Tuesday 18 August 2015

The Spectre of SPECTRE

Last year I did something I called the 'James Bond Poster Project'. Inspired by Vintage Books' gorgeous covers (you really should judge these by their cover), I decided to do a poster for each James Bond movie I didn't do it to sell and make any money, I just did it because I love James Bond and drawing stuff. This was the result:


Lovely. But James Bond never rests, not even in bed, because he's too busy shagging the ladies. Later this year this 24th adventure, SPECTRE, is released, and more sheets will be creased. And ooh I am excited! So much so that I dusted off the Poster Project and designed a new one, based solely on the trailer. When I see the movie, I'll obviously design something else. For now though, this will do and satisfy the completist in me:


As with all the others, it's meant to be a stripped-down, uncomplicated representation of Bond's adventures. The trailer strongly implies that SPECTRE have been working in the shadows and controlling Bond's life for a long while - Christoph Waltz (surely Blofeld?) declares himself the author of all Bond's pain. So at top we have the SPECTRE (Specialist Executive for Counter-Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion, snazzy) logo, its tendrils turning into strings which control a puppet Bond, his own weapon turned against him, emphasising how apparently helpless Bond is in the face of a massive organisation, while also tangled up in it. 

It's a very clean, stylised culmination of what started out as Bond being caught in the tendrils of the SPECTRE symbol, an idea which I thought looked good, but couldn't make work without losing the design of the SPECTRE symbol, at which point it was in danger of looking more like Hokusai's 'The Dream of The Fisherman's Wife'. 

So it's okay. And that's okay, This is a temporary, a stop-gap, and after 06/11/15, I'll come up with something better. Until then, this is good enough. A spectre of the forthcoming SPECTRE. 

Thanks for reading. 

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