Ruddigore - Poster Design

A comic melodrama originally set in the early 19th century, this production was moved to 1960, and the director wanted to stick to the late 50's/ early 60's theme in the poster design as well. The story focuses on an apparently honest, modest famer who is hiding the fact he is really a Baronet, cursed to commit a crime a day or die. Along side this there is also a heroine who gets all her life advice from a book of etiquette, a (supposedly) honest sailor, ghostly ancestors and, of course, a pack of professional bridesmaids who have not had any work for months and are worried about loosing their jobs. This was a lot to squeeze into one poster, and I ended up taking some inspiration from an old film poster for Jekyll and Hyde, which had the same concept of one face wearing two different expressions. This seemed to work better with an actual dividing line drawn down it, which also gave me the chance to fit in blocks of text to fit all the information in. The ghosts I left as shadowy figures, as anything else risked swamping the design. The other minor figures were based on 1960's cartoons, and were fun to draw, with the limited colour pallet very much based on the artwork from an old annual I managed to get hold of. Not a style I would have thought of myself, great fun to draw though!