UNCLE FRANK

In the last 20 or so years movie poster design seems to have lost that magical feel that posters of the 70s and 80s held. With the rise of digital creation programs and the ease of what once was a labor of love posters seem to take a back seat on creativity. Even with the summers biggest blockbuster The Avengers, The poster seems to be a bunch of stills from the movie put together then glazed over with digital airbrushing and a cheezball rendered background. Artists such as Casaro Renato, Matthew Joseph Peak, Robert E McGinnis,and Drew Struzan seem to be few and far between as of late.



Anyone over the age of 30 must remember the time as a kid walking into a video store and crapping yourself at the hundreds of covers of the VHS tapes Staring back at you. I can't remember how many times I would walk in and prepare to choose the movies that would entertain me for the weekend. 9 out of 10 times I would rent the movie strictly for the cover. And 5 times out of 10 the movie would eat shit. But the poster would be enough to draw me in for the kill. Poster artists in my opinion have never gained the attention they truly deserve after all they are one of the main marketing tools behind a film and they rarely are recognized for it.

But once was a seemingly lost art has risen again with the baddest motherfucker in the poster biz. Enter Tom Hodge aka "The Dude Designs" aka "Exploitation Poster Artist Extraordinaire"



When I saw Tom Hodge or "The Dude Designs" poster artwork it brought me back to the days of the video store. Bright colors, cool characters, and loads of attitude. Being an armature artist myself I had a jaw dropping moment of "fuck......I wish I could do that" he manages to capture the mood of the 80s VHS covers that we all know and love. His style is mainly based on horror and exploitation but don't let that fool you the man can tackle any genre. He gained praise for the Hobo With A Shotgun poster and won best poster at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival for Father's Day.




When he was a young lad he used to copy VHS and game covers which most likely brought him where he is today, a gem in a somewhat dying art form of poster creation. And now without further ado, 10 questions with The Dude.



Q: Freddy or Jason?

A: Jason, I love Jason 3 3D its the best 3D film ever! forget avatar and re releasing Titanic, get this bad boy out there!! if you pick it up on BluRay the anaglyph transfer is pretty spot on, i thoroughly recommend it!



Q: What typically goes on when you design a poster?

A: panic, frustration, blood sweat and tears, not mine some one elses but you know what ever sacrifice is required to help the creative process.

Usually i get contacted, hopefully see a preview of the film so i know what elements of the story to extract to best convey the films vibe to the viewer. i like to give my work a strong narrative which the audience can pick up on, sometimes its more subliminal than others but there's always an atmosphere 'vibe' as i call it which says a thousand words about a picture. something you cant do by slapping text over a photo.



Q: Do you use any “traditional” mediums in your artwork?

A: I design and illustrate all my work digitally for reasons of time, cost (its cheaper without paints paper etc) and speed (if you crew up everything is layered and can easily be erased), Plus my background is graphic design so I've been working digitally now way longer than ever was doing 'traditional' painting medium. (Photoshop isn't the problem when it comes to modern poster art the marketing bods), i do sometimes integrate physical paint or other elements then scan them in and incorporate them like with the recent Frankenstein created bikers i painted the background canvas, so its both a blending of physical and digital mediums.



Q: Your posters are fantastic, they take me back to the distant realm of the video store. You yourself must have been amazed at the gallery of covers staring back at you as a kid. Any stories of experiences or covers that influenced you in any way?

A: Well thanks you, and totally, the video shop WAS my art gallery growing up. i do miss the buzz you used to get walking around them picking a movie for Friday or Saturday night as a kid, its a generation thing that us gen X will only know about!! the 60s had Woodstock man we had the video shop!!

But a big influence on me as i have said a lot was Graham Humphreys i loved his Return of the Living Dead cover and through this work i actually got to meet him (i met him at a Hobo screening) and be friends with him as he is UK based as well, its funny twist of fate i got him to sign the original VHS cover from my local video shop which i still have, his work still blows me away!



Q: What is your favourite Horror, Action, and Sci-fi movie?

A: Well i love all Carpenters stuff. (even his 80s band the The Coupe De Villes, EVERY home should have a copy of Waiting Out the Eighties).
The Thing is my favourite. Alien (obviously), Phase IV, Maximum overdrive, Pontypool, Session 9, Death Wish 3, ALL films staring Burt Reynolds... the list goes on! (I'm a big movie buff) I recently went on a complete Van Damme kick (no pun intended) and pretty much picked up all his films and i was totally blown away by the new Universal Solider film 'Regeneration' directed by John Hyams (Peter Hyams son from Time Cop, Outland and my favourite Bustin') its a real brutal action flick and the last 20 mins or so is one long intense action sequence!







Q: OK, say your being held at gunpoint by a group of bloodthirsty Nazi scientists hell-bent on seeing you remake one of the following 4 posters, which one would it be?



A: Ha, ohhh.... well Night Breed! Then its a tie between Missing in Action 2 or Even Horizon. i don't really do torture porn i think its taken a lot of the camp creativity out of horror, we lost monsters when saw came out and i like my crappy rubber ghouls in the cellar, imagination got traded for sawing some ones leg off, theres enough shit going on in the world like that for real i like my horror to have a fantasy escapism... but that's just me I'm old school i guess, ill take Neon Maniacs of Martyrs any day!

Q: Same as above question, but this time its knifepoint and its acid tripping satanic carnival workers determined to see a remake of the following classic games.



A: Ha man i love old game covers too (Renegade has to be my favourite cover i remember trying to re draw it as a kid... actually i have one of my early attempts, (mother saved all my drawings in the attic!!!!)



See what happens when children are brought up on films like Rambo... mind you i quite like the tag line!

But back to the question at hand... i couldn't top Bad Dudes that's perfect, pit-fighter is sentimental so wouldn't want to touch that! i honestly don't know what the hell Chrono Trigger is ?! so Shinobi you just don't get to tackle ninjas these days, EVERYTHING was Ninja when i was growing up!

Q: I read that Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta were some of your influences, did you dig on the Heavy Metal comics when you were young?

A: I'd like to say yes but No...i grew up in England, i did have a lot of comics but it was,



look in, then the Beano, i then got into The Real Ghostbusters, and Action Force, looking at it i suppose you can see a lot of influence from the action force covers (they where brilliant) , i like action coming out towards the viewer



Q: Has anyone ever commissioned you to put them in a fake movie poster? If I had money to burn I would die for a fake exploitation poster featuring me, but jacked on steroids, maybe battling satanic carnival workers.

A: Ha no man not yet but sounds fun!



Q: Finally any new projects coming up you care to share?

A: Well they just released the FCB poster, My House of the Devil design for the Death Waltz Records and there's another Would You Rather poster to come, i have about 3 other designs awaiting release but all the titles are sensitive. there's a poster which i really like (if i do say so myself) which i did for Hypothermia about a year ago that's still awaiting release it.



Thank's Tom, looking forward to see what's next.

Check out the making of the Fathers Day poster in the video below.



also print out your custom Hobo With a Shotgun VHS cover here http://thedudedesigns.blogspot.ca/20...-own-free.html

The Dude Designs http://thedudedesigns.blogspot.ca/