Poster project: Flash Gordon poster ( finished (?)

I did redraw much of Flash's face as I was very unhappy with it. I showed Ming to a couple people they really liked it a lot so maybe Flash suffered from being my first vector portrait as well as me giving into some of my worse tendencies like making him too pale, especially the lips. For the ship I used a 3D model I made combining several Flash Gordon designs. I used it as a special effects test years ago. I was able to position as I wanted for the poster and drawing it was fairly straightforward. 

Poster project: Flash Gordon poster - Ming The merciless

 I finished Ming and so far I think I like it... and of course, now I had the Flash portrait. I might start over or at least remake the eyes and mouth and see how that comes out. This one was going to have Ming's hands and his rings showing but I didn't want Flash, the focus of the poster to be a floating head and Ming to be more complete. I think Ming might have worked out better because he is much more of a cartoon with his heavy eyeliner and giant collar. The thing that really brought his face together when when I added the ears. 

Poster project: Flash Gordon (Buster Crabbe version) poster

 

I have been starting and stopping and restarting this project for years now. I wanted to make Buster Crabbe front and centre with Ming, the spaceship and the cloud city as elements but I wasn't sure if I could get the likeness strong enough, especially when I decide I wanted to make it in Affinity Designer all in vector drawing. I more recently have been wanting to make portraits with AD and thought if I want to get to a place to do that this Flash Gordon project might be a good training ground and test. Afterall, all the people I'm drawing are dead and can't be mad if I do badly. 

This will work for the poster, though I am not sure I got the likeness as close as I would like. I used layers of shapes with blurred edges overlapping to get the soft blending for a more natural look over the overly clean 3D model look vectors can have. I think I really got the overly dyed blonde hair right. There are 100s and 100s of lines to make the hair and I added shapes for shading underneath to keep it from looking too flat. His shirt was inspired by but not copied from any one shirt or another from the series, there were a few to look towards for ideas and I think I get something with a little of all of them in it. 

I can still make adjustments as I go and likely will. I wasn't going to do Ming but now I think I will start him and see how it goes. 

The final poster will have an art deco feel and I don't think I'll do a logo or anything like that. I made one from the original movie version but it's pretty ugly and not having it will give me more options when making the composition. 

Celluloid Slammer blog catégorie icons

 My other blog, Celluloid Slammer, talks about films and related subjects. for the last few years there were banners for  a couple grouping subjects into their own specialized month... Silent Summer was in July and all about solent films and October Horrors is pretty self explanatory. The banner thing wasn't working for me so I decided to make icons to put at the start of each pot categorizing the subject matter instead. More versatile and more fun to look at and make. It was supposed to be "after the new year" but I started using it to see how it looked and figure what I needed to make. Above are what i have now, there might be more... or less depending on how it works out. 

The Slammer has been something I am constantly thinking about not doing but it get more views than anything I do here and it IS cathartic and fun to write about movies. There isn't much interaction there, possibly because i had to restrict comments, The amount of trolling happening all the time and much was very sexist and just plain dumb. I might open it up to be easier to comment next year and see if it's better. 

Illustration: Super 8 Movie camera

This is based on my Super 8 Bell and Howell movie camera from the 80s. Might be the 70s to be honest! I LOVED that camera. It could do 18 and 24 frames a second, record sound and do single frame. So it was what I first started film work and animation with. 

It only took about 6 hours to finish and I left out some details, mostly the text and numbers on it but it still came out much more photo real than I was aiming for. It was black but I added a brown tint to the plastic body when I realized by looking at reference photos that the plastic often had a brown tinge to it. The Xray view that shows the vectors always make these things look much simpler than they seem when you are making them! 

Poster project: War of the Worlds (1953) (finished)

 

I decided on a look I thought fit the film and it's style. The stars are a photo I took in Colorado years ago with my brother and the earth is a 3D render I made in Cinema 4D years ago. I had the planet mars and the martian probe ready for the poster but that was way too crowded and counter to my ideas on what I wanted it to look like. The title is remade from the original poster and I used Paramount logo from the 50s. 

Illustration: Loretta

 

My nephew has an every growing number of dogs these days. I was at his farm for his wedding and sure enough, a new one! She was so cute! She was also really active and getting clear shots to work from was a little challenging. I think this has some life to it and movement. 

Poster project: War of the Worlds (1953)

 

Another poster project caught my interest. I love the martian designs in this movie and the film is really good despite it's departures from the book, maybe because of some of them. The Martian probe and war machine are pretty slick looking. I remade the original poster logo and I would like to draw the arm and three fingered hand of a martian. Not sure how I will fit it all into a poster. My plan is to draw elements I find cool basically and then see what i come up with.  All drawn with Affinity Designer like the last poster. So far anyway. 

UPDATE: Martian arm

Illustration: 1915 rue de la Visitation

 Finished another building I see on my walk to the gym. I will do the one next door as well soon, it's more interesting building. As usual, I HATED this until I was almost done. Then I was fine with it. maybe it says something about not giving up or maybe I'm just not looking at the process of doing these in a positive way. I like the end results and I guess that is what matters. 

Poster Project: The Day the Earth Stood Still (finished!)

 

After about 35 hours of work this poster is done. I thought I was done earlier but I rewatched the film and noticed some robot details I missed. After drawing the elements in Affinity Designer I moved them to Affinity Publisher and composed the poster, added the title and other information. I made a 1940's- 50's style earth that was to go under the hand of Klaatu but it didn't look right and didn't really add to poster for me. Gort, the robot, was a bigger challenge than I thought as he is smooth, reflective the costume lacks some details, his superman undies always look a little goofy to me but I knw why they are there from a practical costume making viewpoint. 

I would like to make a "war of the Worlds" poster from the George Pal movie but I have come up with a decent way to pull it off. I might have to make a 3D model of the spaceship, the creature, the martian probe... maybe all of that and work out my composition when I see what looks good or not.