Last night I had a wonderful conversation with a good friend and a great designer! During our discussion last night we found ourselves talking about the blatent use of found pictures on the internet to compile into a set design, using tools like Photoshop. The practice that we have both seen is to take an image then import that image into say VW then "trace" into a design. (IA and Congress is in the middle of this debate right now, as I type).We (my friend and I) both believe this practice to be cheating, as it technically is someone elses intelectual property. The problem is that even we have been guilty of this practice during our careers, at one time or another. Because lets face it, it is a heck of alot easier to "appropriate" something into your design, then say to draw and paint it by hand. An example of this would be backdrops taken directly from photographs. We have appropriated someone eleses image and have passed it on as our own, without giving thought to asking permission to use the image, and in almost all cases no nod of recognition in the Playbill to the original artist.We made a pro-active decision last night to try and get back to the way we were taught to design, use research images for just that, research. Instead of cuting and pasting them into our designs, and claiming this work as our own. By doing this we hope to continue to grow as designers, instead of cheapening our own artist visions. Are we thinking of a Purist Movement, you bet! I would like different views on this hot-button topic, to see how the theatre world approaches this issue within design. See More

VW+Photoshop. Final Render

Electra Render-Clarence Brown Theatre