Black Swan Cover For Little White Lies
For this brief I had to design a cover forthe film magazine “Little White Lies” there were a couple of films to choosefrom, These films where “Tree of Life,” “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” “Driver”and “The Black Swan” which is the film I chose.
I decided not to go with theother films for the following reasons: At the time I started the project I hadnot seen “Tree of Life” so I did some research into the film, Although I couldfind a lot of information on the plot I could not find any interesting visuals forthe film, I had some ideas based around the idea of setting up a image basedaround American family life using American gothic as a starting point, but noneof these ideas bore fruition. With “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” I had a fewGood ideas, such as using type to create the mane characters face, but when Ilooked at the posters and the pre-existing cover for “Little White Lies.” With “Driver” I felt that the film had some interestingvisual styles and I thought about using neon colours and car parts to constructthe face of the character but I felt that these ideas may lose the Point of thefilm as a major part of the plot is about of the plot is about the main charactersrelationship.
With black swan I had a few good ideas to start that evolved fromthe feeling of the film, many of these where based around Noir as I felt thiswould help create a interesting image as well as tying in to how the maincolours of the film are Black and White the same as with Noir. So with this asa starting point I started off the project by doing a lot of sketches focusingon drawing Natalie Portman, as I needed to show the main characters face, andfeathers that I thought I could use for a background image.
At this Point I realised that If I had the distinctiveBlack Swan Make up showing The face wouldn’t have to be super realistic to showwho it is people would be able to make the link to who the character is andwhat the film is from that.
Next I played around in Photoshop uNext I played around in Photoshop usingfilters and some reference images to make some basic draft ideas and to see how difrent styles would look for example in the first image you will see I played around with film grane to see if that would create a Style that would work with the Iconic Makeup.
After manipulating photos I Moved on to arrangingfound images to see if they would create interesting shapes or ideas that wouldmake a Eye catching cover.
With the above images I played around usingnegative images and having the black and white swan, the two parts in theBallet, on the cover to show the contrast that the two sides of Portman’s charactershow throughout the film.
I decided that my cover should look more tothe House Style of "Little White Lies" to achieve this I decided thatthe cover needed a close up of Portman’s face the next four images are the fourIdeas I created knowing that one was going to be used as a jumping off pointfor the final piece.
Although I carried on experimenting with usingthese images which is why you can see one in an above image.
Even though it may seem like the weakestand look least likePortman I saw greatest potential for the final image from the piece made offeathers. I believed that with some experimentation I could make the featherstake the shape of her face and make it into an eye catching interesting cover.
What follows is all the experimentation andchanging of ideas that I did to help create the final idea. These show somewild ideas that can change rapidly.
The final Image before this text is theidea that I like most I felt it was Human enough, Something some of the simplerideas (such as the eyes by themselves) was lacking, to be recognisably Portman’sface, however I did not like the white feathers on black so I decided to changeit back round for the final piece.
The followingThe following images are the stages that my final design when through to as it evoloved and changed.
This was the first image I created - with this one I felt that the nose wasn't right and I had made it to complicated.
I changed the nose to be simpler - just having the shadow, this combined with the high for head made the image look like and alien.
To help remove the alien like feeling I decidedto add some more feathers to make some hair thus lowering the forehead and makingthe image more human. I also changed the pure white background to a off grey sothat the Logo would stand out more.
With this image I tried a more flesh coloured back ground how ever I felt this didn't work and changed it back.
I decide that I needed to make the mouth simplifiedas well, like I did with nose, here I just tried it with it top lip but howeverI felt that this made her look like she had a moustache.
Here I tried to add a full bottom liphowever I felt that this made the original problem come back and it wastoo complicated.
I then tried to make the lip simpler by using two feathers I felt thatthis created the effect that I wanted.
I decided that the image was done and I started to work on the type font. Istarted by hand drawing a lot of different fonts to create as many differenteffects as I could.
I decided that the image was done and I started to work on the type font. Istarted by hand drawing a lot of different fonts to create as many differenteffects as I could.
I like the final font so I scanned it in and changed the colours to thesame red as I used on the eyes, the reason I used this font is that I felt itwould look like someone had scrawled on the image and the reason I used thesame colour as for the eyes is that I wanted to use a limited colour pallet.
I then started to place the text in different places to see whichblended best with the image.
I then started to place the text in different places to see whichblended best with the image.
