Customer Reviews

The Art of Drew Struzan

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Length:: 0:55 Mins

It's really great to see Drew Struzan's art in one wonderful volume. All those that I've seen before were in different making-of and art-of books, particularly the Star Wars books. This book has much more than that.

There are works dating back to the from the first Indiana Jones movie (1981), Star Wars (he drew for all of them), Back to the Future, Shawshank Redemption, Police Academy, Hellboy and a few movies which I didn't know existed. Going through this book made me feel like watching all those movies again. A very nostalgic collection.

The paintings are gorgeous, nicely reproduced, and many printed full page. Also included are many variations of the movie posters, both in sketches and colours, and all almost as detailed as the final piece.

There's some sort of magical quality in his paintings that evoke a sense of fantasy and adventure. Together with his traditional approach to art, he has created a style that's easily recognisable. Every page is a marvel to look at, to admire.

Besides the art, Drew Struzan himself provided some commentary on the background stories and working with people. It's all very interesting to read.

This is definitely one of the top art books for 2010.

You probably do not want to miss this fantastic book.

(There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Curb Appeal:

At first glance, the book actually reminds me of one of Drew's paintings. It's got a very bold and classic look to the cover. It is a hard cover book, but it's not too heavy and I was able to sit in a chair and read it cover to cover during one sitting in about two hours. I think the weight is an important factor that's worth mentioning as some books are too heavy to hold in your hands and read in one sitting. This one has the perfect balance of size and weight.

Content:

The Forward, which is written by Frank Darabont, really speaks volumes about the current state of movie poster art. He goes into extreme detail about how the "suits" (studio executives) are responsible for the downfall of real art in the movie poster business and feels that the new digital computer art doesn't hold a candle to the old stuff, which I tend to agree with. This is not a complete life's work of Drew Struzan by any means. The story starts in the early 80's and leads right up to 2008 when he retired. There's a brief section for most of the big films he worked on that explain the sometimes short, but always difficult process of creating the perfect piece that everyone is happy with. He speaks of great success seeing pieces of his work used in some of the most beloved films of our time as well as heartbreak when other works of art were thrown by the wayside. I found it particularly interesting to learn how many comps he had to do for studio executives before they finally agreed on an idea. He mentions that at times, he had nothing to go on and was asked to simply make something up which often turned out to be exactly what the studio wanted and other times, not so much.

Conclusions:

Once again, this is not a record of the complete work of Mr. Struzan, but for fans of his work, it's definitely worth picking up. It's a very easy read made up of 160 pages. You will learn new things about Drew and the processes that he went through when creating his movie poster art while following a common theme throughout the book. This theme represents the unfortunate decline in true movie poster art over the last decade. Today, it seems, studios are only interested in the quickest, easiest and cheapest method of producing movie posters which is why we only see digital cutouts and photo shopped backgrounds on most these days. This makes his amazing work seem all the more important.

Quality:

A lot of care was put into the construction of this book. There are both full color and black & white images throughout with each one shown in perfect resolution. This one will fit nicely on my shelf of encyclopedias and reference books.

This is a wonderful book, very well designed and nicely organized. There are terrific reproductions of some of Struzan's most well known work, including Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Back to the Future, Blade Runner and one of my favorite posters, Big Trouble in Little China. The book also contains cool images and info on his beautiful Creature From the Black Lagoon poster. The book shows how many of the posters evolved in the creation process, and we see many poster ideas that sadly did not see the light of day.

Highly recommended to any fan of Struzan, and fans of movie posters.

There are two other books collecting the work of the amazing Drew Struzan. Neither of these books included a substantial amount of Drew's sketches and preliminary drawings which are, in my opinion, some of his most incredible works. They finally got it right with "The Art of Drew Struzan". The book is filled with Drew's incredible comprehensive drawings. This book has great production values and wonderful, illuminating commentary from the artist himself. This is a fantastic art book, buy it.

Movie buffs are likely familiar with the works of Drew Struzan, as are many casual fans of cinema even if they don't know his name. With an incredible knack for producing detailed, dead-on portraits of a film's actors and capturing the sense of excitement and grandiosity of cinema, he has illustrated and painted some of Hollywood's most famous movie posters. A frequent collaborator of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, he was the official illustrator of posters for the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Back to the Future film series.


