Once Upon a Time in the West is one of my favorite movies of all times. This idea of transfering the setting for the cool original poster (see below) to late feudal Japan is based on a conversation I had with Jim, a wanna-be Bengali. The samurai setting is a very interesting concept - considering the style in this Western film has many concepts popular in anime. In the original poster, the postures of the characters conveyed the moment of action after the stare-down between the bad guys and the hero - a very kinetic moment captured in a still. I wanted to have that same urgency in the new poster.

I started by sketching the samurai figures, keeping them similar to the original poster. Then took a few digital shots, cut out the background in Photoshop, and added shading to the characters, and a good textured background with the proper font for the title.

Final Poster (larger version)

Flat colors on figures

Sketch with textured background

Original Poster

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