Ricketts Lane

A while ago I got given a job to illustrate a poster for friends/professional humour-edians Sammy J and Heath McIvor. I’ve done design/illustration work for these dudes before, both individually (this and this) and collectively (this), and they’ve always been really fun jobs, mainly because they give me a lot of freedom and trust me to deliver the goods. Plus they’re also amazing collaborators, and true aficionados of the creative process.

Anyway, they’re currently developing a new stage show together called “Ricketts Lane”. The pitch given to me was basically thus: “Sammy J (a tax lawyer) and Randy (a purple puppet) live together in a house. Sitcom-style shenanigans ensue.” It was described to me as a show containing all the familiar sitcom tropes, but with a darker edge. Actually, here’s a direct quote from an e-mail:

It’s kind of a melting pot of 90’s sitcoms with a HBO twist. Darker than your average sitcom… Tony Danza meets Tony Soprano… Jerry Seinfeld doing time in OZ… Basil Fawlty running the Gem Saloon in Deadwood… Blossom smoking crack in the high rises of Baltimore and then getting fisted by officer McNolte…

The reference to The Wire hooked me and I got to work conceptualising. At first, the job was going to be mainly design-based. There would be little illustration, if any. The guys were going to get a photo-shoot done based on my concept, and I’d put the poster together.

Here are a few of the concepts I sketched up:

The “couch” concept proved a favourite, so I refined it a little and gave Randy a drinking problem:

The next step was to wait for the photo-shoot and then play with the results, but an unexpected deadline arose, and a poster needed to be completed within a couple of days. With a photo-shoot out of the question (Randy the purple puppet was in a crate being shipped from the UK to Australia), the guys decided to go for a fully illustrated poster. The couch concept was still a go, but now there was a matter of determining the style of illustration.

After a few spotty chats over Skype, Sammy pointed to the drawing I’d done of Christopher Walken not long ago as the best direction to head. I decided to sketch up a few different versions of Sammy’s face, to see which way to push it.

There was the more serious, “realistic” direction:

And the more “cartoony” direction:

I was personally pushing for the “cartoony” version, probably because it was the safer, more familiar option to me. Doing a finished illustration in the “realistic” style was a little daunting to me, especially with such a tight deadline.

I decided to rough up the couch concept in the more cartoony style in a hope to win them over to it:

But the realistic direction won them over and so I got to work putting it together.

Here’s the rough I used to base the final illustration on:

I got Sammy’s likeness down pretty well, but Randy was still a little wonky. I refined him in the linework:

Went for a some hatched shading before adding colour:

Here’s what it looked like after some colour:

After finishing the illustration, it was time to put together the poster proper. There were a few options for the title text:

And finally, here’s the finished poster. The wallpaper pattern was designed by me and based on some cool vintage patterns I found online. The carpet was made from a photograph I took of the curtains in my room. Click for a larger version:

The space down the bottom is for show/venue details. The guys are doing a the first run of Ricketts Lane at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, followed by the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Tickets aren’t on sale yet, but I’ll be sure to post links when they are. I highly recommend seeing these guys live. They’ve got an amazing chemistry on stage which is backed up by really clever writing. In short, funny.

That’s it! Was a great pleasure to work on this job. It pushed my skills further than they’d been before, which I’m very grateful for. Thanks to Sammy and Heath for trusting me to do my best!