![[Best Read While Looking at Pretty Pictures]
The Brothers Bloom Poster is stunning!
Zachary Johnson the artist gives some lovely back story on his blog
zucherman:
Drawing by me. Everything else (read: turning a drawing into a bona-fide movie poster, from Font to Typeset to Layout to god-knows-what-else-this-entails-because-it’s-utterly-beyond-me) by Marke Johnson, The Made Shop.
My cousin Rian Johnson (the acclaimed Writer and Director of 2005’s BRICK) has recently finished his second feature film, The Brothers Bloom, which hits theaters this May. It is a con man movie, and it is simply beautiful, adventurous, tragic, and utterly hilarious. (If these inadequate adjectives feel worn and somewhat grab-bag, I assure you that I use them very intentionally, and not at all lightly.) This film is, in my opinion, everything a movie should be. And I unabashedly love it.
Anyway, Rian initially hired my amateur ass to draw Mark Ruffalo’s character’s journal for the film (which meant flying me out to Serbia for two weeks to work directly under the brilliant [and, it should be noted, always impeccably dressed] Production Designer behind Children of Men (Children of Men, for Chrissake!), which I assure you did nothing for my nerves, especially since the time-change confusion led to me calling and waking him up at 5 AM on my first day of work). And, so anyway, after flying me out to work on some of the art in the movie, Rian asked me to draw an unofficial poster for it — a sort of special treat for the fans and the people who made the film. And so we endeavored to create a good old-fashioned Hollywood poster, like how they made them before Photoshop came along.
The poster took me three months to complete, involved several ill-conceived iterations, and provided me with the I-shit-you-not Job Description of having to look at lots of pictures of the beautiful and talented Rachel Weisz day in and day out, since I kept on fucking up capturing her likeness. (Certain psychologists would no doubt suggest that I kept fucking this up on purpose, so that I could keep on being paid to essentially look at pictures of Rachel Weisz while studying her beautiful-and-talented face in detail. I’ll only note that, while I don’t feel qualified to comment on this, and while I think certain psychologists are full of shit (I wasn’t being paid by the hour, for god’s sake), I did draw at least seven versions of Weisz before I felt reasonably happy with the results.)
Anyway, I ought to tip my hat right now to the man I stole the most from in this process. I studied the hell out of Richard Amsel’s film posters for weeks, chainsmoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, drinking whiskey, and then in general becoming very well-acquainted with that peculiar and inevitable phenomenon known to every young artist, where the initial feeling of sheer inspiration one feels at seeing a great work of art turns quite rapidly into despondent discouragement.
Then I usually drank more whiskey and slurred something along the lines of [sic]: ”Ehhh … Fuck Art … fuckshing … fucksing Amshnel and his awesome mmovie posterss,” before promptly passing out.
(Richard Amsel, I should point out, is the incredible artist responsible for such instantly iconic posters as The Sting, Chinatown, and Raiders of the Lost Arc, to name only a few.)
Anyway, here is the poster, and everyone who loves anything, or holds anything dear in this life, should see the film when it comes out.
Or at least anyone who loves great movies should.
http://www.brothersbloom.com/meetthebrothers/
He also posted some more backstory:
zucherman:
The Bloom poster took me three months to complete. Some days I worked six hours, some days I worked fourteen hours, and some days I watched a lot of reality TV, drank a lot of whiskey, and checked my Facebook a lot of times. This is what it looked like around week eight.
He also provided his original sketch:
zucherman:
Borrowing liberally from (or hopefully tipping my hat very respectfully to) Richard Amsel’s beautiful poster for the John Wayne film The Shootist, this was the first concept sketch I did for The Brothers Bloom poster that felt right. By this point I’d tried a variety of failed concepts, including an oil painting that was going for a Gone With The Wind sort of feel, but all of my attempts had just felt weird or wrong. I think this sketch is pretty funny in retrospect, but Rian must have seen something in its messy scribbles, ‘cause he told me to drop everything else and go for it.
(For anyone who’s a fan of posters, I’d recommend trying to find the sketch that Amsel did when preparing for The Shootist, which in my opinion is even cooler than his finished painting.)
I found the original poster by Richard Amsel that was Zachary’s inspiration:
===
I wish more artist shared their design process in this way.
I’m looking forward to seeing Brothers Bloom when it opens at the Angelika this weekend, who wants to join me?
