Friday, July 15, 2011

Work in progress...

This is the final layout for a movie poster parody I've been working on for a few weeks, off and on. It's for the cult-classic racing movie "LeMans" from 1970, starring Steve McQueen. There's still a good bit of merchandising and nostalgia for it in the sportscar racing world, so I was asked to do this satirical look at the making of the movie by the license holder ( at least I think he is...lol ). Going for the Jack Davis madcap comedy look.

As usual it can't be simple, can it?! There are at least 68 characters in here - actors, drivers, crew - and many inside references to the movie and the making thereof. Fortunately there is a comprehensive book about the movie that had just about everyone's picture in it. Originally I planned to work everyone's last name into their caricature for easy ID purposes, but we scrapped that in favor of a key that will come with it.

Today was transferring ( via projector ) this to the board, and now I have to go back in and caricature each face more carefully than in this preliminary. Original size is 19 x 28, but it will probably be printed at 13 x 19.

7 comments:

  1. This is looking good, Roger!...and yes —very epic.
    I particularly love the car going through the Martini sign! Also the clock hovering in mid-air and the ferris wheel —anything that breaks up that mass of people.

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  2. Good lord! That is insane! Just looking at it makes my hand hurt but it makes me feel better about the sketches I have to get done today.

    I hope you will post progress pictures...

    The 70s was a great time for movies. Never saw this one though.

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  3. Roger-this is amazing! You've done such a great job of making each person recognizable, even if I don't know who they are. So much work!

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  4. The amazing Roger strikes again. How many pencil rough preceded this one?

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  5. wow - that's a magnificent pile of work! Are you painting or going digital? Great stuff!

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  6. @Jaydee....there were 4 steps before this one: the first three were my rough marker thumbnails just working out where to put everything. No faces, just circles to indicate where someone would eventually go. Then one more cleaner pencil version to show the client, with faces sketched in. Then that got revised one more time to end up here. I ended up using alot of those same faces for the final version, because they were simple but had all the likeness they needed.

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  7. @jpmagg3....it's a painting. Dr. Martin's while they last, lol.

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