TGIThursday, everyone! While it’s not quite the weekend yet, we’re still about to have us some fun with exclusive new art from Guillermo Del Toro’s upcoming robots-versus-kaiju epic Pacific Rim. While we have to wait until summer 2013 to actually see the film, you can enjoy this awesome vintage propaganda poster right now from Spanish artist Raúl Monge (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy 2), a concept artist for Pacific Rim, which features one of the film’s Jaegers, the giant Gundam-like robots that the characters will pilot in the war against Godzilla’s lesser-known cousins. Even better? Those of you at New York Comic Con should head over to the Legendary booth at 2 pm EST on Friday to see Del Toro sign the artwork and check out costumes from the film or head to the Legendary panel on Friday at 5:15pm to see the artwork and plenty of other goodies, to boot.
To paraphrase what I imagine Guillermo Del Toro said when he saw this, “This looks dope as hell, you guys.” According to an official press release though, here’s what Del Toro actually said: “Raúl is one of my top concept designers. The idea with this particular piece was to emulate an old WWII propaganda poster/flyer that went along with the world we were creating. It symbolizes rationing – voluntary work force, no guts, no glory kind of heroism.”
Still not enough Pacific Rim for you? Well, Del Toro also announced a Pacific Rim graphic novel penned by the film’s writer Travis Beacham (Clash of the Titans), which will serve as a prequel leading up to the events of the film. Listen, guys, you don’t really need to twist our arms when it comes to gargantuan robots wailing on monsters to determine the fate of the universe, but we’re always happy to get extra content. Are you excited to see Raleigh Antrobus (Sons of Anarchy‘s Charlie Hunnam) piloting a massive mech and doing righteous battle with sea-dwelling eldritch creatures? Quemment below and let us know!
pictur mak me feel gud
As a professional graphic designer working in London for the past twenty years I’m always surprised by the terrible graphic design we see in film and television. I suspect these productions do not employ actual graphic designers but rather use a person already working on the movie like a lighting guy or cinematographer’s assistant. They most probably go to their caravan’s boot up the macbook and do a job like this poster most likely in MS Word. It’s a shame because this would be a fun job to do, so much history to draw on. Incidentally the chap above mentions Franklin Gothic, I did a cursory search on google images for WWII posters and not one instance of FG.
I was at Comicon and saw some amazing footage from the film. One shot started on a very funny sign warning about crush hazard. The sign was amazing. Can’t wait to see the movie.
I like it a lot. I think I’d love it more if I had a non-glossy slightly ratty and worn copy framed and up in my office. Really loking forwar to this one.
Yeah the poster is great, but I agree the ‘Now is the time to join!’ bit puts me off because it isn’t matching grunge wise with the rest of the poster.
But hey, this is an exclusive right? So maybe this poster wasn’t exactly completed or maybe rushed out. Who knows, but I am so damn excited for this movie and that is all that matters!
I’m not sure it’s the font so much as the font and borders aren’t “grunged” like the image itself. Also, the gradient is anachronistic. But if this is a poster from the world in the movie, then I guess it’s actually a poster from the future, so all bets are off!
Re: Gavin
As a designer Gavin you should recognize this almost exact poster style from WW2, particularly the font. Franklin Gothic was one of the most common fonts used at the time. Late 30s into early 40s war posters used this blocky, plain text on a blank slab since it was easy to change the illustration for different regions. This is by far the most conservative of the “vintage” posters I’ve seen for Pacific Rim. Just wait…
Couldn’t agree more about the typography choice. It’s incredibly bland and feels like they spent about 10 seconds picking it out.
As a designer, the typeface looks like a lazy pick and out of place in the vintage feel of the poster. Great graphic though. I’ll watch anything del Toro makes.