I didn't expect to do something so serious, but I decided to make a poster of the 1930 movie version of the novel 'All Quiet on the Western Front'. Specifically, the poster is about the scene where Paul reaches for a butterfly( it was established earlier the Paul used to collect butterflies). Paul (who's hand is reaching out) is a young German Boy who, along with his friends, are convinced to enlist to fight in WW1. During the novel( and film) him and his friends slowly die, either mentally or physically. At the end, a psychologically damaged Paul reaches out to a butterfly almost as if he was reaching out to his innocence that he lost to the war. I chose the coloring of the poster to match this symbolism. All around the image is dark, and devoid of life symbolized by the dark browns, and grays. Even the hand lacks color, in reference to how destroyed Paul was. The butterfly represents the innocence and humanity that Paul was reaching out too, so if is full of bright and vibrant colors that completely contrast the dark surroundings.
85% of the image was made in illustrator, with the hand being the exception. The sky is a dark grey, over the ground which is made from a picture of dark brown dirt. Those gray lines at the top are supposed to be trenches, but their real purpose to invoke a sense of forced perception to create a background. The butterfly was created by tracing over a picture of a butter with the pen tool. I tried to trace over a hand( specifically Paul's hand from a screenshot of the movie) but it proved too awkward and didn't look good at all. Instead I got a scan of my own hand, and applied a gray-scale filter over it in photo shop(the hand was the last thing to add). The idea for a poster like this was inspired by abstract movie posters like the few I posted below.
