WALDEMAR SWIERZY

Waldemar Swierzy is one of the most famous and prolific Polish poster artists, having produced over 2500 posters including countless iconic film posters and Cyrk (circus) posters. He's also known for a series of paintings of jazz legends. Here are some of my favorite designs of his. There's a wide range of style on display here, and these selected posters, with the exception of the APOCALYPSE NOW shown below, don't even really showcase his streak/splatter-paint style that could be considered one of his trademarks. I recently picked a great out-of-print book on Swierzy from the kind folk at Posteriatati in New York. Feast your eyes on these.

NEW CRITERION COVERS

Among today's new title announcements from The Criterion Collection I have two new cover designs, for Andrei Tarkovsky's SOLARIS and Jonathan Demme's SOMETHING WILD. Needless to say, it was a great honor to be asked to work on both of these titles, and it's been fun working on both packages of which I will share more soon. Both come to DVD and Blu-ray in May (10th for Something Wild, 24th for Solaris).

BLACK SWAN variant print

Here's a one-of-a-kind variant I made of the BLACK SWAN screenprint today at Kangaroo Press in Nashville, just for fun. Using 2 of the 3 screens-- the white screen was left off and the title done with a white pastel-- and the same inks on black French paper instead of the light pink used on the rest of the run.

Here's a crummy picture of how the standard edition of the print turned out.. quite lovely. Thanks to Ryan at Kangaroo Press!

SATURDAY EVENING POSTER

Changing it up a little this week, here's a nice fan-made poster for Christopher Nolan's conclusion to his Batman trilogy, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. There are some great Batman fan posters out there, and there are plenty of not-so-great ones, and that's the way it's always been. I love this one, created by Josh Gilbert aka Shok Zone Studios, simply because it could actually pass for the real deal; it fits into the world Nolan and Warner Brothers have created with the two existing films and their campaigns, and it plays into our collective excitement about this movie by creating the perfect tagline that WB would be amiss not to steal. Visit Shok Zone Studios for more of Josh's work which is incredibly professional and well composed, ranging from hand-drawn illustrations and graphics to an entire catalog of posters and DVD covers he's created just for fun (my favorites include his Speed Racer cover and a teaser poster for a "what if" CALVIN AND HOBBES movie).

BLACK SWAN print

Now available in my shop is an 18x24" screenprint of the BLACK SWAN poster I made for my 2010 Top Ten project. Three colors, printed on 100 lb French pink lemonade cover stock, signed and numbered limited edition of 30. It will be for sale until Monday, February 14th and shipped out immediately before I head off to Europe for a month. Head over to my shop if you'd like one.

P.S. To readers who have asked about my MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO and BEFORE SUNRISE / BEFORE SUNSET prints, I apologize for the ongoing delays. I had planned to offer these to sell this month as well, but I've been having problems getting the color fields looking exactly as I intended them when printed on an offset machine by a third party. Such is the nature of the beast, trying to find the best way to print a particular design, and as these are two of my favorite designs that I know a lot of people are interested in, I want to make sure they're done right. This might very well lead to me just screenprinting some here in Nashville when I have the next opportunity. Thanks for your patience and support!

SATURDAY EVENING POSTER

The Little Prince Polish film poster, Jerzy Flisak, 1977, 23 x 33".

MARC BOUTAVANT

Marc Boutavant makes art that appeals to many things I love-- characters, cuteness, great handwritten script, French stuff, animals and travel-- and you can explore his fantastic worlds in his books currently in reprint like Around the World with Mouk, his use of color is playful and beautiful, his characters are iconic (think Richard Scary but French), and his books are great for kids. Love him, can't get enough. Unfortunately the new pressing of the above title doesn't come with the original French words as Boutavant wrote them into the illustrations, BUT it does come with a sheet of cute stickers. Click the above image to see all the evidence you need of Boutavant's awesomeness in full detail.

See also: Children's Bookshelf - ALAIN GRÉE

NEVER LET ME GO Blu-ray+DVD wrap

Today my favorite film of 2010 was released on DVD and Blu-ray: Mark Romanek's NEVER LET ME GO. I made this alternate Blu-ray wrap based on my poster design for the film, for anyone who might prefer it to the officially released cover. By clicking the image below, you can view the wrap at full size, download it and print it out however you wish, using the provided crop marks to cut it to the correct size. I'm posting a standard DVD wrap below the Blu-ray wrap as well. Hopefully fans of this film, and anyone who wanted to see it but hasn't yet, will pick up a DVD or Blu-ray to help show Fox Searchlight that this movie won't be easily forgotten. Enjoy!

Blu-ray wrap:

standard DVD wrap: