Case Study

Tom Whalen

Context and Content.

My case study is a 5-colour screen print movie poster created by Tom Whalen based on Tim Burton’s movie “The nightmare before Christmas”. The title is called Nightmare before Christmas because it is taken from the subject matter as inspired by Tim Burton’s film. By focusing on the characters Whalen’s poster shows the main, most remembered characters and the Halloween theme. The theme of nightmare before Christmas is based around a fictional place called “Halloween Town”. The main character being “Jack Skellington”, whom wishes to take over Christmas. Other characters are shown on the poster as they reference and remind the viewer of the overall movie format and the American stop motion, musical, fantasy genre. Whalen has been influenced by the contextual matter as he uses images of the characters and recreates parts of recognisable scenes of the unusual movie in this poster. Many of his works are similar as he enjoys recreating posters based on movies, all using screen-print techniques. For this particular poster Tom Whalen had been commissioned from a friend as a gift. This piece contextually suits a lot of other work that is available at the moment as it is very fashionable. Tom Whalen has created a series of these posters inspired by various movies all employing a similar style in terms of the colour palette, shapes and type.

Form.

The colour palette has been combined using contrasting colours of orange, purple, white, black and grey. The colour purple being the most evident, but balanced by the other secondaries of green and orange. These colours range in various tones between highlights and shadows. The purple and orange are the dominate colours as they stand out the most. The poster is quite flat however the clothes on the two main characters in the foreground have been displayed with various lines and patterns adding texture to the piece and making them stand out. The artist Tom Whalen, has used colour decoratively in a Halloween style palette. The space and depth has been represented through colour, layers and composition because it starts of with a black dark background with an bold orange circled shape containing the title. The mid-ground contains a chunk of purple characters and in the fore-ground are the two main characters with the main colours being black and white with various patterns and hints of orange, purple and grey. The work does hold together throughout as it keeps to the subject matter. The artist uses the media silk screen-print because it gives a good effect for a poster as he’s used it on other works. Silk screen also produces beautiful colour and a much more interesting texture than any ink-jet printer could. The picture is controlled as everything has a neat edge and is detailed clearly and sharp. You can tell its been made using the screen-printing technique as the colours have a uniform fill. Whalen has created this poster on a canted angle. This gives the composition a lop-sided crooked feel which goes along with the theme as the movie itself contains scenes of which are filmed in various camera shots and angles. There are a repetition of circles included in this poster that contrast against the more angular body shapes. For example the pumpkins rolling down, the orange circle containing the title, the dots on the dice and the main characters head.

Process.

The process of this piece has been made using overprinting and the screen-printing technique. The composition has probably been constructed using blue pencil to create a draft. He might have used Photoshop to test out palette colours and make a paste-up. The artist Tom Whalen must have the skill of using the silk screen technique. He must use observation skills to draw realistic drawings of the characters from the movie he has been inspired by. The elements of the layering and the blocking of colour show that process of the media screen-printing.

Personal Response.

The first thing that drew me to the poster is the colours used. They are rather contrasting and vibrant colours. The dark background creates this as it makes the orange and white stand out. Another thing that drew me to this piece was the representation of the characters from the movie “The nightmare before Christmas”. The way the poster has been created reminds me of the movie because it has the intriguing quality, yet whimsical and distinctive feeling to it. The movie has a Halloween theme that is quirky and different, therefore this poster reflects the style of the movie. I like how the characters are created in the image identical to the movie. It makes me feel that its Halloween because of the pumpkins and weird use of characters of skeletons and ghosts and ghouls.