Known for his incredible and vibrant art, UK-based artist Matt Taylor has worked with numerous major clients to create visual delights celebrating classic and pop culture favourites. In recent years, his unique style led him to create much sought-after movie posters, trading cards, and even comic book covers. Earlier this year, contemporary art gallery Spoke Art commissioned Matt Taylor to create a special tribute poster honouring the Studio Ghibli gem, “Kiki’s Delivery Service”; a Japanese animated film by Hayao Miyazaki, this is a well-loved classic!
In this special editorial, Matt Taylor takes us on a journey through his process, sharing a few secrets from his research stage and right through to the end result. Available now as a limited edition screen printed poster, we hope you enjoy this behind the scenes – thank you Matt for sharing!
Matt Taylor: the making of Kiki’s Delivery Service movie poster for Spoke Art
Preparation
For any movie poster, the first step for me is watching the film. I’ll pop it on and watch with a notepad to hand, usually writing down notes and thoughts about the film, but also some small thumbnail sketches if an idea comes to mind as well as time codes for scenes that I feel might be worth revisiting.
For Kiki, my initial thought was that I wanted something to communicate with the poster was the hustle and bustle of the piece – Kiki working in the shop, making friends and growing as a person. Obviously, there’s no scene in the movie where everyone is in shot at the same time, so I thought I’d build one, with the key cast going about their day and Kiki off on one of her errands.
With animated movies, I feel like it’s really important to stay on model to the character designs and backgrounds so that it feels recognisable. Ghibli has such a strong aesthetic to its films, it would be mad not to try and capture that. When I made my Akira poster for Spoke Art back in 2022, I created the layout solely from collaged screenshots, which I could use as the guide for my drawing, and it felt like this was the right choice for this piece too.
Thankfully there’s a bounty of websites devoted to screenshots from movies, so I went through the film shot by shot and grabbed a whole bunch of images that featured poses or elements that stood out to me. Once I had them all, I created a new canvas in Photoshop and set to work.
Building from the blank canvas: the importance of typography
The first thing I wanted to nail down was the title treatment. With any movie poster I work on, type is always the starting point. At the end of the day, a poster is a tool for communication, and if you can’t see what the title of the movie is then you’re not making a good poster.
I had an idea that I wanted something big and bold to run through the center of the image (I’ve been increasingly drawn towards large dynamic title treatments this year). I wanted to have most of the text in Japanese with just the title repeated in English. I hate working on a white canvas, so I threw the blue in there as a base color – mainly because it’s the color of the Ghibli title card and was fresh in my head. This turned out to be unexpectedly fortuitous because it unexpectedly presented the idea for a variant colorway, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
Experimenting with image placement
Once the type was locked in place, I started to place the screen grabbed images from the movie around the page. I found a nice unobscured view of the shop to serve as the centerpiece of the poster and then experimented with placing different elements around the page to see where they felt right. I’d like to say there’s some logic and mystery to this stage but it’s really just a case of moving things around until they feel ‘right’.
Linework
When I had enough of the key pieces in place to begin drawing, I started to put in fairly loose but detailed linework – there’s nothing worse than when you’re making a finished painting and you come across a section that you really didn’t think through at the sketch stage! Once this was done, I basically had my finished line sketch.
Usually I would start throwing some color on, but when I took a step back I realised that the black line on blue looked just like a Ghibli title card and it was great! There was no way that it would be the regular colorway of the poster, but I sent it over as it was to gauge what Ken and John at Spoke Art thought about it.
They liked it! And because we’ve been working together for more than ten years, they trusted me when I said ‘I’ll figure out the actual colors for it when I’m painting’ – for which I’m always grateful. Having that trust with a long running partnership really makes the whole process so much easier.
Making the final design
Once the sketch was signed off, it was just a case of making the final art. This piece was a little different because I wanted to match the visual style of the anime, which meant everything has a black outline around it – something I don’t always do. With a view on avoiding nasty surprises down the line, I drew the entire piece as an outline first – moving a few elements from the sketch and substituting a couple of characters as well.
Generally I draw each character in a separate group on Photoshop so I can move them around. I’ll usually draw a little extra of any characters that fall behind others, so I have some flexibility to move them around. Once the art is moving towards a finished state you see things that aren’t obvious at sketch – usually, lines meeting each other awkwardly, or areas of similar colors next to each other that make it hard to read – so having the ability to adjust without having to repaint it is super helpful. I try to make my art as modular as possible without it feeling too stiff or awkward.
Once the line art was complete, I moved to the coloring. Because each character was in their own group I could paint quite loosely – mixing up tones and textures without worrying about painting outside the lines. In terms of the actual painting, there’s no real explanation other than ‘I just painted it’. So much of it is intuitive by this point – moving textures around and constantly editing as new components are finished so that everything feels harmonious. I’ll usually just work on a piece until it feels ‘right’.
I set a rough palette of contrasting colors in the swatch menu so I could swap colors quickly when painting. Instead of using traditional grey values, I cheated slightly and used colors that are higher contrast. This way you can have an image that from a value point of view is almost the same tone, but your eye reads the contrast and the whole thing can remain really bright and vibrant. I think from a color-theory perspective it’s not the best way to work, but it’s where I’ve landed!
My defaults when I’m painting are blues, pinks and oranges, with maybe a pop of bright yellow. Oftentimes I’ll use adjustment layers to change the finished piece once I’m done, but in this case, it felt like I’d really captured the mood of the movie without simply aping the palette of the film.
Once the color is added it’s then just a case of looking at the whole piece and picking out any errors – usually, areas where the contrast between the foreground and background isn’t clear and making sure all the type is legible. I’ll often paint the amends on a single layer on top of the artwork because at this point everything below it is locked and it’s faster to add the last details to everything at once.
Because I spent a long time on the sketch making sure it was readable, there weren’t really that many edits to make; in spite of its relative complexity, it was a pretty straightforward piece to paint. Planning made it so much easier than other pieces that I’ve only had a very vague idea of what they would look like when they’re done…
And that’s about it!
Want to get your hands on a copy of this limited edition screen printed poster? The work is now available via Spoke Art’s online shop – but be quick, they are selling fast!
About Spoke Art
Matt Taylor is an artist and illustrator based in the UK. With a visual style that leans toward the figurative and dynamic, he has found himself working for a wide range of clients from Nike to the BBC. Over the past few years, he has created sought after movie posters, trading cards and comic book covers.
Matt’s clients include: Amazon Studios, Apatow Pictures, Apple, 20th Century Fox, BBC Worldwide, BOOM! Studios, DC Comcis, FIFA/Triad Berlin, The Guardian, GQ, JWT, Jack White, Lucasfilm, Marvel Entertainment, Mutant, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Pearl Jam, Penguin Books, Phish, Queens of the Stone Age, Spoke Art, Sony, Vertigo Comics, and The Washington Post.
About Spoke Art
Spoke Art is an exhibition space and curatorial venture specializing in new contemporary painting, sculpture and illustration. Started in 2010, the gallery puts on pop-up shows and participates in conventions and art fairs around the country. You can usually find us in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles or Miami at least once a year.
