Wednesday, July 31, 2024

IT'S RIGGED!

Amongst the Hindu temples and oil rigs of Bali. Ruthless gangs of mustachioed smugglers. A hot briefcase of cold cash. Glorious bell bottom jeans... and revenge. Sweet sweet revenge. 

This is gritty, hard film. Perhaps not quite exploitation, but darn close. So for my cover art I leaned into the hard contrasts of black or white. No gentle grays. Figures are coiled for action. Jagged edges point from all directions as if there's no easy escape. The title treatment, a leaning cross of interlocked text. The yellow/orange gradient is pulled directly from the original Hong Kong poster art as homage. All under a layer of grindhouse grime.  

For the booklet cover, black oil drips down the page along side visual references to cause and effect. Wealth. And/or Death. Two inevitable consequences for the characters in the film who deal with the stuff. You could say their ends were quite... "crude". 

I'll show myself out.  

Next time. A TIGER goes on a rampage!

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

It's a MIRACLE

This was a weird one. One of the stranger martial arts films of the 1980s. MIRACLE FIGHTERS, directed by the amazing Yuen Woo Ping, has a little bit of everything. Part fantasy. Part Kung fu. Part magic. But mostly just insane.
 
So for the cover art, the brief I gave myself was to convey a bit of that insanity, without spoiling too much of what awaits the viewer. There's a lot going on in the film, so naturally there's s bit going on in the cover art too. A chaotic swirl of strangeness. The film has a certain color palette which may exist more in my mind than on celluloid. But those spooky "black light" colors was the feeling I got from my viewing experience. Add a tag line, some warped titles, and let simmer for 5 minutes before serving. 


For the booklet included with the Blu-ray I got a little cheeky. If fact, it took some big "cojones" to design this cover. If you've seen the movie, you'll surely get the joke.


There's more to come in this style so stay tuned.
 
But next time.
DOUBLES get CROSSED!