I decided to look into other game posters in order to get inspiration for my own Bloodletting posters. I also researched film and anime posters to broaden my ideas. All of these images are taken from Google Image search.
Game Posters
The game posters I have researched were mainly within the cyberpunk, noir and horror genres. I like the bright tones of the first three posters. The bright pink, magenta and violet contrasted with black and dark blues creates an atmosphere of streets being alive at night with lights coming from shops and spilling out onto the concrete. It’s the same ambiance I want my game to have and therefore convey though advertising. I also like the clutter of Catherine game poster. There’s a lot going on which creates a sense of a fast paced game. For my poster I could use that chaos to represent the conflict between the church and the barbers. I’d like some of my designs to be influenced by punk/cyberpunk and be loud and in audience’s face. I like the dark shadows of The Wolf Among Us poster and how the light source is a match which automatically tells the audience about the character so does the pose. The Void and Meddler poster has great composition but the thing I like about it the most is the static like look of the background lights and the neon look of the typeface. The Evil Within and Bloodborne posters are strikingly different from the first three posters. They’re not bright and don’t include lights or much color instead they’re mainly black with muted colors. I like how The Evil Within poster doesn’t use a character to advertise their game instead it uses a brain and a building with clever composition. This is something I would like to explore in one of my design and focus on the Bloodletting tools or the symbols from the game like the neon cross by it self and the logo. Bloodborne poster includes a chair which I thought was applicable to my game since the barber or the bloodletting chair are the focus of my designs. It’s good to see how other posters integrate a chair into it’s composition. I do like the fact that someone is sitting in it as originally I wanted to include the chair by it self. I’m thinking about including a possessed patient being bleed in the chair violently screaming. Perhaps have it at a canted angle in order to make the design more dynamic. The patient could be trying to break free away from the bloodletting chair towards the corner of the page. I also like the facial expressions of the characters. They’re very explicit and represent each character well. I want the three barbers to have very distinctive facial expression to make their characters memorable.
Film Posters
I decided to research film posters in order to broaden my ideas. I like the blue tone of Nikita poster combined with bright pink font. It gives it a more of a run down club feel which I like. The Oldboy poster also has that night street feel with all the neon signs from shops and clubs. It’s a very striking composition as well with the main characters being so small in relation to the signs. It connotes these to characters to be facing off a bigger problem or that the society or the world is judging them (which is true to the plot of the film). I think that the title of the film being integrated into the rest of the neon signs creates a successful composition. I’d like to attempt this when designing my poster. Inherent Vice posters are one of my favorites this is why I included character posters as well. I haven’t actually seen this film yet but I really like how creative and cluttered these posters are paying homage to some of the older poster designs. The bright colors create a very psychedelic feel to the posters (again representing the ‘vice’ and the narrative). I also like how the designs combine the genres of neo noir and psychedelia. There’s the iconic composition of noir posters reminiscent of films such as Double Indemnity combined with the bright colors and neon fonts. Since my game also combines different genres I might pull out elements of each genre and attribute it to either the font or the composition or the image itself and combine these together to create a unique feel. Finally the Sweeney Todd poster depicts a barber sitting on a barber chair which I thought was appropriate to my project. It’s another point of reference for my bloodletting/barber chair design. I like that the title is right at the bottom below the chair.
Anime Posters
I like how dynamic and creative anime posters are. I particularly like how movement is represented through these posters and how they establish conflict between characters (especially the first Psycho-Pass poster). Again I like the clutter of the first poster and how the chaos of the background creates conflict between the two present characters. At the same time I like the white/gray background Psycho-Pass posters and the Blue Exorcist poster as well because they’re really clear and the background doesn’t take away from the main composition. It’s simple yet effective. On the other hand the static like backgrounds of the first Psycho-Pass poster and Ergo Proxy poster they go with the tone of the cyberpunk genre. I also really like the positioning of the title for Psycho-Pass at the bottom of the page. Again it’s a really clean design which I could use for the church’s exorcists design to show off the contrasting sides. I also like Psycho-Pass‘ animation style, especially how the clothes behave which adds movement to the designs.
