Middle Earth Poster Series – The Shire : micronaut.ca

Middle Earth Poster Series – The Shire

Posted by Micronaut on August - 26 - 2011

Working on a series of posters inspired by some old 1930s-1940s era US Public Works posters, now in the public domain. They have been used by others, notably for a series of Star Wars-themed travel posters. I figured “Lord of the Rings” needed a set too.

I have several done (or near done)… here’s one for the Shire, based on a promotion for Pennsylvania:

Original WPA Pennsylvania travel poster

I expanded the canvas for the original in Photoshop, then started the clean-up and fill process, adding details as I went along, finally ending with the heavier blacks.

Original Pennsylvania poster expanded

Pennsylvania poster with hand painted mid-tones

Adding contrast colours

Then I started smoothing out the tones, simplifying the artwork, and getting rid of the grain.

Smoothing out the tones

More simplification

Adding contrast back

This was going to be a mix of Photoshop and Illustrator to begin with (due to some of the work being done) so after cleaning up the reconstructed poster, I brought it into Illustrator and converted it with Live Trace. This actually took a while, as I kept going back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop, adjusting the settings, so I kept as much detail as a I could, yet still reduced it down to a very simple image. Then, I started adding layers of new colours into the image, often using the Live Paint brush, then added some text.