Ziska Childs original art monsanto

In the summer of 1999 Paul Palazzo my good friend, world class chef, and one of the hottest lighting designers on the planet asked me to do a painting for him for the Monsanto exhibit at Epcot 2000.

This painting would then be front projected onto a series of curved fabric covered surfaces. There would be several areas for rear projections to "appear" as the exhibit progressed. This meant a painting with a lot of detail since it would be scanned at 2500 dpi (you are viewing at 72dpi). What made this project interesting was that the painting would have to be kept to a scannable - shippable size.

monsanto jungle

Here is a short description of the process which led to the finished exhibit:

Recommended reading:

1. By Design Interviews with Film Production Designers, by Vincent LoBruntto

2.The Obstacle Race, by Germaine Greer.

3. The Art of War by Sun Tzu translated and with an introduction by Samuel B. Griffith foreword by B.H. Liddell Hart

For a discussion of drafting click here.

For a discussion of design click here.

If you want to see more of Monsanto Innovention click here.

970-963-3651 phone
970-963-3652 Fax
zcdz@aol.com

Paul had opted for a painted "jungle" instead of a realistic/photographic jungle because of the stylized shapes in the exhibit. There are many different "styles" of jungle-so we began where everyone begins..with research. Many different images were e-mailed back and forth in order to get an idea of what would work for our clients, Monsanto and Thinc Design.

Then the next phase was "marker art" to try and determine the large shapes and just how saturate the color should be as well as overall tonality.

The next phase was to start on the actual rendering. I took a scan of one area of the sketch and e-mailed it off to make sure everything was going in the right direction. The big problem with e-mailing is that the richness of the actual colors are never going to get across in a 72dpi scan although the values seem to stay fairly constant.

With approval it was time to finish up the whole rendering.

Here is the sketch with the different projection surfaces superimposed.

This is the first finished sketch.

Well, it was decided that this was okay-except for the "time of day".
They wanted sunset.

Sunset.

Well, this was okay too,
but couldn't the light areas be dark and the dark areas be light?

"Like this?"

"Yes, and let's change the shape of the projection panels, make them all flat, and change where it shifts from one plane into another....okay?"

"Okay."

Now, drumroll, the finished product up in Orlando:

A lot of the color you are seeing is added color from Mr. Palazzo. By keeping the overall tonality of the artwork fairly neutral it allowed Paul to change it on site-which is much more flexible and faster than changing the watercolor.

Here's another view which shows a projected narrator "emerging" from the foliage.

Hope you enjoyed this little missive on the "process of design". It's a pretty typical scenario.