Drew Struzan

There are very few illustrators who's work defines a generation.

Charles Gibson created early 1900's female style.
Howard Pyle created the classic pirate.
N.C. Wyeth created the vision of all great adventure stories.
Norman Rockwell created the perfect nostalgic American family life.
Frank Frazetta created the texture of modern epic fantasy.
Drew Struzan created a cult of late century pop culture film geeks.

His movie posters made any film look better than they were...

Struzan's art is as famous as the film's themselves. In the 80's and early 90's it seemed like he illustrated the poster for every movie. Below is a small sample of his classics ...


In a world of photoshop, Struzan remains a craftsman. His art is done at actual poster size ( around 27" x 40") in acrylic and colored pencil on gesso'ed board.

Yesterday morning I checked my e-mail as usual and my friend Rene sent me this image of the newest Drew poster...


It was a great way to start the day. I like that it's reminiscent of the teaser poster from TEMPLE of DOOM, one of my favorite Indy ads...


I love the TEMPLE of DOOM poster because it's so pulp novel/magazine cover feeling, perfect for the period of an Indiana Jones adventure.

It's iconic, Indy is posed as if he's a statue to worship in the temple he's about to enter. This poster was cool because it was the first time you saw the name "Indiana Jones" as the now classic logo. Contrary to Lucasfilm revisionist history on the DVDs...the first movie was "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and not "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark".

It made me feel the movie was going to be something special and not just RAIDERS II.

Can anyone tell me who the illustrator of the above TEMPLE of DOOM poster was? I'm serious, I don't know.

5 comments:

  1. Was it the original 'Raiders' poster artist Richard Amsel? or maybe John Alvin? (no - I'm not that good - looked it up on-line!)

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  2. I know it's not Amsel as he passed away in those years and Struzan took up the torch. I checked John Alvin but can't find the image.

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  3. I believe Bruce Wolf did the artwork for the ToD poster you've got pictured here. No I didn't know that off the top of my head...I looked it up:

    http://www.learnaboutmovieposters.com/posters/db/poster.asp?pid=2036

    Regards,
    Rene'

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  4. I believe it was done by Bruce Wolfe.

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  5. It was John Alvin...or so said the replica I picked up from Universal Studios in the Mid-90's.

    Why can't all movie posters (or even the movies themselves) be that fantastic nowadays?

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