Cell Count Movie Poster

For Cell Count I wanted to crate a modern illustrated montage poster. A lot times of this type of work can get labelled as 'retro' but i really wanted to show that this type of art is still as fresh, fun and relevant for today's movie market in 2012 as it was back in 1972.

Cell Count is also the type of movie which can benefits from this school of poster art as there s some much going on, so while you could just depict one isolated character or image to promote the film, it wouldn't really tell you the whole story! and my main aim for the design was to capture all the rich nuances, characters, plot twists and atmosphere of the movie to build this static trailer.

I took a lot of influence from the Thai posters of the 70s, as they always had such a great flair for balancing out a broad spectrum of elements but still tying them together in a composition that looks unified as a whole.

8 Questions with the Dude Designs

A brief chat with the poster collective about design and i select my rundown of (what i feel) are some of the best posters ever... HERE

A Little Bit Zombie Poster

Here the poster art for A little bit zombie, its the first time I've got to really swing my design bat at a full on comedy movie poster!

During a weekend cabin trip to sort out wedding plans, Steve becomes infected by the zombie virus and Tries to battle his overwhelming desire for brains!

The basic challenge was to get 6 characters into a montage and give the piece a narrative whilst trying to make the design visually funny... and humour is an incredibly difficult thing to convey in a single static image (with a touch of horror!). To make the poster visually entertaining, i thought the best route was to create something epic and completely OTT for the subject matter, while playing on something that i depict a lot of in this type of work.... over blown machismo!

To create a classic comedy poster in a fantasy art style, so this piece really came to be a love letter to the such great artists who inspired me growing up, like Frank Frazetta (for EVERYTHING), Boris Vallejo (of course his Vacation stuff but soooo much more as well), John Bolton (thanks for the brilliant Army of Darkness!!). As the saying goes... 'standing on the shoulders of giants', ergo One who develops future intellectual pursuits by understanding the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past, (thanks wikipedia!!)

The comedy angle came from twisting that classic image of machismo by depicting the main character as this totally ripped zombie groom in a stereo typical heroic stance holding his ample-busted perma-tanned bride in one hand while thrusting BRAINSSSSS aloft to the gods!! but contrasting those cliches with a expression that screams PANIC I'M A MILD MANNERED HR MANAGER NOT A ZOMBIE !!!


Tina the bride actually is more in control as character of the pushy bride who REALLY has to get married but possibly more for the attention than anything else!

In this classic setting i was also able to bringing out the rest of the characters personalities so we see Sarah (bottom right) as the not amused by the whole situation sister, Craig (bottom left) beer drinking frat boy esque best friend, Penelope (top left) a preppy zombie hunter and Max (top right) bad tempered zombie hunter, I'm a massive Stephen McHattie fan so it was a joy to be able to paint the dude!!! (i loved Pontypool and Casey actually got me a signed copy of the film for working on the poster!!).


The background elements really help set the tone by allow the viewer to build up a subconscious impression of the story without being too busy and allowing the main focus to stay on the characters.


Title wise I've been looking for an excuse to create a cracked stone type design for ages and now was the time to fulfil that dream!


Due to the characters being smaller of this design there was a lot of intricate detailing going on that wont be visible on the web jpg (only the final printed piece), so I'm attaching a couple of closer details shots as well... Enjoy!!!

Christopher Walken King of New York Arrow Video

couch cutter petition for The Dude Designs

David at CouchCutter.com has kindly started a petition to get Quentin Tarantino's attention and hopefully get for The O'l Dude Designs hired for a poster on his upcoming Django Unchained flick!
So if you have a sec to spare sign away dudes... HERE

Creep Show Radio

I got invited on Creep Show Radio to have a good chat with the host Brian Harris about poster design, processes, inspiration, the industry and work in general so far... an honest insight into the world of the dude designs

Archived Podcast

Flake & Flames a Kustom Kulture Documentary

2011 best movie poster of the year !!

Well Most of the polls are in now for best movie poster of 2011 and i have to say the ol' Dude Designs didn't fair to badly (considering I've only seriously been perusing the more commercial movie poster work for a year now!). So for any inquiring minds out there, here is a breakdown of what got nominated and where (sometimes we've even managed to to get 3 designs on one list!!)... links on the titles!

