Reveal 1 - Making of "System Failure"

So it seems like a lot of people like to see the artist's process of making a poster. Below is a summary with some pictures of my process for making "System Failure".

Here are some of my thumbnails. My original concept was to do a retro style travel poster. I did these two quick sketches to get my ideas down on paper and see how the composition would work. I did the first thumbnail and had the circles at the bottom of the composition so that they wouldn't distract from the words. I also wanted to incorporate the "numbers" as a telephone number (which is where I got the idea for the clues for my first giveaway). But I thought the circles in the water area didn't really make sense and the text was kind of cheesy, so with the second sketch, I removed the words and drew the circles in the sky. This gave me the idea to make the plane break apart when the circles hit it, which led me to the glow in the dark idea.

 

After this, I brought it into the computer and started drawing the island. I worked in Red so that I could easily see all of the objects in the layer that I was working on. Once I finished a layer, I would give it a rough color. I didn't worry about exact colors at this point, I just wanted to establish highlights, midtones, and shadows. The colors were one of the last things that I decided on. However, each of these "tones" needed to be done on it's own layer to make color separations easier. Color separations are important for the screen printing process. 

Below is a view of all of the shapes that make up the island. Due to the screen-printing process, I had to make sure certain shapes weren't overlapping since this would affect the colors. The image below is still the raw drawing before I separated and cut out all of the shapes.

Once I had the island and plane drawn in, I used some brushes to paint in the water and I did a simple half-tone gradient for the sky. I still wasn't sure how much detail I wanted to do in the sky and was thinking that I'd keep it simple.

Next I put in the concentric circles. I came back to the idea of making it a travel poster and played with type, but it felt too boring and didn't invoke any emotion or feeling in me. It was also feeling way to campy and forced.

I played with ways of making the concentric circles more interesting and it was at this point that I decided to name the poster System Failure.

I really wanted the daytime image to give you a sense of awe while the glow image felt more spooky and ominous. The type was still feeling forced, so I ended up putting it in the glow ink. I thought this would be a nice surprise and it went well with the concept. The last thing I did was to add the clouds. Since I wasn't going to have type in the sky on the daytime image anymore, I wanted to use a powerful cloud image in the background to really pop the island and push that sense of awe. Once I found a cloud image I liked, my plan was to do a half-tone of it (think of how when you look a newsprint up close you can see the dots. Half-tone is an affect like that). However, my computer glitched and gave me the crazy thin line effect you see in the final image. I really liked how this looked and ended up using it. As Bob Ross would say, "it was a happy accident".

If you haven't done so already, you can check out the final print at FirstPlaneCrash.com! I'm almost sold out, so now's your chance to get one! A high resolution download of this will be available for free shortly.

Thanks to EVERYONE who's visited the site and a HUGE thanks to those that have bought prints. You have no idea how much I appreciate the kind words and the support. I personally have a few more prints in the works, but I probably won't be able to release them until early Jan. In the meantime, check back tomorrow for our first guest artist release! I also have a few more giveaways including some swag signed by Damon and Carlton themselves! You can use the RSS feed in the right hand column to stay updated. Stay tuned!