In response to the D&AD brief for Little White Lies magazine to create original cover illustrations depicting the main characters along with the film titles from the five selected movies by the magazine, I chose Black Swan and Super 8.
Black Swan Cover Illustration
In Black Swan, the main character Nina Sayers is portrayed as an innocent, timid, and fragile young ballerina. However, although she grew up having these personalities, Nina truly held a darker side beneath her innocence. Therefore in depicting her character, I took the concept of showing these two sides of Nina. Interpreting both sides of Nina, Nina is illustrated having her dark doppelganger gazing at her in her reflection. Similar to how a blank canvas can be tainted by ink, the use of ink splatters in the background represent her dark side spreading and slowly taking over her innocence. Additionally, the cover is created in black and white to show the contrast between the two personalities.
Super 8 Cover Illustration
In Super 8, I see the main character Joe Lamb as an adventurous, brave, and curious character. Therefore for the cover illustration, I took the idea of drawing him while encountering the weird events he faced within the film, such as the monster, the cube, etc. In the progress of visualizing the idea, I finally chose the cube to represent the other bizarre events he encountered and drew a realistic portrait of him holding the cube while looking towards the readers. The character was then combined with a simple background so that the character and the cube serve as the main focus in the cover. In addition, the color palette is decided based on the atmosphere colors of the movie.
