For our Creative Futures module, the first piece of work I started was the poster design for our End of Year Show displays. As it would be part of the marketing for our short film, I had the goal of creating a design that would match my initial inspiration for my short film, would appear as a professional piece of marketing and would communicate the base line idea of my short film’s narrative of the characters Snatch and Screech fighting over a paper crown.
References and Ideas-
Below are the main references I had in mind when starting to work on the poster. The main idea that I wanted to go for was having my poster resemble a DVD cover for a collection of cartoon episodes, and from the references I have gathered I noted that one of the main marketing points was that the characters faces were the focal point of the cover, though I was also advised to focus on additional details as these characters are more famous to warrant the close ups shots. Furthermore, I also noted that the Tom & Jerry covers had an airbrushing rendering to them, with a good amount of rim lighting on the character bodies, which I would recreate when shading my final poster design.
In addition, I also gathered some references for more particular set pieces and shot composition I wanted to include, namely having my two characters oppose each other in the design, along with having the idea of both characters standing on a large tower of trash bags, which I would also need references for in order to get the reflectiveness of the trash bags correct.
Lastly, one of my earlier concepts for the poster was to have Snatch and Screech dressed up as a king and a peasant with a more regal crown and throne, the idea being that the poster would be ironically grand compared to the actual plot where the crown is made of cardboard. I also had the idea of putting a castle in the poster and even having it made out of cardboard as well. However whilst drawing up early concepts, I ended up scrapping the idea.
Early Concepts-
Final Concept-
Below is the concept poster that I ended up going for, which felt the strongest to me along with the lecturers who I had shown the designs to, with the only note being to change the title format so it more easily fits on the poster, along with adjusting the colours to have more depth.
Final Poster Design-
Below is my final poster design, along with work in progress exports of the initial blocking, along with the base colours before adding the shading.
