To Serve Man

TO SERVE MAN. 2016.

Digital

A tribute poster for one of my favorite television series.

The Game is Afoot!

Heres one of a handful of projects I did at the start of the month. The school were my mother teaches was celebrating National Literature Month and she asked if I would help put together some kind of decoration for her door to promote the event. 

Since her room is close to the building entrance, I thought I would depict English Literature's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, investigating the start of a trail that would lead him to other doors that were likewise celebrating great works of fiction. 

Peabody Parody Posters

These are parody Posters of Academy Awards Nominees ("Her" and "The Wolf of Wall Street") that serve as promotions for the upcoming film "Mr. Peabody and Sherman". 

They are a bit on the rough side side I did them quickly to just get the joke across and while the movie has had many promotional videos, it was tough to find faces that best matched the look I was spoofing.

Just trying to crowbar one last thing before the end of January because oh me oh my Feburary is shaping up to be a busy one!

Foreign Frozen: Why France got better posters than us

Even a month after its release during of the busiest times of year, especially for movies, Disney's "Frozen" still continues to put its competition on ice.  

This past weekend however, a friend of mine asked why Europe got better posters for this film than we did here in the states. 

Heres what they used to advertise to cinemas in France:

And here are the posters primarily used in America:

These foreign posters reminded me of the teaser posters made by the late great John Alvin, who became synonymous with the Disney Renaissance of the1990s. His work was simply alluring, using silhouettes and negative space to build these stories in your imagination long before you ever saw them come to life on screen.

Heres just a small sample of the kinds of images he produced for Disney. (Click to enlarge)

Even when Alvin wasn't directly involved with creating the poster, the people in charge of making them were likely told to mimic his style.

This trend left an impact on a generation of movie goers, so it was no surprise that it made a comeback when the company was looking to return to the fairy tale features with big musical numbers for the big screen again. Just compare this poster for Mermaid based on a sketch by John Alvin, to the poster used as the primary promotional piece for Princess.

  

However, times have changed, and so has how movies are marketed. Now domestic posters showcase their characters in full view, looking directly at the audience, often with a raised eyebrow to emphasis "Hey you". Playing up the comedy angle to let you know this is going to be a feel good kind of movie. There are no secrets or surprises in this campaign. What you see is what you get.

This formula has been very successful thus far, as you can see in these examples:

 

Marketing has sort of a Pavlovian effect and since lots of people saw these movies and recognized them for their quality, it makes sense that the marketing team made an effort to bring audiences back again with the same kind of format from something that they liked before.

 Both styles of posters have their place, and I'm glad to see that the tradition is alive and well elsewhere.  

LOEB: Fantastic Finds!

Illustration by C.F. Payne

I actually had some reluctance in joining the League, since unlike most of the other contributors, I am not a collector in the traditional sense. I joked last week about how I was a collector of images, but that really pales in comparison to some of outrageous items many of you have unearthed from the various corners of the goodwill and garage sale globe.

While I may not accumulate as much as my peers, I have been known to frequent rummage sales, garage sales and used book sales and have found some rather interesting items during those trips. This past summer in particular I've often tweeted "garage sale find" with a picture of whatever odd thing I've found. 

J.C. Leyendecker is easily my favorite illustrator. He had unique rectilinear style and sharply defined features in his figures, with well developed compositions and a certain charm to his storytelling skills. However, he was very reclusive, even in his heyday during the Roaring '20s, and has since been overshadowed by Rockwell as the Saturday Evening Post's golden boy, so I was very surprised to find these two framed pictures of his covers. The one with the toymaker is actually one I had never seen reprinted before, so that was quite a find indeed.

I found those pictures at the Lutheran church's annual rummage sale last year were I also acquired this nifty T-Shirt. 

While my hometown may be small, the local library's used book sale always delivers the goods. I've found a wide variety of titles and found many surprising special interest selections. (A pity there isn't this much material on the actual shelves) I think the one book I've bought that left the biggest impact on me was "Dennis the Menace: His First 40 Years". 

