xal ART

So! For my movie poster for San Junipero, through feedback from my classmates and lecturer I decided that the following sketch was the best (showed the characters, settings and themes of the movie well):

Now it was time to put the work in in Illustrator to make it great.

I definitely wanted to use cyan and magenta as 2 of my 3 colours as they are used in the neon sign in the movie and show the party vibe well.

I started putting together the sign as a VERY rough sketch in Photoshop:

But then I remembered that white inside & coloured outside looks more like neon:

I was very happy with that sketch. Then I realised that I needed to figure out a minimalist (no transparency, gradients) way to make the glass and bottle look see-through and reflective.

I took to paper with paint to sketch many ways to do glass and to try to decide on a dark background colour:

I liked the bottom left and the top right hand drinks the most so I moved into Illustrator.

I downloaded a few free fonts from http://dafont.com/ and tried to find a cursive one that mimicked the look of neon.

My favourite was the middle right.

I also found ways to draw reflections on the glass:

When I was almost finished it looked like this:

But the background was kind of too light & clashed with the cyan and magenta... As well as kind of ugly in general. The reflections on the table were also kind of weird.

A few adjustments and I knew I had my final product:

San Junipero
Movie Poster

Assignment: Design & create a vector movie poster (14 x 22") using 3 colours

Movie: San Junipero (standalone movie-length episode (season 3, episode 4) of Black Mirror)

(NB: Major spoilers for the movie ahead)

Synopsis (From Wikipedia):

In 1987, a shy and sheltered woman named Yorkie visits San Junipero, a beach resort town. Kelly, a vivacious party girl, strikes up a conversation with Yorkie at a night club in order to ditch Wes, a man she had sex with previously. Kelly invites Yorkie to dance but Yorkie, self-conscious and embarrassed, flees from the bar. Kelly follows, and flirts with Yorkie before offering to have sex with her. Yorkie declines, saying she is engaged to a man named Greg. The following week, Yorkie returns to the bar and... Yorkie and Kelly reunite in the bathroom, before returning to Kelly's bungalow to have sex. Yorkie admits it is the first time she has had sex with anyone. Kelly reveals she is bisexual, and that she was once married to a man.

The next week, Yorkie returns, looking for Kelly. She spots Wes, who advises her to "try a different time". Yorkie visits the 1990s, and then finds Kelly in the 2000s, but Kelly rebuffs her advances. After Yorkie leaves the bar, Kelly follows and confesses that she is dying, and that she avoided Yorkie because she feared making a genuine connection with anyone in San Junipero. The two engage in sexual activity again; Kelly tells Yorkie she wants to meet her in real life. Yorkie is hesitant at first, but at Kelly's urging, tells Kelly her location.

It is revealed that San Junipero is a simulated reality in which the elderly are permitted to visit for up to five hours per week, and the deceased can live in permanently; in this reality, they have the body of a younger version of themselves, and cannot die or feel pain unless they choose to. Back in the physical world, an elderly Kelly visits Yorkie. Yorkie, surviving via life support, was paralyzed 40 years prior after running her car off the road, despondent after being rejected by her parents when she came out to them as gay. Yorkie wishes to be euthanised so that she can live in San Junipero full time, but as her family has religious objections to her being removed from life support, she intends to marry her nurse Greg so he can sign off on her euthanisation. Kelly offers to marry Yorkie instead; Yorkie enthusiastically accepts, and Kelly subsequently authorises Yorkie's euthanasia.

Yorkie asks Kelly to join her full-time. Though Kelly does not believe in heaven, she plans to die without being uploaded to San Junipero; her husband of 49 years Richard chose to die in the same way, because their daughter Alison died aged 39 before San Junipero existed. Yorkie and Kelly argue, and Kelly leaves in her jeep, which she crashes on purpose. Yorkie runs after her and catches up to her, and at that very moment, Kelly's virtual body disappears, her time having ended for the week in San Junipero.

Time passes, and the real Kelly's health continues to worsen. She elects to become euthanized and her body is buried alongside her husband and daughter; meanwhile, her consciousness is uploaded to San Junipero, where she happily reunites with Yorkie.

Movie Screenshots:

Brainstorming/Ideation:

My original notes while watching the movie:

But no one can understand that 😉 so: