Halloween Zombie Hand - How it was done by Christopher King

ZOMBIE HAND TEST - PART ONE

Halloween is only round the corner and when this time of year comes I get to thinking about horror movies and in this instance, horror movie posters.

Which has inspired me to design a zombie/graveyard based poster starting with a test illustration of the classic living dead hand bursting out of the grave image.

One of my all time favourite zombie movies is ‘The Return of the Living Dead’. Best described as a punk, comedy, gross-out horror, this is one film any self-respecting horror fan should see if not own ( I actually have 2 copies). More to the point, back when this was released on video here in the UK, it featured the superb cover art by of by Graham Humphreys. He was also responsible for the Evil Dead and Nightmare on Elm Street artwork of that time too and his artwork remains a massive influence on me today. With my zombie hand illustration I want to try and capture some of the Humphreys look while retaining my own pen and ink style.

Starting from a photograph of my own hand in various pain inducing positions, I sketch out what I think might be the right look and angle for the hand to be viewed from. The ground up viewpoint is the most obvious choice so I’ll start there.

Once I’ve developed a rough sketch to a point where I’m happy I’ll start to pencil out a tighter version and I’ll plan out my light and dark areas. Then I start inking with brushes and/or pens. I’ve just picked up a new set of brushes so I’m eager to put them to the test. It’s usually at this point where I make mistakes and gather a scrap heap. As I’m not inking all the time it can take me a while to find my eye again and there will be a few false starts, well, nobody’s perfect. Eventually I’ll end up with outline elements that I’m happy with. I’m doing this illustration on a thick tracing paper as I want to keep all of the elements separate for now and bring them all together on the computer. Then comes the light and dark areas that I planned before. I’m trying out a brush stroke style of shading which I hope will bring a traditional but also slightly unreal look the finished pic.

I scan all the elements in, convert them to vector format, arrange and colour them up Adobe Illustrator. I think this is looking okay, but I’m now not sure that position of the hand is effective as it can be (I really want it to look like the hand is bursting out of the ground with some force) so I may try something a little different.

An interesting test illustration and only a small part of a grand

plan. As a overall look it’s showing promise and I'll certainly develop it further and hopefully end up with my own zombie flick poster. To be continued...