Monthly Archives: November 2009

Yet another school assignment. Though I must admit, this was a pretty cool project. We were required to recreate a dvd cover for a movie of our choice, I decided to pick a movie that has always stood out in my top favourites, Slacker. If you have not seen Slacker, I urge you to rent it next time you’re at blockbuster or wherever it is you rent your movies. Here’s a description of this cult classic from Wikipedia:

Slacker is a uniquely-structured and seemingly plotless film, following a single day in the life of an ensemble of mostly twenty-something bohemians and misfits in Austin, Texas. The film follows various characters and scenes, never staying with one character or conversation for more than a few minutes before picking up someone else in the scene and following them. The characters include Linklater as a miscreant who just steps off a bus, a UFO buff who insists the U.S. has been on the moon since the 1950s, a JFK conspiracy theorist, an elderly anarchist who befriends a man trying to burglarize his house, a serial television set collector and a woman trying to sell a Madonna pap smear.

I decided to use Linklater’s original vision and focus on his unique method of storytelling, portraying each story symbolically as panels of a building’s facade. I situated two non-descript characters seemingly talking to one another on the sidewalk. That is the essence of this movie, using conversation as the main vehicle that drives the story forward. This illustration was done using my usual method, drawing in pencil and ink and scanning into Photoshop and working with it digitally. Paper textures were added to give the image a crafty look and help accentuate the movie’s DIY roots. For a film with a budget of only $23,000 Linklater created a cult masterpiece that grossed over $1 Million in the end.

I also recommend watching Linklater’s other films, notably Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly, Dazed and Confused, and Me and Orson Welles which was just recently released!