NEAL ADAMS’ Respect for DREW STRUZAN Was Endless — and for Excellent Reason
A NEAL ADAMS CHRONICLES birthday tribute to the movie-poster master… By PETER STONE Think about your favorite most iconic movie posters. Jaws, The Thing, Rocky, Alien, Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, Hellboy, Harry Potter, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones. I bet half, if not more, were painted by Drew Struzan, who was born 77 years ago, on March 18, 1947. Bob Peak, Richard Amsel and a few exceptional graphic designers probably created the rest. Drew Struzan is an exceptional painter and uses photos to create likenesses of famous actors better than even photographs can. He makes some actors look better than they do in real life. He is one of the best painters in the last 100 years. Struzan is probably the last great movie poster artist of the 20th century. His work will be forever remembered in connection to Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, The Goonies and even Back to the Future. His compositions were unique and brilliant. He captured the heart of the story in a single illustration as he created a tremendously commercial imagr. Before Struzan, movie posters were graphic designs like Jaws. Or photographs. Like The Godfather. Neal Adams loved Drew Struzan’s work to the degree that he would show other artists that Struzan knew how to capture a likeness better than possibly anyone working at the time. He loved the highlights Drew put on the faces, the double-lighting, the fact that he worked with photos better than anyone. (NOTE from Dan: The first time I met Neal many years ago, he asked me if I knew who Drew Struzan was and then went off on a tangent about him.) Neal totally understood what it meant to work with a photo of an actor. I remember him doing a promotional image of a series of actors for a popular TV show. He told me on many occasions that you could not draw the actor as they really were but as they thought they really were. In other words, make them look better than possibly they really were. This time when he was working on this TV promotion was wonderful. Each of the actors were dead on and attractive. Then, one actor said “No, I don’t look like that.” Neal, ever the commercial artist said, “Fine. I will try again.” Nope. The second try wasn’t good...
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