Carven

These are two posters that I made for a (for now) nonexistent movie. Obviously, one thing that I did to make these visually striking was to put them in black and white, except for a few spots of color. On the first version, that spot is entirely bright red, and is composed of the likely unique "carven" heart that I'm using as a symbol for the entire story. Keeping it company is a brief, understandable quote that gives a bit of insight into the movie's plot. Below, I have the title, which the eye is drawn to by its font and sheer size, as well as a brief attribution to the author (hi) and a mass of nanotext at the very bottom. 

The second version is similar, except that the heart is smaller, darker, and appears (I hope) to be blood on my beautiful model's chest- a friend of mine took the picture as a favor to me. She becomes less visually striking and the blood moreso because I made her picture grayscaled, while the heart remains in color. In addition, with all of the activity on the top part of the poster, the bottom half became less important and less impressive. This is why I changed the color of the title to the same blood red as the heart, as well as made it bigger.

If Today Was Your Last Day

This quote came from the song "If Today Was Your Last Day" by Nickelback, and was the main reason for me having it on my playlist. For one thing, the concept is surprisingly wise for a rock group, but for another- I just absolutely loved the wordplay that's used. After I was finished being blown away by this quote, of course, I had time to be taken over by others, such as "What's worth the prize is always worth the fight" and "Would you live each moment like your last? Leave old pictures in the past? Donate every dime you have?" And, of course, the concept for the song itself is extremely interesting.

I like the quote for its simplicity, so I used a simplistic setup for this- centered the text and basically just went with two fonts. The first, I feel, gives a slight feeling of mystique, while the small caps give it a natural feel of authority without making it seem like 'yelling' text. The second I made much more casual because, really, the two parts are very simple. The first is a confident announcement, and the second is some casually-given words of wisdom.

Major Win and Epic Fail

I've been looking at a few movie posters, and have noticed that a few of them really know what they're doing. They encourage you to watch the movie, if only to find out what inspired such an awesome poster. Others? Well, they seem to actively push you away, which is not, I feel, what should be intended, One of the first example is the poster for Pirates of the Caribbean. (Magic appearance NOW:)

It has all of the major characters of the plot lined up at top, with noticeable but not forceful text telling us who they are (although, who really cares if Orlando Bloom is in a movie, right?). Right in the middle is the title of the movie, put into a simple design hat I agree with, and below is a very pirate-y scene. And despite having so much content on it, unlike many movie posters, I can't help feel that the color scheme holds it together very well.

This is an example of one of the latter versions. The try-too-hard type that misses its target entirely. Now, don't get me wrong- this is an awesome movie. I'd go as far as to say comedic genius. However, the poster does not reflect this. It has a bunch of cartoon characters and a castle inside a decent rendition of a grail. That's not funny. In addition, the text- pretty much ALL of the text- just looks desperate. The banner, the stamps, and even the title of the movie look overworked and they really only serve to make someone look for a different movie if they weren't already planning to see it.

Author Win

Patrick Rothfuss- Blog

If you have NOT read The Name of the Wind and have ANY inclination towards fantasy novels, I fully suggest you read it. This man is quite simply a genius with words and ideas- a fact that becomes quickly evident as you read through his blog posts. Personally, I suggest looking up the extracts that he's taken from the College Survival Guide, which was a series of columns that Pat did for his school newspaper before he became an officially published author. The stances he takes can get a little weird and he has strong self-opinions ranging from 'hopeless bastard' to 'sexy beast', but the way he feels about his work and his family never changes.