Retro Computer Game Art

So it's a Tuesday night and I'm doing everything I can to divert thoughts away from the daily grind currently being experienced over at the Big British Castle (it's a long and very mundane story, suffice to say I have some good jobs on at the moment but also a few rubbish ones); anyways, I decided to revisit my geek riddled youth and wasted days in front of television, tape player, 48k Sinclair Spectrum and what I perceived at the time to be state of the art cutting edge game play.

Obviously you can find pretty much anything online now so my train of thought turned sharply towards the game companies of the time and all the free stuff I used to get from them just by writing to them (letter of course), saying I was a fan of game X or game Y. Two weeks later I'd get a package in the post containing all sort of lovely poster art for new or existing games to put on my bedroom wall. A company called Ocean Software used to be one of the better companies to do this, as were US Gold.

My search for such poster art drew a blank, even on the mighty Google however I did stumble across a site called Bear Graphics and in particular this homage to an Atari 2600 cartridge box art (complete with hand written 'Instructions Missing' note found on all second hand packaging). This iteration though features the relatively modern movie title 'Cloverfield'.

Hints of Roger Dean

One for the thirty somethings here and reminiscent of the great Roger Dean; introducing sci-fi illustrator Dan McPharlin. You can see more at his Flickrfolio which features new album art for various bands, created in that very recognisible 1960 and 70s Ace/Berkeley science fiction book covers style.

Hey Mickey

Steamboat Willie Poster by Tom Whalan. 18" x 24" screenprint with metallic inks and limited to 200 signed copies.

Unfortunately for me [yet again] these were all sold out on the Mondo website within minutes of going up.

Highly recommend checking out Tom's site, Strong Stuff too.

More Olly Moss

From his website...

Olly Moss

Spent all day yesterday waiting for these to become available to buy at MondoTees.com ('random sales time' was specified), only to leave my desk for 10 minutes and find them all sodding sold out! Ce la vie I guess.

Wanted to get the set of three for $150 but obviously not going to happen now so I'll seek solace through posting an image here on my blog.

Created by artist Olly Moss, these clever posters (love the twin sun/eyes on the Star Wars one) are/were screen printed by hand and 24"x36", limited to just 400.

Worth checking out Olly's site too as there are more lovely examples of design and illustration on there.

And Olly, if for some extremely high odds reason you're reading this....any chance of creating 401 Star Wars sets?!

Abduzeedo Posters

More inspirational stuff from art website Abduzeedo; this time [my favourite subject] posters.
Check the selection out here.

Abduzeedo.com

Thanks to Stephen at work for passing me on this link for all things art and design at website Abduzeedo. And what a great source of shiny aesthetics it is. Below features an image taken from the 'daily inspiration' section.

Plus, there's a while host of tutorials on there to sharpen up your skills [that pay the bills].

Duel - Don't run out of gas!!

Fancied knocking up another poster, a classic film. This clean graphic though possibly suitable for a modern remake. Its about time they did it!

Predator Movie Poster

Very quick poster test for Predator here. Done in about 10 minutes whilst sitting in EAT drinking coffee and waiting for my bus to work.

When I was about 13 or 14 I used to have a Predator T-Shirt with this image on it and always liked the infra red fx in the movie, so thought it would work well as a poster too.

Not perfect by any means but quite a fun exercise to partake in on an otherwise slightly mundane Wednesday morning en route to the daily grind.




"Want some candy?"

Bullitt in your head!

One of my all time favourite films. San Francisco in the 60s, plus one of the greatest screen icons of all time.

Theres been loads of posters produced for this film, lots in Japan (they love McQueen), but they are all very busy. Thought I'd do a very simple version. McQueen along with Dean were the first to pull some serious Blue Steel in their films, McQueen seen 'mid steel' here.

The Shining Movie Poster

Another night, another movie poster design. I'm what the French would call 'sur un pain'.

This time taking on that Kubrick classic The Shining. Wanted to steer clear of big axes (there's a small one in the title though) and tackle it very graphically, so while surfing for images remembered how iconic* and crazy looking that carpet of the Outlook Hotel was.

* Iconic enough to also appears in the hallway of Andy's house in the original Toy Story.

Anyway, a quick redraw and some carefully placed font work later and you have my before-you reversioned attempt. Reckon it would work pretty well as a screen print.

Did have a few other ideas which I may create at a later date (including a sort of tech style car ad type thing featuring the toy tricycle). For now though, this will have to do.

Time for a shot of red rum in celebration of my recent creative form I think...

Hamburger Hill Movie Poster

Got home this evening and felt inspired enough to start mucking around on my laptop.

30 minutes later here's the result. A re-imagining of Nam classic Hamburger Hill. And yes, that is a hamburger at the bottom representing a hill. Sometimes it's best [easy] to be simplistic when all that's on telly is Eastenders. Quite pleased with the burger style U.S flag in the top though. Another artist would probably say it represents American popular culture, deeply entrenched with a desire to conquer. But not me. It's just a flag.

Good source for most of the imagery is either Google images or Flickr (highly recommended as you can often find good high res stuff on there).

My only regret is that I couldn't include an image of Don Cheadle, but then of course war is hell.

Film poster art is a real passion of mine and I may start a little series of these. Dinium/C-Poe - if you're reading this and feel equally inspired, feel free to create and post your favourite redux.

Cider Labels

Here are a couple of cider labels I created for Chris Davey back in Suffolk. Chris created his own cider back in November last year and after collecting a few empty bottles, needed some label action.

These two represent the variants brewed; the strong 'Roight Hoss' and the lethal 'Proper Rum'.

LA Wind - Hollywood or Hell Tour

From a more innocent time.

Stanley Donwood

Here's another great site if you're in the market for buying original art or limited prints.

Eyestorm's front page currently features this 40th anniversary Glastonbury poster by Stanley Donwood. Yours for the manageable sum of just £125.

Stanley Donwood is best known for his collaboration with Radiohead, having produced the artwork for the bands album and single record sleeves since 1994, when he designed the artwork for ‘My Iron Lung’. 

Since then he has gone on to produce artwork for Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’(1995), ‘OK Computer’(1997), ‘Kid A’(2000), ‘Amnesiac’(2001), ‘Hail To The Thief’(2003) and all the associated singles, posters, websites and official merchandise.

His fondness to explore and question society, sexuality, war, conformity and politics, are usually the subjects for his artwork.