Hobo With a Shotgun Poster

Well Its the big one and it's been all over the web now on!!:

IGN • Entertainment weekly • IMP • Worst Preview • Bloody Disgusting • Beyond Hollywood • Twitch • Shock till you drop • Screen Junkies • Greek Tyrant • Horror Society • Shock till you drop • Fangoria • Chud • Mubi

I'm proud to present the new poster for Jason Eisener's Hobo with a Shotgun, which I've been excited about since I saw the trailer in the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse film(s). Now it's a full-length feature and staring The Hauer no less - it's a proper hark back to the vigilante films of the 70's/80's and the whole future gang/ punk films of the 80's.

So it was an opportunity not to miss!!! I posted a message on the Hobo site saying "I do posters etc, love to knock something together for you guys..." and the next thing i know Jason Eisener emails me back saying:

"I'm extremely impressed by your work. We seem to share the same artistic inspirations... Would love to see what you could do with Hobo With a Shotgun.... P.s Your Jaguar Lives is inspiring. Also did you make that vigilante video logo? Its amazing. "

Well I was stoked to say the least and worked my ass off to turn something around quickly before they forgot i ever emailed them!

There was no holding back on this baby - I went for the full balls out 70s/80s exploitation vibe, throwing everything into the pot and looking back over every exploitation poster I did for inspiration!

My main thought process/direction for the poster was to give it a strong narrative. I mean, that's what was so great and captivating about the old posters, they really drew you in visually, telling you what the film was about. It was easy with this film - all i had to do was say "Look at this cool thing here... and also over here... and check out Hauer, he's in it and he has a MASSIVE shotgun and he looks PISSED!!!"

I did take liberties with the shotgun, making it look more over-the-top/futuristic, which is all part of the style! It's just the done thing - check out the covers of Savage streets and the executioner part 2. Another must is that you always need a helicopter. Whether there is one in the film or not there's a definite correlation between the decline in the number of painted helicopters and the quality of movie posters these days! A helicopter tells you it's exciting, and there's a budget!!!
(Well, a helicopter in a poster used to tell you that but I'm getting old these days. Maybe kids today just aren't impressed by such a thing. When I was growing up we based an entire tv series JUST on a helicopter!!!)

As far as the colouring goes, everything I saw already for Hobo had a strong yellow and black colouring but I didn't want people to think of Kill Bill, as a friend pointed out, so I needed to bring in some colouring which would give the poster its own feel. So after looking at the trailer again and again and again...I wanted to reflect that vibrant, neon, almost-80's style, so i brought in a strong use of magenta/purple in the sky and on the lighting for Hauer.

The massive Hauer title at the top is, again, harking back to the glory days of the old Charles Bronson films, where the lead actor's name was usually bigger than the film title. I've got a great video of The Evil That Men Do on which most of the cover is taken up with 'BRONSON' printed across it three times! I didn't want to go that far but i felt RUTGER HAUER, quite bold, gave it some attitude and come on... it's RUTGER HAUER! This is the dude that kicked Gene Simmons's ass!!! And Harrison Ford's (that one's for making Indy 4!)!!! Then I played around with 'is'/ 'in' to link the actor and the movie title, but none of them seemed to fit. So i thought it would be funny to say RUTGER HAUER is a... Hobo With a Shotgun! And it stuck.

This really was a dream project, although it was also a whole lot of work! I'll fondly remember losing the will to live, sat in a seedy internet shop for 2 hrs while the slow-ass connection tried to send a 500mb file on New Year's Eve! ...but all for a good cause, great to work on from start to finish and the guys Jason Eisener (Director) and Rob Cotterill (Producer) were amazing and incredibly receptive to everything! Plus most of all it's going to be an AWESOME movie, the guys just get it! From the story, to the visual style, to the music!

SO GO CHECK IT OUT!!!

Trailer • Hobo Web site

Vamp Arrow Video DVD cover illustration

Here is the new illustration for the 80s classic Vamp!

When i was given the job the first thing they requested was that i incorporated a 'special' colour into the illustration. So colour became the big theme for this cover, it's also a representation of the films style too. when i watched it again i really picked up on the strong use of 'comic book' style lighting and neon colours used throughout.

