Attention all shower-singers, vacuum-wielding dancers and secret stars: you may never make it to the big screen, but you sure can live vicariously with the aid of digital graphics.
Schuster Gallery currently has a plethora of digitally created movie “fauxsters,” with students as the stars, on display in a student arts exhibition.
The posters were created in MC Gensheimer’s Intermediate Graphics course, where the culminating project was to choose an existing movie poster and recreate all the elements from scratch.
That includes the models, background, props, lighting and fonts, just to name a few of the details.
Ellie Pietras, a senior public relations & advertising major, chose the 2009 horror comedy “Zombieland” for her project.
Students applied skills such as layers, masks and filters to design their posters.
Pietras’ greatest challenge was finding people and props that best represented the existing poster. She digitally edited physical objects when they did not conform to the original concept.
“A lot of this project was trial and error,” she explained. “Sometimes I would use one method to create an element, but then go back and redo it later if I found a different approach.”
In her final poster, her friends, wielding guns, sledgehammers and chainsaws, stare down the camera with mock serious expressions as an amusement park burns in the background. “ZOMBIELAND” is branded across the top in striking red font.
“[This type of project] takes a lot of time and focus, but I encourage anyone who might be interested to sign up for a digital graphics course,” she said. “You’ll get a fun learning experience with other students who love creating art, too!”
Brian Bowersox, a senior communications major, has two pieces in the show: a movie “fauxster” and a digitally created self-portrait.
He drew inspiration for his “fauxster” from the film “Midnight Cowboy.”
“Both pieces were good learning experiences and taught me how to use Adobe Suite and Photoshop in some cool and unique ways,” Bowersox said. “This class has a sparked a flame in me to pursue graphic design as a career.”
Stop by the Schuster Gallery, located on the first floor of the Center for Communication and the Arts, to see Pietras’ and Bowersox’s pieces, plus recreations of other iconic movie posters.
The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and the student arts exhibition runs until Sept. 20.
The next show, titled “Works on Paper,” opens Oct. 1.
ALEX STAUFF
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