Shortly before I started the blog my hard drive died an ugly and unceremonious death, and of course being the tech savvy person I am I hadn't backed anything up. Smart right? Thankfully for this post some lower resolution stuff had ambled its way onto my flickr page, and it's sat there ever since. I'd never thought to post it on the blog since it's not really what the blog is about (but in a way it's what sparked of the notion that led to it, as you can read about all the way back at the beginning - You'll see one of this posts images there too). But since this month is going to be fairly slow it's time to start dredging the archives. Skip to the end? OK, to pictures!
So this got the ball rolling - I thought it would be cool do do a Jaws poster in the style of Saul Bass. You know who Saul Bass is right?
I thought it turned out pretty well, and of course it didn't require much in the way of drawing. A few days later I thought I'd try doing a Jaws poster in the style of something else (you may wonder why Jaws. It's a brilliant and iconic poster, and highly adaptable. That's really the only reason).
This was the weakest of the Jaws posters I did (IMO), and didn't really need any actual drawing at all. In retrospect it's rubbish, but it does sort of capture that Soviet propaganda feel. I think I could do this one better now.
If you're interested the text says "They hunt the shark, but it eats them! Cheer the shark that eats Yankees! JAWS" but it's translated through Bablefish or something so it probably actually says "Waterbear is needed, eat fresh thyme! Applaud Americans eating Waterbear! SMILE!" But I digress.
Probably the one that most accurately nails the desired style (Looney Tunes title cards), but also the one I had the most trouble with since I couldn't draw for toffee (nothing much has changed you'll note). All the text was hand lettered (not that you can tell). I quite like it though. Not much else to say really
Jaws in the (vague) style of the now defunct Designers Republic. The Jaws poster as an infographic basically. I really should rework this one at a higher res again and get it printed because I think it's brilliant even now (I may be alone in this). This is probably the most widely seen piece I've ever done outside the game industry by the way; my brother stuck it into an episode of Sinister Dexter that appeared in 2000AD ("The galaxy's greatest comic!" He's a colourist). No I didn't get paid, it's a brilliant brotherly in-joke!
So there you have it - a little slice of Mestory. I might do another of these little retrospectives soon, but next up... Well, I have no idea right now, I'll have to think of something.
Oh, and "Eat, swim, make little sharks" is a quote from the film - Hooper describing pretty much everything that sharks do.
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Thank you Bobby, I appreciate it :) Sadly I can't take any credit for the speed of loading, sine I'm just set up using Blogger's servers and am at their mercy... well, maybe a little, I did pair down the CSS to the minimum fuss that I could and I'm careful with my image optimizations; no doubt that helps loading times a little bit.
Deleteas a 40+ year film poster collector/ dealer/ appraiser/ historian, all i can say is BRILLIANT contribution to the art of message design, even to the point of earning a capital A in that "art" designation. would that the "suits" who push the money in film production and promotion had 1/10 your imagination and creativity when it comes to graphic exploitation of a product or message, we'd have a helluva lot more intriguing and challenging and rewarding posters to lure us back into theaters, where god (goddess, dog, etc.) intended man to witness the spectacle of film. i found your work accidently by searching for milton glaser's chaotic and wonderful special poster for "zabriskie point" and he has met his match in you to be sure. all the best, postermandan
ReplyDeleteThank you for your amazingly kind words Daniel. I don't consider myself to be an amazing graphic designer, but I have dabbled enough to make a little money from it. I will wholeheartedly accept your compliments, but being compared to Glaser is definitely enough to make me blush (if only because he did not have the benefit of computers to make his work easier, and this sort of design benefits from them enormously).
DeleteI fully agree about the quality of most modern posters though, and find that the majority end up feeling very generic, as well as often being poorly implemented. I don't feel that Photography over illustration is always a bad thing, but it helps if the person using it is employed as much for their design sense as they are for how well they can use Photoshop, and it saddens me greatly that the art of poster illustration hasn't just reached a status quo with the photography, but has been near obliterated by it. Hmm. There may be a future blog post in that. :)
Thanks Again, Harl.