‘the Tell-Tale heart’ Poster Creation

Earlier this year, my good friend Alexander Miller released his essay film ‘The Barbie Movie,’ which I had the privilege to design the poster for. Quickly thereafter, without missing a beat, he mentioned he’s already beginning work on his next film.

"Hey man, if you ever need another poster…”

Sketches

I don’t know how productive it is to compare my work to previous attempts, but for the sake of this narrative, I’ll compare it to my last poster for “The Barbie Movie”. When it came to designing this poster, the sketches came out pretty easily. I felt possessed, and quickly, after seeing a draft of the film, I already had a rough composition laid out.

However, one thing that didn’t make the cut was a sketch of a vulture surrounded by the flame of a matchstick.

With the poster for ‘The Barbie Movie’, I knew I would be covering up my pencils with digital ink to evoke shiny plastic. Despite having a solid idea of the composition, it just never looked right on a screen. I found myself sketching over my sketches repeatedly. You can see some of this neuroticism in the time-lapse.

colour and final details

This time, I figured it needed to embrace my sketches. Once I figured that out, it just all fell into place.

While the film is in black and white, I tinted it to be more blue-scale. Another piece of texture I wanted to include was the hexagon tiling in some scenes. Call it hypnotic, call it a background filler for the composition, it just seemed to work by the end of the day.

Finally, the logo was done with the new reed pen tip featured in the Notes app on iPadOS 26. Calligraphy and typography are not my strong suit, but the reed tip seemed to cure my ineptitudes.

To my friends attending MCLA or the surrounding environs of Berkshire County, Alex will be premiering this latest film in Murdock Hall on November 6th at 5:30. The film is available for streaming here on Youtube.