SUBMARINE FLICKS

This is a different kind of poster, not a print and hang on the wall kind of design – I made it for a collection of films I have in my iTunes library. It is a collection of all my submarine films – I don’t know why but I love a good submarine adventure, and there have been some great ones over the years. My idea was to clump all these into a single SUB-FLICK category – like a collector’s set that I can add to as I find them. I wanted to design a poster template that I could use for all of the film titles, changing only the poster art and text information like title and release date, and I wanted something that visually tied them all together.

I knew I wanted some kind of underwater background that I could arrange the poster art over, mainly to keep it interesting rather than just having a plain background, I wanted something submarine-ie if you will. I found a bunch of image elements that I knew I could blend together into something illustrative but simple for a background base. I found a cool picture of a surfacing sub jumping out of the water that would be great as kind of a subject base.

First thing I wanted to do was grab the above/below image of the water, with the concept that the Sub-flicks identification would be above the water and the poster art would be underwater. This image would work well for part of it, but I needed to get rid of the fish and the bobber, which was easily photoshopped out.

Now I wanted to make the sky and water a little less inviting, the exotic perfect blue water needed a touch of menace, which I did with some color correction and saturation adjustments.

Next up was adding in the lower portion of water. I had this cool underwater shot with some rays of light beaming down, this would be great to add some contrasting color and shapes to the lower portion which otherwise would be a boring shot of plain sea. I arranged this right up to where the water line was on the other picture and masked out a bit of the top to make it look like we were seeing above and below the water in the same shot.

So far so good, but I need some action, like a submarine busting out from the depths. The picture of the submarine ended up working perfect for this and had a similar perspective as my water. I masked this out to set it in the water and angled it a bit to match the over all askew horizon.

To add in a little more texture, specifically water related, I grabbed a source photo of some underwater air bubbles which I desaturated. I then adjusted the levels so I had a good solid black background with white bubbles. I could now add this to my design by switching the blend mode to “screen” allowing the bubble to appear part of the water image. I sized and arranged them in place that would be visible outside the poster frame.

Its looking good but I need more submarine design elements. Why not add in some cliche’ sonar screen…I found a greenish sonar display screen that would work well. I tweaked the color a bit to more of a blue tint to match my over-all underwater theme. Once again I crushed the blacks so I could set the blend mode to “screen”. I figured I would arrange them in the top left corner and lower right to balance the design a bit. I lowered the opacity to about 50% so they would blend in with the design and not be too over bearing.

At this point I wanted to establish my poster border frame. I wanted to be able to display the films poster art but not in a way that takes up the entire canvas – but to keep the “sub flicks” series motif across all titles. I opted for a poster frame that had rounded corners so soften the poster edge and allow it to become more part of the design. To keep it visually interesting I titled the frame a bit to keep it in line with the water line.

With the border selected I then deleted the layers below leaving the inside blank, now I had a true frame border.

To frame the poster art better I went with a double stroke that would help display posters that are both dark or light. Once I had my strokes established I set their blend mode to overlay so it blended with the background water, giving it a cool clear blue look.

At this point I felt like I needed a little more design element overlays on the edges of the poster frame. I found some more computer screen type imagery that I tinted blue and crushed the blacks like I did with the sonar screens. I arranged them into the piece and set these layers to a “screen” blend mode.

After I set these in I felt like I was getting a little too much blue and went back and shifted the color tint back to green. This added an alternate color that I felt blended well with the other elements.

I tried to come up with a very studio sounding title that you would usually see on the shelves at best buy trying to trick consumers into not just buying the single title but the whole collection. I came up with “Sub Flicks” basically because, well…they are all of my favorite submarine films. Pretty simple.

I chose a stencil type font to give it a military feel and I also liked the roughness of the typeface. I tilted the main text to same askew angle of the water line which also gives it a more dynamic look. I also decided to add in the “collect’s series” as a tag line to establish that each film is part of a bigger collection.

Now I feel like I have the main part of the cover art finished so I can now add in some additional film information text to establish this as the submarine movie collection. But first I merged all of my design layers into a single layer, leaving the center empty. I now had one layer (basic poster art and “sub flicks” title) that would not change from this point on. The only elements that would change from film to film would be the poster art and the film information.

By tilting the frame itself it opened up a small pocket in the lower right corner that I could add in the film information, more specifically the title of the film and the original year of it’s release. I used the same stencil style font for the film title as well as the same font I used for the “collector’s series” for the release year. I placed this in the lower right corner to balance the over-all design.

Now I have set up my project ready to add in the poster art for each film. To keep things simple and make it easier to add new titles as I get get them I saved my project as a single template. I created three different folders in my Photshop document – FRAME ART / POSTER ART / TEXT. By doing this you now can fix and change any information on any of the titles you add, rather than having a separate PSD for each film.

With your Photoshop document set up and organized like this all you need to do is add the poster art into your POSTER ART folder which is below your TEXT and TEMPALTE folders. Leave your poster layers in your folder, making only the poster you want visible by selecting or deselecting the little “eye” icon to the left of the selected layer. As you see above I have all of my posters contained in this document.

Now I have my own iTunes tag art for all of my favorite submarine films all neatly designed into one uniform “set” or “collection”, and with my Sub Flicks template document I can keep adding as many titles as I want.