• Total Film (Hobo & The Innkeepers)
• Yahoo (Hobo)
• Screen rant (Hobo)
• Shortlist (Hobo)
• First Showing (Hobo)
• Next Movie (Hobo)
• I design Now (Innkeepers, Madison County & Dear God No)
• Bloody Disgusting (The Innkeepers)
• The Globe and Mail (Hobo)
• Horror movies CA (Hobo)
• Complex (Hobo)
• Badass Digest (Hobo)
• Player affinity (Hobo)
• Sound on sight (Hobo & The Innkeepers)
• Poster collective (Madison County)
• highsnobiety (Hobo)
• Starpulse (Hobo)
• Flavourwire (Hobo)
• Buzzfeed (Hobo)
• Freddy in space (Innkeepers, Madison & Psychotic Ranger)

Modus Operandi DVD artwork

Here's the artwork for the DVD release of Frankie Latina's 2009 film Modus Operandi, which stars Danny Trejo, Mark Borchardt, Michael Sottile and Randy Russell. Frankie wrote, shot, and directed Modus over the course of four years, all shot on Super 8 film. It's a homage to B-Movies of the 60's and 70's. So i guess that's why they came to me!

So this was always going to be a fun cheesy design to play around with!

Colourful, packed with action, sex, gals, boobs and guns! Planes, helicopters... and even a phallic boat this time!



The guys wanted to promote Danny Trejo (being the most well known actor of course!) but while he's kind of a sub-character who's integral to the story, his appearance in the film isn't long enough to sell the film purely on the strength of. So i had to make him central to the montage but not the most prominent element, hence the other characters being larger!

Randy Russell (guy at the bottom) is the main protagonist and he's not your typical looking lead character, so i did pimp him out a bit more for added attitude with the shades and suit look. I also couldn't pass up the opportunity (with the film reel element of the storyline - watch the DVD, it will all make sense!) to play up a total and shameless homage to one of my own favourite film posters for the 1976 film Hollywood Man with William Smith!! Coincidentally I think Hollywood Man has just been released on DVD again in the US.

The other two main characters are Dallas Deacon (on the left) and the sexy Black Licorice... who i again pimped out in a low cut gold lame jump suit! Gotta love the jump suit!! I also threw in a bit of sexual innuendo with the aforementioned speed boat powering out from between roller girl's legs!


Colour-wise i went for a strong 70s yellow, brown and orange pallette, taking lead from the very cool interior decor styling seen throughout the movie (a set Frankie the director actually built himself... the man can decorate my flat any day!!!). I wanted to capture the same classic retro decor tone with the style of the packaging design. The use of the old Super 8 logo sticker was actually from the director who i got chatting with while working on the cover and i think it really builds on that whole vintage packaging vibe!

German Super movie DVD Blu-ray cover

This is the German DVD Blu-ray artwork i created for Kotch Medias release of James Gunn's Super movie. they sound like a company who know what they like and it wasn't the truly terrible UK artwork. Time was tight on this one and i was working on another job when this came in so i worked up a rough photo concept which now seems to seep out on-line but this is the actual artwork!

The original artwork had a strong creative and took a more high concept route. which i guess didn't really work more for the DVD market the UK released THIS! (shudder). So i got contacted by Kotch Media to produce a design which would be more cast orientated! as there really is a plethora of talent going on in this one (Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon and the great Michael Rooker!!) so i wanted to get everyone in the action but still give the artwork some style which related back to the films storyline. I explored two routes for this design one being the classic 70's esque over the top explosion and big title treatment, then this one which Took the super hero theme which treated the whole DVD cover 
a classic comic book design, the composition still has that narrative poster style but building it around the comic book concept allows the visual to capture the vibe of the films story line and then relate it back to the viewer, it also gives the cover a different twist and a more fun look to stand out on the shelves against the other movies.


I saturated the use of colour more in the illustration to give the thing that comic illustration vibe without being too 'cartoony' and polished it off with that old dot printing effect and offsetting the colour plates slightly so the whole piece has that distorted out of registration look (you can see a more detail section above). Again i was very happy that Kotch media ran with this as well and didn't just request a more clean version of the artwork to be used.

BloodSpayer feature

An interview i recently did for bloodsprayer, this one has tongue firmly in cheek as Rondal the writer wanted to interview the man behind the man... ?!?!
So i squeezed into my ever shrinking 70's western suit cracked out the Cubans poured a dram of whiskey and sat down to talk as 'the dude' exploitation poster designer extraordinaire and all round social degenerate!! HERE

Fathers Day Poster wins BEST POSTER award at the TORONTO AFTER DARK FILM FESTIVAL

You can see the 2011 award winners here, Fathers Day also won the audience awards for best film!!!
Dont forget to check out the making of at 'An evening with The Dude Designs' short on you tube so you can see what REALLY goes into designing a classic exploration poster! (and yes i will keep plugging it the damn thing cost me over £300 to produce it!!!)

