The Original Movie Posters Blog - Art of the Movies

Every now and then we come across a poster that stops us dead in our tracks. It’s happened twice recently, first with an unofficial poster for “Captain America : The First Avenger”, and then secondly, with the official French poster for the fantastic sci-fi thriller “Looper”.

Imagine our surprise to find that they are by the same artist, the phenomenally talented Richard Davies. We tracked Richard down in deepest Carmarthenshire and were thrilled when he agreed to have a chat with us.

With the current trend for 'secret' extra scenes, I imagine we have all sat through the credits to a recent movie. 

Ever seen “Movie Poster Artist” in there? No, neither have we, and, that is a real shame.

So, we were excited to see that this year's San Diego Comic-Con (the most significant annual comic and pop culture festival in the world and celebrating its 50th year) includes a special panel entitled “Masters of the Illustrated Film Poster”.

We reached out to Paul Shipper of Paul Shipper Studio to find out more…

Ever walked past a movie poster and thought "that film looks good" even though you haven't seen the trailer? We all have. Movie posters are powerful.

At their best, they capture the magic and energy of an entire feature film in an image roughly 27 inches across by 40 inches long.

They can make, or break, a film. Yet, only rarely do the extremely talented artists behind them get a mention. There aren't many movie poster superstars.

But, there are a few, and, Drew Struzan is one of them...

In a previous post to the Original Movie Posters Blog, we looked at the major movie poster artists of the late twentieth century. In this, we take our first deep dive in to the work of one of those legends.

To kick off, "the father of the modern movie poster", Robert "Bob" Peak.

Together with a short bio, we include every movie poster by Bob Peak that we are aware of...

When we aren’t out looking for original movie posters, one of our favourite past-times is to settle in at home, to turn on the T.V. and to watch a good British detective programme - even the non-Brits reading this will know ‘Miss Marple’, ‘Hercule Poirot’ and ‘Midsomer Murders’.

So, a Sunday evening a few weeks ago, the Art of the Movies team settled down on the sofa and turned on the television to watch the long-awaited 6th series of 'Endeavour'.

This is what we saw, and, it made us sit up and take notice… 

We opened our blog series 'The Artists' with a look at the birth of the movie poster in the late nineteenth century.

In this, the second of the series, we outline a key period that 'The Artists' will cover and provide a downloadable Infographic showing a Chronology of the most prominent movie poster artists - many of whom this blog series will take a look at.