Monday, April 29, 2013

" no ship should go down without her captain"

My newest print is a doozy, in conjunction with Gallery 1988, Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures, IMAX (to debut their FANFIX program) I created a poster for Star Trek Into Darkness.


12x36, lithograph with glow in the dark ink... Click here to find out how to get one! It's an absolute honor and a pleasure to be involved with the release of Star Trek Into Darkness. When Jensen from Gallery 1988 emailed me asking if I liked Star Trek...


The first movie I ever attended, when I was only a few months old, was Star Trek The Motion Picture. I've been a lifelong Trek fan, watched every film and television incarnation of the franchise and was blown away by the JJ Abrams helmed relaunch in 2009.


I immediately jumped in and started sketching the Enterprise. Not having any idea what happens in the movie, I knew for sure there'd be the Enterprise in space and that no time would be wasted drawing that. I quickly redrew the sketch in Photoshop and roughed up something to send out for approval to move forward.


From the trailers, I knew that Earth was featured prominently in the movie and that it was facing a serious threat. So, I decided to have the Enterprise in Earth's orbit and figure out some way to imply the danger with color.


This was the longest step in my process... because there isn't much going on in the image, composition was going to be vitally important. So, I endlessly moved around and tinkered with the major shapes until I arrived at something I found pleasing and decided to move forward.


To keep things looking consistent with the rest of my work, I approached this as if it was going to be a screen print. If it was printed on black paper, it would be a 5 color screen print. I chose a red color for the star field to pop the Enterprise and the Earth forward, but also to give the sense of impending doom for both of the foreground elements.


The last steps were mainly rendering more clouds on the earth, adding white stars, giving the stars a bit of of motion blur to add some drama and pop the Enterprise forward a bit more, then going ahead and rendering out the Enterprise with as much detail as I could to draw attention to it even though it is the smallest of the foreground elements.

I was fortunate enough to see the 2009 Star Trek at the Arclight where they had a scale model of the new Enterprise on display. I snapped some pictures of it and wound up using those as reference to get all of the little details right.

Thanks again to Gallery 1988, Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures, IMAX for somehow making May 15th even more exciting for me!

10 comments:

  1. This is awesome, Mark. I was going to see the movie anyway, of course. But going opening night now because of this. Congrats on a job well done!

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  3. So this is going to sound absolutely absurd, but is there any other way to get a hold of one of these? I had tickets for the 8 o'clock showing, but got scheduled work and was able to exchange my tickets for a later showing, but missed out on this GORGEOUS poster. As an art student and star trek lover, I need one of these framed on my wall. Pleaseeee let me know if there's any way I can purchase one from you.

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  4. Thanks to Bill Hunt's Digital Bits site, I found myself here and wondering if I could ever get a copy of this print. It's truly stunning!

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  5. Hi, I would very much like to purchase one of these.Please email navinrjohnsonastronaught@gmail.com with instructions on how to purchase. Anxiously awaiting your reply!

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  6. Hi, I would very much like to purchase one of these.Please email navinrjohnsonastronaught@gmail.com with instructions on how to purchase. Anxiously awaiting your reply!

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