Travelling Man - British film & Tv exhibition

. Travelling Man
The comic book shop Travelling Man set a brief asking for illustration related to British film and television. This was a brief I was glad I ended up taking on, as I didnt initially sign up because of too much work over the summer, but it was definitely the right decision to try to tackle this. In relation to the work itself, I wanted to illustrate something that represents British creativity, but also would work in the context of being up in Travelling Man. Thinking about my work in context is something I’ve been consciously trying to bring into my practice, hopefully to make a more coherent body of work, rather than a directionless collection of stuff in my portfolio.
Kingsman: The Secret Service is a 2014 film based on a comic that was started in 2012 by Mark Millar. Mark Millar is someone who has been on my radar for a lot of years, having made a few of my favourite books such as Kick Ass, Superman: Red Son and Old Man Logan. Because he is British, he’s someone that I found to be a really exciting creator when I was young, as a large percentage of the industry are American, so he was one of the first creators I read that came from the same place I did.
I thought this brief was a good opportunity to reflect this appreciation of British creativity that has been a formative part of my own creative progress.

For this reason, I chose to make a graphically focused poster for Kingsman that focused on the British sensibilities of that book/film (rather than the comically insane violence that it's mostly remembered for). The Iine “manners maketh the man” is the underpinning of the Kingsman characters, as sort of James Bond inspired gentleman spies. (Who also kill people with guns hidden in umbrellas, but that’s less relevant to my point.)
I enjoyed working the fast turnaround on this brief, it gave me a lot to think about but also a limited time frame, which I found helped to cut out faffing about and focus more on the ideas I wanted to get across.