Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1495092
the Kinoscope Pictures board on his plan to makeover Nellie's tarnished image. Each movie poster represents a popular story genre, the romantic ingenue, a pirate adventure, an exotic Middle Eastern romance, a tale of the Noble classes in 18th century England, and a lavish quasi-historical costume spectacular. For the costumes and background settings, I provided Sara with the silent film posters that Margot Robbie's poses emulated, along with stills and other graphic research from the silent era. At the shoot, Ms. Robbie had worn a sheer sequined costume that had nothing to do with these projects. It would take lots of research and Sara's great skills to make these illustrations work. Sara's contemporary posters are very crisp and refined, and look like classic airbrush works, though all are done in Photoshop. For these 1926 posters, she would have to work on rendering with period-appropriate looks and simulate natural media. The first poster art she did was Blushing Violet, which was the one poster that came closest to emulating our research choice, The Dove, a 1927 Norma Talmadge film. Through several rounds, Sara worked out both her rendering technique and how to insure we retained Margot Robbie's likeness with such different hair and makeup stylings than we would see her in throughout the movie. We discovered it was all about the cheekbones, rendered too subtle and the likeness disappeared. I continue to work with Sara throughout the following months until she completed the set with Harem's Fortune in late September. Once I had all of the the final artwork, I began working on the typography. The film titles were selected from a large list created by Art Department coordinator Heather Elwell. I largely drew from the Letterhead Fonts catalog, along with Walden fonts. Both are terrific resources for accurately-drawn period typography essential for such designs. When I started the show, I obtained legal clearance for both foundries, and my graphics colleague Kerry Hyatt had already cleared the way for using fonts by Jeff Levine. As is common these days, the studio wanted us to design exclusively using fonts from Monotype via their subscription. Claims against the major studios for unlicensed font use have grown over the years, and studios now limit which font companies graphic designers can use. Although Monotype is the giant of the industry with indispensable resources, its catalog still doesn't offer the range of accurate past period font styles needed for a project like Babylon. It's critical when beginning a project like this one to obtain permission for using these smaller specialty type houses in order have the ability to accurately design for the period. The poster for band leader and trumpeter Sidney Palmer's first Kinoscope film Loose Tunes is revealed by Manny following the Nellie LaRoy posters. This poster was based on one for Duke Ellington's 1927 Black and Tan short and a few other all-Black cast films from the era. I designed this one late into production, at that point we no longer had sufficient budget to hire an illustrator for Sidney's portrait, so I opted for a graphic rendering. E. BLUSHING VIOLET. A DIRECT HOMAGE TO KEY ART FOR THE DOVE (1927) STARRING NORMA TALMADGE. F. HAREM'S FORTUNE. THE POSE WAS INSPIRED BY SUMURUN (1920), A GERMAN FILM STARRING POLA NEGRI. G. SIDNEY PALMER LOOSE TUNES POSTER. AN HOMAGE TO DUKE ELLINGTON'S MUSICAL SHORT BLACK AND TAN FANTASY (1924). E F G