I did scenic design for Electric City Playhouse’s 2024 production of The Holiday Channel Christmas Movie Wonderthon, directed by Abigail Thomas.

The set needed to use nearly the same physical build as the blackbox theater’s previous show, Carrie the Musical. We would rely primarily on paint to transform it from a doomed school gym into the rustic inn at Hopewood Falls, where several Hallmark-inspiried movie plots would combine into a hilarious romance extravaganza.

To make the design effective at conveying both indoor and outdoor scenes, the director wanted the walls and floor to fade to a snowy landscape at the edges.

I brought a photograph of the set into Clip Studio Paint and drew some ideas for various paint treatments directly on top of it. For each, I provided several color options that could be mixed and matched. I played this digital set dress up game with director Abigail over a video call one day, and she decided on her favorite combination.

Behind the double doors at center stage, we needed a mural of the great outdoors. I made a rough digital illustration to use as a guide when I picked up the paintbrush. While I had extensive help on the rest of the set, I did all the landscape painting.