Download and make your very own FREE Hobo Video artwork

I promised if the Dude Designs FB group counter got to 500 i would post up the Hobo video cover artwork i created for the evening with the dude designs video to allow people to download it at home and print off to make your very own FREE! Dude Designs Hobo video cover like this.


To say thanks for all the on going support with these posters and to give a little something back!
It's not easy but seeing people enjoying this stuff and hopefully bring some magic back into the world of poster designs makes it all worth it!

So enjoy !!!

Madison County movie Poster

Heres the new poster for Madison County folks!

Its been hectic over he past few months going full time on the poster work so i haven't had time for write ups unfortunately. in time ill go back and fill in the blanks, however here's the latest, i actually completed this design right after The Legend of the Psychotic forest ranger LOTPFR, (so if you want to know what i did last summer, all two weeks of it in the UK! this is it!!) having already jumped on the more tongue and cheek side of the slasher, i had to change gears for this one and deliver a more straight laced piece. Also i couldn't use an AXE! i was geared up for a chainsaw but was informed there is NO chainsaw used, so i dragged old Betty back to the WORK SHED! and sat down to create a more serious slasher design!

The film itself is by first time director Eric England and the lovely producer Ace Marrero (who very kindly brought me a MASSIVE -over 6ft- poster of the Italian death wish 3 as a thanks!!). Its very much in the same classic vain as films like A Texas Chainsaw and The Hills Have Eyes, so i really wanted to draw that vibe out for people in the art to allow people to make the connection and as always set them in the right mind set when siting down to view the film. 90% of the action takes place in the day this time so we wanted the design to reflect that sunlight rather than the black darkness which you usually get in horror posters, rather than dropping in a blue sky though i wanted to give the piece more atmosphere so thats where the orange sky came in, the same way the puple sky works for night!! it just holds more visual impact i felt.

The guys already had some photo posters out with a still of the pigs head being cradled by Damien, so they wanted a more classic montage style design, to deliver the narrative of the film and give it more emotional impact (i do apologies for women get such a bum deal on this one but a girl screaming holds a lot of cultural baggage through the history of horror film posters generally women tend to do the screaming, i suppose we could get into the psychology with the majority of the audience being male, what emotions this will drive in the viewer, i like to think its one of protection and damsels in distress, your probably going to want to run in and protect a woman being attacked by some pig head wearing psycho than the guy at the gas pump! (they where always the throw away kills at the start weren't they! gas pump attendants DO NOT have a great life span in slasher films... think about it!).

I digress... so i wanted to get some kills n thrills around the poster in a forest setting but for the main centerpiece i really needed to have a classic slasher pose of the BIG money shot scream and knife wielding maniac, so a total nod to posters like Beyond (awesome poster!), the devil within her, hell hole and Mansion of the doomed, among many others where all influences! but how to get both killer and victim playing to the audience in an embrace of death with full frontal screams and a totally over sized knife coming out towards the audience! became the challenge. So i had to do the old Drew Struzan trick and once again convince my girlfriend to pose for some reference shots (thanks babe you have to suffer for my art as i tell her!!) then add a WHOLE lot of forced perspective! in the final composition i had Damien doing a sleeper hold from behind glad to see those years of watching wrestling didn't go to waste... what do you mean its not real dad!!) i also had to fulfill my hand obsession by having the unfortunate girl grabbing outwards, i love posters which literally reach out to the audience it adds a feel of depth to draw the viewer in and hopefully pull a few emotional strings with a plea of HELP ME! to the audience. Please do note the grime on the girls body as that became a real pain to do but when i had her clean it just didn't have the same atmosphere!

Finally the title which was also total Biiiiiatch! to illustrate if it was just text the job would have finished but painting the sign with the rust! (don't attempt to paint rust at home kids its very monotonous!).

Over all the feedback was great especially a great comment from the producer "looking at it felt as if I was watching a video" which was brilliant as that was the exact tone i wanted to go for this time!

Well hope you like it dudes... All the best Tom!

Death Waltz Recording Co.

A bit of a change from the poster designs but very much in the same vain, here is a 80's VHS inspired logo identity i designed for the soon to be launched Death Waltz Recording Co. Who will be releasing limited edition cult vinyl soundtracks check them out here. So they wanted a fitting logo with that old school Video distribution company vibe, i played around with a few routes and as usual the best one was the last, this spells it out really the heartbeat of the last death waltz, with a stylized TV screen distortion in the background. (thats gradated the blue lines!)