Good Movies as Old Books / 01: The Easy Way

Now that I’m done with the 100 illustrations, self-published the book and caught up on fulfilling the Kickstarter and first big wave of orders of books and prints, I’m finally going to do a series of process posts about the project. I’m hoping to do five posts and want to start with this post; The Easy Way (you guessed it…the next post is going to be The Hard Way).

One of the best and most freeing parts of doing personal projects is the ability to have a very clear idea early and execute it without outside feedback or interference. Don’t get me wrong, good outside art direction or feedback just about always makes creative work better, but there is a satisfaction in having a very clear gut instinct, attacking an idea, and having the end result be just the way you want it.

This post is about the ideas that came really easily and quickly. Just from knowing and loving these films and when the time came to express them visually, having a bolt of quick inspiration. When people ask me about my favorites from this project, I’ll often list these illustrations. Not because they are the best, but because I have a good feeling about them because they just came without lots of second guessing or hesitation.

WHIPLASH / Such a great movie and my introduction to Damien Chazelle. I had in my head the energy and the violence of the drumming sequences and also the visual language of classic jazz graphic design from albums and posters. The type came first and the idea of a simplification of an overhead view of a drum set with the director’s name mimicking drumsticks came very quickly. I played with how rendered to make the drum set and tried many versions but ultimately decided to keep it really simple and flat. This was all vector and then composited in Photoshop.

THE MATRIX / I remember seeing this in the theater the summer it came out many times and telling everyone about it. It really blew me away. So much great art has been done from this franchise, much of it focusing on the characters and the matrix green lettering texture. Going into this I knew I wanted to avoid those things and also do something very simple. The few entries I had done before this had been more rendered and drawn, so I wanted to limit myself to very simple shapes and honestly needed a break from more intense drawing. I suddenly had the image of the bullets being frozen in mid air by Neo and it was pretty quick from there. At this point I was also starting to think about making the stickers more of an easter egg type element and felt like it needed a pop of some other color. The red/blue pills were just sitting there staring me in the face. “.99” is also to signify the year the film was released. This was all vector and composited in Photoshop.

SPEED RACER / Since we’re talking Wachowskis, let’s talk about Speed Racer. Definitely a love it or hate if film. I happen to be in the “love it” camp. I’m not sure it would have made it to my 100 list, but Matt Kaufenberg mentioned it on twitter one day, suggesting I do it, and I immediately had a super simplified color striped road in my head. The cars being simple and a very dramatic angle on the road with long shadows from the cars. The picture in my mind captured the frenetic energy of the film, but in a more minimal way and this was one of the few cases where what was in my head translated even better to the page. Included is my very simple sketch I did to just get the idea and angle down while I was thinking about it as well as some of the research that gave me the color palette and to get the car shapes. This was was all vector and composited in Photoshop.

HIGH FIDELITY/ For this one I knew because of the setting of the film in a record store (yes, I know it was a book first) I wanted to use the record and sleeve as a primary element. I played exclusively with those shapes. I also knew that I wanted to capture a mid-century / blue note album kind of vibe. You can see a lot of the geometry and transparency ideas came from the inspiration above. I thought this would be a nice contrast to the 90’s setting, but also really said “music” right away. The movie is about John Cusack’s character trying to get insight into himself and how he’s been throughout his life by diving into past relationships. I wanted to show a sequence of an album being removed from the sleeve as a metaphor for that. I played a lot with cropping on this one, but the idea came quick. This was all vector and composited in photoshop.

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS / How do you illustrate a movie that is basically an adaptation of a Mamet play with hardly any action and mostly just dialogue. I instantly thought of the leads. I love this movie. It’s my comfort food and I can watch it just about any time under any circumstance. The Alec Baldwin sequence is the best cameo of all time. The focus of the film being about this group of desperate salesmen and their pursuit of the leads…the GOOD leads…the GLENGARRY leads. The idea came quick and the execution was simple. The brutal and haphazard style from the reference above also inspired my visual take. Drawn in Procreate, finished in Illustrator and composited in Photoshop.

COMMANDO / I like you Commando, that’s why I show you last (that terrible joke was for the 5 of you that will get it). Maybe it’s a stretch to call Commando a “good” movie, but I have a soft spot for it. It’s infinitely quotable, was a favorite watch for me as a dumb pre-teen and was Arnold at just about the height of his powers. I always loved the sequence at the end where he paints himself up to infiltrate the bad guy’s base so I knew I wanted that to be the focus. I had the idea to zoom way in on his face so his features are only revealed by the shapes of color. I wanted the color to be applied in a way that it looked like a rough stencil on a military vehicle of some kind. This started in Procreate. I finished the spray paint effects in Photoshop and composited in Photoshop as well.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading along. Stay tuned for “The Hard Way” and more posts in the coming days and weeks. If you want to purchase the book and/or prints, those are avaialable here.