“I do love a good joke and this is the best ever, a joke on the children.” -Conal Cochran
When it comes to TV in the fall, nothing says Halloween like viewing “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” The special, which has seen constant airing since its premiere in 1966 still holds the same magic for me as a 39 year old that it did back when I was 6, watching it on a slightly blurred television in my living room. Even with it’s current year round availability online, and super HD remastered Blu Ray, I always save it for the fall. In a way it helps to keep the special, special.
For years I have been wanting to do some form of artistic tribute to the show. Being a 3D artist and toy designer, the obvious choice was to do something sculptural.However, there are a lot of great sculptural tributes already, and I wanted to do something different. This is where the Halloween 3 theme came in.
Say what you will about the movie Halloween 3 but I personally really like it. In fact, I liked it before it got cool to like it. In that sense, I’m glad it is getting the recognition it deserves outside of just being “the Halloween movie everyone hates because Michael Meyers isn’t in it.” That said, love it or hate it, it’s poster is amazing –
Original Halloween 3 theatrical poster
The saturated red, the demon face, the children seen only in black outline. The poster just feels dangerous. You know immediately that this movie is NOT for kids. And while searching for an original on eBay (Which I did buy actually…) I got the idea. Why not mix the composition and colors of this poster with the kids from The Great Pumpkin.
The first step was to figure out what kids to silhouette. Since 80% of the group was just ghosts, I wasn’t left with too many places to go here. He have Lucy with her witch mask, some kid with that top-hat Mr. Hyde thing, and really that only left me with one other identifiable silhouette, the kid that is supposed to be maybe the ghost of Davy Crockett? Whatever. That kid will do.
The first thing I did was tell a buddy of mine who is a fantastic graphic designer about the idea. He thought it was great, so I grabbed my sketch book and did a rough “Does this work” drawing:
As goofy as it looks, to me, it worked. My buddy agreed and I got started. It was generally very straight forward. The color palate was simple enough, and I chose to draw everything in Photoshop instead of Illustrator so it kept a hint of that classic Schulz wiggle in the line work. The only real issue came with the floating head in the center of the poster. At first – as seen above – I was going to have that head be Charlie Brown in his ghost costume, but when I roughed it in it didn’t read right. Next I tried Linus, but again, it didn’t read. Then it occurred to me that one of the most iconic images in the film is snoopy’s outline rising up in front of the moon. Done.
Add the title, some borders, credits and presto, a finished piece!
As an artist, I feel like I am very seldom “happy” with my work. Typically I just see the “should have done” aspects, but this one I am sincerely very happy with. As such, when I posted it on Twitter, I got quite a few very kind comments, and a lot of likes and retweets! One of them however really stands out:
To get a comment like that is the greatest compliment of all!