Classic movie posters with a surprising twist

By David Ebert

We’ve all at one point in our lives had a poster hanging in our rooms of that one movie that remains to date the most memorable and influential movie we’ve ever watched. It probably became the yardstick we’ve used to judge and rate every other movie watched since then and still pull it out for an occasional viewing.

Now personally, I love Al Pacino as an actor and I was quite excited when someone showed me a Scarface movie poster constructed, believe it or not, out of the original screenplay. Now who wouldn’t want a large movie poster of their all time favourite film hanging in their living room that they not only get to look at, but read as well? For me it was the cat’s whiskers in movie memorabilia and I wanted to find out how it was done and how I could get my hands one some, so I tracked down the artist to find out.

The technique, explained digital artist Nish Niruthan, is called digital micrography but he prefers to label it ‘text art’ as he explained: “Micrography denotes something that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Even though I utilise the same techniques, my goal is to still keep the text visible to the naked eye when you look at it as a poster. Essentially, the concept is rather simple. It is a movie screenplay up close, and a movie poster from afar.  

Q: What prompted you to combine text and images like this?

A: I have always been fascinated by collages. I love images that are made up of smaller images and when I was a kid, I could never understand how they were made, even though I was fascinated by the mechanics of it. So I started putting together my own collages but I never quite succeeded. It was only after I completely devoted myself to understanding the process of dissecting and deconstructing an image that I realised that it would be done with enough diligence and vision.

Q: Why movie posters?



A: Movie posters are pretty much the masterpieces of our generation. I am a huge movie buff and have been collecting digital prints of movie posters ever since I could access the internet. I have worked in the film industry in India and it fascinated me that movie posters had the responsibility of conveying the importance of a three hour movie through a one-shot still.

Successful posters like the ones for Jurassic Park and Fight Club, for example, virtually become ID cards for movies. Most of my word art before this was unfocused, with a variety of topics and one of my closest friends suggested applying it to movie posters to give me direction, as well as lend more weight to the concept of the word art and it worked beautifully.

Q: So how does one go about creating a movie poster simply out of the text in the screenplay?

A: I work digitally so it all begins with gathering the screenplay, or in some cases, the script of the movie that I want to paint. I lay out the entire text and watch the movie word-for-word to make sure there are no discrepancies between my text and the movie. I lay it out on Illustrator, or in some cases Coral Draw. I then follow that by doing a sketch of the actual movie poster above the text.

The good thing about working digitally is that you can zoom in and zoom out to your heart’s content to work out any small details. There are some artists I have met who insist on doing Micrography on Photoshop, but I find the results almost always lifeless and without detail. With that method, the computer decides what your final image will look like. My way takes me more time and effort but at least I remain in full control of the final output.  

Q: What would you say your influences are and what sort of a background did you have growing up?

A: My background is pretty atypical for a Sri Lankan. I was born in India and I spent most of my childhood there. I come from a very normal family and didn’t travel much as a child. So whenever I got opportunities to study and work abroad, I pounced on it. I have been mostly around South East Asia, with job stints living in both Malaysia and Singapore.

It is great to be influenced by a huge mix of styles. Travelling around there, I got to experience everything from Salvador Dali to Raja Ravi Varma to Hayao Miyazaki. Like I’ve mentioned before, a large part of my artistic influence comes from movies. I watch movies from all over the world. I actively seek out movies that remain obscure even in their own countries. It is important for young artists to be on the lookout for new work because that is where inspiration strikes from most frequently.  

Q: How much of a positive response have you received for your work so far?

A: So far, it has been fantastic; I’ve had people who’ve wanted to give them as gifts and even obliged a few requests to draw portrait pictures of loved ones using the screenplay of their favourite movies.

Q: And how does one get their hands on one?

A: I can be contacted by email at [email protected] for any requests. Most of my work is freelance, so I remain as flexible as humanly possible because I let the clients and customers decide on the size of the prints that they want and I look forward to the challenge of doing different types of movies as well on request.