For the final version of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs poster I had to rework the wolf to give him way more expression. With the sinister grin he clearly looks guilty. Jim Helsinger advised me to look at the Grinch’s grin and that was a gem of an idea. dialed it back a bit. I kept the brush work very rough since I was painting fur. It was a fun change to make. He now felt like the villain he should be.
The pigs got rounder heads and were more anthropomorphized. Two of the pigs are in the jury box while the third pig is in the witness stand. That third pig is a police pig. I’m not so sure he is one of the pigs that got his house blown down. Anyway he looks confident and smug, like he has absolutely convincing evidence that will convict the wolf. Of the jury pigs, one looks annoyed and the other surprised and worried. The simple act of giving each pig a different hat helped me decide who they were and what their personality might be.
The rest of the background remained unchanged, with the infinitely tall brick wall and color panels. A panel that was black I changed to a dark green because it worked better with the Wolf’s green pin striped suit. I gave the wolf stronger shoulders and added the same green color as a bar across the bottom of the poster for all the credits. In general the poster used the complimentary colors or red and green to help make the image pop.
With the jury box and witness stand a little bit off kilter I set a subtle sense of unease. I can’t help but look at the wolfs teeth biting his lip as he grins. I resisted adding the fangs. That would have added too much menace. I learned that lesson working on the Dracula poster. It is impossible to show a vampire’s fang toothed grin without it looking menacing.
Another reference I was looking at while I worked on this poster was the Dick Tracy movie. All the costuming in that movie was vivid and over the top. This was a very fun poster to work on and it came together quickly with the notes provided. It is always fun to see how the poster pivots towards the final look. It is much the way AI images evolve with verbal prompts, only this is Artist Intelligence.