The Original Movie Posters Blog - Art of the Movies

Pixar’s "The Incredibles" (2004) is one of our family’s favourite movies. Despite having watched the film, many people are still surprised to hear that it is set in the 1960’s. 

The modern ultra-sleek movie posters probably have something to do with that…

… but it could have been very different...

We are big fans of early sci-fi stories and for Christmas we were gifted a set of “STAR Science Fiction Stories”, books 1-6, each with amazing cover art of detailed planets and intricate spaceships.

They are all from the mind and paintbrush of one man. An artist who inspired a galaxy far, far away and yet never watched the film himself...

2020 was an interesting year for author, film-maker, screen-writer and artist Adam McDaniel. The fires that ravaged Southern California threatened to engulf his home, he left his job of nearly twelve years with Warner Brothers and his wedding cruise was twice cancelled due to the COVID epidemic.

That would have got a lot of us down but, not McDaniel. He has set out to finish a journey that began, unbeknown to him, a few decades before...

Great art has the ability to affect us physically, emotionally, and perhaps, even spiritually. 

As a precursor to next week's blog post with author and film-maker Adam McDaniel, we give you two examples that do it for us.

Every now and then the opportunity comes along to help make something magical happen. Even if you don't have time to read the whole of this blog post - please back this Kickstarter!

Those of you that do have time, are in for a treat. Including an exclusive look at a Star Wars poster that never was...

A few of the great movie poster artists (amongst them Bill Gold, Drew Struzan, Saul Bass, John Alvin, Frank McCarthy and Robert McGinnis) have their careers documented in print, but, when you look at any poster fan’s book-shelf, there has always been one name missing, Richard Amsel.

Thankfully, that is about to change…

In an earlier blog post we talked about Drew Struzan's phenomenal movie poster for 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' and the travesty that prevented him completing the movie series.

Speaking to a few movie poster artists, we get the impression that it happens more than you may think. Here is another example...

Each year, the Society of Illustrators adds a small creme-de-la-creme group of illustrators to its Hall of Fame for "their distinguished achievement in the art of illustration".

2020's elite group included movie poster legend Drew Struzan!

You can watch the wonderful tribute film here...

It was fantastic to settle down a few Sundays ago and watch the Comic-Con@Home panel "Masters of the Illustrated Film Poster - The Sequel'.

Building on last year's ground-breaking panel this year's virtual discussion brought some movie poster legends and some 'new kids on the block' to our screens in a fascinating discussion that showed the mutual respect and admiration between a group that have shaped so much of our popular culture.

And now, you can watch it on-line, at any time. Enjoy!

For most of us, our school years weren’t as eventful as High School Musical. There were no spontaneous songs with back-flips in the canteen, nor mass synchronised dancing in the playground as a camera panned slowly over us.

However cool your school was, I have a feeling it wasn’t as cool as the DAVE school (and no, it has nothing to do with the U.K. comedy repeat TV channel).

Read on to learn more...

A lot has changed in a year. At the time, San Diego Comic-Con was gearing up for its fiftieth year, including a ground-breaking panel “Masters of the Illustrated Film Poster” that brought eight amazing movie poster artists from behind their easels, to centre-stage of a packed auditorium.

Wind forward a year and the thought of a packed auditorium now seems alien.

How could Comic-Con possibly go ahead with the shadow of corona virus hanging over us?

Where there is a will, there is a way...

Selling a film to a movie studio can't be easy. Millions of pounds are at stake and Hollywood is littered with glorious failures.

How do you make the pitch even harder? Propose something that has never been achieved before. Require technology and techniques that don't yet exist. Fill your film with imaginary worlds, astonishing space battles and strange creatures and droids. 

But then, to give yourself a chance, make sure you have an amazing concept artist. One like Ralph McQuarrie...