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Tyler Stout: I've spent a good portion of my life watching films. College was no exception. Even in high school me and my friend would rent ten movies for ten bucks and watch them all in one sitting; that was our idea of an awesome weekend. Needless to say I didn't have a girlfriend until I was well into my 20s.

I started out doing posters for music venues while I was in college. Every venue needs 11x17 flyers to advertise upcoming shows, so I started doing those. Eventually I was asked to contribute to the Alamo Drafthouse cinema in Austin, Texas, basically to advertise upcoming showings of older classic movies like The Thing or The Warriors. I got asked to do one and people responded well, so they asked me to do more and it went from there.

Yeah, I came late to 1980s movies; my parents were pretty strict so I missed most of them until I was in my late teens, in the 90s. I couldn't watch anything R-rated, and the best 80s movies were R-rated. Practical special effects, total commitment to stories (no matter how unlikely), iconic actors – there just won't be another decade in movies like the 80s. Take 1984, for example: Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Spinal Tap, Terminator, Red Dawn, Nightmare On Elm Street. All in one year. That's nuts.
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I have a ton I'd like to do. Maybe something different like Rambo or something. Of course the holy grail would be Escape From New York. That's my all-time 'want to do' poster.

I'm a big Alan Moore fan, but who isn't? I'm usually more inspired by the art than the story, so the perfect storm for me are the ones that have both. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be one of those, with Moore writing and Kevin O'Neill illustrating. I like a lot of Geof Darrow's work, a lot of Frank Miller's stuff, Mike Mignola (Hellboy). At the moment I'm reading the Fear Agent series. The first few are illustrated by Tony Moore, who I really like, but after he left they found some other pretty outstanding artists.


I don't think so, I think it just goes through phases. Right now it's very dependent on movie stars' faces, but eventually I think it'll go back towards conceptual posters, or fine art illustrated posters – anything that grabs people's attention by being different. I think the reason I've had some success in my poster work is because people are interested in hand-illustrated movie posters.
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