Soon the movie world will be blessed by a new iteration of the well known Predator franchise. I sure love the original movie to death but I am not quite sure if the new one can promise what the old one fulfilled. (Just for your info: I didn’t even care to watch any of the sequels or mash-ups.) So, the Predators teaser poster I just found on various movie news sites just is like I feared it to be: the idea itself is great because we all love and fear those nasty bastards but the execution of the idea is mediocre at best.

Let’s take a look at the original teaser poster (click to enlarge):

To me the the teaser poster looks kinda messed up because there doesn’t seem to exist one major axis. For example, the “Predators” title floats on the right side of the teaser as if the designer couldn’t find a better place for it. Additionally the tagline doesn’t line up with the movie details section on the bottom.

The tagline “Fear is Reborn” is, well, not the best one either and placing it up there somehow doesn’t really help it.

Moreover our beloved Predator (I gladly call him “The Butcher”) looks too big on this teaser. I understand that the designer wants to imply dominance and terror but some “white”space (in this case blackspace) is never bad.

With this points in mind I loaded the original teaser into my photo editor of choice and messed around with it a little bit. Here is the result I came up with (click to enlarge):

Basically I re-sized our beloved butcher to let it breath some fresh air of blackspace while placing him/she/it a little bit further to the left since it looks to the right. I also decreased the size of the movie information. Then I moved the title below the sword-thingy. This way, everything you read is below the Predator. Since he/she/it is reaches the top of my Predators teaser poster it hopefully gives an increased feeling of dominance and terror.

The rest are some additional tweaks. For example, I moved the hand a little bit further down the image because I constantly had the impression the lower arm was too short. Moreover I increased the contrast a little bit to give it a harsher impression. Oh yeah, the tagline is gone for good…Oh yeah the second: I also increased the lightning on its jaw a little bit.

This is it. My take on the Predators teaser poster after twenty minutes.

What do you think? Is this version an improvement of the teaser poster or should I have kept my fingers from it? Tell us what you think!

Not using this movie blog for some shameless self-promotion is as if James Bond would stop wearing or showing off product placements. Not only would the financial crisis get worse, but also this blog would have one post less to boast on Google.

This cannot happen!!!

On the other hand, is it bad to rely on a double fantasy for men and women to justify ones actions? After I consulted my doctor about it this night (he was thrilled…by my call) and after I asked the buddy cops that arrived some minutes later I knew it: no one gives a shit!

Thanks to them it’s time again for a little bit of creativity. You know, my creativity. You know, my creativity which I snitched from here and there. A little…

I think the internet watchers new-fashioned-ly call this remix. Well, at least it didn’t turn out to be a reboot Hollywood is so hot for. Have fun watching the psychedelic ride…

I hope you survived and enjoyed the trip. For crazy info maniacs like myself who find background stuff more interesting than a action scene filled with good old Ahnold, here are some information regarding the production:

I tinkered with this short movie for about three or four days fulltime. The visual stuff is from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 – A Space Odyssey (for those people whose knowledge of sci-fi starts and stops with Star Wars), the audio part is from the Fuck Buttons. Yes, they really call themselves the Fuck Buttons. The track I used here is called Colours Move, which gave me the initial idea for this project.

Of course the seasoned special effects viewer of today immediately notices that I mainly worked with an epic amount of layers here. This brought my computer to edge of binary insanity. At times there are up to fifteen layers at work here. Although this sounds nothing for Photoshop freaks like me, doing this stuff for an eight minute long movie is a whole different level of madness.

And now it’s your turn to praise my work of genius in the comments. Don’t hold back. Give it everything you got. Let the Praise of the Mad begin…

(Photo by Beep)

The gap between an idea and its execution sometimes can be as large as the empty lot between the ears of a clichéd horror movie chick.

When I started this movie poster project for the first Star Trek movie (not the lens flary reboot from 2009) I had this great idea. The poster idea was wonderful, it was incredible. I patted myself on the back for t his spark of genius. I felt like Steven Seagal finding his second expression.

Not long after that reality kicked in and shortened me back to the usual Hobbit size.

As you can see below, the idea for this alternative movie poster for Star Trek is simple but somehow manages to boil down the whole story to the nameplate of V’Ger, the “character” the story centers on. The problem I have with the result is the scope of it because instead of a movie poster this one more feels like a cheesy book cover.

Well, you can’t beat them all, and sometimes you’ll find that gap you cannot close (and now that I think about it, Star Trek plagued the same problems – amazing idea, problematic execution…this thing is cursed I say).

