The new poster for Rogue Trooper, directed by Duncan Jones and designed by illustrator Paolo Rivera, embraces a 1970s and 1980s aesthetic. With a hand-painted finish, bold shapes, and muted colors, the image avoids modern floating-head collages. The result is a grainy, atmospheric poster, as if it had survived on the facade of a closed cinema for decades, capturing the pulp essence of the original 2000 AD comic.
Handcrafted technique vs. digital render 🎨
Rivera has used brushes and acrylics to create a grainy texture that contrasts with the polished look of computer-generated posters. The protagonist's lighting recalls 1980s science fiction novel covers, with sharp shadows and a gradient background that simulates the passage of time. The muted color palette, dominated by earth tones and desaturated blues, reinforces the feeling that the poster could have been printed in a workshop using analog techniques. There is no digital saturation or glow effects.
Less Photoshop and more brushstrokes, please 🖌️
This poster proves that you can still sell an action movie without placing the actor's face over a background of generic explosions. Studios think we need to see twelve smiling faces on the same poster to understand it's a movie. Rivera, instead, gives us a lone, dusty blue soldier. And it works. Perhaps next up is a trailer without voice-overs saying in a world... but let's not ask for miracles.