Poster Process (4th blog post)

Once I had all of the faces and hands done and finished I looked at the text that I could be potentially putting on the poster, I looked around at all different sites and font download pages to find the right one. I found this quite hard as most of the horror ones had a tendency to look cheesy or over complicated. And as I have quite a complicated and detailed piece on the poster I wanted something horror themed but still very simple.

I really like the type face of this one and the idea of having both 'R's large to mirror one another and carry on the symmetrical feel to the poster.

I did like this one but the more I played with it on the piece I found that it didn't look quite right. 

This one is actually a text taken from letters written to the police after the murders from the ripper himself, so obviously I thought this one is perfect and ties in so well, and when I added it to the piece I felt it went perfectly. 

After adding the text I played around with the warp tool to move and adjust the letters as I wished. 

I also found that the Puppet Warp tool was perfect to move the letters easily and well. 

This is it so far! All I have to do is add a caption and whatever other small pieces of text to join it all together! 

Poster Process (3rd post)

I decided that I wanted a tear or blood, I am still unsure whether I want to put this on all the faces, so for now I want to do this face then work from there.

At first I was conflicted at how I wanted the eyes to be so I played around with a few colours until I decided I like the eye. I stuck to oranges, reds and some yellow and white for highlighting. 

I have been considering having the eyes different, like on pupil bigger or all black, but for now I copied and pasted the eye. I think I may come back to it and play with a few other ideas for the eyes. 

The finished eyes. 

Here is the outlined piece! Now I am going to play with hues, colours, lighting and so on..

Poster Process (2nd Post)

Yesterday I finished the general outline for the heads and some of the hands, and this morning I have been focusing on the outline of the hair of all the girls. I did a slight sketch of the feral layout of the hairstyles, and to create the final outline I turned down the opacity of the original sketch hair layers and added a new layer and completed the hair. Here are some screen prints to show my process. 

Here is a screen shot of when I first started the outline of the hair in the new layer. 

This is a screen shot from a little while later, at this point I thought I was almost done with the hair but the further along I got the more I thought that the hair should be messier and denser. 

...more detail!

This is the finished hair outline I am happy with it but I am considering adding colour for depth. But right now I want to finish the outline then I will go further in to it and experiment with colouring. 

Poster Process

First I scanned in a sketch I had done of the rough poster idea. I used yellow pencil, the reason I did this was so that I would find it easier to build over a yellow pencil rather than a deep black that would make it difficult for me to see.

I then drew in with a pencil tool at 3px, this tool is faint so it is easy for me to build up, or ignore faint mistakes. 

After doing the first first profile face I decided to copy it and paste in position of each head. I used a grid to get everything in the right place as I want it to be symmetrical.

I then looked at late 1800's hairstyles and applied them to the heads, each head has a different hairstyle. I don't want them to all be exactly the same as I want them to represent individuals killed, and creating a group of matching girls would take away the individuality. But I want all the girls to have the same face and show the same sad expression, I want to do this so that they tie together in the experiences that they shared and the feelings that the victims would have all experienced. I want them to be calm and sad, almost a subtle devastation, I think these faces show pure sorrow and no fight, showing an acceptance of their ends. 

Now I am throwing the base together, adding rough sketches of the hands and we ponds and mirroring them. Im considering removing the top two hands and replacing them with something else or just the title. 

Now Im going to work up the final outline from this!

Relation between artists, old and new.

Looking in to any piece of art, old or new, we see influences and concepts that have been formed by what that artists likes or dislikes or who they are inspired by. Through time many styles come in and out of style, so what may seem new and contemporary may be an old popular concept with a slight twist.

I have chosen to look at a handful of artist through time and what their techniques are like and how they compare to other similar artists from different times. I want to look at Brom (born March 9th 1965), Frank Frazetta (February 9th 1928 - May 10th 2010) and William Adolphe Bouguereau (November 30th 1825 - August 19 1905). The reason I have chosen these artists is that they all have a slim familiarity in the pieces, so I want to look further in to their work and see what techniques or concepts run through time and their artwork.

