Metal for Veterans

 

This is a poster I put together for a group of metal bands playing a benefit show in Boise, ID next weekend. My brother is in the band RipshaW and their album is now available. Give a listen here.

On the process of making this: The skull image was sketched out in pencil using reference from GoMedia. I inked it with a Sumi brush, using a very wet brush for a slightly sloppy flowing effect. Then some dry brush for some details and texture and then some layers of grays for more texture and tone. Then I used a flag image and messed with the layer options in Photoshop until it looked 'right'.

I thought the dogtags would be a nice way to display the band names. I started with low res versions of the band names and a dogtag image from Google images. In Photoshop I created a brushed steel pattern with the dogtag outline and then used some layer options on the band names to give them a 'stamped' look. Once I had the skull and dogtag elements, I brought them into Illustrator and added the requested logos and text. The font was free from dafont.com. Spent some time nudging and tweaking and that's about it.