Calgary Expo Roller Derby Poster

The upcoming Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo will have a Roller Derby on Father's Day. The theme is Super Heroes vs Zombies. It was a lot of fun to do the poster. I titled it Battle at the Saddle because the Expo takes place on the Calgary Stampede grounds and one of the city's claims to fame is our saddle shaped arena, and Battle at the Saddle has a much better ring to it than Battle at the BMO Centre. It's still awaiting some copy but I wanted to post the image now because I'm pretty happy with it.

I wanted to use a super hero who doesn't wear a cape and I thought Wonder Woman would be pretty cool, and eye catching as well. Nice bright colors to offset the grays and greens of the zombies. Wonder Woman is based on Lynda Carter, of course. And as far as I'm concerned she was, and always will be, Wonder Woman - although I'm not sure I could watch the show now (tastes change), but I remember loving it when I was younger.

Frak Yeah!

I changed the billboard headline on this one (I did it for me, no word yet on if we are going ahead with these concepts). I liked the feel of the headline now, it has more energy and I also added more dimension and texture to the type. As it stands I am pretty happy with the whole series, I would be even happier if we use it, but for now it's a nice addition to my portfolio.

Expo Billboards Round 2

After talking over the original concepts for the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo billboards, based on old pulp magazines, I presented the next round. Taking into consideration all the feedback I received - and here they are.

I decided to keep the rough edges because we were still thinking of using the first group in a local magazine as a series, so I wanted them to all tie together as a unit. I wanted to keep the headline simple, a catch phrase or an expletive or a single word that can be associated with the attending celebrity. Kirk got Khaaaaan! (I even did two, the composition using the original series image works best as it leads you into the board, but I like the Wrath of Khan version better), Starbuck got Frak, Tia Carrere got Schwing, and Elvira got Unpleasant Dreams. Everything boiled down to something people can absorb in the 5 or 10 seconds that they look up to see a billboard.

It didn't meet with the level of enthusiasm I was expecting. I certainly wasn't expecting people to name their child after me (although Dean is a hell of a good name, and only the coolest people have it - Dean Martin anyone) but I was expecting a certain level of compliments, or a smattering of applause would have also been nice - I tell you, egos suck. But anyway, it is a work in progress after all. We'll see where it goes from here.

Redd Skull Comics ad

I'm going to start working on the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo program in the next few days and I thought I would take care of an ad for Redd Skull comics (which I was going to have to do before the program went to publication anyway). When I asked the owner if there was anything he had in mind for his ad he said "whatever" - he had a cold that day so I cut him some slack. By the way, I want to mention that Redd Skull is the best shop in town in my opinion, and I'm not just saying that because I did the ad. Go to Redd Skull.

Anyway, with that creative direction firmly planted in my mind I decided to look up some images of the character Red Skull and see what I could do. I found a concept illustration for the movie that I really liked and I modified it (hopefully I modified it enough), it's a fairly standard hero/villain pose so hopefully people don't think to poorly of me. I sketched out a version of Red Skull's head that I liked, and I put it all together basing it on an old propaganda poster that I really like…this post makes me sound extremely derivative but really I'm not. Anyway, I pieced it all together, threw it all into Photoshop and began playing with my brushes (not a euphemism).

I was very happy with how it turned out. The store owner was also very happy, the only things he asked was that I add a monocle, because his logo has one to differentiate it from the Marvel character, add the Captain America shield in place of the stars I have in the text (I didn't like it, that's why this version is the way it is - the shields were tooooooo much), and lastly he wanted his booth number for the upcoming Expo put on the ad (Booth 615 if you go to the show, he has a lot of amazing stuff).

So this is it.

Solaris

My latest poster design for the Calgary Cinematheque is for the movie Solaris, by Andrei Tarkovsky. A fascinating film that starts off a little slow but it does hook you. I've linked to the IMDB page so I won't bore you with the plot details, but I will say it uses science fiction to full effect, much like  2001: A Space Odyssey did before it, making it worth seeing and talking about.

I had been tempted to watch it for a number of years (the local library has several copies of the Criterion Collection version) but until I worked on the poster I didn't see it – I think it was the Russian subtitles that may have given me pause, but that's probably just an excuse. I had watched the George Clooney version, directed by Steven Soderbergh (I've been a fan of his since Kafka), and found it to be an outstanding movie. It doesn't have the trappings of a lot of contemporary science fiction, but I liked it anyway. It's a thought provoking film that will have you talking about it long after you've finished watching it.

