“Avengers: Infinity War,” the much-anticipated apogee to Marvel Studios’ hit superhero films, is so successful that it inspired many budding artists’ creativity.
Take the case of a post that has gotten viral on Facebook because it juxtaposed the movie poster of “Avengers: Infinity War” to an artwork of “Dragon Ball Super.”
The caption of the post implied that Marvel Studios “imitated” the poster concept of the popular anime.
It did not sit well on some Marvel fans, insisting that “Dragon Ball Super’s” art was inspired by the poster of “Infinity War.”
A user attached a link where the artwork originally appeared. It was uploaded to Reddit by “Taco144” on March 23.
Meanwhile, Marvel released the poster in question on March 17.
In the comments thread of the post, it was suggested that “Taco144” got inspired by the poster of “Avengers: Infinity War.”
The “Dragon Ball Super” art also suggested that it had a movie called “Dragon Ball: Tournament of Power.” But it was just a story arc of the television series. No such movie titled “Dragon Ball: Tournament of Power” was produced nor conceptualized.
Fan arts, artists and movie studios
There are lots of artists like “Taco144” who create fan art originally inspired by movie posters.
They share it on the internet; usually on social media platforms, art community websites and online portfolio websites like DeviantArt and Behance.
In fact, a website exists which solely dedicates itself to artist-generated alternative movie posters. It calls itself the “world’s largest curated collection” of alternative movie posters and categorizes art into different genres of movies they were based in.
New York Times reported that there are “alternative movie poster” artists whose works have become so popular that they are commissioned to do actual artworks for movie studios.
Among them are Tracie Ching, whose prints of “The Jungle Book” appeared in Blu-ray covers, Marie Bergeron, whose illustrations have appeared in Takeshi Kitano’s films and artist Kyle Lambert, who was tasked to create the “Stranger Things 2” poster.
It’s all thanks to social media
Matthew Chojnacki, the award-winning author of a book titled “Alternative Movie Posters: Film Art from the Underground,” said that posting artworks on social media is a great way for artists to get noticed.
Chojnacki said that before he released his book, he looked for artworks shared on Instagram, Pinterest, and film and design blogs:
“When I was doing the first book, it was a real struggle to find 100 artists doing it. There are probably 300 to 400 artists doing it now.”
Chojnacki believes that social media “really levels the playing field” when it comes to displaying artworks based on movies.
He shared in another interview: “In the first book, there’s a story where a guy posted a Quentin Tarantino poster on Tarantino’s Facebook page and he (Tarantino) bought it for one of his teaser posters.”
“Anthony Petrie did a ‘Rocky 4’ poster and Sylvester Stallone bought two online and sent him back one signed. It’s funny how, with social media, you just throw it out there and you’re not sure who’s going to see it,” he said.
