I redesigned the movie poster and digital marketing assets for the 2021 Ridley Scott film, "The Last Duel", a #MeToo retelling of the last duel that ever took place in medieval France, and the rape that caused it. The movie presents the events leading up to the duel from 3 perspectives: the husband, the rapist, and the victim. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck worked together with Nicole Holofcener to write a script that highlights the struggle of a woman fighting to prove her innocence and seek justice in a time when women were treated as property. While the original movie poster and branding was already quite good, I endeavored to create a rebrand that put more focus on the feminist struggle than the brutal combat that Ridley Scott is known for as a director.

There are several obvious and subtle metaphors present in the film: a white horse representing a pure and courageous woman, a lily on red representing her dashing yet abusive husband, and a snake representing her rapist. I extrapolated my own metaphor from these elements: a white horse struggling to escape from snakes as they threaten to strangle her. 

My illustrations were hand drawn in pen and ink to pay homage to medieval combat manuals. I added sword tips to the type logo to give it a knightly feel. The main horse drawing lacks eyes or any unique features so it can represent Margueritte, the rape victim featured in the movie, but also any women who has been the victim of rape. The whole illustration sits on a diagonally divided field of color such that the whole poster can be interpreted as a coat of arms.

I struggled with the multimedia assets. When I revisit this project later, these will likely be the first things to change. I plan to use the snakes more in the smaller assets when I do come back to it.

Because I wasn't able to incorporate lilies much in the poster, I started off my animation with one. I made references to heraldry design in my credit layouts. I animated the illustrated elements at 12fps to give the feel of a story book that has escaped its pages, while heraldry elements are animated at 24fps so they can flow like banners in the wind.

Logotype design was difficult for this project because Blackletter type feels too old for a Me Too story, while serif type feels too new for a medieval setting. I threw everything at the wall to see what would stick, until I eventually arrived at my solution of putting sword tips on a serif typeface.

I illustrated the poster's elements with dip pens and homemade ink made from walnuts and cloves before I digitized them in Photoshop. Color was an issue for me, and I'll likely revisit it later.

Personally, I find it difficult to wrap my head around motion when I'm looking at traditional storyboard frames, so I drew and animated mine in Procreate. Not all of my initial storyboards made it to the final animation, but I added a lot more heraldry reference as I animated in AfterEffects.