I'm doing some more art for Little Red Bicycle based on bad movies. These two pieces are representations of
Them! and
Plan 9 from Outer Space, each using the colors of the yarn.
For Them! I drew an iconic movie still - the first time the giant radioactive ants appear on camera. This is the movie still I based the illustration on:
This was an interesting project because here I'm basically copying someone else's work right? I did this for a few reasons: the movie is actually good (despite its special effects) and has some excellent imagery, and budget constraints prevented me from spending a huge amount of time researching ant anatomy. This had me thinking as I went about rehashing this movie still as an illustration: what is my role as an illustrator? If the point is that this is supposed to look like a movie scene, then why am I drawing it?
I realized that there is a lot an illustrator can do when working from photos in the realm of clarifying and refining an existing image, much like someone touching up a photo. The ant effects aren't really that good in Them! and, though that's definitely part of its charm, as an illustrator I have license to improve the ant: to make it scarier and more defined, as in the detail shot below:
The art for Plan 9 is successful, I think, but it was more challenging. There are so many facets to the movie and the print size of this artwork is pretty small. So the task was to accurately depict the movie without cluttering the small image. The scene I ended up drawing involves a graveyard, the palm trees of San Fernando, flying saucers, and the living dead. I really did want to add in Vampira, the cheesy aliens, and Bela Legosi, but I don't think it would work visually.
I also recreated the text from the original movie poster which was pretty fun. Even the campiest typefaces have rigid rules that they follow.
