'Stranger Things' News and Updates: Artist Used iPad Pro and Apple Pencil to Create Iconic TV Show Poster
Netflix's summer science fiction series, Stranger Things, is well-known for its iconic homages to '80s cult classics and legends such as Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, John Carpenter, among others.
Its central premise is an assortment of '80s tropes--shadow worlds, shady government agencies, supernatural powers, coming-of-age maturing--and all of these things had to be succinctly summed up by artist Kyle Lambert in a single image that was to become its poster.
Coming up with a poster
Lambert recounted how he was tasked to come up with a poster: given only a general sense of the storyline, rough cuts from a few episodes, and some photographs. Of course, he succeeded in creating the poster that was to become the archetype of any 1980s show.
How did he do it? With an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil, he revealed.
Creating the poster
In an interview with Mashable, Lambert said he used the Apple device to create preliminary compositions, as well as the sketch for the main poster art, because it allows him to sketch naturally using the Apple Pencil.
Afterwards, he did the basic tonal blocking on an app called Procreate, and did majority of the color work on Adobe app Photoshop, where he upscaled the image's resolution to create a more fluid image. During this process, he used a Wacuom Intuos tablet, which connects to a Mac device.
The sudden popularity of the series' poster touts the tremendous digital prowess of the iPad Pro, which has been shrugged off by critics as merely being good for apps and playing. With Lambert successfully boosting its profile, digital artists can now expect to take the Apple device more seriously over more popular choices such as the Wacom series.
Lambert is all-praises for the Apple device, saying that the iPad Pro is portable and nice to hold, while the app Procreate has several Pencil brushes that artists can use in their works.
Not the first time
This is not the first time Lambert worked with an iPad, either. His most famous work is a photorealistic image of Bruce Almighty star Morgan Freeman in 2013, which he did on an iPad Air.
As the iPad Pro proves itself worthy of such a huge task, one can expect more digital artists making the switch this device.