For the design of the official poster for “1.21 Gigawatts”, I knew I wanted to create a piece of artwork that paid tribute to the amazing work of Drew Struzan, illustrator of all of the original Back to the Future theatrical posters.
Working in Photoshop from a behind the scenes crew photo, I removed the extra people and gear, color corrected and graded the image, then added additional lighting and background elements. I then brought the image into Procreate on the iPad and hand-drew a pencil & pen illustration and airbrush underpainting.
Afterwards I brought these layers back into Photoshop and blended these elements into the final painterly look. The last step was adding in our original logo and crew credits after researching and matching the original font and typography from the original BTTF poster.
Below you’ll find breakdown images showing each step of the poster’s creation.
