MR ROBOT
This is the illustrated poster I did for what is probably the best written television show I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching, ‘Mr Robot’! The poster was done as a piece for Gallery1988’s ‘Idiot Box’ Exhibition, which celebrates the best television of the last (roughly) 20 years.
Prints are soon to be available for purchase either through Gallery1988 (Click Here)! The Original Illustration will also be available to purchase through Gallery1988 (Click Here)!
PROCESS
As a general rule, and as I’ve spoken about on other projects, I struggle with drawing people. So it’s partially fun and partially frustrating to set myself a project which hinges around being able to draw anatomy. I had a few different ideas floating around before I started, but ultimately I set upon the idea of an ensemble piece within the train carriage that Elliot/Rami Malek often frequents.
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One of the ideas that I wanted to represent no matter what was the idea of the two worlds that Elliot is pulled between, his regular life as a Cybersecurity Engineer and the dark underground world of revolutionism. As such we have all the characters that are involved in Elliot’s life in one way or another seated in the train, whilst we have the reflections representing this other world Elliot is pulled into, where the characters become reflections of ‘fsociety’.
The first step was managing to get the perspective right. I didn’t plan on using a grid or anything for this one, instead I was just going to do my own thing and eyeball it, but there was still a lot of care and attention in trying to get that to look right. In order to try and streamline the process, there was a lot of scanning half way done drawings in and layering things digitally to get a completed sketch quicker. Below you can see the steps to move from one stage to another to get to the final drawing:
![1 - Slightly developed thumbnail sketch,]()
![2 - Loosely hashing out the perspective and linework,]()
![3 - Sketching the right half of the train carriage,]()
![4 - Scanned in the previous step and flipped it in Photoshop to create a complete train carriage,]()
![5 - Tracing above the previous step to sketch the characters into the scene,]()
![6 - Working on sketching the faces separately to then superimpose in Photoshop later. You can see by how awful the very first Elliot face is that portraiture doesn't come naturally,]()
![7 - Sketch brought together in Photoshop,]()
![8 - Initial attempt at the reflection, where all the characters are standing to create that more 'aggressive' feel,]()
![9 - Having the characters stand would mean most of them are out of frame, and also doesn't work as nicely in terms of composition. So instead I opt for them sitting and leaning far forward, which I think accomplishes the idea I was chasing but in a better way,]()
![10 - Having fun creating the miscellaneous adverts that feature along the top of the train carraige,]()
![11 - The final drawing, after I was able to layer all of the various sketches together and lightbox it to create one complete illustration,]()
![12 - Closeup of some of the linework in the final illustration.]()
Prints are soon to be available for purchase either through Gallery1988 (Click Here)! The Original Illustration will also be available to purchase through Gallery1988 (Click Here)!
PROCESS
As a general rule, and as I’ve spoken about on other projects, I struggle with drawing people. So it’s partially fun and partially frustrating to set myself a project which hinges around being able to draw anatomy. I had a few different ideas floating around before I started, but ultimately I set upon the idea of an ensemble piece within the train carriage that Elliot/Rami Malek often frequents.
One of the ideas that I wanted to represent no matter what was the idea of the two worlds that Elliot is pulled between, his regular life as a Cybersecurity Engineer and the dark underground world of revolutionism. As such we have all the characters that are involved in Elliot’s life in one way or another seated in the train, whilst we have the reflections representing this other world Elliot is pulled into, where the characters become reflections of ‘fsociety’.
The first step was managing to get the perspective right. I didn’t plan on using a grid or anything for this one, instead I was just going to do my own thing and eyeball it, but there was still a lot of care and attention in trying to get that to look right. In order to try and streamline the process, there was a lot of scanning half way done drawings in and layering things digitally to get a completed sketch quicker. Below you can see the steps to move from one stage to another to get to the final drawing:
