Due to certain circumstances, a gallery opening at Gallery 1988 in which was invited to contribute, was cancelled. This was a bit of a bummer, but closing one (cabin) door opened another! It was short notice, but Gallery 1988 invited me to do something for the Joss Whedon tribute show... opening in 2 weeks. Of course I was going to do it, but how?
Not a Buffy fan and only having seen a few episodes of Firefly (there goes my street cred), I immediately thought Avengers. Gallery 1988 said no Avengers art for this show. But then, I remembered Cabin in the Woods.
Specifically, this badass scene where all Hell breaks loose:
With no time to spare, I started sketching up some ideas. I wanted it to be pretty simple, not too spoiler-y, and a nod to retro horror posters. Here's the winning concept:
I thought of Pandora's Box, the Greek myth about a woman named Pandora who receives a container with all the world's evil inside. Her curiosity gets the best of her and she opens the container, releasing evil onto the world. With this as inspiration, I came up with a design in which the roof of the cabin is acting as the lid of a box. This lid is opened and all the beasts are pouring out the top. It doesn't say why or how, it just says what: someone just opened up a box of mayhem.
I wanted the style to be reminiscent to classic 70s-80s horror posters like the original Friday the 13th, Halloween, or even Alien; a main central image that represents setting and antagonist. I also liked the bold typography utilized.
The Cabin itself was the easy part (aside from having to pause Netflix a million times to make sure my cabin is accurate). I got a little carried away with the texture, so the version below was eventually simplified.
The monsters were the tough part. Which ones to use, how many of them, all of them, the obscure ones? These were questions I kept asking during the process.
Here are a few shots of the process. Notice a few of the sketched out monsters didn't make the final cut, like the Sugarplum Fairy, or the blob that was supposed to be the Merman. Also, I re-did the Wraith (ghost thing) so he didn't look so swollen.
It took me a week, off and on, to complete those damn monsters. This was by far the most texture I've used in a piece. I had to eventually separate the poster's layers in Photoshop because Illustrator was moving so incredibly slow. So now that everything is done on my end, Mama's Sauce has only seven days to print and ship 50 screen printed posters from Florida to California. They were able to pull some strings, and some squeegees, and make it happen. They definitely said I got lucky on this one, just barely squeezing into their busy schedule. They really killed it on this poster (get it?)
Here is the final print drying on the Mama's Sauce racks.
Here is the final design in all its gory glory!
A very limited quantity is available in the Bandito Shop. Get 'em while they last!