The Art of Drew Struzan chronicles much of his work, beginning with Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 to his retirement in 2008 and the final, unused image he produced for Hellboy II: The Golden Army at the request of his friend Guillermo del Toro. In between are selected works from an extensive portfolio of images now part of the canon of some of America's most celebrated films. Struzan shares the illustrations produced for Blade Runner: The Final Cut and the anniversary release of The Shawshank Redemption, and offers up interesting glimpses of comp work that was never fully developed into a final form, like his work for the 1992 theatrical version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Writing with David J. Schow, Struzan provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at designing movie posters by assembling collections of comp artwork (basically the rough drafts) that would eventually lead to the final images. It's a great chance to see the ideas Struzan worked with as he built towards many of his now famous works. It's also intriguing to see the images that could, or should, have been, but for various reasons never quite congealed. Throughout the book Struzan speaks briefly of the commissioned work, the changes that were requested, and how the ideas were formed, shared, and collaborated upon with the filmmakers in order to develop the art that would come to represent and identify the movie itself.

Created with an irreplaceable style and a strong sense of composition his painted illustrations drew in movie-watchers and created a sense of connection between the film and its viewers. By creatively employing the use of direct gaze, filmgoers took part in the experience of a film's world directly, establishing a personal connection with the impeccable portraits of Harry Potter and Indiana Jones, who met their viewer's gaze and invited them into their worlds. His paintings created a cohesive story representative of the movie, showcasing the sense of adventure and excitement of an Indiana Jones movie with perfection, the macho, clueless buffoonery of Big Trouble in Little China's Jack Burton, and the epic space operatics of Star Wars.

As enjoyable as it is to share in the visions of Struzan, it is also a bittersweet journey as it highlights the death of the relationship between Hollywood and illustrative art in the marketing of a film. As the years rolled on and technology progressed, movie studio execs learned how much easier, cheaper, and brainless it was to create a movie poster from publicity stills and promo images in Photoshop. It truly is a shame, and since Struzan's retirement in 2008 there has been a noticeable lack of creative, artistic imagery prior to a film's release. Gone are the days of a collective tingling of spines amongst cinemaphiles when the official poster of a long-awaited film was unveiled, as occurred on March 11, 1999 for Star Wars: Episode I when Struzan's image was introduced as the worldwide promotional piece for George Lucas's widely awaited continuation of the Skywalker saga.

Over the last decade, the spectacle of movie posters has eroded into simplistic images of generic backdrops populated with floating heads staring off into the distance, severing the relationship between the film and its viewers almost immediately. The grandiosity of cinema, the sense of excitement and fun, have been relegated to budget lines. Illustrations that were once sought after by Hollywood's biggest directors were now being scuttled by studio executives who no longer saw the appeal, who simply viewed movies as nothing more than a bottom line in their operating budget, or worse yet, just didn't get it. When asked by a reporter why Struzan's commissioned poster wasn't used for Pan's Labyrinth, a studio representative said, "We didn't use it because it looks too much like art."

Struzan's greatest gift, of course, was that he was able to marry the artistic merits of film and painted illustration. Having produced some of the finest images for many of Hollywood's most enjoyable fare, Struzan now offers fans a look at his creative process and showcases the work he is most fond of. Seeing his work collected in The Art of Drew Struzan one is instantly reminded of the glory of film and the emotional and cultural investments we've made in particular favorites. For more than 30 years, his posters have brought to life all the drama, adventure, humor and camaraderie of the movie itself, rising far above a simple marketing gimmick and into the realm of art. They were, and are to this day, a celebration of cinema at its best.

-- Michael Hicks

The Art of Drew Struzan is unfortunately a let down. I have always admired Drew's work and enjoyed studying the great detail and unique style his paintings exemplify. There is no question that Drew Struzan is an amazing artist. The reproductions in the book are of good quality, and I enjoy the work selected, though it could have been more versatile. The reason for this three star review is simply due to the writing. The forward sets the tone for the entire text of the book. It was a rant. A poorly written, and often immature rant of a dying art. I agree with the idea Mr. Darabont was projecting, I just didn't agree with the way it was written. Forward aside, the majority of the content was also voiced frustrations and complaining by David Schow and Drew himself. Perhaps my expectations were high for a book titled "The art of Drew Struzan" I don't believe this artist is limited to just phenomenal movie posters. There's more, and I wanted to see it and here about it in a professional way. Unfortunately, The writing lessens the art. Simply put, for an artist who made great movies even better, his book read like bad television.

This is a beautiful book that does not exhaustively detail every piece of work Struzan has ever done, but rather provides a selective walkthrough of the artist's career, with his own commentary. Like many creative types working in Hollywood who have gone 'on record' to talk about the frustrations they have faced (like, for example William Goldman, and Julia Phillips) Struzan's career evolved into an ever-increasing farce involving nameless suits decreeing 'art'-direction that eventually burnt the artist out (they even went so far as to have another nameless artist paint something over a portion of his work without telling him). One feels a frustration at the depressing homogenisation, conservative attitudes, and the dearth of creativity involved in the (post) modern Hollywood machine, although it does provide the reader with a fascinating insight into Struzan's creative process as he provides multiple sketches and differing takes whilst trying to prevent 'too many cooks' from spoiling things. Indeed, his sketches are awe-inducing in their own right, and I often wished he'd painted an alternative poster from some of his preliminaries, rather than the sketch the studio selected (I think specifically of his Revenge of the Sith poster). This book is not definitive- some of my favourite Strew posters were from the cinema re-releases of the original Star Wars trilogy in the 1990s which do not appear, but for both the artist interested in Struzan's process, through to the film-fan nostalgic for the posters that adorned the films of their youth, this is a splendid purchase, and takes pride of place on my shelf alongside the similarly beautiful Adam Hughes and Alex Ross coffee-table books.

The Art Of Drew Struzan is a wonderful book featuring several examples of Drew's illustration mastery in a form rarely seen. He offers commentary on each piece along with prelimary drawings accompanying each of the finished illustrations presented. For illustrators of any level and/or fans of Drew's movie poster work, this is a highly recommended book.

The layout and design of the book is very nice; clearly presented with taste and class. However, the actual quality of the book itself is less than exemplary. I've examined numerous copies of the book virtually every one contained some sort of printing flaw, either on the cover or within the book. Appears to be a cheaper quality overseas job. Less expensive to keep costs down, but less control over the finished product.

I appreciated Amazon's communication, customer service and pricing. However, I ultimatatly had to return three copies of this book to Amazon because each one arrived with some sort of damage incurred in shipping. To their credit the company honored their return policy and tried to please me. I admit, I am meticulous about the condition of my books; probably more than the average customer. However I don't believe I should accept merchandise that received damage due to insufficient packaging. Why Amazon continues to ship valuable items in cheap, thin, flimsy cartons just boggles my mind. Ends arrived crushed; spines will be buckled from having been dropped on them. Bubble wrap, immobilizing the book upon a larger board so the edges and spine can't be touched should the book drop and packing the carton with stiffer material to cushion mishandling would do the trick...but I guess that would cost too much money and it is worth it to the company to simply return or write off damaged copies, or hope that less fussy customers will just accept the dinged ones, than to go to the trouble. A shame, because I appreciate the deep discounting but I do not appreciate lazy, flimsy packing.

E.T., the Indiana Jones movies, the Star Wars movies, the Back to the Future trilogy, the Goonies, Harry Potter, and Frank Darabont's Stephen King adaptations are all movies that Drew Struzan created all the promotional art. From the late 1970's until his retirement at the end of 2008, Struzan was THE movie poster artist. His artwork came to define some of the movies he helped promote.

THE ART OF DREW STRUZAN isn't a collection or treasury of all of Struzan's movie posters. Instead, it is more akin to an author's favorites or best-of collection. Struzan worked on the movie posters and promotional materials for around 200 different films; only 40 are collected here. In addition, there are a series of sketches, some in black and white others in color, as well as comments from Struzan about each of the movies. The book contains a forward by Frank Darabont that laments the fall of the movie poster artist and the rise of digital and PhotoShopped posters.

The book is a bit larger than an average book, but smaller than most art books. It's about 9"X12" in size with a black cover. The writing is easy to read and a person can read the entire book within a few hours or less.

Besides the artwork, some of which hasn't appeared before in the other two Struzan books available, what I liked most about the book was Darabont's foreward and Struzan's comments. Which is to say, I liked the entire book. Even though it's a book about the work of a particular movie poster artist, it provides a glimpse into the business side of motion pictures and how that often conflicts with artistic side of the movie business.

This is an excellent book that any visual artist or movie fan will enjoy and is almost a must-have for either one.

I whipped the keys out of my pocket and plunged the teeth of one into the strip of packing tape. The bold amazon.com logo rooted with that trademark half smile printed on the sides told me everything that I needed to know about the box's contents. I threw back the flaps of the box and plunged my hands into the dense peanut packing foam. My fingers found purchase on the edges of the hard bound cover and I lifted the book free with the care one would give a sacred tome. It was here; The Art of Drew Struzan.

Seven years ago I had met Drew for the first time. He was lecturing at the studio I was working for. One of the things he shared with me was the story of how his career as an illustrator had begun with an interview with the enrollment councilor at Art Center College of Design. He rocked slowly back on his heels, and cocked his head down, looking at me with a twinkle in his eye, like he was about to bestow upon me a great gem of wisdom. He wore black from neck to knee; I don't think I've ever seen him wearing anything but black, and most often a turtleneck, with the cuffs of his pants rolled up shin-high. His thinning hair beginning to frost and deep within his trademark peppered beard he cracked a thin smile, and related with the soft voice of a Tibetan monk:

"While I was sitting in the office of the counselor, he asked me; "Are you intending to enroll in the Fine Arts Program, or the Illustration Program?" "What's the difference?" I asked. He replied; "Do you want to make money when you're dead, or while you're still alive?" Being a starving young man, I answered; "While I'm still alive." "Illustration it is." He replied, and the rest is history." (Struzan)

It was at that moment that I realized who Drew Struzan really was. He was J.C. Leyendecker. He was Maxfield Parrish and J.W. Waterhouse. He was Norman Rockwell. He was an art genius cuffed with the title "illustrator" not knowing true respect until he died.

In Drew's case his death is only metaphorical so far.

When I first heard that this book was being published I was excited. I had been a fan and supporter of Drew's work for as long as I can remember. Like many people growing up in the 80's, my first experience with Drew Struzan's art came in a dimly lit lobby of the local movie theater. It was 1983 and bustling moviegoers patronized the concession stand, oblivious to the small boy that stood transfixed before the most powerful image he had ever seen in his short lived life. The movie poster that was framed in a silver plated shadowbox was dominated by the most violent of reds, designed to invoke the most visceral of emotion. In the midst of that crimson field was the broken silhouette of the foreboding death's head mask of Darth Vader. In the bottom right hand corner the silhouettes of the heroic Luke Skywalker and the menacing Darth Vader were locked in the mortal struggle of father and son. All around the poster's subjects were flecks of frenetic paint. A rich spattering of black infused the negative space of red. A gaseous swirl of purples and blues framed the figures. At the bottom of the poster emblazoned in red text were the words; "RETURN OF THE JEDI" stamped like a statement of fact. This image did not come from the ether, it came from the mind of a man, and that man had placed that image in my mind forever.

So here I sat with a book that held the title that seemed to encompass the whole of Drew's Art. Turning the book over to inspect it, I couldn't help but smile when I realized that the bold semi-gloss black dust jacket was appropriate for a book representing a man who almost always dressed just that way. On the cover beneath the title were paneled images of Anakin Skywalker, Harry Potter, Marty Mcfly and Harrison Ford as Decker from Bladerunner. All of them excerpts from the posters Drew had illustrated.

As you'd expect from a book chronicling the works of a master artist, the pages were pregnant with illustrations that are evocative, entertaining and immersive. You cannot help but look upon the images of Indiana Jones, or Dustin Hoffman's Hook without the memories of those films and the positive emotions associated with them coming back to you. Titan Books spared no expense on the publication of this title. The books dimensions are near coffee table in size and weighs in with 160 pages, almost all of them filled with Drew's illustrations. The reproductions of the artwork are vivid and of the sincerest fidelity to the artist's work.

In years past Struzan had made two attempts at publishing his artwork in book form. His first came in 2004 entitled The Movie Posters of Drew Struzan . It was a worthy publication highlighting some of the most memorable of Drew's posters. However it was far from being a comprehensive collection of Struzan's artwork which spanned beyond just movie posters. Two years later Drew invested heavily in a joint venture with Dreamwave Productions, a publishing company located in Toronto, to print his massive Drew Struzan : Oeuvre. The word literally means the lifework or body of work of an artist, writer or composer. This book was enormous in dimensions and scope. Its coffee table format was perfect for presenting what was at the time nearly his entire collected works. Unfortunately, shortly after its initial run Dreamwave Productions went under, taking any future prospect of Drew's book seeing reprint with it.

What could I expect from a new book that the other two hadn't addressed? Similar to the recently released book Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, The Art of Drew Struzan focuses on the artist's process and personal experiences with working in the illustration industry. I found it curious that some of Drew's most memorable posters like the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition 3-up were absent from the book, while more obscure posters such as the unused comprehensives from the Money Pit were included.

Presented in chronological order, individual posters were selected to point out landmark experiences that Struzan had while working in the movie poster illustration industry. The artist shares in his own words compelling, inspirational and sometimes infuriating tales of what it meant to work with some of the most influential filmmakers of our generation. I was fascinated as I delved into the story of his working with the Walt Disney Studios to create the Adventures in Babysitting poster. A series of never before seen photos document the changes that Drew had to make to appease the studio heads. These included an image where Drew took an exacto knife and cut out the characters of his original poster and pasted them to an entirely new background. My frustration was off the charts as Struzan tells how years later that poster was found stored in a Disney Studio sound stage in "a pile of artwork nearly four feet tall, sitting in a pool of water...on the very bottom, face down" (Struzan and Schow 50). Luckily the man who found the discarded poster was a friend of Struzan's, and the poster was returned to its rightful owner who later restored it.

It was inspiring and joyful to read how Struzan commanded the respect of such great filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Guillermo Del Toro. However as I continued reading through, I felt an emerging bitterness seeping into Struzan's text as his experiences working with the studios began to sour. With the new generation of buzz-word businessmen heading the studios, they didn't understand the value of artwork as it related to movie making. Never mind that Drew's posters were the primary marketing tool for over 30 of the top 100 grossing films of all time. Emptiness filled me as I read how most of the posters directors commissioned Drew to paint for their films were no longer being used in the promotion of the movies. On one occasion Del Toro had commissioned Struzan to paint the poster for Pan's Labyrinth, the studio declined to use it. I nearly jumped from my seat and flung the book across the room when I read that during a press conference a journalist asked one of the marketing people, "How come you didn't use Drew Struzan's artwork for the poster."...The suit's reply was: "We didn't use it because it looks too much like art"(Struzan and Schow 138). After having read that, I realized that The Art of Drew Struzan was in actuality, a cautionary tale. It is the pictorial history of the rise, decline and eventual retirement of one of the world's greatest illustrators. It is not a collected works like his other books. It serves as both inspiration and warning voice to all aspiring illustrators.
I remember how I felt when Drew Struzan announced his retirement in 2008. My heart sank, just as it had when I had learned of Charles Schultz death. He made his choice largely due to the ignorance of the modern film marketing machine, and to the Photoshop copy/paste designers that have saturated the movie poster industry. Despite that he has enjoyed a recent revival of interest in his work, as evidenced by the popularity of the book; The Art of Drew Struzan. Perhaps it is a buyer's remorse response to the void that his retiring left behind. Drew relates this to having died:

"I dunno, maybe it's that retirement, you know what, people come when you die, people come to your funeral and talk about all the cool stuff you did. Well, I died and now they're talkin' about it so now I realize that it actually did reach people"(Donahue).

As I closed the book and contemplated the self portrait of the artist on the back of the dust jacket I couldn't help but think that perhaps Drew's interview for Art Center was a bit paradoxical in the end. From its slick dust jacket, to its incredible reproduction of Drew's work, to the artists own words, The Art of Drew Struzan is a unique and insightful book that gives you a peek into the life of the man Time Magazine calls "the Last Movie Poster Artist" (TIME "The Last Movie-Poster Artist" - Photo Essays)