Filmmaking Basics/Making the Props

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Table of contents for Lesson: Making the movie poster:

This school is:: Wikiversity Film School - Narrative Film Production

This course is:: Fundamentals of filmmaking

This lesson is:: Lesson: Making the Movie Props - The Star Wars Poster

The pages of this lesson are:

Drawing the Star Wars Poster

Painting the movie poster

Creating the props for our movie

Making the Star Wars poster

This is a movie poster prop for the
movie set of "Seduced by the Dark Side!"
created with the free ArtRage 2 demo.

This artwork was created by placing real posters from Star Wars in a tracing layer which can be enlarged and centered as needed.

Then I use the very natural painting tools of ArtRage2 with a Wacom tablet to trace pieces of the original artwork to make a poster of my own design.

Because ArtRage2 feels so natural and organic, this poster was fun to create even though I am not an artist.

I highly recommend this program and you can download it immediately for either the Macintosh or Windows PC. Best of all, this working demo version is free.

Use it today!
FREE!

We need a poster for our movie set. It must be very simple. It should look good when reduced to only 285 pixels wide (like the example to the left.) This is an ideal project to do with ArtRage2 FREE.

Screen shot of the free version of ArtRage2.
Here, I am working on the Star Wars poster in the template layer.

Step 1 · Download ArtRage 2 FREE (The free version)

Highly Recommended !!!

ArtRage 2 is a fun painting program simulating simple artist tools. Ambient Design is a New Zealand based company founded by Andy Bearsley and Matt Fox-Wilson who came from MetaCreations Corp. They offer a free version of ArtRage 2 which has only some of the features of the full version. Still, the free version is more than enough to do this project.

ArtRage2 is one of those programs which needs no instructions to begin using. Almost everything is self explanatory. And it is fun!

Note 1: ArtRage 2 requires a graphic tablet since a mouse is not a good painting tool. I tried using a mouse and could not do it. You must have an artist's tablet attached to your computer to get the benefit of pressure sensitivity.

Step 2 · Download Star Wars Posters from Internet

There are a lot of Star Wars movie posters on the internet. Since you are only using it as a template, it does not have to be very large. I used the file named "StarWarsMoviePoster1977.jpg". (Google it.)

Step 3 · Create a new page in ArtRage2

Create a blank drawing (a blank canvas) in ArtRage2 which is the correct size for a poster. If possible, make this as small as you can. For a movie prop, it must NOT have much fine detail. If you create the poster at 285 by 425, then when it is blown up, it will have clear details.

Step 4 · Import the template

Put the Star Wars poster from the Internet into the tracing layer.

The great thing about ArtRage2 is you can move the artwork all around the tracing layer and enlarge it as much as you want. To create the sample drawing to the left, I used the same original poster as a template but you will see that I took different parts of it at different magnifications. This is amazingly easy in ArtRage2 (specially when you compare this feature to other painting programs.)

For my sample drawing (seen left), I use the images of the to actors at one magnification and the words "Star Wars" at another magnification.

Step 5 · Create the poster

The free version of ArtRage2 has a limited about of brushes and tools but these are more than enough to create wonderful artwork.

Step 6 · Save your work

Save your work and then export the artwork as an PNG or a JPEG file. You can upload the PNG or JPEG file to Wikiversity or email it to me.

My email address

Hopefully, you have my email address by now. If not, please send me a message. Click Here.

Let's look at a useful filming trick for motion pictures

The next page

Now we continue learning new and useful things about filmmaking. Matte paintings is one of the oldest tricks in filmmaking. It is useful to know and we will need it later for our movie.

Go to Understanding Film Dailies.

Contact your instructor

Your instructor for this filmmaking class is Robert Elliott. You can email me by clicking here.

Completed Homework Assignments - The Movie Poster Prop / Building the movie set in FrameForge 3D Studio

Movie posters from the lesson on creating the movie props

Tunderboy9 has completed this assignment (pdf) (16 July 2007) 30 points

Tharun Bhascker has completed this assignment (pdf) (5 September 2007) 30 points

Sir Mok has completed this assignment (pdf) (12 October 2007) Note: In many countries, movie posters are wider than tall. This poster is from Egypt.

The text means "Star Wars", and it’s pronounced “Harb El Nojoom” in Arabic language. And in Egyptian accent, it is pronounced as “Harb El Nogoom”, the “G” as in “Game”. 30 points

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