Clearly you can’t visit the sand planet of Arrakis and maybe you wouldn’t want to. It’s hot, it’s dry, and you can’t walk in a straight line without a sandworm coming and eating you up. What you can do though is bring Arrakis home with a brand new poster for Dune: Part One by artist Martin Ansin, and io9 is excited to exclusively debut it.
Ansin’s Dune: Part One is a 24 x 36 inch screenprint in an edition of 300 that goes on sale Friday at 1 p.m. ET at www.codacurates.com. It costs $65.
Also—if you happen to be in Las Vegas for DesignerCon this weekend, there’s a “sand” variant, available only at the convention. It’s a run of 150 copies and costs $85. Check it out.
Ansin is a mainstay in the pop culture art/alternative movie poster community. He was one of the first artists Mondo worked with going back over 15 years, making some of the hobby’s most collectible posters for films such as The Bride of Frankenstein and The Phantom of the Opera. In the years since, Ansin doesn’t release a lot of work but when he does, it’s a stunner. Some of our favorites are Scott Pilgrim, Thor, Looper, Man of Steel, and Ghost in the Shell.
But now, he’s tackled Dune: Part One, something several other artists have done in the past. io9 chatted with Ansin briefly over email about the poster and that’s where we started.
Germain Lussier, io9: Dune is a property many of your fellow artists have already tackled. How did that impact your design choices?
Martin Ansin: I think there’s always prior art when I get to do a poster. Most of the time we’re doing alternative views of classics that have original posters being permanent fixtures in culture, or join new titles that roll out with amazing visuals for a new audience. Taking all into account can be overwhelming. Personally I’ll just take a broad look at what’s out there and if there’s a very beaten path hopefully avoid it. I don’t think there’s a limit to how many cool versions can be made if the movie speaks to you in some way, and you think your vision needs to be out there.
io9: What are you primarily trying to convey with this piece?
Ansin: Dune is massive. Not just the amazing Dune and Dune: Part Two that we’re lucky to have, I mean it’s arguably the greatest novel in science fiction and it’s been huge for decades. The art style for this poster is mostly me taking Denis Villeneuve’s visuals and the cast in a weird trip back in time. I remember I was fascinated by the covers of old 1970s hard sci-fi novels, I would see them side by side in magazine racks near bus stops as a kid. Those were weird, abstract, psychedelic artifacts that maybe didn’t faithfully represent the contents of the book, but they threatened you with questions.
io9: The composition here, with the title down the left side, is very unique. Tell me about that decision and the choice of font.
Ansin: I think that came from an idea of Paul’s story, his origin, his visions and destiny all happening on different levels and converging on Dune. I thought the title could be the portal into that overlap, and the ground on where he ultimately stands on. The title font needed a certain weight to throw stuff into, so I had to switch from the original movie logo.
io9: As always, your likenesses are excellent. Did any of the actors pose any problems?
Ansin: Not at all! They were super gracious with their time and we only got minimal requests. It’s the most important thing for me to get not just the actors “right” but also some of the essence of their character on the poster, so it’s a huge pleasure to hear that the work cleared that bar.
io9: Unlike David Lynch, Denis Villeneuve turned Dune into two films. As this poster is clearly for the first film, have you at all thought about what a poster for Part Two would be?
Ansin: I certainly didn’t while I designed this one! I can’t wait to give it a shot, but honestly starting it is the toughest part—there’s so much that you have to leave out.
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