'Until Dawn' FAN POSTER

This was a fan poster I created over the span of 15 hours, featuring both up close portraits of characters and key moments all positioned for storytelling and impact.
The first step was finding key storytelling moments from within the game, as this is a story based game, such as the character 'Chris' facing his 'Saw' choice, the character 'Mike' in the Sanatorium and 'Matt' alone in the mines with a lantern. This covers key locations like the Lodge, Sanatorium and The Mines.
'Ashley' and 'Emily's poses were chosen for their dramatic qualities, 'Jessica's pose was chosen for a softer variety of this.
'Sam' and 'Josh' are the two largest portraits, facing opposite directions in different light levels. Their relationship within the game is complicated so I wanted to highlight that and show it visually through the direction of the poster layout.
The overall lighting for the piece moves from left to right, with a bright blue source on the left which transitions into a deep red on the right, to match the hourglass featured in the 2024 remake for the game. I positioned each character based on lighting and colour, cold bright lighting for everyone on the left and warm dark lighting for everyone on the right side so the piece was cohesive.
I experimented with many different poster layouts, from the shape of the Butterfly symbolism in the game to a large trio portrait of just 'Josh', 'Ashley' and 'Chris' I finally settled with the hourglass shape and all characters except two for fuller storytelling. The hourglass matches the lighting and environment behind it with a cold frosted effect, and silhouettes of all characters at the bottom with the Lodge.
The painting style was originally completed in greyscale before colouring to ensure all shapes and tones were distinguishable, and to allow a more continuous colour palette after colouring by correctly balancing all colours within the piece.
The style itself is very focused on my own painting style with elements from other Supermassive Games posters ('The Quarry') such as additional sketching colouring textures to create something more authentic.
This is FAN MADE, not official work from Supermassive.