THE ART OF MATT FERGUSON

The artist discusses his career journey and shares his creative process for illustrating movie posters with James Clarke

- James Clarke

Rich in heritage, illustrated movie posters have been enjoying a resurgence and renewal in recent years. A leading exponent of this renaissance is Matt Ferguson. Over the past decade and a half, Matt’s work has played its part in reinvigorating the poster-art tradition for science fiction, fantasy and horror movies - both new titles and anniversary rereleases.

Matt, how did your fascination with visual art and design evolve?

As a teenager, I got heavily into video games and taught myself Photoshop and a bit of 3D so that I could start editing and adding to video games, like Quake. That almost turned into a career when I got a job offer from a games studio when I was 17. I did that on and off and I got some credits on a few games; including a Star Wars game. I then decided to go to university, and I did a film degree. Film was a big passion in my life and it was my girlfriend - she's now my wife - who said to me that, "You can combine illustration and film." This was around 2009 or 2010, and back then there was this undercurrent of fan art and alternative art coming up with artists like Olly Moss.

I saw his work and thought, “Yeah, I want to do that.”

So, I did that and then, very quickly, in 2010 or 2011, I did an Avengers piece and that got noticed online and led to my first actual job doing this kind of work for Marvel. My first real job doing film art was for The Avengers.

What's your experience of having established yourself during the illustrated poster renaissance of a decade or so ago?

There's been a pushback against the rise of photo manipulation in the 1990s. It can be a great tool, but if done in a lazy way, or in a quick way, you can get boring results. There were a lot of what I would call boring movie posters being produced that would be just a photo of an actor.