Akiko Stehrenberger is a highly awarded and experienced film poster artist who creates original film poster artwork for major motion pictures, TV series, and more. We are so thrilled to bring her work on chain as she helps guide the evolution of movie and TV show fandom in web3.
Here is a peek into the process behind her bright, contemporary, and one of a kind Ace Ventura: Pet Detective design as well as some examples of her previous work for films like Dune, A Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and more.
What are the steps of your process for creating digital artwork?
I treat my digital painting the same way I’d do it in real life. Obviously photoshop speeds up editing tremendously, but I use the same painting technique I learned back in art school: painting dark to light. I start with a line drawing and fill it with flat color and then slowly build up my values and dimensions, painting mid tones, then highlights and lowlights. But before I get started, my concept is the most important thing to me.
What does the Magritte homage/parody mean to you? How did you come to it? What's its significance in the context of Ace Ventura and our closed beta drop?
When coming up with concepts for this project, I thought about how iconic the Ace Ventura character is, even without seeing Jim Carrey’s face. With just his hair and clothing, he’s still easily recognizable and I wanted to take advantage of this. Many of my ideas didn’t show his face at all and a Magritte parody came to mind as one of the ways to achieve this. In addition, I felt this set up could give us an opportunity to hint at the film’s location in Miami, with a bright teal sky and palm trees on his shirt. I always jump at the chance of switching up my illustration style, so trying to mimic Magritte’s paintings was fun!
What was your favorite part of this project?
The most fun with any project is coming up with the concept and then figuring out the painting style that drives the specific idea home. I wanted to put a new spin on Ace Ventura since everyone already knows him. Combining art history with this film felt so silly but yet right at the same time.
What was the most challenging part of this project?
Coming up with a concept that could be animated, definitely forced me to approach this differently. It seemed like an obvious choice to have the macaw fly from one side of the composition to the other…but then again, what makes a Magritte parody piece, is not seeing the face at all. So with this, I decided the bird can still flap its wings, but should hover in the area that keeps Ace’s face mostly obscured. I still ended up painting Jim Carrey’s face after all, but only so you get tiny glimpses of part of him during the animation.
Find more of Akiko's posters below and on her website.
We feel so honored to work with Akiko on her first digital collectible and our first drop! The reception to her work has been outstanding.
We love you Akiko!
Team JUKE
