Sartorially Bond: An Interview with Tom Ralston
Tom Ralston is a UK born illustrator and graphic artist. Based in Canada, he has honed his design skills and techniques while developing his talent for clients under his own design studio, Studio Ralston. Recently, he has delved into the world of illustration of pop culture where he has explored properties such as Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and The Planet of the Apes. A rising talent in the Alternative Movie Poster world, we’re just happy to feature him before he becomes too famous.
What got you into illustration?
Like so many other illustrators, much of it is nostalgia for things. The first time I saw Alien (1978), I was way too young, and it made such a strong impression on me. Not just terrifying me, but just those incredible visuals. I'd never seen anything remotely like that. But I also think about the Don Bluth movies a lot, like An American Tail (1986) and Secret of NIMH (1982). Those made such a deep impression on me as well, both the animation and the storytelling. For me, having these objects around, they transport me back there. Creating art and posters does the same. Then there’s art that serves a different function. I have a few Kilian Eng prints, and they take me off somewhere else, you know? They're so detailed that they transport me into the future... or my imagination, as opposed to the past.
Your design studio, which crafts brand identities for clients, is so much different than the style of your illustrations. How does one influence or help the other?
Designing logos and brands for clients means following fairly rigid processes. While it can be very creative, it’s also very strategic and there are goals and compromises that have to be met. With Illustration I can be more free-flowing. These days, I try to be a bit more disciplined, but historically, the way I've worked is that when I stumble across a great movie poster, I suddenly feel compelled to try and mimic that artist’s style, or at least explore it. I could go through my portfolio and say “This is inspired by this”. However, over the last year I've really tried to just focus on my own concepts and develop my own style. I've learned by passionately exploring different styles over the years. These days I'm taking that kind of learning, but trying to find my own style and navigate that originality, and I think that's what has been quite exciting for me this year. Producing pieces where each time I finish, I feel like I'm heading in a direction where perhaps it's closer to my own style, which is a great feeling when it comes together.
Do you find your personal illustrations allow you to play around with design that might not be possible in a client-based relationship?
100%. I’ve been designing logos for the last 10 years and my illustration has taken a back-seat to that. What’s interesting is, as a kid, all I ever thought of doing was making film related art posters. I did portraits of musicians and actors that I adored, and at some point I lost that desire. After Art College and University I did a bunch of random temporary jobs and I found myself thinking, “What am I going to do?!” So my graphic design career came out of a pragmatic decision to do something creative. What's interesting about having gone through 10 years of design, is how fundamental those design principles are in creating a poster. Whether it’s the typography or the composition, and the Gestalt principles of how things are situated and when to utilise scale or repeat patterns, negative space, grid systems etc. — all of that plays a pivotal role in a good poster. So it’s been a weird path to return to illustration and designing movie posters, but in hindsight the journey has been beneficial.
Your illustrations range from a variety of properties rather than one topic or genre, what inspires you to tackle a property?
I always find it fascinating looking back at posters, say from the ‘70s, whether it’s done by the studios themselves or international alternative posters, and seeing dozens of different artists tackle a certain film. It's interesting to see over time which ones stand out from the rest. Sometimes it’s an obscure Polish poster that becomes popular amongst those that appreciate these things. The way in which I tend to pick properties, I feel like I'm kind of playing catch-up. Again, going back to the idea of nostalgia, there's stuff that I watched as a kid that never left me, and the marks are indelible. I love returning to those films and rewatching them from a different perspective, and trying to figure out the best way to succinctly put all that information into a compelling poster. It’s a reimagining. Sometimes it completely ruins the film-watching experience, especially if you're watching with a partner who's telling you to stop pausing the movie because you’re continually taking screenshots! But I digress. Take something like Serpico (1973). I don't know how many times I've seen that movie, but it never loses its shine, as far as I'm concerned. I have a hard time not doing yet another Serpico poster every time I sit down to draw. The ‘70s were full of movies I really adore, and sometimes I have to force myself to do something that might be a little more modern, that might get shared amongst people, as opposed to being put away in a dusty vault.
What do you look for when starting a piece? Is it the subject matter, or is there an iconographic moment you want to depict in your style?
If you take a film like Papillon (1973), to me it feels like a real epic, and the way it’s put together it really feels like a long journey. You literally watch the characters age, and there's something about it that makes you really feel that passage of time, whereas Serpico has a little bit of that, but really, it's all about the intensity of character. So with my Serpico poster, I really wanted to feel like you are looking in the eyes of Frank Serpico; it's all about his integrity. Whereas I wanted to try to squeeze everything that felt grandiose and epic into my Papillon poster, and just wrung that dry. Squeezing too much in can be a dangerous thing with a poster, because much like logo design, you want to distill ideas down to its simplest form, and I think the best posters do that, but you also want to do some storytelling, and add in some mystery and intrigue.
It's interesting, because with different artists, like Tyler Stout for example, they've come to us and talked about how they start their posters, especially when there’s so much stuff going, and he essentially said “Well, I start with different elements, put them together, and you know, I move them around. And once I do that, I kind of fit it almost like a puzzle.” Right?
Yeah, totally. And to be perfectly honest, the best posters I think that I’ve done are the ones where I had a strong concept to start with, and I knew almost what it was going to look like from the beginning. But so often, especially if it's a self initiated project, I just want to draw a specific image, or an actor because their portrayal is so captivating, and then I would build around it or feel my way through, designing it instinctively as I go. Sometimes that can be really magical because you’re more inclined to make accidents and do things unintentionally, and it's often those kinds of mistakes and happy accidents that create a striking composition. But I think a lot of the poster designers I really admire are the ones where you're struck immediately by the overall concept and composition. Other times it's a really great metaphor for a film that you love, or it's something that just intrigues you to see the film. I recall years ago I was in the cinema and was late and missed the showing of the film I had wanted to see, and I saw a poster for a film I had never heard of called Napoleon Dynamite (2004). I remember seeing the poster, and to be perfectly honest, I don't remember exactly what it was, but I think it's a lot of hand-drawn elements. I remember just seeing that and thinking that I just had to go see whatever this was. That combined with not knowing anything about the movie itself made for a glorious cinematic experience.
James Bond seems to be a frequent character you tackle. What is it about that property that makes you want to revisit it?
I have always loved the Bond franchise, but it's not one of those franchises I’m obsessive about. You were asking what I look for when I start a piece… another thing that I find when approaching film posters is that I can find someone else’s enthusiasm for a property as a starting point because it's so infectious when someone else is obsessed with something. With the Bond illustrations, it actually came from hanging out with my friend Lee, who runs an Instagram page called SartorialBond, where he dissects Daniel Craig’s outfits, the suits, watches, glasses, and shares what they are and who designed them and where you can purchase them. So he has that sort of contagious enthusiasm, and whenever we get together, we spend hours talking about all things Bond. So at the start of this year, I was actually trying to, again, explore different styles, and was very drawn to the 1960s bubble and streak style of illustration. It’s a loose painterly and illustrative effect that is fairly impressionistic. I wanted to explore a property that fit with that style and era, and Bond immediately came to mind. I started illustrating a bunch of James Bonds in that style, and that had two weird knock-on effects. First of all, I really started to kind of enjoy that style, and it was the first time in a long time where I was exploring a technique that was new, but it felt really right. Even though it was borrowed from this bygone period, it felt fresh to me at least. The second thing that happened was that people started sharing those Bond images, and it led to me getting more work, which was fantastic. People started reaching out and saying “Hey, could you do me a commission?” For me, it's been the kind of year that was unexpected and unplanned, but it's such a great property to work with.
What is your favourite Bond Movie?
Well, it's not necessarily my favorite, but when I think back, GoldenEye (1995) stands out, as I was just the right age to be able to go to the cinema and be able to appreciate the tone of that film, which was before his movies that jumped the shark a little bit.
Or the jump the iceberg I guess, we should say.
Haha, exactly. And the invisible car! And also the GoldenEye game was huge for me. I remember trying to do the timed runs in the facility level, I was obsessed with that game. But in terms of the other movies, one thing that's brilliant about that whole franchise, is that if you look at any other film series that spawned sequels, there's usually a dud somewhere along the lines. And whilst there are definitely highs and lows in the Bond franchise, there isn't really a film that stands out to me that is appalling. I just love the formula that it created and the template that's in there from Dr. No (1962) onwards. But the one film that has a very special place in my heart is On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) because I'm probably a bit of a romantic, and I appreciate how James Bond was humanized with the love story. That ending breaks me every time.
I also love how your Bond pieces also range from portrait to action pose to poster. How do you go about choosing that?
It really varies - I don’t plan too much. If it is a portrait more often than not, I've seen it and felt like I had to draw it. And when I am really compelled to draw in that way, then there's no stopping me. Whereas if it's something that's perhaps a little more detailed, then chances are I may have done some sketches before diving in. But so much of the imagery surrounding Bond is so iconic. If you just take the publicity poses of the Bonds outside of the film itself, the images used on the posters, for example, you know that those are always so well orchestrated and almost choreographed in a Bond ‘style’, and they just lend so well to being drawn. That's why a lot of them have become so iconic, because, especially for the Sean Connery era, there are few photographs from them. They weren't doing huge press junkets, so there are several images from a film that become completely iconic. That's why I think a lot of illustrators are drawn to them, and you can kind of reinterpret it in your own style.
Do you find that gives you more freedom in terms of that art direction or style? Because you can maybe change a post based on what you know might or might not be there?
