Responses by Martin Dupuis, art director, Les Évadés

Background: The purpose of the project was to advertise special screenings of these films at the Cinéma du Parc, a local movie theater in Montréal. What’s fun about doing posters for older films is that they can veer from the norm a bit, since a lot of people already know these children’s movies. They can end up being a personal reflection of what I like in the films, and therefore, what I think like-minded audiences will also appreciate.

Reasoning: I had worked with illustrator Massimiliano di Lauro before, and we had focused on main characters in our last poster series, so this time around, I wanted to focus on some of the backgrounds in these films. Each poster has a three-part layering system that divides three environments from the films. Like the cave, suburbs and pirate boat for The Goonies; Trash Island, the park and the city of Megasaki for Isle of Dogs; and the beach, plane and fair tents for Porco Rosso. The ultimate aim was to pay homage to the original source material while bringing in visual elements that felt new and different.

Challenges: The most challenging part was also the most fun. Once our three-part layering system had been decided as a template, it was re-watching all the films again to see how they fit the system. di Lauro is someone I really love working with, so the back and forth of the process was really smooth. He expects that my ideas and suggestions are worked out properly and I expect that he surprises me and throws a twist that makes my ideas even better.

Favorite details: I think di Lauro really nailed some great small details in The Goonies poster. I love the way he drew the big brother riding the bike on the side and the chocolate bars. I like the idea of crafting something where the main elements are locked in and work, and then spending that extra time to craft little moments of surprise around.

Visual influences: In this case, when looking for ideas and doing research, I saw an image from di Lauro that suggested to me the idea of a layered system using different backgrounds. So the idea came directly from him.

Time constraints: It just meant we needed to hit the ground running, with some extra late nights working and going in on weekends. We also had to rewatch all the films pretty quickly to get ideas. On a project like this, a lot of it is about pleasing yourself, so it was going to be doing whatever it takes to make the posters as good as it could be.

lesevades.com