Creative Process: The Shining - Part II

Thanks for joining me for Part II of the behind the scenes look at the creation of my The Shining: Maze poster. If you missed Part I feel free to catch up here.

Now when I said in Part I that I tear apart the poster, I actually do tear it apart...digitally. While still in Illustrator, I save all the design elements into separate .ai (adobe illustrator format) files and then bring them into Photoshop as Smart Objects on their own layer.

Here you can see the main design elements broken up into their own layers as Smart Objects

One reason I like this method is that it allows me to apply textures to each design element separately. This helps give the illusion that the poster was printed with several color plates and maybe the plates had unique imperfections. The second reason I take the illustration apart before bring it into Photoshop, is that with each design element in it's own layer, it allows me to go back to the Illustrator files, make changes to the vector, and then replace the content of the Smart Object at anytime. This method means my vector art changes, but it doesn’t move within my carefully positioned Photoshop layout. This is great for small tweaks to the original illustration. 

Having each design element as a Smart Object means that if I want to make tweaks like creating a "Red Variant," it is very easy. Simply go the the original Illustrator Vector file and change green to red.

As I get close to the end of my process, I put my textures in different layers, adjust the transparency, and then use a variety of blending modes to finish up the poster. I try and do a few test prints on my handy-dandy Epson printer to see if my textures are visible enough when printed on paper. Since my textures are in separate layers and use different transparency percentages, I can adjust the strength of texture by bringing the transparency percentages up or down. I have found that my printed posters tend to require a higher percentage of texture in order to show up on paper. This tends to mean that the texture becomes way to strong for any web files that I will post online. Lately, I have been creating one file for print and one for web so they look just right in each medium.

(Left) The Shining poster without texture added (Right) Final version of The Shining poster with all of it's texture

That is the basics of The Shining: Maze poster development. It really takes a lot of trial and error to get everything the way I like it, but well worth the effort. I tried not to kill you with to much technical speak on purpose, so if you have more detailed questions, please leave them in the comment section of this post.

Creative Process: The Shining - Part I

My hope is to have several of these posts about the process behind my work. I have found that process breakdowns are a great way to learn new techniques and workflows. For this post, I am going to give a little peek behind the curtain into my newest re-imagined film poster for The Shining.

The first stop in my creation process is usually Google Image Search. I pull photos of the actors in the film, the director, as well as the official film poster. At this point I may not have a clear concept, but this step can sometimes help to flush out an idea to build upon. I also like to see what other re-imagined posters are out there. It helps me to pick a subject that hasn t already been done and hopefully I can bring something new to the table.

Once I have some photo references, if I am still having trouble with developing a concept, I will go to the source material. For this poster I popped in The Shining DVD. The idea for my poster came at the end of the film when Jack is chasing Danny through the maze. I actually took a picture with my iPhone of the exact frame that I thought would make a great visual.

A quick shot that I took with my iPhone for reference

Until recently, I would have gone straight to the computer at this point. Thanks to other artists who blog about their work (there is a great post by Signalnoise on the creation of his Green Lantern poster) I have been inspired to start hand sketching on paper the initial concepts. In some cases, I will scan the sketches then start my work in Illustrator turning the sketches into vector art. However, with this Shining poster I wanted an actual human figure and my sketches weren t quite right at this stage.

Early sketches that I used to figure out the final layout

So, I tucked away my dignity and used myself as a model. I have a remote trigger for my Nikon D7000, which comes in pretty handy for these types of situations. I needed a shot from an elevated angle and I knew that the shadow I cast on the ground could come into play later, so I staged the scene as best I could in my basement.

Simple, but effective way of getting the figure references I needed. Don't I look scary? Yes, that is a yard stick in my hand.

Once I had a good reference photo for creating Jack standing in the snow I started illustrating. I had a pretty clear idea of how the poster was going to come together at this point. I wanted the hedges of the maze to frame the entire piece and I wanted Jack s shadow to help reveal the movie title. The shadow was hard to get right until I learned more about the new Perspective Grid Tool in Illustrator. With the help of my co-worker Brian Fellows, I was able to get a decent shadow drawn in an accurate perspective. The catch was that it looked too accurate. I actually ended up redrawing the shadow, using the work I did with the Perspective Grid Tool as reference, in order to make it look the way I wanted.

Choosing a font for the film title and credits was pretty easy. I searched free horror fonts on dafont.com. I then used Illustrator s Perspective Grid Tool to correctly position the text in the snow along the same perspective line as the shadow. With the text, I found that the Perspective Grid Tool did a really nice job without needing adjustments.

The amazing Perspective Grid Tool in Illustrator

The last step in Illustrator was to add a bit of snow in the air. I could do this in Photoshop, but I wanted the snowflakes to be super crisp, so I knew they were going to have to be vector. I brought a texture into Illustrator and then ran Live Trace and Live Paint. I deleted what I didn t need, colored the vectors white, and then copy and pasted the white flakes into the layout making sure to rotate and scale so that they didn t all look the same.

Once I had my snow, it was time to tear the poster apart and bring it into Photoshop for the final texturing. I like to add texture to my work because I think it gives it a sense of life. Matched with the right paper at the printing stage, textures can really help bring the whole piece together.

Stay tuned for Part II as I explain the process for going from Illustrator to Photoshop.