It also really needed it to shout '80s' to people and i drew the title in a classic brush script (cornering the V and P into fangs, although this did get lost a bit lost behind the characters in the end), i then toyed with the idea of dropping in a green neon grid for the background but felt it didn't say anything about the film and instead i opted for some neon esque pyramid styling (a nod to the Vamps origins!) with stars and a full moon to set that 80's retro mood.

Finally i wanted to visually represent a more comical side of Vamp to let people know sort of film there getting themselves into. I felt going down a dark gory horror route wouldn't be appropriate for this title and would just alienate a load of potential viewers (its a extremely tame horror film by todays standards) so i was trying to sell it more on its strength of 80s teen horror nostalgia, appealing to any retro hipsters out there! or people just looking for a good ol' classic light harted horror romp! ... just like you remember them (before torture porn destroyed all that!).

For the layout i used Grace Jones for the main character to represent the horror aspect by having her literally lunging out of the cover to grab you! then i framed her with the other characters to show the more non serious elements with funny/repulsed expressions.

Twitch Film article on Arrow Video illustrations

I just wanted to post this awesome article on the Twitch Film site by J Hurtado.

It say's some really cool things things about the cover artwork and mentions the dude!

So i was quite chuffed (to say the least) when i saw it, its my first review on the work ive been doing here. Some of the game covers i work on have been on forums but this type of work is more personal and done out of passion rather than financial gain. On the whole the receptions been good and as this stuff grows its excellent to see some people are enjoying it and feel the same love of trash, grindhouse, pulp pop video art, that i do... Im not alone on this one!

Well anyway heres J Hurtado. article (and the guys at arrow assure me they didnt pay him!)

Video Home Invasion: Arrow Video Artwork and Cult Labs

hopefully some of my trash art will continue to works its voodoo!

.... and thanks to everyone!

Deadly Outlaw Rekka Takashi Miike DVD cover illustration

Hi, Ive been sitting on this one for about a month now waiting to post it, its the new illustration for Arrow Videos Deadly Outlaw Rekka directed by Takashi Miike.

DOR is more adult (and violent) film than Jaguar Lives, so it needed a darker vibe plus its also a more modern title (2002) so i couldn't have the same cheesy layout as JL obviously. But i still wanted to keep that classic looking VHS artwork style.So the first thing i did was to create the film title. I new i wanted the cover dark this time but with a vibrant title, so i immediately thought back to films like The Warriors, Repro man, Maniac with there splattered spray paint esque logos, which look great against a plain black background. Plus this film is all about bloody revenge so it was a bit of a no brainier what needed doing.

For the illustration itself i have always loved those dark to white style paintings so this would be a great opportunity to play about with that, having all the characters coming out and merging with the darkness would really set the right tone. As the painting was quite dark though i needed to give it that extra kick (so i wouldn't get lost on the shelf), so offset the black with big bold bloody red strokes and splatter it allowed me highlight the characters and incorporate the logo style into the illustration more.

There were not many assets to work with for this one. Particularly of the main character Riki Takeuchi, (he is one crazy mother! Just google him) but he has an awesome expressive face so i based him on a mixture of elements and the same goes for Yûya Uchida (the old dude) he has an amazing white main of hair, i had to drop him in on the cover (even though he doesn't last long on the film, he's quite central to the story and very iconic) his hair actually proved to be one of the most awkward bits to do. The only real image i had from the film was of the severed hand strangle (a brilliant scene!) but it was very dark (literally) with not much detail, so quite a bit of work went on for that one too.

All in all I'm really happy with how its come out, love the bright red contrasting with the black (i did use a similar effect on the Cronos which i did after rekka... but i just couldn't help myself!!). Well Hope everyone else likes it too.

These cards mean buisness...

I've been meaning to get around to it for a while so finally here is my design/illustration for the Dude designs business card. You can get wrapped up doing graphic design trying to say (and sell) everything about yourself (i used to work for a small design firm in Shoreditch that never actually got around to designing there own website as they just couldn't decide on what the perfect design was). So an ethos im slowly building with allot of the dude designs work... is 'f*ck it man!' im just going to do what feels right and fun! don't take yourself to seriously and some great things do come out!! (if you limit yourself being to uptight nothings going to happen).

Anyway i wanted something that would say a bit about the site and my style of work so this is it, you may recognise the photo i based the illustration on below with the cannon stuff, i was going for the gentle man designer vibe!

This is just the front obviously. I've done a similar style for the back but just with my contact details on but thought i'd just stick the illustrtation money shot on here.