The Making of Broadway Bird – Part 3
🎶 New York, New York, a helluva town
The Bronx is up, and the Battery's down
The people ride in a hole in the groun'
New York, New York, it's a helluva town! 🎶
This song takes place near the opening of the Broadway musical On the Town, as three sailors come ashore in anticipation of their day of leave in New York City. (Check it out here.)
Boy, can I relate! It was exactly how I felt when I arrived in New York for the first time, all bug-eyed, unbridled enthusiasm, overwhelmed with the jam-packed intensity of the place, clueless as to how to cram so much excitement into so little time. – But thankfully without the urge to dance everywhere or find a dame.
Actually, it was also a pretty good reflection of how I felt about the entire Broadway Bird project. How on earth could I squeeze so much rampant New York-ness onto a 20 x 25 cm page? Where to even start?
New York is a character in its own right. How could it not be? Manhattan Island is one of the most densely populated centers in the world, with over one and a half million living in a land area of roughly 23 square miles. That’s 73,000-ish residents per square mile! It’s a heaving built-up metropolis, teeming with life at all levels from skyscraper rooftops all the way down into the underground.
The first challenge of capturing just a little of it was waiting for me just a few pages into the book in the form of a sweeping panorama of Times Square. It’s an establishing shot of Louisa’s home so it needed to show the buzzzz of everyday life – billboards, marquees, a variety of building styles including grand historic theatres, glittering skyscrapers, department stores, apartment blocks, and a consistent yellow ribbon of cabs – and it had to be done without overwhelming the wonderfully quirky residents, or tragically losing a tiny green parakeet in the sensory scrum of it all.
Since it was a bit of a challenge I thought I’d break it down into the exact steps I took to get to the final full-colour spread in the book.
The first thing I needed to do was to figure out the landscape, decide which buildings to show (love the Chrysler!) and develop a kind of rhythm in the shapes. Cities require a heavy dose of perspective, so thank goodness for my fastidious tech-drawing teacher. I’ve spared you the first rough that looked more like a spider’s web than a city, but below is a neat but spookily empty Times Square, waiting for its population.
The Great White Way has long been layer upon layer of bright, flickering messages, shouting to get your attention. But this book is just as much about community so I really wanted all the rich character diversity of New Yorkers to be front and center. So, along with Louisa, that’s exactly where I planned to put them.
I started out looking at reference material of crowds in Times Square and used a number of these images to help me populate my Working Sketch with people. I wanted to get a feel for crowd numbers, poses, and how personality shows up in a person’s stride before I took on the specifics of different animals.
It took a while to work out how busy to make it. I had to decide whether there should be traffic lights, fire hydrants, one-way signs? How much traffic should there be on foot or wheels? Could I cram in an open-top bus? What about air traffic? etc. etc…
So as you can see, in the complete Final Sketch, Broadway was substantially pared back. It became almost zen-like in comparison to the real place. There are far fewer billboards and signs, much less traffic, and in general, it’s a whole lot leafier. Not exactly accurate to the concrete jungle of Times Square but more the way I imagine the anthropomorphic animals would like it. After all, I didn’t want to stress them out. Stressed lions, alligators, and anything with pointy horns really, are best avoided.
But let’s talk about characters. Creating characters has always been, my favourite thing to do. Back in primary school when I was obsessed with the idea of being the youngest animator in history – Yep, it was a thing! – I used to fill sketchbooks and school books with them, much to the chagrin of my teachers.
When it comes to creating characters I want to know all about them – their nicknames, their homes, their hobbies, likes, dislikes, dreams, anxieties, favourite foods, music, colours, quirks temperament, passions – every little thing. I’m on a mission to capture the best expression of their quirky personality, whether in facial expressions, clothing, or movement.
Even at the refined drawing stage of the Broadway spread, I swapped a couple of the characters out for stronger replacements. I already had a handsome merchant banker deer making a deal on his phone, so the second deer at the Pretzel cart became a Gnu. Turns out Gnus are pretty great when it comes to naming theatres too.
This particular Gnu is part wholefood-loving hippie, part eccentric beat poet. He is obsessed with what he puts in his body and loves to debate the finer points of ingredients with Bill, the bemused pretzel-selling duck. His name is Heston Gnu-menthal.
The other character to get swapped out was the traveling bear, in the Final Sketch, he looked way too much like the much-loved English children’s book bear, Rupert. His replacement, a much stockier guy, by the name of Black Jack Bernie, is much more the ticket. Bernie has traveled all the way from his mountain home in North Carolina to make his fortune in New York City – he’s truly wicked on the spoons.
He also has a serious sweet tooth but sadly bought his first New York snack at a greasy spoon just off Grand Central Station. Not to worry, tomorrow he’ll find Schmackery’s and start working his way through all 75 flavours of scrumptious cookies with gusto.
So here it is, the finished spread, including quirky critters and enormous billboards (but more on that later). I’m pretty chuffed with how it turned out and the fact that I managed to find the perfect perch for Louisa to sing day and night into her beloved Times Square.
Now let’s meet the Pigeons…
When it came to Sal and the pigeons, episodes of Seinfeld and Friends popped to mind. It’s a tried and true sitcom formula – a bunch of intriguing, often bizarre personalities bouncing off each other in a typical NYC apartment block as they face the everyday oddities of life in The Big Apple. A super generous TV trope, for sure.
I thought a pigeon coop tucked behind a giant rooftop Times Square billboard would make a perfect bird-friendly equivalent of a Times Square apartment block. I can just imagine Sal’s sales pitch – Spacious Penthouse, Beak Dropping 360-Degree Views, World Class Dining on the doorstep, Never a dull Moment!
I like to name my characters, helps keep my Photoshop layers under control. Here’s a handful of characters from the Pigeon Pad…
First, we have Studious Lewis, making his third attempt at his grossly overdue quantum physics essay whilst listening to Thrash Metal.
Playing cards is JD who likes old-fashioned tailoring and the odd cigar (not shown for obvious reasons), next to him is Outrageously-Lucky Billy Bob, and Not-so-lucky Martin.
Behind them sits Chuck who is rubbish at playing cards and was dealt out almost immediately, and Greta, a French exchange student who is frankly gobsmacked at how much popcorn Chuck can gulp down in an evening, and is quietly convinced he will explode at any moment.
And that’s a wrap for this one. I hope you enjoyed it, as always if you have any questions or thoughts please don’t be shy and leave them in the comments below. It’d be my pleasure to answer them.
So until next time, all the very best. x
Broadway Bird, is written by Broadway Director Alex Timbers – author proceeds will benefit two amazing organizations: The Entertainment Community Fund (formerly the actors fund) and The Wildbird Fund. Broadway Bird is available through the links here, or through your favourite indy bookshop.