How has cinema influenced contempory artists? The first artist I am looking at is Olly Moss; who is a English graphic designer from Winchester. He explores numerous creative mediums such as: comic books, t-shirt design, posters, video games and branding – while only being 31 years old. Moss never had any ‘traditional design training’, instead he studied literature at the University of Birmingham; making him a self-taught Graphic Designer. Thus, why he saw art as a hobby as he gets to create designs on his interests, with him stating – “I was really interested in films”. From this fascination of movies he has produced works spanning Star wars, The evil dead, An American werewolf in London and multiple Studio Ghibli films; with his ‘My neighbour Totoro’ poster being a personal favourite. This Shows how cinema has influenced Olly Moss’ passion for Graphic design, with it being at the forefront of his creations and without it, the majority of his works would seize to exist. Olly Moss was heavily influenced by film early on in his design career; which started with him delving into a crowd sourcing website called ‘Threadless’. His earliest designs are found on this website, but one in particular that was ‘solely’ around his love of movies was – ‘Spoilt’. In this design we see numerous iconic film spoilers, making it one of his most “complained about” and popular designs on the website. However, he defended himself, stating “I tried to make most of the references vague enough so you’d need to have seen the movie to understand them” – and this is the first example of his ‘art style’ of discrete references used throughout his work. You can see it being used in his first initial poster works on movies; in which kick-started his career of movie poster design. These first films included; Taxi Driver, Die Hard and Rain Man – with the posters showing how his original influence from cinema came from the context/plot points of particular movies. From these designs he obtained his first ‘real job’, working on the movie art for ‘The Losers’, which caught the eye of bigger opportunities such as the film – ‘ The Evil Dead’. He was notably influenced by the atmosphere of said film, resulting in him portraying this in his poster art for the movie. Additionally, in his creative process he was inspired by other artists such as Daniel Danger and Dan McCarthy, commenting on the “sense of depth” they used “with such a limited colour pallet”. He shows this in his final poster design, consisting of oranges, blacks and white; although, he used bolder composition compared to McCarthy and Danger. And this movie profoundly influenced his minimalistic art style used in numerous of his later designs, such as his ‘Star wars’ posters. Furthermore, he has used cinematic influences in his latest art show – ‘sillohettes’. Here he plays around with the likeness in characters that are ingrained in today’s society, with multiple revolving around films. Among them are; Top Gun, Spiderman, Die Hard and Pinocchio – portraying them to specifically coincide with the character’s persona in the film. For example: broken glass for John McClane (Die Hard), Spiderman placed upside-down and Pinocchio’s nose expanding to a second frame. This shows how cinema has influenced the style of each character, with the majority of his silhouette designs not of been created - if cinema did not exist. Moss has taken a different approach most recently, by trying more complex designs compared to his previous minimalistic movie posters. This led to his ‘The Simpsons’, ‘Legend of Zelda’ and ‘Mario’ posters; showcasing his advanced art style. Although, they’re not directly linked to films, he took inspiration from the old black and white movie ‘Title Cards’, as he wanted to distance himself from his previous minimalistic method. This shows how old cinema, has an expansive influence on contemporary art, as it is
deep-seated in today’s culture. Providing the thought that, even though art may be contemporary, it doesn’t have to be influenced by ‘modern’ cinema. Cinema has provided Olly Moss with some of his most famous works. For example, his set of Star Wars posters for Lucasfilms. Although, they use a similar double exposure technique as his ‘The Evil Dead’ posters, they’re some differences - with the sillohette being a character instead of a hand and the text sizing/placement differing. Yet, Moss wanted to stay safe and create designs that he has found to already be popular, thus why they are similar. His first desgin in the set was his ‘Darth Vadar’ poster, whwere he was “playing with the iconicness of that character”. He again got commisioned to produce a further two; resulting in his ‘Bobafet’ and ‘C3PO’ designs. For these two creations in particular, he was inspired by Nomarba, taking his caricature idea, while giving the designs “more context”. Olly Moss tends to use plot-points, characters and locations that are iconic to his breif given / the films. This is shown when he continues to use important characters for the other two film poster designs, with Bobafet representing - Empire Strikes Back and C3PO representing - A New Hope / the first Star Wars. Additionally, he uses iconic scenes / locations from the Star Wars films. For example, the trees in his ‘The Return of the Jedi’ poster, depicting ‘Dagabar’. You would only understand the importance of these elements used if you’ve seen the films, giving fans the chance to reminisce with the Star Wars universe. To enable Moss to create these posters he would of had to reflect on the films and take direct influences from the Star Wars franchise. This ensures that they’re not only successful with fans but correlate correctly with the certain movies. As a consequence, this job and cinema have provided him with his most popular while successful works. And this undoubtedly influenced his art style of using iconic features blended together - later seen in his Jungle Book poster for Walt Disney’s Art Show in 2014.