Kim Newman's Video Dungeon

This is a video nasty cover i designed for empire movie magazines Kim Newman's (horror guru) regular Video Dungeon page.

They had some images of Kim which i chopped up and then re-illustrated, complete with generic scary house and screaming girl, plus the three chainsaw swipe, which is a bit of a homage to the pranks cover. (What's better than putting one chainsaw on the cover... THREE chainsaws!!).
I then chose to have the Video Dungeon title as the film distributors name rather than the film title itself, i felt this would be a nice twist and allow me to emphasise the whole cheesy video nasty cover more, its also massive nod to my personal favourite film distributors of the 80's Video Movies from Hokushin so i couldn't help referencing them on this one.

Excellent news emailed by empire magazine saying...

"incredible work!" and a "Big thumbs up from Kim"

So my design was selected to appear in the July issue of Empire Magazine:

CANNON

This the last in the CANNON series, so aptly its the much later 1980's video release design.
I painted the picture in photoshop using a selection of acrylic style brushes to give it that real rough illustration feel and as this would be a few years down the line I wanted a different more 80's feel to it rather than my previous 70's covers, so i went all metallic silver with an electric/neon typography for this Vigilante Video release.



Here is a screen grab i made for the title screen. I designed it in photoshop then imported it onto VHS and ripped it from that, i do like the rough grain and bleeding colours which you get with video tape that we have lost with DVD and even more so with BluRay now, it wasn't perfect but something about the rough quality of it all made it more fun as a kid, especially if it was a pirate of an 18 rated film which you shouldn't be bunking off school watch...


These are the second two posters in the series, this time promoting CANNONE which is more inspired by the brilliant 70's Italian Poliziotteschi crime films of the time so giving me a different angle to work on.



Here is a rare lobby card for CANNON not in great condition and quite sun bleached.


This is the first poster for CANNON a homage to the old American Cop,Vigilante films of the 70's/80's. The title is a nod to the Deathwish/Dirty harry 'Cannon' films of the time and it also tribute to Cannon its self who brought us many... many... many awesome vigilante films of my youth (mostly staring Bronson).

video cover, Video Nasty, grindhouse, film, vhs: The Rent Collector

Here is the cover of new video nasty sleeve cover the lost classic 'The Rent Collector' produced by 'Mondo Video' (a bit of a homage to Faces of death).

I wanted this to be a more 70's Roman Polanski esque, art house, skin flick, slasher film.

So lots of brown, earthy tones. Cigar smoke and leather pretty much sums up the feel i was after on this one.

video cover, Video Nasty, grindhouse, film, vhs: DUDE

Here is the beginning of a new design/art project based on early 80's video nasty covers.

It was something of an obsession of mine growing up, living in a small village i not much moved fast!, I even remember the first time i ever went to the video shop.
I saw the video store as a twisted pop art gallery, these brilliant covers all displayed in rows would entice me as I went around the aisles and viewed the display cases at the local 'Blaby video' or 'Hollywood video' shop.

Then as i got older i really fell in love with the video nasty section, it was like art porn almost. The excitement of what lay behind these worn, sun bleached trashy covers with there tacky Video logos and all the promises they made but sadly rarely delivered, 'selling the sizzle but not the steak'. really got my design rocks off.

Video nasty covers are what really got me into graphics, i started off by my own video covers for the old horror films i recorded off the TV and Its been a love hate relationship ever since. With this project I've come full circle and returned back too a subject matter that first inspired me, exploring design as pop art combining photography, illustration and graphics.

So here is the first in hopefully a long line of covers in the series.