Sometime, yes…sometime, I maybe find a better way to finish this one or you already have an amazing idea which you can post below…until then:

Do you still remember the horror Schumacher brought us with his abysmal Batman movies? I still cringe by the very thought of it (all those flashing lights and nasty designs…eek).

Thank god the franchise got a reboot and got a treatment the way it should be treated forever: dark and gritty.

And basically, this is what my newest movie poster art is all about.

As far as I remember there is a perfect way to create your characters for a movie script: let them have some nightmare or other big experience when they are young, in the early teens would be best. This way you can create someone that might not have obvious problems as an adult but whose actions most likely are still influenced by those experiences.

Batman aka Bruce Wayne is the prime example of that principle since he witnessed the death of his parents. Okay, his reaction to this trauma is a little bit…creative but dark and interesting nevertheless.

One thing I don’t understand, though, is the fact, that nobody seemingly ever had the idea I got some time ago for Batman Begins. You know, the killing is connected directly to Batman, so it’s kinda logic to connect both events visually.

But how could you connect them? Well, I had an idea and started to flesh it out. This is the (clickable) result:

Perhaps we have never seen something similar in our theater of choice because of the fact that the imagery might be too dark and gritty for the usual audience (blood forming a bat? *gasp*). But that’s okay for me, since I can now claim copyright to this idea *evil lol*.

The only problem: you cannot claim © to an Idea^TM. And the other problem: I am quite sure that a massive amount of fans had the very same idea centuries ago.

In the end I think it doesn’t matter, though. The only thing that does matter is this: do you like it?

One thing is sure: some movie posters I create are definitely not fit for marketing. If it comes close they could be used as teaser posters that spark thousands of questions in the mind of the viewers and therefore do their job. Most often, though, my posters are for those who already have seen the movie and hence understand the underlying meaning.

The movie poster I created for Slumdog Millionaire is such an example.

The best ideas come to mind when you least expect them, that is for sure. Three weeks ago I was literally doing nothing and thinking of nothing special; I only was reading some stuff I already don’t remember. Then I had it, an idea for a movie poster for Slumdog Millionaire. That’s basically the whole story.

In any way the result I came up with is something you need to take a close look at and think about what you see. Which is both good and bad at the same time (as I already stated above).

Now, before I continue, here’s the final movie poster:

At first look, the poster is not that interesting because it is a simple (but very clichéd) photo mosaic, showing parts from a question and two empty answer boxes. Of course, the overall design is from “Who wants to be a Millionaire” and in that regard my take is very similar to the official poster.

As I mentioned above, my images are for teaser posters at best because the viewers need some background knowledge to fully understand its meaning. In this case, only the “initiated” – in other words, the people who already watched Slumdog Millionaire – know that the question shown here is the final question in the movie.

Although the movie obviously is about much more than the bare question itself, it is in many ways a culmination of the movie. Everything we witnessed from the life of Jamal directly or indirectly lead to this final moment.

And this is where the second, almost hidden layer of this movie poster comes to play.

I used the story setup of Slumdog Millionaire – a Mumbai teen knows the answers to the questions only because of his sad and tragic life – and created a visual representation of his journey by building the mosaic only of those moments (aka screenshots) of Jamal’s life that gave him the chance to come this far.

Overall, I am satisfied with the results, although I had no chance to influence the results directly as I normally could. It was a weird feeling to let the PC do the 2D stuff and most often the results were not that good, so several runs were necessary until I had something I could live with. At least I could indirectly influence everything with the original image I created in Illustrator and the settings in the mosaic creation tool.

Still I am not sure if this approach is perfect for a good movie poster, so what do you think? Is it acceptable when a movie poster has several layers of almost hidden meanings or is that a little bit too much? Should a movie poster stick to more obvious messages and visuals?

Yesterday I was reminded of the 10^th birthday of the well-known Matrix movie franchise that happened some days ago. The news of this birthday happened to be an immediate trigger in my mind for something related to it: an image.

You know, normally I really don’t read much into these 10^th of this and 125^th of that. The only thing you learn is the time something was created because – in my eyes – those numbers don’t tell you anything about the quality of something. Heck, even SANTA CLAUSE CONQUERS THE MARTIANS has an anniversary now and then and nobody would listen or care.

Nevertheless this time is special in a way because this 10^th anniversary of The Matrix is the perfect moment to humbly present you a movie poster art I worked on some time ago and happens to be for the MATRIX franchise.

While I love the first installment of this franchise and am able to barely like the action scenes of the third movie, some of the movie posters, and especially the various DVD Cover Arts, are not that mind-blowing in my eyes. In fact some are even mind-blowingly bad, for example the DVD cover art for MATRIX REVOLUTIONS, which is a cheap and simple Photoshop-job of “yahooo-we-cannot-decide-so-let’s-put-everything-together”.

