Category: Process

Movie Campaign // Cold Sweat

Task: Create an original movie campaign for a brand new film.

Ideation

In the beginning, I was stuck on what kind of movie poster I should do. I thought of working based off the fear panel from the previous assignment, which was a dog being afraid of baths, and create a movie poster for an animated film. I wanted the poster to “troll” people in a sense. So I looked into both animated and horror film movie posters. I intended to combine elements from both genres and find a balance that suits the theme that I was going for.

 

Process

After researching on movie posters, I drew some thumbnail sketches to decide on the composition. I tried to apply design principles such as symmetry, asymmetry, leading lines, framing etc in the arrangement of elements.

My criteria for selecting the final composition was that it had to be simple and yet stand out. I asked around for other people’s opinions too — some agreed that 2 stood out the most so I picked that one. I also liked 3 because of its asymmetry but I felt that it wouldn’t make a statement as compared to 1 or 2. I did not pick 1 because it was inspired from/similar to an existing film (Puppy! A Hotel Transylvania Short by Sony Pictures Animation) so I didn’t want to be too influenced by their film.

 

Featuring cringey movie titles.
Thumbnail 1 was too similar to this.

 

From the chosen thumbnail, I roughly figured out what sort of colour I want my poster to be. Following the horror theme, I knew it needed to be dark and not as saturated. I also decided to add a beam of light (supposedly coming from a bathroom door) to help with the composition in terms of values. 

I use these thumbnails as a rough guide, because the colours of the my final work are usually adjusted again based on my preferences after completing the painting then. Below are some of the edits that I considered using.

Left: The least colourful of the three — it works, but I preferred something with a bit more colour. Especially since it is an animated film.

Middle: Need more colour.

Right: The blue/green tones make the dog look cold instead of scared in my opinion.

Final work

I opted for a subtle purple tint in the end. Composition wise, every element is centralised, and I use the beam of light (coming from a bathroom door) to offset the balance a little. The font of the title is not following the horror theme — I did not want the poster to look like a full fledged horror film. From the references that I have, animation film posters had dynamic fonts so I picked a font that is spontaneous looking and not scary. I added water droplet and dirty mirror stains to keep to the bathroom element.

 

cold sweat
noun
  1. a state of sweating induced by fear, anxiety, or illness

 

 

Movie Campaign Shots

Most movie campaigns can be seen around MRT stations in Singapore, so I composited the poster into some of these boards.


 

I also modified the poster into a banner type so that it could be placed in MRT cabins.

 


Human Emotions with Digital Images.

Task: Conceptualize and present ideas with digital photography or digital painting.

Ideation

Initially, I wanted to do illustrations inspired by songs. However the idea wasn’t very concrete, and the visuals would be all over the place. So I thought about including a narrative. In the end, I decided to do an illustration series depicting snapshots of a dog’s life/emotion, which is inspired by my friend’s pet that recently died. I wanted to portray moments of an animal’s life and its emotions felt in different situations.

The emotions that I picked are happiness, saddness, fear and surprise.

I started off by doing sketches of whatever imagery that came to mind relating to the 4 emotions.


Mood boards / references

I researched into the relation between colours and emotions, then created mood boards to guide my illustrations. Surprise was the most difficult emotion to give a specific colour. I decided to use pink in the end, because I interpret it as a positive child-like emotion.

Yellow — Associated with happiness, energy and warmth.

Blue — Coldness, sadness.

Pink — Cheery, surprise.

Purple — Fear, mystery.

 

Final work

The illustrations express human emotions portrayed by a non-human character— a dog. Other than colour choice, I took composition, facial expressions and gestures into consideration.

For happiness, I opted for a low angle camera view slanting upwards to give the impression of energy and cheerfulness. I made sure that the gestures convey the emotion even without the aid of facial expression as it is a long shot.

Happiness

 

My interpretation of surprise in this illustration resembles a child-like surprise. I portray the energy of the emotion through the motion blur of the butterflies.

 

Surprise

 

Fear is a very overwelming emotion, which is why I included harsh lighting in the illustration. The light creates a drama — a reflection of the dog’s emotions — and at the same time frames the characters.

 

Fear

 

Here, I wanted to suggest that the dog was either abandoned, or lost. I use a train going away into the distance as a visual representation of abandonment. Rain is another visual cue for sadness. I attempted to convey sadness without showing the facial expression of the dog.

 

Sadness