Analysing and interpretating others work - The inspiration for our digipak

By Kathrine Nielsen

Having to consider how our design for the digipack eventually was going to look like, we decided each of us should do some notes and background for a famous poster/CD/VCR/DVD and for this I've decided to look at the original Star Wars posters and the Brother Hildebrandt. What I find appealing with the old Star Wars posters is the general build up of characters, and how they've all been fused together accordingly to role within the film. Below are some examples I found on the web, I picked these because I thought them most relevant to what I was trying to explain and because they appeal to me and gives me an overall idea of how and what we could do.

On the left is the original poster for "A new hope" an on the right is an example of a special edition cover. On "A new hope" the audience clearly sees action surrounding the two lead characters Luke and Leya, and in the background is Darth Vader who is known as 'the bad guy' In general the background is dark, war is going on which is extremely symbolic and relevant to the film itself and the only lighter bits are the heroes, who are displayed in an almost golden glow, which could possibly relate to the fact the Leya is a Princess and gold is very royal, as the throughout the films wears gold, chreme, sand and shiny clothes when she is being 'Princess Leya' On the side of Vader is his space station on which his 'death star' is, rather significant and again it is important to the overall storyline and plot of the film. When an audience sees this it clearly states who is the hero and who is the bad guy, yet this is without giving anything away from the plot. So there is something for us to consider I find, producing a cover with a build up of the leads, using photographs from the film but all this without giving anything away.

Above is another example with a similar build up to the 'new hope' poster, yet in this piece one notices many more characters and colours. Because this is for the film "Return of the Jedi" the audience is familiar with more of the cast so this has been included, the audience already knows about the war going on in the film so therefore a focus on 'war' is not found in this poster. I find it works along with the first film because again there is a build up, only this time it is seen in a more triangular shape with Darth Vader again on the top. There is also a much larger variety of colour used in this than the first example, this is possibly to insinuate the fact there are more characters and different personalities. For example; Vader is still dark because he is 'evil', along with other 'evil' characters which have been darkened down by either their costume or the lighting giving subtle shadows particulary in their faces, this clashes with the much more positive characters which are found mainly in centre and on the right side. Overall I find The Hildebrandt brothers have done a brilliant job and they've given me some ideas to work with.

The Hildebrandt brothers:

Twin brothers who worked as fantasy and science fiction artists. They were born January 23, 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, Greg Hildebrandt and Tim Hildebrandt began professionally painting in 1959. They are very famous for their popular interpretation of The Lord of the Rings and painting the first Star Wars film posters, illustrating comics and cards,and their Magic: Greg is also famous for his contributions to the art for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's albums and concert merchandise. He also provided the cover art for Black Sabbath's Mob Rules album and
Tim Hildebrandt also was Associate Producer of the horror-themed science fiction film, The Deadly Spawn.