[Best Read While Looking at Pretty Pictures]](http://27.media.tumblr.com/qU0vTIvWim73vdq4Eg1Hg13Fo1_500.jpg)
[Best Read While Looking at Pretty Pictures]
The Brothers Bloom Poster is stunning!
Zachary Johnson the artist gives some lovely back story on his blog
Drawing by me. Everything else (read: turning a drawing into a bona-fide movie poster, from Font to Typeset to Layout to god-knows-what-else-this-entails-because-it’s-utterly-beyond-me) by Marke Johnson, The Made Shop.
My cousin Rian Johnson (the acclaimed Writer and Director of 2005’s BRICK) has recently finished his second feature film, The Brothers Bloom, which hits theaters this May. It is a con man movie, and it is simply beautiful, adventurous, tragic, and utterly hilarious. (If these inadequate adjectives feel worn and somewhat grab-bag, I assure you that I use them very intentionally, and not at all lightly.) This film is, in my opinion, everything a movie should be. And I unabashedly love it.
Anyway, Rian initially hired my amateur ass to draw Mark Ruffalo’s character’s journal for the film (which meant flying me out to Serbia for two weeks to work directly under the brilliant [and, it should be noted, always impeccably dressed] Production Designer behind Children of Men (Children of Men, for Chrissake!), which I assure you did nothing for my nerves, especially since the time-change confusion led to me calling and waking him up at 5 AM on my first day of work). And, so anyway, after flying me out to work on some of the art in the movie, Rian asked me to draw an unofficial poster for it — a sort of special treat for the fans and the people who made the film. And so we endeavored to create a good old-fashioned Hollywood poster, like how they made them before Photoshop came along.
The poster took me three months to complete, involved several ill-conceived iterations, and provided me with the I-shit-you-not Job Description of having to look at lots of pictures of the beautiful and talented Rachel Weisz day in and day out, since I kept on fucking up capturing her likeness. (Certain psychologists would no doubt suggest that I kept fucking this up on purpose, so that I could keep on being paid to essentially look at pictures of Rachel Weisz while studying her beautiful-and-talented face in detail. I’ll only note that, while I don’t feel qualified to comment on this, and while I think certain psychologists are full of shit (I wasn’t being paid by the hour, for god’s sake), I did draw at least seven versions of Weisz before I felt reasonably happy with the results.)
Anyway, I ought to tip my hat right now to the man I stole the most from in this process. I studied the hell out of Richard Amsel’s film posters for weeks, chainsmoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, drinking whiskey, and then in general becoming very well-acquainted with that peculiar and inevitable phenomenon known to every young artist, where the initial feeling of sheer inspiration one feels at seeing a great work of art turns quite rapidly into despondent discouragement.
Then I usually drank more whiskey and slurred something along the lines of [sic]: ”Ehhh … Fuck Art … fuckshing … fucksing Amshnel and his awesome mmovie posterss,” before promptly passing out.
(Richard Amsel, I should point out, is the incredible artist responsible for such instantly iconic posters as The Sting, Chinatown, and Raiders of the Lost Arc, to name only a few.)
Anyway, here is the poster, and everyone who loves anything, or holds anything dear in this life, should see the film when it comes out.
Or at least anyone who loves great movies should.
He also posted some more backstory:
The Bloom poster took me three months to complete. Some days I worked six hours, some days I worked fourteen hours, and some days I watched a lot of reality TV, drank a lot of whiskey, and checked my Facebook a lot of times. This is what it looked like around week eight.
He also provided his original sketch:
Borrowing liberally from (or hopefully tipping my hat very respectfully to) Richard Amsel’s beautiful poster for the John Wayne film The Shootist, this was the first concept sketch I did for The Brothers Bloom poster that felt right. By this point I’d tried a variety of failed concepts, including an oil painting that was going for a Gone With The Wind sort of feel, but all of my attempts had just felt weird or wrong. I think this sketch is pretty funny in retrospect, but Rian must have seen something in its messy scribbles, ‘cause he told me to drop everything else and go for it.
(For anyone who’s a fan of posters, I’d recommend trying to find the sketch that Amsel did when preparing for The Shootist, which in my opinion is even cooler than his finished painting.)
I found the original poster by Richard Amsel that was Zachary’s inspiration:
===
I wish more artist shared their design process in this way.
I’m looking forward to seeing Brothers Bloom when it opens at the Angelika this weekend, who wants to join me?
