As a fan of the 80s I am always excited by anything that brings me back memories from that incredible decade. When I saw the trailer for Stranger Things, a new original Netflix series I knew there was something there. After seeing a few episodes I got to say, it's amazing and they really captured the look and feel of that time and the poster created by Kyle Lambert also illustrate the style of that time beautifully well. It reminds me of the Drew Struzan's poster for famous movies like Indiana Jones, Star Wars and many others.
Kyle Lambert is a US based visual artist, who is known for his striking digital illustration work in the entertainment industry. Kyle has pushed boundaries with his use of technology to create commercially successful artwork and illustrations at the highest level. Over the past 10 years Kyle has worked with some of the worlds largest brands, including Apple, Adobe, GQ, Netflix, Paramount Studios and Vanity Fair.
I was commissioned by Netflix to produce a classic illustrated poster for the series ‘Stranger Things’. The studio wanted me to create a piece of artwork that celebrated the 80’s era of hand-painted movie posters. So I began studying several of the legendary poster artists such as Drew Struzan and experimented with ways to create similar paint work using digital tools.
After a few weeks of exploration, the studio and I settled on a composition and I was tasked with painting the finished poster. I used the Procreate app on my iPad Pro to do the preliminary sketches and for blocking the basic colors of the poster. I then exported these layers into Adobe Photoshop and began detailing the artwork at a much higher resolution.
The final poster is featured across all of Netflix’ streaming platforms as the key art for the ‘Stranger Things’ series. While working on this project, The Duffer Brothers, who directed the series, also commissioned him to produce paintings of the main characters in the same style. These paintings were printed onto canvas and given as wrap gifts to the actors, including Winona Ryder.
For more information check out http://www.kylelambert.com/
