Saturday, May 12, 2012

The Lost Art of the Drawn Movie Poster!

Here recently movie posters seem to be Photoshopped or a freeze frame is taken from the film and placed on a poster.  It just doesn't seem as artistic to me to have a freeze frame as a movie poster, it's lazy really.  I love the movie posters from the seventies and eighties, they just have more to give than a one sheet of a scene in the film.  A drawn poster has more to offer and is more original.  Lets look at a few examples and maybe you'll see what I'm talking about.  This first example is a poster for the 1977 film Star Wars: A New Hope.
Now there are several different posters to select from when it comes to this movie, three to be exact, but this one speaks to me more than the others.  The next one is from the latest Star Wars trilogy, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.
 Now the first poster just seems to have more going on and has a more cinematic feel than the second poster, which has digital, as well as, photographed characters.  It's all a matter of opinion and I'm sure some will go for the Attack of the Clones poster, and anyone who does has every right to think that.  What I'm saying is just my opinion, take it or leave it.
Now my favorite character in all of cinema would just not look right to me in a poster if he wasn't drawn.  Indiana Jones has been drawn in every movie the character has shown up in.  Raiders, being the first in the series, was drawn by Drew Struzan.  He is one of my favorite artists, not because he does movie posters, but because he does his art so well.  The man has done everything from Star Wars to Blade Runner and even a few recent releases, one being Cowboys and Aliens.  A few examples of his work are below.
The first Indiana Jones poster in 1981, and in my opinion the best poster to ever be published.
 All three Back to the Future Movies were created by the artist, though the poster design hadn't changed all that much, it gets the point across with costume changes, an addition of a character signifying what movie it is, and a change in the time machine to give us a view of whats to come.
Last up on our little tour through some of the best posters is a favorite of my dads, not the poster itself, but the movie.
If you don't know this movie than go to your local video store, if one still exists around you, or go to you nearest computer and rent Big Trouble in Little China; it's an eighties movie, and its a bit cheesy, but if you don't like Kurt Russell with a gun fighting monsters and demons then your not American.  My point is, a drawn poster just seems to have more life than one Photoshopped together.  What do you think?




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