Major Mustasha

A turn-of-the-century (LAST century, that is!) theatrical poster.

As usual, a simple little sketchbook doodle  turned into a complicated illustration project. There's definitely something in my head that likes to complicate matters.

I probably got a little carried away with all the text. The poster kept growing in length as I'd think of more copy to write. It was fun writing it though. I tried to mimic that early 1900s style as closely as I could. Be sure and click on the image in order to read it all. Depending on your monitor you may have to use "zoom" to read the finer print.

I used the whole software arsenal for this one. The frame, boxes and text were all laid out in InDesign. I then imported all that into Photoshop. I thought the text looked a little too perfect and precise for an old poster, so I used a wave filter on it to distort it a bit. The wavy text on either side of the Major was written and distorted in Illustrator, and of course imported into Photoshop. And the Major himself was drawn in Photoshop, of course.

Here's the original simple sketch of a little guy supported by his mustache.

 

Here's the more refined second sketch. I had to change the proportions of his mustache a lot in the final image to better fill the space.