Introduction

After finishing our dissertations, coming back from Christmas, our second class was filled with our Creative Futures lectures. That is when we officially started the work towards our marketing/display for our films. You could produce a brilliant film but if it comes to the end of year show and your table showing your film has little to no decoration, there is no appeal and makes everything about your product look dull, which could deter someone from bothering to watch, as the lack of quality in display may indicate to them you lack creativity and you film will be on par. So, to make our product as attractive as possible, we needed to combine multiple aspects of marketing, including a poster, decorated display, art, book, business cards and CVs, and merge them into one display for our end of year show and pair that with industry essentials, such as a CV, an accessible Portfolio and business cards.

 

Poster

For our end of year show, the main attraction of our display is arguably our poster. Coming in at 150 by 100 centimeters, it is pretty big. This means it immediately attracts attention and stands out, so you want it to be good. Initially I had a lot of inspiration in mind, so I created a power point and was able to narrow it down to five different posters/covers that I liked that would potentially serve as the catalyst for my own.

The three posters/covers shown above were part of the power point. My thinking behind the first one, the cover of Dragon Ball Super volume 20, was that it would suit my story, as there are constant flashbacks between the protagonist in the current day and him when he was younger. The cover is father and son but it could have served the same purpose of showing old and young. On top of that, the placement for the title was already laid out and similarly to the cover I could have put the antagonist in a similar box behind the drawing of the protagonist. The second one, the Dragon Ball Super volume 13 cover is similarly straight forward, the idea was to replace Goku with the older protagonist, Vegeta with the younger version, More with the Demon antagonist and then the the row of characters behind would have been the villagers from the man’s town (at this point the plot hadn’t changed to the man living on his own with a son, it was an entire, somewhat well populated village. The Third one is promotional art for the 2005 King Kong film and would be as simple as having the man and the demon face off in the same manner as Kong and the V-Rex and I would have put the title at the top. These three did not end up getting used. The two Dragon Ball covers were not used at all, but the Kong poster served as inspiration for a shot near the end of my film, where the man and demon face off in the same manner.

 

Another idea for my poster was a painting done by Guido Reni around 1636, depicting The Archangel Michael defeating Satan, in the Book of Revelation. I did not group this in with the three unused inspirations, as this one was used in a different capacity, which I will write about in the section of this blog allocated for the art book.

The image from the PowerPoint that ended up having the most influence on my poster was a poster for the third Hobbit film. It depicted Bard The Bowman facing directly away from the camera as the massive Smaug approached him. I decided to go with this one as I felt it suited the story of my film the best, in that the protagonist is facing down a scary, very imposing enemy/monster, and this poster would serve to make the antagonist the most imposing, by making it feel massive and the man feel small. Initially, my poster was going to have a lot of detail. It showed the man stood with his sword raised beside the river bank, about to enter the forest, with the fiery features of the demon looming over it. However, I could never get the scenery quite right and most of what I tried didn’t serve the ratios of the characters well and as I added more to it, it started to clutter up the poster. So ultimately I decided there was too much going on and to strip it back, making the poster much more “to the point.” I did this by removing everything aside from the man and the fiery features of the demon. This also allowed me to make the demon a lot bigger, making it more imposing and put the man a lot closer, making the faceoff feel more imminent and personal. Then all I had to add was a bit of texture to the background so it wasn’t pitch black and then add the title. I wanted the title to have the same style as the poster (a painted look, using many layers of slightly changed colours using a paintbrush tool on Krita) and standout without looking too vibrant so with with a washed kind of muddy yellow. With a few splats of blood that was my poster finished.

 

Display

I needed my display to match the feel of my film, so given the film is set in a forest, I decided to go the grassy/natural route. I was able to get my hands on a few rolls of turf which just about fill the table, leaving a perfect slice of room at the back of the table for the monitors to sit, with the keyboard tucked neatly between them. In the shop I was able to find a couple of leafy garlands, which I got to put around the edge of my display, not only does it at life to the “forest,” but the also do a good job at disguising the inch or two of space around the edge of the table that the turf just about doesn’t reach. I acquired some log panels as well, which served a dual purpose. Firstly, they nicely go with the turf to represent the trees and add to the forest feel, secondly, they create a sturdy flat surface for items to stand on. Speaking of which, I had my business cards printed and bought a little see through container for them, which sit nicely on a log. The cards are double sided, so as suggested by Henry, the cards in the stand are showing the simple side with just “Joseph McCartan – 2D Animator & Artist” on them, then I removed one card from the deck and set it below the rest, showing the other side which has all my details including email, phone number and a QR code which brings you to my portfolio on Artstation. I pasted the actual URL underneath the QR code too, just to account for the one in a million chance that someone employing in our field can’t/doesn’t know how to scan it. I also brought a foam sword (I believe from Game of Thrones) that was for an old Halloween costume. I had an to put racket/sports tape on it to make it resemble the sword wielded by the protagonist in my film. Ideally I wanted brown tape and red tape. But the only brown tape i could find was bandage tape and brown art tape, bot of which you can see through unless you apply a stupid amount and also they were not a dark enough brown colour. I managed to get red tape, so got a roll of black to use instead of brown and it turned out fine.

 

Art book

In my art book I wanted to clearly display my characters, backgrounds and assets. I used Microsoft word to create it and dedicated sections for each item I mentioned. First i dedicated a page to the film’s poster and briefly spoke about it, then showed the characters, the man, young and old, his son and then the demon. For the demon I wanted to display the art beyond the character, as for the whole film it is a pitch black mass of muscle. I put in the frame of the demon engulfed in flame when it enters and also put in the lined out frame of the character with the colour turned off, to showcase the demon actually has a pretty detailed physique. The following section was assets and backgrounds. So the house, trees, boats and skies, followed by the backgrounds. For the final section I decided to insert three (two images to a page so six in total) pages of some of my favorite stills taken from the film. Returning earlier to what I mentioned about the painting of Archangel Michael, I took that idea that may have been a poster and created it to uses as the cover of my art book. I think this worked well as I was able to further showcase my art and my characters (while displaying a scene that actually happens off camera in the film, so it also somewhat counts as bonus content/lore) without just making the film poster the cover, which would just be a repeat of what is already massive above the display.

 

Industry Related

Lastly I created, as mentioned, a CV and a show reel. I kept the CV as simple as possible, giving a brief intro and listing my experiences, all just my main films in Uni. It was a combo of red, dark grey and white so i went with the same theme for the business card, which I described when talking about my display. Last but not least is my portfolio on Artstation, which contains my best work from Uni, set out in detailed posts, accompanied by my work condensed down into a quick show reel.