Turn it up to Eleven

Kyle Lambert brings composition to the fore as he paints the official poster for Netflix’s Stranger Things

Getting the official Stranger Things artist to tell us how he created the poster got me fangirling…

The agency Contend asked me to produce an illustrated poster for Netflix’s rating-stopping show Stranger Things. The brief was to create a striking image reminiscent of classic, handpainted film artwork from the 1980s.

I began by studying some of the most iconic poster designs from this era and then experimenting in Photoshop, looking at ways to paint in a traditional style. I worked with Contend’s art director Nate Sherman to explore composition ideas and story elements. I did my sketch work using Procreate on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. I used the standard 6B Pencil brush in this app to do all of the line work and shading for the poster. I then exported the final sketch into Photoshop where I upscaled the artwork to a higher resolution and used the Lasso tool to cut up the elements into layers. I applied the Multiply Blend mode to all of the sketch layers and blocked the basic colours underneath using the standard Photoshop airbrush. I reduced the Opacity of the sketch layer as the colour work progressed and then merged these layers together.

The final stage was to export these layers back into Procreate, where I used the Splatter and Pencil brushes to add texture to the artwork. I reimported each layer separately back into Photoshop and used the airbrush to blend the colours into one cohesive image.