Almost Human Poster

Heres the Poster artwork for Almost Human. for this one i actually worked up an alternate design which follows along the same lines but with a more minimal vibe, which you can see bellow.

Mark Fisher (guy with the beard) disappeared from his home in a brilliant flash of blue light almost two years ago. His friend Seth Hampton was the last to see him alive. Now a string of grisly, violent murders leads Seth to believe that Mark is back, and something evil is inside of him.

Upon watching the preview i instantly picked up on visual vibes from such films like, Altered States, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (80s) and obviously The Thing (Carpenter was a big inspiration for the guys), These where all mainly down to this scream that mark does, it was such a powerful image that i really wanted to lead with it and show this distorted scream, the other strong image i got from the film was of Mark getting hit by the blue beam light in the intro sequence so they provided me with the main visual hook for the poster art, with inspiration from posters like The Beast within, The Thing, Madman, Friday the 13th part 3 (my personal favourite of the series!!) even berserker, Prince of Darkness and the altered states poster itself. My other big inspiration was a John Saul book i picked up called Comes the blind fury which had a great image of a blind girl lit from the bellow.

Joe Begos the director wanted a montage design so i wanted to interpret it in a different way this time, leading with the main scream and fitting the imagery inside of that. For the montage was all about setting the seen so i wanted to convey this sense of fear and loss of control in the characters, so there aren't any 'guns out' building a sense of fear. then i wanted to show some of the action but not give away too much, so keeping an air of mystery to draw the viewer in.

The only controversial image was the naked sort of slim covered girl, as it was such a contrasting image against the rest i felt it really held power, plus being a woman it broke up the rest of the images and added air of mystery, 'who is she?' 'what is going on there', which then leads down to the pods on the bottom right and we start to get more of a twist for people to interpret !

Finally the title treatment was a big thing for the designs vibe, i wanted to keep it more conservative with a alien vibe. I experimented with different letter forms to convey this. and created a logo which is sort of modern but actually is a very classic 70s inspired. to contrast with the rest of the imagery and layout.

As i mentioned at the start i did work up an alternative design, it was always in my head to go down a more minimal route with the main character, so it want much more work to see how that design would play out (the joys of working digitally!). I also think it might be more fitting for the DVD market in foreign territories where they seem to go for a more minimal image, so it offers options to the distributors and will be interesting to see if they run with it. See what you think below

Hypothermia Poster

Here's another Glass Eye Pix / Dark Sky Pictures MPI Media the guys behind The Innkeepers.


Ill need to cast my mind back a bit as this one goes back a bit, I actually completed the design way back in October of last year. MPI Media contacted me about this one wanting a classic creature feature design.  


The basic premise is a family out ice fishing catch more than they bargained for (that's not the official line but  hey i can't resist a good pun!) When they stumble across a monster from the deep!  Well I'm a massive fan of snow bound horrors and monster horror films (which sadly dont get made as much)  so i had a field playing around with these themes.

As the action centres around this monster coming out of the ice hole it gave me this great visual of the plain white snow then this this dark mysterious hole OF TERROR!!

So i emphasised the hole more to represent said terror with its sinister cracks splitting and breaking along the clean crisp ice (i was quite proud of my cracks, i spent quite a bit of time on the detailing), which reach out to the viewer as well as the family in the distance. It also allowed me to play with the use of the negative space in the poster, i loved the idea of the image starting off really dark at the top the trailers lights just highlighting the characters in the distance then this gradually bleeds out into the white nothingness of the paper at the bottom with just the cracks intersecting the two. then keeping the title treatment in perspective to lead the eye down.

There where actually two title treatments i offered up, this blood version and one made up of  the cracks continued on from the hole. The blood one won out for impact of the read.There where also some montage concepts thrown into the mix, particularly as Michael Rooker is staring in it but it just wasn't fitting with the genre, so i talked the guys into making more of a picture treatment out of the design rather than loose the atmosphere and impact.

The design sort of recreates a scene in the move but taken from an alternate angle, the family isolated on the lake and trapped in a trailer looking out into the night to keep watch for where ever is out there beyond the darkness under the frozen ice.....

Monster Fest 2012 poster

Here is the artwork i created for Monster Pictures Australian horror film festival Monster Fest.

The concept was to create a classic film poster design based on the monster geisha character they have made for this promo short created by Isabel Peppard as the face of the fest for 2012 (it's a metamorphosis of there previous asian film festival geisha character).

 

Its a straight down the line celebration of classic exploitation, monster, horror design to really drive home that film style vibe for the folks and as a fun poster momentum of the festival.

 

 As the main visual was to be of a strong female character my instant inspiration was the wonderful work of Frank Frazetta (again!) you just cant get sexier female illustrations for my money! so that really was the tone i wanted to capture, the powerful sexy and voluptuous fantasy barbarian monster woman walking through the mountains of blood guts and bones!!

 

I did slightly sex up the outfit a touch to a more thong inspired garment so emphasizing the ladies powerful posterior more as well as bosom to capture the classic spirit of the piece.