Yeah, absolutely. What you don't really want to have is to spend a lot of time on a portrait or poster and share it with the world, only to see fellow artists share the exact same reference image and blow yours out of the water! So choosing the right references is key, but I will sometimes splice things together. I did a recent set of portraits for SartorialBond, as a giveaway collaboration, and I wanted all of them to be in tuxedos. Finding the right kind of portrait style in a tuxedo wasn't always the case. So there's some image slicing that goes on. But sometimes it's more about trying to create a mood and tone, which can be more important than the right look on the right pose.
Now, about that portrait series, do you find that, for example, a portrait of Daniel Craig seems to be more “Cold Steel,” whereas you have more of a suaveness in a George Lazenby, or Timothy Dalton? How did you know how to design all those particular portraits? Why did you choose them to be in tuxes?
So with that series, I knew from the get-go that the primary format that they would be seen was on Instagram, so I wanted to fill a square image. It was also designed around No Time To Die (2021) coming out, which is now obviously being pushed back, but we wanted to release it as a bit of a farewell to Daniel Craig, but also capturing the rest of the Bond characters too. I wanted to find a format where it was square, but they're all unified in some way. So I took the SartorialBond color palette, the blue and gold, and I knew I wanted them looking directly at the viewer in a clean tuxe in that color palette. If you take the Roger Moore one, for example, it's exactly as you said, it's the steely stare that I wanted them all to have. All of those guys are so interesting to draw. I found Daniel Craig to be the most intriguing to draw, but I had to redraw him a couple of times to even get close to a decent likeness.
I feel like No Time to Die is your first full poster for that particular property. Take us through the design, and why you choose to start with this one? Was it hard to depict certain scenes or elements because you haven't seen the movie? What element did you start with first?
I was watching the No Time to Die trailer, and it was the first trailer in quite a long time where it just knocked my socks off. I haven't been excited to see a film in quite a while, and getting that feeling of adrenaline rush from a trailer really inspired me to embark on that poster. It's an experiment creating a poster for a film I haven’t seen. What that trailer does so wonderfully is that it doesn’t give anything away, whilst showing you what felt like so much. It’s a brilliant expression of “Show, don’t tell.”
Do you find with a full poster that it’s easier to compose the final product around one element or creating each element separately and piecing them together almost like a puzzle, changing things as you go?
I do a little of both. A curious thing happened with the No Time to Die poster, as I found myself pondering “Wait a second, who is really the villain here?” I guess that’s the crux of the trailer - who's on Bond’s side. Rami Malek is the central “bad guy,” but there’s obviously more to it than that, and it’s interesting just observing what goes through your mind as you're putting together a poster for a film nobody has seen. But as opposed to the portraits, this one was all about composition. Looking back in hindsight, I probably could have stripped out a few elements, but alas, I just love doing portraits, so I had a hard time not adding in more faces. I think I tried to do something with this radial composition where things were growing out of the barrel. The analogy of it being like a puzzle is exactly right. It really was splicing elements together and moving them around. I must have done about 10-15 compositions, and to be quite honest, I don't even know if I'm happy with the final one. But it was the one that rose to the top. I like the idea. I think one of the things that I'm really pushing to get better at is the overall concept of the poster. If I can't nail a concept, then I have to try and really push the composition.
Aside from Bond would there be other parts of the property you would want to do? For example a series on the gadgets, cars, or Bond Girls?
I think if there was an angle back into Bond I wanted to explore, it would definitely be through the eyes of the villains. That's another interesting thing about the Bond formula as it were. The archetype of the villain that you might be seeing in the film, they're always so beautifully portrayed and in different, often wild and wacky ways, even variations on Blofeld. Maybe I’ll pair the villian with their ‘lair’ or henchmen, so you can have maybe the villain in the foreground and that kind of background unique to each character. Something like that would be fun.
Is there another franchise or series of films that you want to tackle the same way you’ve done with Bond?
I did a Star Wars (1977) poster recently, and that scratched that itch for now. I think I mentioned Alien and Aliens (1988), which were both such an enormous part of my childhood. I definitely would like to do something official for Disney or Star Wars. That would be huge for me. The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) would be big. I have a series of empty folders on my computer with film titles, and I'm running through them like a checklist, one by one designing posters for each film. At the moment, I'm working around client work, but I'm trying to do a personal poster exploration a week. Sometimes it's more, a lot of the time, it's less, but that's what I'm trying to tackle at the moment. With the recent passing of Sean Connery I felt compelled to do something, and having done so many Bond movies, I felt like I had to approach that in a different way. So I did a Robin and Marian (1976) poster, which is again, a movie that affected me very deeply as a kid. That’s another reason why I draw. A lot of the stuff I do is in memory or homage to the people who made the art I love, and it’s a great way of appreciating and reflecting upon those memories.
Check out our store on Friday June 4th, where you can purchase an open edition print of Tom Ralston’s James Bond. All proceeds raised will go towards printing our James Bond issue.
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