Suite.

A lot older than the others, and constructed from poor quality cardboard.

The Wizard of Oz.

Humorous illustrations, but the same poor cardboard as the Nutcracker Suite.

I've had the idea of a story in a box for a while, so having looked at how other people constructed model theaters tried my own.  I designed it on paper, and started building a prototype so I could see what kind of problems I'd come up against, and hopefully avoid when building a finished model.

An ordinary looking box?

Open up and fold out.

The wings open and proscenium rises.

Side doors and wings held in place with magnets.

Side doors swing open and join the wings, exposing the inner proscenia for adding characters etc etc. The front folds over to create the orchestra pit. Huzzah for GCSE trigonometry.

A tidy little hide away for all the characters / actors to sleep in whilst they're waiting to go on stage.

Now I know that it's possible to make something like this, I need to refine the ideas that I've had, and of course draw all the artwork that will need to accompany / be pasted on the box itself.