Up until finding this tome about a year ago I hadn't know Dennis the Menace as anything other than a Diary Queen mascot and one of many newspaper comic strips that had long since past its prime. Seeing the origins of this comic, I was blown away by its quality. The amount of detail that Hank Ketcham was able to pack into a single panel all with just a few choice strokes of the pen! There was a perfect balance between light and dark that produced an incredible sense of definition to such an abstract cartoon world. The inside cover was even autographed by Hank Ketcham! Who gives that away?! 

I couldn't believe that in all my time reading old comics, I had never seen this one. Oh how I wish I had back when I was doing those panels for Sleep Care, I really could have learned a thing or two on how to reign myself in and push my boundaries at the same time. 

The book sale's movie selections have increased by leaps and bounds in the past few years. With such great bargain prices, I can afford to buy something I've never said before, watch it once, and if I don't need to watch it again, just donate it back for the library to benefit a sale yet again. 

What could have potentially been my greatest film find was a VHS Tape of "Jetman", a Japanese superhero series from the early '90s. It had a sleeve and label written in English, so I assumed it was something a video distributor had hastily dubbed in order to capitalize on the success of "Power Rangers". Sadly, I'll never know what was on the video because nothing happened when I tried to play it. On closer inspection, I noticed a label along the side that said "Not to be used outside of the province of Malaysia". If I wanted to watch it I would need a Region 2 or 3 VCR, but I think I just threw it away out of disappointment.

Fortunately I've had better finds when it comes to collecting film promotional material. I have a number of movie posters in storage awaiting the day when I can find a residence with more wall space for me to hang these up proudly like the works of art that they truly are. 

I found a framed copy of this Bob Peak masterpiece at a Baptist Church rummage sale for three dollars! My dream is that one day I'll have a place with an entertainment lounge with wall space to display a couple of posters like this. I may have to purchase some of Peak's other posters to balance it out the awesome or else tie the whole house together around a common theme. 

This poster for a 1941 spy thriller that I bought at an estate sale in July for four dollars may be the oldest in my collection. I've got a special place in my heart for these old suspense features and the posters during that era have an engaging kind of simplicity with their blocky letters and bold colors. Maybe I just need to gather enough of diverse catalog of posters that I can swap them out every month or so just to keep things fresh. Though it would be difficult to plan the wall color around constantly changing decor. 

Perhaps Bogie himself can close us out with his own thoughts on discovering a rare find:

Other Collectors in the League:

* Toyriffic scores He-Man and Batgirl!

* Brian's Favorite Find

* Kal's Action Figures

Let's Make A Show Of It!

Captain Marvelous' catchphrase from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger juxtaposed with the classic "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters. These pirates may not care much for "Keeping Calm", but they know all about carrying on. 

Originally this was something I just did on a lark, but it was a big hit on tumblr, so I decided to try submitting it to WeLoveFine's Power Ranger T-Shirt contest, even if it is based on a Sentai series. Well low and behold, this design was approved and is eligible for voting when the polls open on February 18th. Here is a link to the design page were you can share it on Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus.

http://www.welovefine.com/vote.php?id_contest=32&m=gallery&id_submit=11203

New Gods Movie Poster

This is a project thats been keeping me busy lately. So here it is, my entry for Super Punch's DC Comics Movie Poster Contest. http://superpunch.blogspot.com/2012/02/design-dc-comics-movie-poster-win-dc.html

It is based on Jack Kirby's "The New Gods" series, done in the style of Drew Struzan's Star Wars posters.

X-Men First Class

These are the character posters that were made by paid professionals to promote the upcoming movie "X-Men: First Class". A Floating Head inside of a silhouette. Wow. 

I can't even look at the the Professor X poster without cringing. His eyeball is being cut off by white negative space!

So when SuperPunch announced they were having a contest to design a  new poster for the movie that would be "sleeker and sexier", I jumped onboard, and produced this:

I will say, that this may not be the best entry, because I did put it together rather hasty and because with only so much information available about the actual story it was difficult to judge what would be important. Not the mention the obvious trouble I had with creating a drawing, but not having color in mind at the time. Others might also call me a hypocrite (and hey, it wouldn't be the first time) for using floating heads as well, but this is my attempt at a "take that" to the original posters, a way of saying "I can do that do, but not only can I make it more dynamic, I can do it better by hand!"

Further Comments and Critiques are always welcome and encouraged.