How i made a movie poster for Disney

In an effort to bring some variety to the Patreon today i'll bring in some insight in the process of how i made official art for a movie, hope you find this helpful, or at the very least interesting!

I'll be separating this story into 3 stages: The selection, the process and the final artwork

The selection:

I have to be honest and say that i'm bad at reaching out, or marketing in general, so getting selected for this job opportunity was very lucky for me, instead of me reaching, i got contacted by a company that was hired directly by Disney already, to find artists for their upcomming movie. This might come to a surprise but most big companies actually outsource much of their work, leading to third party companies to do the hiring. BTW, don't bet on companies reaching out, while it happens like in this case always try to knock on doors, if you're good enough with art it will often lead to opportunity!

When i got contacted by them i wasn't directly hired for the job (that would have been insane), I was simply told that they liked my art and that they where taking portfolios for an upcomming movie poster project, they asked if i was i interested and that if i was, i should send around 20 original works for the chance to be selected. Eventually i got this message and the rest is history...

Not really actually the rest is what i'm about to tell you

The process:

Ok here we get to the sauce of the situation. How does it all work?

For once, if you're doing a movie poster you first need to see the movie, so to my honor and surprise i watched the full movie months before release date, of course this all comes with multiple non-disclosure agreements, and they really make sure that if you leak the movie they'll know it was you who leaked it, well moving on lol.

After watching the movie i was asked to start working on the poster, for this i was to make 3 potential posters, and explain each one. Here's one of the concepts that got scraped!

As you can tell it's a very very rough sketch, wich was interesting to do, as i wasn't sure how much detailed they needed for this stage, it ended up working out, so if you're ever in a situation where you need to do multiple takes on one thing, don't worry too much on the detail, get the idea through and you'll be alright.

After a bit they settle on a design, they will also give some feedback on it. so from here on we take the rough and make it into a clean sketch while also taking into account the feedback.

This point is really not much different to any other commission, you clean up the drawing, update the client, they give you feedback, you apply that feedback, and update the client again, they give you feedback.
I guess the only real difference is i've never went back and forward as much as i did with this work, usually maybe get a couple of feedbacks and by the 2nd or 3rd time it's all good to start working on lineart and color, with this it took a lot, of back and forward to finally reach a design they liked.

But like i said other than being longer than usual it's still the same concept as any other art commission work, here's a mid stage of the final concept!I think before moving on, it's worth mentioning the waiting times, when i first started the project i was giving super specific deadlines, and to not make the story too long, none of them were done in time (maybe like one was), but not because of me! Everyone, and i mean eeeeeeeveryone got delayed. This actually gave me great insight on things cause you think maybe the more professional the more on time things are but while everyone tries to keep a schedule, sometimes is just not enough time, for a bit this freaked me out cause i thought they'd rush me. I was actually never rushed at any point in time, eventually i noticed everyone was just kinda on the same boat, trying to adapt to this new delayed schedule and not really pointing fingers to blame or to rush people, it all worked out in the end.

The final artwork:

I think it's worth saying that the details took the longest, i already mentioned that there was a lot of back and forward with feedback but the actual work done was minimal, it could be a 5 minute fix but they could take 3 days in order to respond again, so basically after a certain point while i was technically still working on it, it was small changes being done and most of the work was already done, just waiting on feedback, doing small changes until they settle and the final work was completed.

In case you missed it, this is how it looks like:

After it's done we settle on an upload date, i make sure to put the copyright stuff in, and it's all good!

While i uploaded it on my profile, the art was also shared in other official profiles, such as the 20thcenturyfox one, it did overwhelmingly well but sadly while people liked it, not a lot of people care much for the artist lol, so even tho it was my biggest job so far it probably didn't got me more than like 30 or 40 followers in my socials.

That's the story and insight of how i made an official movie poster, i hope you enjoyed the read and thanks for the support, please comment if you'd like to know any other detail that i might have missed sharing in this post, i'll make sure to respond and clear any doubts. Much love friends have a good day!