William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)

Dante and Virgil in Hell 

I absolutely love Bouguereau's work, the clear talent and the way he sets an atmosphere is astounding. I love the positioning of the men, the way they seem to flow together almost creating one figure. The demon in the background is so sinister and seems to lay in the dark background yet still pushes the terror to the audience.
The colours used are in my opinion what makes this piece amazing, the flesh tones are illuminating and bring the character out and makes them seem alive and real. The use of the dark tones, especially the oranges and brown are throwing the illumination foreground closer to us and throws them in to a spot light.
The piece was made in 1850 and the concepts we see here run through history since around the 14th century when the devil was first conjured from a God of temptation and delights of the worlds. And since then the devil has been used as a popular concept becoming darker and more sinister through time. 

Gypsy Girl with Basque Drum

Here is another piece by Wiliam from 1867. This piece is a lot calmer in comparison to 'Dante and Virgil in Hell' and the colour palette shows a softer and sweeter approach. Here again we see Williams pure talent and his illuminating painting skills, making the character the soft focus of the piece. 

Frank Frazetta (1928-2010)

Death Dealer (1973)

I feel many likeness's of Franks work to William Bourguereau's work. The first is the painting skill and the ability to illuminate certain pieces of the work. In this piece Frank has used this in the horses body and the shield held by the warrior. I also see that Frank also uses deep oranges and brown to light up the background and creating a dark and doom atmosphere. 

A Fighting Man of Mars (1973)

In this piece by Frank we also see the illuminating skin tones, similar to 'Dante and Virgil in Hell' in the respects that the figures in the piece are shown in a golden and pale light to bring them in to the main focus. Also relating the Bouguereau, Frank has used more dark browns and oranges in the background to darken the atmosphere and bring the figures closes to the audience. 

 Brom (1965-Now)

Lion Head

This piece ties in so well with Frazetta's and Bougueraeau's as he has used the same painting techniques and colour palettes common in the said artists work also. For instance, this piece has a warrior highlighted with bright flesh tones to centre the attention to him. Also, bringing the figure forward and creating a heavy atmosphere with the dark oranges and browns. 

Morgan Le Fay

This piece is once again in correlation with the artists I have spoken about.
They all use the same concepts and ideas, they think about composition and colour in similar ways, all using these concepts to create astounding pieces of art.

 Looking at these artist all from varying times we see that these concepts run through time and come in and out of popularity. These concepts are changed and edited as they pass through each artist and when applied with such talent creates timeless pieces, although they hint at an older and traditional style they are all still popular today.

Hands (Pictures for reference)

I decided to take some pictures of my hands in several positions that I thought would benefit me. An idea that I am working more in to is a womans face surrounded by hands of the Ripper, so I needed to get some hand poses that would fit. 

I am thinking of having a hand in this sort of position coming from behind the woman's head.

Maybe a hand picking up hair?
Maybe a marionette appearance?

More hands wrapping around the head towards the face?

A hand more threatening and approaching around her face?

A fist holding a knife?

Holding handfuls of hair? 

Holding hair?

Grabbing scalp?

Hand creeping across face? 

Horror Posters

I think I want to start with the poster, so that I have more time to build on concepts and ideas for the vinyl cover and the rest of the item. I want more of a dramatic and harsh poster design, so to get some ideas I want to look through some popular posters for horror films and see what concepts they used and how they carried them off to fit appropriately and attract public attention.

I like the basic colour palette use for this poster, the use of three dramatic colours together worked very well. Although Star Trek isn't a horror movie I felt like the concept for this one would portray a horror movie well so I decided to look at it too. I like the basic male face, yet it doesn't appear altogether basic, I think the techniques used for this takes advantage of the space well. 

I see the concept for most horror posters are vague as to not give away much, this is shown in this poster for The Grudge. The close up of the scared eye and a vague reflection in the eye. The colour palette is here again kept to a minimum selection of colours, and each chosen is a creepy dark and suitable. 

I love the colour palette in this, reds and blacks are in my opinion essential to horror. My favourite component of this poster is the restrained skull that is visible yet it feels like you have to strain, or that its pushing through.

