BRIEF PROPOSAL: To create an illustrated book rating and reviewing the best movies from the 80s-90’s period using parody and humour to poke fun at traditional ‘top 100’ style publications and movie critiques. OUTCOMES: A collections of 5 illustrated pages re-imaganing movies in a parody poster style format and 1 book cover. AUDIENCE: The ‘millennials’ demographic. PRODUCT AND RANGE: The proposed final product will be a fully illustrated book, also including a product range of posters, prints and apparel.
RESEARCH
My research included looking at a range of contemporary practitioners who focused on book illustration, character and movie posters. I researched a broad span of illustrators because I wanted to consider all these aspects in my product and out comes. I also collected imagery of retro movie release posters and found inspiration in the Japanese versions of western classics with the compositions and bold colours. Shown here is a book I picked up in ‘Colour’s may vary’ that I discovered after writing my proposal. This was exactly the kind of thing I had in mind and it really helped me visualise what my potential project could be
DEVELOPMENT
Initially my idea to start this brief was to focus on the narrative side of the book a lot more, looking at short comics to go alongside full page illustrations. However I decided as I was only producing 6 illustration, it would be wiser to develop the more substantial or ‘main’ images. These are some pages from my sketchbook - I did a lot of development on character & compositions across quite a few movies so I could pick and chooses what was most successful and what maybe wasn’t working so well. Once I had narrowed down my choices to the final 6, I decided to work larger scale. The colour experimentation that took place was mostly digital - I was inspired by retro 80’s & 90’s aesthetics so the bold colour generated from there.
FINAL ILLUSTRATIONS These are the 6 finished outcomes starting from the illustrated cover. The images were hand drawn in soft pencil crayon then scanned, cleaned up and coloured digitally. The pages featured here include movies as followed -
Titanic Small Soldiers American Werewolf in London Mean girls Gremlins
PRODUCT RANGE
These are the proposed items that would be included in the product range which features t-shirts, totes and poster prints. The products are simple and complimentary to the bold artwork - displaying the illustrations to their full bright and colourful glory. Potential distributors would range from smaller independent book stores & quirky retailers to larger branches such as HMV and high-street shops in ‘gifting’ seasons where these product would appeal to the novelty market. The ideal proposed publisher for the book would be Nobrow Press as they have a strong focus on new and exiting illustration and design.