Ricky Controversy Makes Posters For Things That Shouldn't Have Posters

[rcontroversy]

One of my favorite graphic-design activities is to create posters. In particular, I get a kick out of designing movie posters for various video games, anime, and other things that I enjoy which do not typically have posters, and certainly not in a modernist style. This will be where I share those and various other art/graphic design endeavors.

I don't have my backlog publicly available, because I don't think anything in it is up to snuff, so we begin with two peaces I made in the past couple of hours.

http://r-controversy.deviantart.com/#/d4zeov8 - Settlers of Catan

and

http://r-controversy.deviantart.com/#/d4zeyt3 - Touhou Rei'iden: Highly Responsive to Prayer.

[Five_X]

Hm. Those are pretty good.

[skyfish]

Not bad.. Pretty good concept with the Catan one but the balance feels a bit off. Might be better with two hexagons as the base instead of having it tilted to the side.

You seem to favor center compositions..might wanna try experimenting more.

The Reimu poster is nice but you might want to kern the type so it doesn't look like it was just typed out..

(Hope I'm not being too harsh with the critique... I'm a design student so it's almost second nature to do so whenever I see things like these..just tell me if you want me to stop!)

[rcontroversy]

@Skyfish: I wouldn't consider those critiques 'harsh' at all; your comment about kerning is particularly appropriate. I can suss out where bad kerning is happening, but I'm still not so acclimated to this stuff that I notice when it's happening without someone else's guidance. Your tone was friendly and constructive, so you've no reason to worry about that.

That I'm leading with two centered designs is just coincidence. In the mockups I'm working from for the next few, there are varied foci from piece to piece, and I do agree that it's important to be aware of alignment. In the case of the Catan poster, I weighted it towards the center overall, but the reason I have the hexes arranged as they are is to shift the weight a bit right of center; no one player is the heart of the whole world in Catan, and I felt it was crucial to reflect that.

Despite that one disagreement with your criticism in this case, I hope you will continue to supply it. I'm largely an autodidact, and I make my living as a writer; visual art and design are secondary interests that I have long put off because I felt intimidated, and I have only seriously delved into this world in the past two weeks. I need all the criticism I can get from those more experienced than I.

[rcontroversy]

I gave the Rei'iden poster another go, accounting for things Skyfish was kind enough to point out. Though this still has a strong central weight, the focal axis of the composition is now slanted. Additionally, manual kerning alterations were made here and there. When working with this ultra-high-resolution (9,000 x 13,500) image, every single operation took far longer than I'd have liked, so the vast majority of time invested in this remake was simply waiting for the actions I'd already planned to execute.

http://r-controversy.deviantart.com/#/d4zjy0t