Archive for the ‘Lowell house’ Category

Tosca

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

I took a hiatus from doing any Harvard related posters to focus more on this improv thing. Now that I’ve gotten some free time in my hands (Due to finishing my Improv classes and having less hours at the Improv Asylum because of renovations), I accepted Lowell House Opera director Mike Yashinsky’s request to design the poster for their production of Puccini’s Tosca.
Mike wanted some kind of War propaganda theme to the poster and sent  me several suggestions and links to classic posters in order for me to get the idea. Pshhhh….obviously Mike didn’t  know who he’s dealing with… I’ve dabbled in this war propaganda poster thing before. Yup….

Mein Propoganda! It means NOTHING!

Mein Propoganda! It means NOTHING!

Actually, what I meant to say was I tried this War propaganda poster thing before—just  for shits and giggles and I wasn’t at all an expert with the style. But I’ve always wanted to paint something in the style of war posters and Mike gave me that opportunity.

So first a sketch!

Inspired by a WWII towering Uncle Sam poster Mike sent me. I did this….

In Bizzaro world, their Towering Uncle Sam is a Towering Benito Mussolini

In Bizzaro world, a Towering Uncle Sam is a Towering Benito Mussolini

And Mike approved. It received praise! Hooray! It’s time to paint the thing! What’s that Vic? Oh you want to keep the original sketch? OK let’s go to the nearest copy place in Quincy….which is nowhere near  Quincy and is actually 40 minutes on the Red Line to Boston. Get a copy of this thing and then…wait…what’s that? More than one copy? SURE! Make plenty of copies! You’ll have so much you’ll never run out! You are so proud of yourself right now aren’t you Vic? Yes you are! Now don’t be a dumbass and accidentally LEAVE THE SKETCH AND IT’S MANY COPIES ON THE RED LINE ON YOUR WAY BACK TO QUINCY, okay?

And… as you guessed… I went ahead and became a complete dumbass.

I guess lack of sleep and listening to Lady Gaga (yeah I said it…Lady Gaga…you wanna fist fight mo’fo?)  on my ipod made me forget that I was carrying something very important. Lost and found said they didn’t have it and because I didn’t feel like going around town looking for a printer that could print my digital copy on 11 x17 paper….I went ahead and re-drew the whole thing.

The Sketch round 2….

Mussolini gained some weight.

Mussolini gained some weight here.

I gave the characters in the foreground some more of a “Holy fuck! that’s Mussolini!” gesture than the original’s “the fuck is that in the sky?” gesture. As soon as I finished this thing I went ahead and mounted it on a panel and attacked it with paint. Brushing a red preliminary base color to it.

This is also the general idea of what my Asian Flush looks like.

This is also the general idea of what an Asian Flush looks like.

And When I finished that, The rest of the colors I used was inspired by Anselmo Ballester’s Broken Blossom Poster from 1919 .

I had to take this picture with a low quality camera so it looks a bit blurred…anyways here it is:

Bitch be wearin mah colors! Mussolini sneered.

"Bitch be wearin' mah colors!" Mussolini sneered.

The final poster will have text digitally put in regarding schedules, venue and pricing for the show……and I should be getting a copy very soon.

So yeah, that’s the new LHO poster….In closing–just in case– if you by any chance come across an orange cardboard portfolio in the red line train and see the first Tosca sketch with it’s many copies inside of it, more than likely, that portfolio is mine…. be a dear and please notify me at victorcaezar@gmail.com. Thanks.

-Vic

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Oh dark clouds that can’t decide whether to rain or clear up….

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

This has been the longest February in memory mainly because I’ve haven’t been this busy since I was pulling all nighters in college. Oh 3:00AM coffee breath, how I DON’T miss you.

Speaking of which, the majority of my time is being eaten up by this Harvard class I’m taking. I’ve been doing museum research every week and writing papers while finding the time to read the many articles assigned to us. Our deadlines are weekly. Those dark clouds I was talking about starts to rain when I’m close to deadline and not quite finished with everything yet, it clears up when I perform a miracle and hand in something at last minute.

Anyways, during the clear skies I try to take advantage of it by doing stuff like this:
I have a penchant for the ridiculous.

You know, I always try to do something new each year…something to tell myself that when the year ends, “well, at least I did such and such…” and convince myself that the year was not a complete loss. This mentality began in 2004, when I went camping for the first time ever and when I decided to visit Florence, Italy, my first European visit. In 2005, I went to Bonnaroo, my first stoner musical event. In 2006, I had a lot of firsts that I had no control over, It was my first step into the “real world” without school, my first job in a museum (Children’s Museum, Recycle Shop Operator) and the first of many times I hit deep deep depression over student loans. In 2007 I joined a stunt team and also learned the consequences of working every single day for 5 months. So in 2008, I just want to get this “NEW” thing out of the way and joined the cast of Harvard’s Lowell House Opera’s production of TURANDOT. I play a very small part as a guard/executioner’s assistant.
Before I volunteered for the part, the producer asked me to design the T-shirts for them. I gave them three illustrations and they picked out one. I have the one they picked out in the illustration section of my website
Here are the other two:

The T-Shirt is available here
TURANDOT information is available here
TURANDOT tickets are available here (with the thumbnail of the illustration they picked out.)
So anyways, rehearsing this and learning how to read body language for cues (since I’m audio impaired when it comes to musical cues and I can’t understand the most basic of Italian words.) has taken hold of my “free” time.

Then there are those times when I pretend there are no dark clouds looming over me. I pretend it’s nice and peachy and nothing is due. If there are things due, then I’ll finish them in time somehow. Yes my friends, this are the procrastination periods. As a result I have sketches to show you:

When you procrastinate you tend to think of things only people with free time in their hands would ever think about.


I thought I was going somewhere with this one….there’s a Part 2 in my head, and it will stay there for now.


Straight from the mean streets of Cambridge, MA. Here is the Notorious J.H! No, J.H. does not stand for Jesper Hansson NOT EVERYTHING REVOLVES AROUND THE SWEDE! It is Michael Van Devere’s Gangstalicious version of John Harvard from his movie of the same name. By the way, his movie, “John Harvard” is not a gangsta flick…it’s a realistic period drama so don’t let the caricature fool you. Anyways, I can’t take all the credit for this since it was Mr. Van Devere himself who thought of the idea and cleaned up my sketch while also adding in the colors.

Last but not lease…I’ve decided to make a comic about short skits I want to film in the future. Check out this comic of how smooth I am with the Ladies.

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And that is the end of this long blog….You might ask yourself, “Well, Vic…if you have such a ‘dark cloud looming over you’ and you are in shortage of time…where ever did you find the time to write this blog…can I get a TURANDOT T-shirt for free?”
The answer to that is…I’m at work and writing this blog is killing a tremendous amount of time and TURANDOT T-shirts….no…They’re not free.

BUY A TICKET TO TURANDOT AND WATCH ME TWIST AN ARM OR TWO! I’m vicious!

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