A new piece of work which I completed recently, this is a poster for a short film, Stone Elegy, written and directed by Shane Smith. The film is a drama set in Ireland during the Iron Age, with a narrative that encompasses lost love, armed conflict and a touch of magic. The brief from Thin Veil Pictures was for something in the style of the cover I created for Alan Moore’s Voice of the Fire, a window-like frame of multiple panels in which various figures and details from the story could be seen. The Moore cover is very hard-edged and brightly coloured, going deliberately for a stained-glass window effect. The director and producer liked the formal frame but wanted the look of the poster to be darker, softer and more diffuse which has led to my doing this in a much more painterly style than I’d normally use. I’m very pleased with the results (as are the film-makers), in part because achieving this look with digital tools is no longer the chore I’ve felt it to be in the past. This has been achieved by a great deal of trial and error over the past few years, fine-tuning a small range of digital brushes that now behave in the ways I’d want a regular paintbrush to behave. One thing you never want when drawing or painting is to feel that the tools are getting in your your way.
Stone Elegy was a crowd-funded project so the poster is being used in part as a reward for the backers of the film. The print version will have the credits running at the foot of the poster. There’s a teaser for the film here (actually a self-contained piece), and a proper trailer here.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore