
Sunday, March 26, 2023
Action Overload
Saturday, March 25, 2023
Duty Calls
Taiwanese actress Cynthia Khan (a stage name amalgamation of Cynthia Rothrock and Michelle Khan) takes over for a retiring Michelle Yeoh in this hard-hitting installment in the very loosely connected Hong Kong "girls with guns" film series. For the IN THE LINE DUTY III cover art I continued the graphic theme established previously, this time with a yellow tone as seen on the original HK lobby cards.
The booklet cover spread continues the visual theme. (The Thai poster is featured on the back.)
As does the menu featuring that iconic shot.Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Biao in Action
This was a quick little cover piece I did for a magazine highlighting the 1990s work of Hong Kong action star Yuen Biao. The main image is from 1987's EASTERN CONDORS per my client's request, but the inset images are all from his later work, made during the decline of the film industry.
To differentiate the films profiled inside, I rendered the smaller images of Biao in a graphic flat style, with a limited blue/orange color palette and popped them out of a strip of 35mm film.
Saturday, February 25, 2023
Magnificent Michelle
The booklet cover (below) solely focused on Michelle in her defense posture. I actually did the art a few months before I even knew my client was going to release the film. Just as a fun exercise.
Yuen Biao gets a retro retrospective... and a magazine cover
Monday, January 30, 2023
A Warrior's Heart
Michelle Yeoh followed up her star turn in YES, MADAM! with the brutal actioner, ROYAL WARRIORS, in 1986. You can tell the producers were now confident in her proven abilities to carry the film and please an audience, as they did not feel the need to add goofy sequences featuring star cameos into the film this time. The film is better for it.
For this cover design I went with an intense orange tone, culled from the fiery Hong Kong poster.
The right hand side of the image is a bit "spoilerific". As it slyly tells the story of Michael Wong's character arc.
HE'S A COP READY FOR ACTION.
HE DIES FALLING THRU A GLASS CEILING.
HIS COFFIN GETS HUNG FROM A CRANE.
Saturday, January 28, 2023
Madam Yeoh Meets Miss Rothrock
Regardless of the order of the films, YES, MADAM! remains a highlight of female-lead action cinema, and it was a pleasure to design the packaging for the first 4 films in the series. (Their success slowly dwindled after the wonderful fourth installment, and the rights holder has yet to make the remaining 3 films available in HD, but who knows what the future may hold.)
I decided to give each film a consistent bold compositional design, with a unique color theme. YES, MADAM! demanded a minty 'Miami Vice' mid-80s palette. With a splash of hot pink paint to pop the title and mimic the original HK poster art. I also decided to choose a simple title font that could work with all the film titles in the series (long or short), to further connect them visually.
I was able to illustrate the leads in representative poses exploding from the title, and give Michelle and Cynthia the emphasis they deserve. Monochromatic background elements in the upper corners are architectural details seen in the final act's big action set piece (soon to be painfully smashed by falling stuntmen).
For the booklet cover I went with a minimal black background with the leads in a tinted monochrome under the title text.
I carried this over to the Blu-ray menu, with the background design element from the cover behind the title and a color photo of the leads. This left plenty of room for a single-page layout of all the menu options.