Monday, September 24, 2007

The Art Of The Poster...


I'm a huge fan and collector of posters, Disney and all others. One thing I've found out is that even though a movie can turn out as a disaster, it doesn't mean the poster isn't a success. The same can be reverse, a successful movie can have an unimaginative poster.

Posters in and of themselves can be a form of art.

There are posters I have for movies that I would never watch, but there is something more in the poster that conveys what the movie failed to get across. What's great is when a movie is great and a poster displays that as well.

My favorite poster is one for "Apocalypse Now", a movie I think is brilliant btw. It happens to be done by a man named Bob Peaks, my favorite poster artist, that sadly has now passed away. The most well known poster artist is a guy named Drew Struzman who has done hundreds of famous movie posters.

I thought it would be nice to look at some Disney posters that are beautiful, while not all of the movies they represent are of the same caliber.

Some are from good movies that weren't hits...


Others from movies that were disappointments...


Even some hits had posters better than the film...


Then there were movies which were better than you remember and the art was beautiful...


Lastly, we have great posters for movies that are forgotten gems...


There are many, many more you can find if you're determined to mine the vaults of Google. You might try looking around it, or find a poster shop near you... or one that is online. Sometime even a bad movie can create art... and sometimes you can frame that art on your wall. Good things come even in bad packages it appears.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ooh nice article. I'm a fan of poster art too - the problem is when you have a poster that's great for a movie that isn't. You don't want to hang a poster for a movie you'd be embarrassed to be seen watching!

I love that Oz poster and the "Something Wicked..." poster. Disney art of that era (the early to mid 80s) was usually pretty good, and had a particular style - it must have been a specific artist or group of artists because the look is very unique and specific.

Poster art as a whole has gone downhill in the last decade - the stylized art of the 70's and 80's has given way to Photoshop and floaty heads.

One of the worst offenders is Disney - posters for their animated releases are almost uniformly awful. The teaser posters are often great - that Mulan image you posted has stuck in my mind for years - but the release posters are usually garbage.

Even worse are the DVD covers for home release - I often think that Disney should have reversible covers or something for adult animation fans who don't want to look at embarrassingly bad cover art on their DVD shelf. At the start of DVD Disney had some really great cover art - the original Tarzan 2-disc set, etc... but that has gone the way of the dodo.

What's more insulting is that Disney overseas releases often have poster art far superior to domestic release. I've seen some foreign Disney animated posters that blow away anything we ever see here - the same for DVD covers. Then again, most studios' releases tend to have better foreign posters...

If you come across anything else interesting you should post it! Great stuff...

thanks

Thomas Phillip said...

Vary nice article. I love poster art myself but these examples are exceptionally exciting! Now I want to watch the movies.

Anonymous said...

Very good article. Visit the site: www.impawards.com. There are lots of movie posters there.
Wow this Mulan posters is fantastic.
Well, all this posters are really beautiful. Another amazing Disney's poster is that with the silhouette
of Belle and The Beast dancing.
Rogerio
São Paulo, Brazil

V.M.L. said...

I love your article! I love seeing interesting poster art. Too bad we haven't seen much fantastic posters since Photoshop was invented, which made people make more cheaply-made posters.

As an ATLANTIS fan, I loved the posters, including the teasers. Also, THE LION KING one is gorgeous. There are too many Disney posters to mention, like the odd ones (Belle wearing pink? A penis in King Tritan's castle?).

I'm also glad that you mention Drew Struzman. He is one of the best artists out there. Too bad he hasn't painted posters as frequently as he did in the 70s and 80s.