This project is the brainchild of our Graphics Editor Bonnie Berkowitz
who, some three weeks ago, saw the potential for a big piece for our
Sunday Arts section.
War Horse, the Tony Award winner play based on Michael Morpurgo's
novel was coming to the Kennedy Center on October 23 and the fact that
the main character of the show was a life-size puppet created by the
Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa, seemed like a great
opportunity to create an explanatory infographic for our readers.
Final double page
Given the bizarre and unconventional
appearance of the puppet, I decided to start working first on the cover
illustration for the section so I could familiarize myself with the
creature. I used ink pens of different widths for the outlines and then
applied washes of watercolour.
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| Creation stages of cover Illustration |
The overal design of the infographic had the usual central theme which I
planned to use as a visual guide to explain how then puppet was
operated and as a map for a series of diagrams pointing to some crucial
mechanical components of the horse. The graphic also would include two
secondary components: a description of several configurations of the
puppet and a timeline, discussing the evolution of several puppets
created by Handspring that, ultimately, inspired the creation of Joey.
The main component of the graphic was created on a 20 x 25 in rigid board with the same technique than the cover Illustration.
At this point, I also decided to give the graphic certain appearance of
age, by creating a background imitating a worn off fabric texture. The
idea was originated by the fact that the War Horse puppet exterior is
made of cane and cloth.
In order to keep a stylistic coherence acros the whole piece, I decided to go for a hand-drawn feel for the whole graphic.
That was also the case for all the secondary illustrations.
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