I wonder who will get to do the Episode VII poster; I am hoping Drew Struzan will, to keep the continuity with the prequel and special edition posters, but I heard a rumor he had retired, what do you guys say.

My guess is that it would be a Disney Artist.

Drew Struzan is without a doubt the best movie poster artist ever! He's able to capture a photo-realistic look of the actor while producing a dynamic & dramatic arrangement of the figures that make you feel that something epic is going on. All in one picture.

His wiki says that he retired in 2008 after the Crystal Skull, but perhaps Disney could woo him into semi-retirement.

http://media.beta.photobucket.com/u...s&sort=1&_suid=135757657711405235627981145186

Did anyone NOT like the PT posters (the 3 in the link above)? I have to say, I hated all of them. The OT ones were a lot better....

-C

No matter who does the artwork for the posters, I want them to be painted. 99% of posters that are photoshopped out of pictured from the movie end up looking cheesy and unprofessional. The gimmicky approach worked well for TPM 3D since the releases focused mainly on on-screen visuals, but it would be a crime for Episode VII's poster to not be hand-made by an artist like the rest of the films.

I'm pretty sure the reason why he retired was due in part to the fact that the Revenge of the Sith poster was actually edited after he gave it to them. I think that bothered him a lot...as well as the entire industry going hard-digital. But I vaguely remember reading an article where he described how irritated he was when he found out they cut and pasted Anikin's head and made it bigger or whatever than how he painted it.

Interesting. I've never heard that before. If you remember the article or the book that you read that from, I would really like to know. I'd really like to read the whole thing in its entirety. I find it odd that he would wait until the ROTS poster to allow something that he would have been dealing with his whole career to force him into retirement. Companies messing with the final art is nothing new. It actually happens all the time in this industry and it's certainly not something you take personally.

Now, the industry going digital, I can see his frustration with that. Painting digitally is one thing, but what movie studios are doing with posters (slapping a bunch of images together in Photoshop) is something totally different. It may be more cost effective, but the end result? Ugh.

HS29's take may be closer to the truth of his retirement. I still hold out hope he returns for the ST for, at the very least, continuity's sake.

Is anyone else bothered by the SE posters? They use images of characters from the wrong movies in some cases, and don't use the main characters in each one like an actual movie poster would. Episode IV does, but V shows mostly secondary characters.

SE Posters were always designed as a triptych; that is an image divided in three parts, meant to be seen as a whole. If you look at all three posters lined up - ANH, ESB, RotJ, the composition becomes apparent.

The original Empire poster was my favorite!

Always loved this one.

Yeah I thought they were all pretty average. The rumour I heard was that the individual pieces were drawn, handed over to lucas film and then photoshopped together by someone else. Which anyone involved with design will tell you is almost guarenteed to produce lackluster results.

The Empire poster is without doubt the best, the ANH poster iconic as hell, the rest of them were utterly forgetable.

If you look at, say, the AOTC theatrical poster credits, New Wave Creative are credited with "poster design" whereas Struzan is credited only for the artwork. New Wave Creative also produced the photoshopped prequel teaser posters. All of this suggests exactly what you're saying above--Struzan produced the theatrical artwork which was then digitally composed by the hacks at New Wave Creative.

And yes, the PT posters are uninspired.

I actually like the AOTC one the best out of the PT posters. But you wanna know what I hate much more...are these things...



As long as we don't just get this sorta stuff, I'll be happy. Because this isn't just lame photoshopped heads in a generic modern day Hollywood poster, it's just sooooo uninspiring too. It's like they literally just grabbed a bunch of old star wars photos and plopped them down.

I want some art. Hell. If Drew Struzan aint available get those Mondo guys. They are doing fantastic art/desgned posters.

LFL must have loved those DVD covers, since they went with a similar approach for TPM3D.

AWESOME!!

The artist for this was Roger Kastel. He also did the iconic JAWS painting. Check out his website: www.RogerKastel.com

He's got a nice print available of the first version of this painting as well as the final.

I actually liked the Episode II teaser poster the best. I like my posters minimalist, and that one was great. I got one full size and hung it in my room.

Struzan's most iconic poster is his Back to the Future theatrical one sheet, IMHO. It's simple but sums up the film in one single image. No floating heads, no clutter, and closer to what you'd now find on a teaser.

I find teaser posters these days much more abstract and pleasing in general--no need for literalism. The AOTC teaser poster looks awkward, however--the lightsaber is clearly an after-the-fact effect on top of a photoshopped image of Christensen, for example.

Those DVD covers suck so badly the change in air pressure gives me a headache.
Whatever photoshop hero did those should be charged with crimes against good design. The lense flares are the worst.

I honestly don't know why they didn't use the movie poster art, it's a billion times better.

The reasoning is that movie posters aren't scaled for presenting recognisable stars/characters on a shelf full of DVDs all begging for your cash.

It's Star Wars! It doesn't have to beg, it has direct unrestricted access to my wallet.

I agree. And these aren't much better:



I don't understand why they didn't just use the original art for the posters instead of trying to recreate them and coming up with these atrocities.

In regards to the lense flares in the other covers, I can understand why they put them in there. They were very prominent in Struzan's original artwork (after reading this thread, whether he actually painted them in there or they were added later is anyone's guess) and they were probably trying to stay within the same style. Still, the end result doesn't look very good.

Probably because it costs money too. Licensing and royalties. They'd have to pay Drew Struzan all over again, I bet. So it's way cheaper to get an in-house designer to whip these up. I've never seen these exact ones, they're actually worse than the other new sets photoshopped ones.

The best posters are the originals for ANH, TESB and AOTC, IMO. I love them!
The theatrical poster for ROTS is the only one I have a problem with, though. It took ugliness to a new level.

I also wish for painted, tasteful posters, BTW.





"It is so... beautiful"
/LM