Special Event Design

Towers and Turrets

Joshua Hoegh from First Baptist Church of Elgin in Elgin, Illinois brings us this castle scene for their stage.

The theme for Vacation Bible School last summer was Kingdom Rock, and rather than have an elaborate stage design for simply one week, they decide to create a sermon series around the design so that they could not only create a “buzz” leading up to VBS, but also pool their resources with the Children’s Ministry (both financial and volunteer) to create an amazing stage design. The result? They built a castle on stage. There were 2 strong components to this design – the construction of the design itself, and then the aesthetic work of painting and accessorizing.

They framed the towers with traditional 2×4 studs, then wrapped the frames with 3×3 sheets of flexible, paintable plastic. The 3-dimensional stones were simply painted styrofoam. They eventually decided not to use the large, center plywood panel depicted in the concept images, in light of deciding to use their center screen.

The walls built between the towers were styrofoam panels painted to look stone, and the backdrop being lit in the archways was a backdrop provided by Group VBS. They accessorized the stage with purple fabric and finished it off with some dramatic lighting.

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VBS Castle - Bottom

VBS Castle - Front

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VBS Castle - Rear

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3 responses to “Towers and Turrets”

  1. Heather Jones says:

    What did you use to create the curve base and top plates for your turrets, that the 2″ x 4’s are attached to? Is the plastic Coroplast sheets? This is a beautiful design! Is anything nailed down?. My email address is simplysimonne@aol.com and my name is Heather.

    • Joshua Hoegh says:

      Apologies for the delay in responding! Yes, the columns are wrapped in 3’X3′ plastic panels, which were painted once applied. I don’t have exact details on the specifics of the material, as they were donated by a local plastics company, but they were essentially heavy-duty poster board material that we could easily curve and paint :) hope that’s helpful!

  2. Doug G says:

    The height of the window panels are 7′. What is the width? Did you construct them from the same plastic materials as the turrets or are they made from foam insulation or hardboard? They look bigger than 4’x8′ panels.

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