Essential Vectorworks Skills for Scenic and Production Designers: Drawing, Rendering, Modeling, Drafting, and Presenting

Essential Vectorworks Skills for Scenic and Production Designers is an accessible textbook that covers the digital skills of 2D drawing, 3D modeling, rendering, drafting, and design presentation, providing aspiring designers with an invaluable toolkit to quickly and efficiently hone their craft.

Modeled after learner-centered teaching practice and based on USITT drafting standards, this book is structured around six carefully selected core projects. It introduces key terms and commands, tools, techniques, and procedures for drawing, modeling, rendering, drafting, and design presentation with Vectorworks. Each chapter begins with key commands and a set of learning objectives that will be explored. The design exercises and projects that follow invite the reader’s active participation in the learning process. Along with step-by-step instructions, 240 illustrations (including student work samples), and three insightful interviews with professional designers, this book also contains open-ended projects that encourage the reader to explore new ways of scenographic expression and creatively apply commands and techniques to solve example design problems.

This textbook is for use in scenic design, drafting, model making, and rendering courses in university theatre and media programs, and may be of interest to emerging professional scenic designers or scenographers for theatre, opera, and concert performances, production designers or art directors in film and television industries, themed exhibition designers, and theme park designers.

Essential Vectorworks Skills for Scenic and Production Designers includes access to a wealth of online resources, including 15 videos with step-by-step instruction, six files of vwx or PDF formats for additional exercises and projects, and a video of student work samples.

Ming Chen is a Professor of Theatre and Resident Scenic Designer at Kennesaw State University. She has over 30 years of university teaching experience in scene design and is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829, actively working in the professional world as a scene designer. She is the author of Visual Literacy for Theatre, a textbook on theatrical designs, and a major contributor to ArtsTrends USA, a bilingual book on performance designs. She authored and co-authored a dozen of articles published in peer reviewed journals, such as Theatre Topics, TD&T, and American Review of China Studies in the U.S., Theatre Arts and EPerformance (Shanghai Theatre Academy, China), Theatre Arts Journal (online, Tel Aviv University, Israel), as well as Scenography International (online). She is the recipient of a categorical award at Prague Quadrennial for her co-design of the set for Titus Andronicus, an Excellence in Scene Design award from The Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival for her set design for Good Person of Szechwan, and a Distinguished Professor Award (2023), as well as two Outstanding Book awards (for ArtsTrends USA and Visual Literacy for Theatre) from Kennesaw State University.