Matthew Meleady

Tyler Stout – Poster Art 1 From looking at Maurice Kimball’s work on Sleeping Dogs I came across the artist who created the amazing looking box art for it – Tyler Stout. I immediately started researching him and found out that he has done many other similar pieces, allot of which are alternative film posters (such as Inglorious Bastards, Shaun of the Dead (left), Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and Star Wars). The only downside to his work seems to be that he images of it online aren’t very high resolution, and he makes very few prints that sell out extremely fast. This appears to be due to many of his prints on specific things being commissioned. Tyler says he started drawing at since he was 3 and that his mum has even kept some of those drawings from when he was a small child, by the time he entered high school he was beginning to move to computer aided drawing and got a “graphic media” community college degree. After doing this he began fond of illustrator jobs over other kinds of jobs so he started to focus on that as a career. Unfortunately, little information about where he was born or where he studied is available as he is still relatively small and young.

One of the images that first caught my eye was his Shaun of the Dead film poster, in particular the red, white and black version. The high contrast of the blacks and whites with the red looks beautiful and makes almost every part of the image stand out due to how high the contrast is. Red is widely known as a colour representing rage, increased heart rate, and in this case especially: blood. The artist uses the red to make both the blood and injuries more impactful and obvious to the viewer. Another interesting use of red which in this case does the opposite of make things stand out, would be the mass of dead zombies at the top of the background of the poster, their would be skin is all coloured in red – the same red as the background behind them as is. On top of this they are all rather small and many cannot be individually identified, other than being simply located. I believe this is used to create anonymity of the zombies, a classic feature of zombie apocalypse media. This would also not apply to all the zombies as some of those at the front are recognisable characters from the film, such as the old guy on the left of the poster.

I think it also should be noted this although this is a bloody, dark, zombie themed poster; as with the film there is still allot of comical aspects to it. The ability of the artist to keep something like that in a poster like this is very admirable and impressive, but when broken down it makes easy sense. A very large amount of this comedy aspect comes from the facial expressions of the characters, a simple comparison would be with the expression of the characters on the Sleeping Dogs cover below: the characters faces are all serious and driven, whereas the characters faces on this poster are a mixture of confused, brainless and the kind of face that says “are you fucking serious...”, which is very relevant to some of the dialogue in the film.

One of Tyler Stout’s greatest works has to be his illustration for the box art of Sleeping Dogs. One of the main reasons this piece looks so good is because of the way the character’s two lives (one as an undercover police man, on the left with Superintendent Pendrew, Raymond the handler, Officer Teng, and a nameless unimportant policeman. Then on the right, Uncle Po, DOGEYES, Jackie and a nameless unimportant triad member) are portrayed. One way is through symmetry, with the different sides of Wei (the main guy in the middle) on different sides of the image; the left side being the criminal side and the right side containing his real identity as a police officer. This is also true with the ranks of the policeman and gang members with Uncle Po, the leader of the Sun On Yee (the triad that Wei goes undercover into in the game) and Superintendent Pendrew, one of the highest ranked members of the Hong Kong police force are both right next to him on the cover, facing opposite directions as well as being on different sides. This is also true with the 2nd in line characters, DOGEYES (man with the fedora), a Red Pole (lieutenant rank) corresponding with Raymond (on the right holding the pistol), who’s rank is unknown other than it being superior in comparison to Wei’s. Again this works with the two generic characters of the criminal and policeman who are more a representation of the lives rather than important individual characters; and finally Jackie and Officer Teng both help Wei by being his friend and providing support though jobs/missions to make Wei rise up in the gang and for Wei to use his position to make Hong Kong a safer place.

Tyler Stout, (2013), Shaun of the Dead [ONLINE]. Available at: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/550db867e4b051bbaff5260a/553ba801e4b0b45c076e6d87/553bac9ae4b0f015b9772a22/1429974170478/shaunofthedead_var.jpg?format=750w [Accessed 01 October 15].

Tyler Stout, (2012), Sleeping Dogs TM [ONLINE]. Available at:http://thekoalition.com/images/2013/12/sleepingdogs.jpg [Accessed 01 October 15].