So, some months ago I decided to give it a try – to create my own poster for the Matrix to counter this awfulness. The result you see above is in many aspects a slightly different version of some teaser posters that were published for the Matrix franchise which also use the stylish coding as the main visual center.

The work was done completely in Photoshop and since I love working in layers I ended up with several hundreds of them. They were even so numerous I had to flatten everything to one layer once in the middle because the CPU and RAM couldn’t handle it effectively anymore.

The reason for this high number of layers is the original resolution of 300dpi I worked with. To create a high amount of detail I used a “television effect” that I placed above the normal coding and added several layers of glow to each of those groups to enhance the effect even further. The following image shows a small full resolution detail so you can understand better what I mean.

Now that I look at it in full resolution again I spot several problems here and there and thinking as the movie addict I am, I am on the verge of working on this poster again. Whew, calm down, little me. Calm down…

What do you think of the result? Should I add something or delete something? Or is it good as it is?

The newly released (beta / test) software from Microsoft called SONGSMITH is such an example of unexpectedness. The original purpose of this app is to “generate musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice”. In other words: it’s Karaoke inverted.

Microsoft released this app some weeks ago and what is the result so far? Instead of singing yourself, the community threw this purpose into the bin, takes popular songs, extracts the voice track and let Songsmith do the rest. That’s Karaoke inverse engineered.

Here’s my personal favorite, before and after:

Some might call this silly. I call it creativity unleashed because to me it’s amazing what everyone out there can think of. They use so many things so out of context. They mix, they change, they create. Constantly. And then they share it with everyone.

This is what I so love about the Internet.

Oh Critic, how are you fine.

you make me smile, you make me whine.

Whenever I search in the darkest night

you come along and shine a light.

You teach me idiot with high class

what to watch and what to pass.

You talk and write and foam and scream

about some things that seem so gleam.

Your opinion, that’s for sure

is the best, so clean, so pure.

So we shut up and don’t object,

because we are nothing, we are abject.

And in the end when all is read

we know one thing: you are the Critic. You are the head.

Well, to be frank, until some months ago i would have said, that besides George W. there might not be that many sources for script material – until one election debacle began its way here in a part of Germany.

Believe me, this story has everything: it has a politician named Andrea Ypsilanti who wants to be the prime minister of Hesse but lacks the overwhelming majority to do this. Hence, it has has months (nine, to be exact. NINE) of fighting over the votes in parliament. And it concludes with a big meltdown for Ypsilanti, who lost because of four voters dumping her – but who are in the same party as her (this sent shock waves throughout Germany).

But the best part is this: after being dumped she gave the job opportunity (they are doing re-elections) to a guy who to a small degree resembles Peter Griffin from FAMILY GUY (and many say, the German people don’t have an ounce of humor – or a sense of drama).

If some Hollywood writer is clever he would immediately start writing a movie telling this dramatic and funny story.

By the way: you can find a very good coverage of the final vote disaster (and the political reasons behind the end of her) on YouTube and a good overall coverage of the story on the Economist.

EXT. FARM – NIGHT

John emerges from the eerie woods behind him, running for his life, his right arm stained in blood. The fast footsteps echo through the dead grass around him.

Frantically and gasping he searches the surroundings for something to hide. After mere seconds his eyes are glued on a shallowly lit barn which best days are long past.

As John changes his course a dark figure in farmer cloths jumps out from the woods behind him. The metal of the bloody knife is flashing as the silent figure sprints through the grass like lightning.

John watches the speed of his pursuer with horror and tries to increase his speed. He wheezes in pain. The blood stained pursuer is catching up.

With the last bit of strength he reaches the barn and enters.

INT. BARN – Night

John fastly scans the run-down interior full of hay and spots some rusted pitchforks plunked at the wall. He stumples across the barn and grabs the first pitchfork possible. A smile is on his face as he turns around to see his pursuer who is fast enters the broody light of the barn.

Preparing to fight John painfully puts himself into a firm stand, the pitchfork pointing right at the pursuer.

20 feet, 17 feet, 15 feet. An almost inaudlible breathing sound can be heard from the pursuer for the first time. Then again. 10 feet. Yet another, deeper breath is heard, this time sounding like an “Ah”.

8 feet.

Pursuer

AAAAAAAAAATCHO!!!

The pursuer starts to stumble. He flutters his arms with an amazing speed as he passes by John and with full speed crashes into the pile of rusty pitchforks.

John slowly turns around and gazes the scene, unable to grasp the sheer lunacy of this moment.