Let's All Go to the Movies, Part 2: Return of the Reel

After my adventure making a movie poster for How to Steal A Million, my mind wandered from classic movies to cult classics. Ladies and gentlemen; Firefly.

I have always loved every poster series from Quantum Mechanix and wanted to create on of my own. And to be honest, I have no idea what inspired it, but these doodles popped up in my sketchbook for a movie style poster for the episode "Objects In Space".

As is my style, I jumped into the final piece without much planning and would become frozen constantly when faced with how to exactly create what was in my head. Never the less, I soldiered on! Well, half soldiered on. It is till a work in progress, but I will share what I have thus far. You're welcome. (please excuse the poor quality photo)

With the other posters, I decided to do a little more planning. So instead of jumping from rough thumbnail to finished piece, I started making more detailed concept sketches. We have "Our Mrs. Reynolds", "Trash", and my personal favorite "Ariel".

Anyone that gets the references in all the posters gets a cookie. :)

Let's All Go to the Movies!

I love movies, and I love movie posters, and I love movie posters of movies I love! Unfortunately some of my favorite movies have some... dated posters. Not the good kind of vintage dated, just bad. One such movie is 'How To Steal A Million'.

I don't know if it is the weird outfit Audrey has on, or the obnoxious amounts of text scattered all over the place, I just hate this poster. It doesn't stand the test of time and personally don't feel it carries the mood of the film. I decided to sketch a few designs focusing on the statue of Venus that Audrey and Peter are trying to steal.

First thumb is a silhouette of the statue with close ups of the stars. But I realized the statues shape chopped up the faces in an awkward way, it just didn't work. So I switched it around, detailed image of the statue and silhouettes of the couple. I like this design, the contrast of the detailed statue against the flat background images; and it gives the image of our thieves trying to hide in the crowd.  

I liked the last thumb best, I'm a sucker for asymmetry. Now to decide on the color scheme. This is where I'm stuck. I'm partial to the first design myself but wonder if the red pops better, or if the background should be broken up with a gradient.

Which is your favorite? Or do you not like any of them? Leave your thoughts!