This is for a small budget horror/suspence flick with tones of those old 80's Nam style revenge War films, gone bad!
Basically its about a group of robbers who get mixed up in the forest with an old Vietnam vet that lives out there as a hermit surrounded by an arsenal of weapons and a Cong style den!,
i thought the teaser trailers where interesting TEASER and CONCEPT (the film was originally titled Skeleton Lake... if there's any confusion) Andi felt it was a great opportunity to pay tribute to those Nam action films of the 80's which i used to love as a kid. Although it needed to be kept on a more serious level to Hobo so i couldn't have any over the top layouts, although I did have some great set photos to play around with for this one and listened to the Rambo soundtrack to get me in the Zone!
As with all these old Nam posters/video covers the main character was central to the design usually toting an over sized gun.
So i chose to take that stereo type and give a more sombre that twist of the aging Rambo who's gone even further over the edge, and the poster did become a some what alternative comment on The Rambo posters as i developed the design. The characters pose is very expressive i chose his arsenal as a specific homage to those 80's Vet film so we have the Uzi 9mm (i did also want to go with a machete but it was felt that it would make it out to be more horror orientated than action, which with hindsight after viewing the film myself! would have been the right tone... because that's what it is!!!) in one had and most importantly the iconic Rambo M16 (complete with bullet belt) in the other. However the way the character is holding them shows a more weathered, tired and darker attitude. In the trailers i was never too sure how he was coming across hero or villain? (especially in the earlier concept trailer) so i wanted to keep that ambiguity to him, although he is kited out we see he's looking downwards to the smoking gun in his hand with these almost totally blacked out eye sockets (which was kind of inspired by the work of Tim Bradstreet). So you really cant place him.
I surrounded the larger character of the vet with the more explanatory narrative elements about the film, so of course the big ol' explosion! On one side and the dead bank robber with the guns and cash which sets off the whole story draped along the bottom. Then main gang is seen weaving there way around the edge hunting him through the grass yet there is a tone of who's hunting who as they seem edgy in there stances. Finally to round off the layout and give it that almost mushroom cloud formation, a large red skull which again helps give the poster that darker tone and was inspired by the scene in the concept trailer where he boils a skull, I'm not sure if this was carried through to the final film but it still works in the posters concept and is a sweet device with which i could show the vets background in Nam and have those iconic scenes of the patrol walking through the paddy fields as well as the hughes flying through the sky (got to get those helicopters in!!)
The title itself i wanted to keep quite simple and bold to contrast against the busy ness of the illustration.
So there it is a homage to those 80's Nam films but with a more darker and sombre twist.