I wanted the poster to have a sense of zero gravity, and a feeling of "things aren't as they seem".

Super Punch: X-Men First Class Art Contest

Super Punch has a design a better poster Art Contest for the upcoming X-Men movie and I decided to participate and…Ta-da! This is my entry.

You would not believe how much fun I had doing this. I always have fun participating in John's contests – and no, it's not because there are 4, count em 4, Last Exit to Nowhere shirts on the line (my fave shirt is Nostromo, with my Nexus 6 a very close second). I do it for the challenge and for the fun of it all.

Okay, this may sound like a tangent but hear me out, let me start by telling you how awesome I think my daughter is. She will sit at her computer and open up a program and play. She doesn't ask how do you do this, or that. She. Just. Plays. And she makes some amazing and creative stuff.Where as I tend to be the type who ponders about stuff and I try to find a book that will help me/guide me/show me/inspire me…whatever. So I decided to just see what happens when I open up photoshop, trust my instincts and play – now I am hooked.

Now on to the poster. Most of the current available imagery for this movie is pretty bland, you might find a nice shot of the helmet, you might find a nice shot of the actor but usually not the same shot. So I sketched out several ideas based on the available imagery, then I found an okay shot of Michael Fassbender (an awesome and versatile actor by the way) and I found a nice shot of the Magneto helmet, merged them together and then, as I said before, I just played. So this poster ties into my love of painted posters and my desire to keep things simple, and yeah it's a big head but I like to think I did it with style. I could have probably done more with the title treatment but for me this was about painting and playing.

The one thing I added was a  cooler tag line. I understand where the powers that be are going with the whole "before they were this, they were that" approach, but right in the trailer is this cool line where Erik/Magneto says "Peace was never an option". I think that adds a little menace to the big head shot.

So there you go.

Cruel Story of Youth Part Deux

Well, I got censored. I totally understand why, the whole depiction of violence against women. I get it. The thing is the whole movie is about male domination/control over women. There is probably some political subtext that has flown high enough over my head to have achieved orbit, but I think my first poster is a more accurate representation of the explosive and violent nature of the film.

Anyway, enough with the sour grapes - here is the final version of the poster for Cruel Story of Youth for the Calgary Cinematheque. Like I said, I understand the hesitation so I, begrudgingly, changed the image to be a contrast of the main characters before and after, a kind of "that was then, this is now" approach. Click here for the original, I still think it's the stronger one.

I guess my next poster featuring four mop top lads with doll parts and raw meat will get censored too.

Oh well.

Cruel Story of Youth

A new addition to the posters I've been working on for the Calgary Cinematheque. This is for Cruel Story of Youth, a 1960 film directed by Nagisa Oshima (who also directed the movie Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence with David Bowie).

I like to watch the movie before designing the poster to see if there is anything that will inspire me, or if there is an underlying theme that I feel I should expand upon, and this was an interesting movie to watch because the film is done in such a frank way – it's an extreme version of Rebel Without A Cause (a movie that was made 5 years earlier) – misunderstood youth trying to figure out their place in this world sort of stuff.

I won't go into the details of the movie, I have provided a link to the imdb site for that, but needless to say I was struck by the energy of the film and I tried to convey that in the poster.

The Cagary Expo Billboard Concepts

Click on the above images to get a better look.

I decided to develop some billboard concepts for this year's Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. There will be plenty of items (posters, flyers, ads, etc.) around the city that will speak to who is coming, so I wanted to focus on the experience that the visitors have when they go to this fantastic event. I wanted to keep the boards simple, make them memorable and tie them to the history of comics.

One thing that has always fascinated me are pulp magazines, their illustration style and their energy, and the fact that they were never just stories…they were AMAZING, THRILLING, FANTASTIC or ASTOUNDING stories. So I grabbed all of the adjective-based pulp covers I could find (there are still more but this is a good start) and I built this series of billboards. I did restrain myself, you will note that there were no exclamation marks used in the making of these billboards.

The jury is still out right now as to whether or not these will see the light of day. I hope they do. I think they are AMAZING billboards, if I say so myself. But I just couldn't wait to get them on my blog.

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.