Okay, so I’ve been wanting to make a really cool, minimal movie poster for “It Follows” for a while now. That movie freaked me out, but in a good way, you know? And the visuals are just so striking. I wanted to capture that unsettling feeling in a poster.
Getting Started
First, I spent some time just re-watching some scenes and looking at stills online. I needed to get that creepy vibe back in my head. I was really drawn to the scenes with the tall man, he’s just pure nightmare fuel. I also played around with the simple imagery of just legs walking, which creates that feeling of inevitable approach.
Experimenting with Ideas
I grabbed my sketchbook and started, well, sketching. My initial idea was super simple: just a pair of legs, maybe from the knees down, walking on a blank background. I tried different angles, different perspectives… I wanted it to look almost normal, but just off enough to be unsettling.
I even messed with drawing blurred motion, and tried a bit of low angle view.
Then I thought, what about color? The movie has this washed-out, almost vintage look, so I didn’t want anything too bright. I was thinking pale yellows, maybe a sickly green… something that just felt wrong. I jotted down some color palettes to try later.
Putting It Together (and Failing a Few Times)
Okay, so after the sketchbook, I moved to my computer. I usually use this free image editing software, and it is pretty good.
I tried a few things. First, I created a plain background with one of those off-putting colors I’d picked. Then, I tried to draw the legs digitally. Big fail. My digital drawing skills are, uh, not great. They looked like weird, wobbly sausages. Nope.
Next, I thought, maybe I could find a photo of legs walking and manipulate it. I spent ages searching for a free-to-use image that was the right angle and had the right creepy vibe. I found a couple that were almost right, but not quite.
The Breakthrough (Finally!)
I was about to give up, but then I had an idea. What if, instead of trying to be photorealistic, I went super stylized? I could use simple shapes, almost like silhouettes, to create the legs. I could also play with negative space, making the background part of the image.
Craft the Image
So, back to the design software. I created a new canvas, picked a pale, sickly yellow for the background. Then, using basic shape tools, I created two long, thin rectangles for the legs. I made them a slightly darker shade of the same yellow, so they’d stand out, but not too much.
I positioned them slightly off-center, walking towards the “viewer.” I played with the spacing between the legs, making it a little wider than normal, to add to that unsettling feeling. And then, I added a subtle gradient to the background, making it slightly darker at the bottom, like a shadow looming.
The Finishing Touches
The last thing was the title. I didn’t want anything fancy, just a simple, clean font. I chose a sans-serif font, something that looked modern but also a little cold. I placed the title “It Follows” at the bottom, in a dark gray color, almost blending into the background’s gradient.
And that’s basically the “It Follows” poster.
It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. It’s simple, but I think it captures that creepy, minimalist vibe I was going for. It’s definitely a poster that would make me do a double-take if I saw it in a hallway. Mission accomplished, I guess!
