Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Seven Samurai


The next presentation for the Calgary Cinematheque will be Seven Samurai. This is one of the first foreign films I had ever watched and it is outstanding. I wanted to give the overall poster an expressive feel to tie in with the action of the film, plus I prefer posters that have a more illustrative quality, that's something that I find is missing in poster design these days. So the first thing I tried doing was a Drew Struzan approach, with the gessoed board and the pencil crayons, but it wasn't working for me -I'll keep at it though because, after all, it just takes time and patience, and the Drew Struzan "how to" dvd that I've watched more than a few times already (Thank goodness for ebay, because otherwise it's a pretty pricey flick).

So with press time fast approaching I decided to use the technique I used for the Expo Volunteer poster I had just finished. I took photos of paint strokes and created a variety of masks out of them and then layered pieces of the larger image over top of each other to give it a layered, painterly look and applying color in select areas to give it more of an expressive feeling.

I'm really happy with the end result. I can't wait to see it out in the world.

2 comments:

  1. How do I buy one?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've been getting some pretty good feedback on some of my posters, so I think I will look into setting up an online store.

      I've never done it before so please bear with me. If you want one before I set the store up give me a shout and I can see what I can do.

      Delete