Since the first parade of the season that I designed rolled through downtown Mobile last night, I can go ahead and post some float drawings, as well as some roughs and insights on the design process!
The Order of Polka Dots theme this year was
"Women of Winter", and I drew 15 floats as reference for
Steve Mussell's crew over at
MIRTHCO, INC.
The themes are ideally selected well in advance--
sometimes years-- in order to allow prep time for costuming, ball decorations, accessorizing, and -
most importantly to me-
Float Building!
In this post, I will go a little bit into the process, and include both the sketches and the related finished drawings.
First, I'll start off with a trio of 'rough drawings', which are produced after the Float Builder gets the theme and we discuss what he wants on the float. We will typically meet and go over the organization's theme, look at specific requests ( along with reference pics often submitted by the organization), and do some preliminary sketches known as 'thumbnail' roughs.
Then, I render some somewhat clearer sketches and submit them to the builder for approval.
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| Float rough sketches for Mirthco, Inc by BRENT AMACKER |
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| (c) Brent Amacker |
Once approved, the floats are hand-rendered on
9" x12" Bristol Board -- a heavy, textured cardstock art paper-- and then inked using archival, waterproof inks.
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| Brent Amacker |
The black and white images are clearly drawn in order for the crew to use as reference, and the builder (or an associate) will usually color the drawing to achieve the proper color scheme to his liking.
The floats are all built on either identical or very similar platforms, so I only render the facades.
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| In this case, it was decided that the front figure would be dressed in traditional Swiss attire, as opposed to being bundled snugly in a furry parka...! |
