Dredd (or Welcome to Peach Trees if I’m in the mood for a fancier name) is the film poster I illustrated for the 2012 film of the same name. This is the second film poster I’ve completed, the first being Kill Bill, and I’m tremendously happy with how it came out as a finished piece.

So far there hasn’t been any particular rhyme or reason as to the films that I’ve chosen to illustrate. Whilst I do immensely enjoy this film (and think it’s criminally underrated), I wouldn’t say it’s a ‘favourite’ film. Like with most of my work, I think I just had a concept in my head after watching it and found myself wanting to draw it. So I did.

The idea for the illustration grew around wanting to illustrate something that had a tonne of detail but also a strong sense of perspective. As a developing illustrator I’ve been trying to get myself more experienced with drawing correct perspective, so when it came to ‘Dredd’ I really wanted to emphasise that Peach Trees is a tall, looming tower block.

If you’ve seen the film, then you know that Peach Trees is as much of a character in the film as Anderson or Ma-Ma is, so I really wanted to try and present that within the illustration. By having Dredd and Anderson be dwarfed by the size of the building, I felt I was able to represent the almost  ‘David v Goliath’-like situation that takes place in the film, as they face the prospect of fighting their way to the top of the block.

In the slideshow, you can see the loose steps I took to bring the illustration from the concept to a final piece of work. One major thing I managed to learn from this illustration is the idea of planning out the colour of the work first. Initially, in my mind, I had imagined that the image would mostly be a dingy green colour (like it is in the film), but when I first tried this out in Photoshop I found that I just couldn’t find a balance between aesthetics and accuracy. It just looked horrible. What followed was quite a long and large stumble in the dark trying to find a colour that I liked. Eventually, I tried the red/blue gradient that is in the final illustration, and voilà!

After I had finished the illustration, I went back and played around with the colour some more. I felt I owed it to both myself and to those people who are sticklers for detail to try and get a film accurate colouring of the illustration. I knew it wouldn’t be impossible, it was just a matter of finding a shade of green that was both accurate and nice to look at, and after much experimentation I think I found it. I’m really happy with both colour variants I created, and it’s certainly my favourite illustration I’ve completed to date!

If you like the poster enough to buy a print, then you can find them at my shop!