And here again we have the black and red theme as they had used for their 1st series poster (above). They have also used the 'strained' effect that they used in their first poster but in this one they used a chain fence to show a barrier between the audience and the asylum. 

I love the figure coming out of blood splatters! I think it blends well in to the black area and does not look just dropped on to a piece of paper. 

This is a concept I have found in many other horror movie posters, they seem  to alway have a general picture of the setting in the film with some sort of object symbolising the murderer or fate of the people in the film. In this one they have use the mask of the killer standing out at the top of the piece and blended in to the main surrounding. Even though the mask blends in to the background a bit does not loosen the hold of terror that the mask portrays. I love this concept and I am thinking about this sort of direction. 

Let Me In used a quite simple design, the characters are simple silhouettes and are placed in a very graceful flow to one another. I think the red blood is the only thing that points to it being a horror movie. But I do like the idea of the silhouettes.  

This is the sort of this my original ideas were leaning toward, I love the simplicity and anonymous hand. 

I love how grubby and rusty this poster is, and it seems like it is a collage underneath the face.

Victorian Hair

One of the hardest things I am getting a grip on with this is drawing hair, I normally struggle but I have found it hard to tackle old and complicated hair styles like the ones in 1888.
To help me with this I want to look at other artists interpretations of victorian hair, here are a few things I have found.

I like this one, as the drawings are simple and show the general outline of the hair shape, leaving out the complicated detail of full hair. These can give me help with hair styles to use for the women in my illustrations. 

I like this one, the way the curls are in the front of the hair is very simple almost yet shows all the detail needed. Unlike the previous this one shows more detail in the hair flow. 

Once again in this the detail of the hair shows detail and flow but isn't overly detailed. 

I love this illustration, the womans eyes are huge and doll like. And the hair is full of details and gives off a lovely vintage feel. 

Horror Soundtrack Covers

As the aim for my project is to create a horror vinyl and extras, I wanted to look at other horror movie soundtrack covers and see what other artists have done to attract and audience to buying a soundtrack. I also want to see what would fit the target audiences wants and expectations with a horror soundtrack and how the artists met these needs and expectations through their concepts, ideas and finished cover. 

Masters of Horror
I like the cover to this, due to the red and the black together with the design and text, a horror theme is clearly portrayed to the audience, and would attract somebody like me who loves horror to buying this. I love the background and the texture added, as I think without it the cover would be duller, I like the idea of adding textures to a colours background as it adds more of an interesting effect and a grunge feel to it, coupling well with the concept. 

The Amityville Horror
I like the colours in this piece, as they seem warm, but dangerous, and attract the eye to the windows creating an uneasy feeling towards the house. I like that the colours gradient from a hot orange to a dark purple black, this brings the viewers eye up to the desired point. 

Carrie
I am a huge fan of this film, but in my personal opinion I don't like the use of the cover for this vinyl. I do see how it shows the contrast of Carrie's mood, from one happiest moment to the next darkest moment and how her character changes drastically in a heart beat and the heat of her rage in contrast to the warm loving happiness of her proudest moment. So in some respects I do like the concept use, but I would think there could be more interesting ways to show this concept to the audience other than just two pictures next to one another. 

These are awesome horror themed turntables, I like the use of the space and would like to look in to the idea of painting a vinyl to go with the collection that I will prepare for the brief. 

Halloween
Simple and scary, here they have kept the main image used for Halloween and used it again for the vinyl, I do love this image, but I would like to use a different image for each product and piece. 

Troll
I love this cover, I think it obviously fits perfectly and the picture chosen in awesome!

Psycho
I like the concept for this idea, showing the victim in a pale colour in one corner and the villain in red in the diagonal corner. And the house in the background ties it all in, I like how it shows the good, the bad and the setting, making it clear and crisp for the audience. 

Rosemary's Baby
I love the cover of this vinyl, as it shows the peak moment of the film, the moment that the whole film builds up to. So I think that using the final moment on the soundtrack is a wonderful idea, as it has some insight but doesn't give anything away.

Tales From The Crypt