Making of the "Journey to the West" Poster

As an assignment for a class I was to design a poster for a theater. The subject was up to me, so I picked Journey to the West since it is one of my favorite stories.

So the first thing I did was thumb out some ideas and then pick one to go with for the final Poster.
Sketches:

So i picked the one with the Monkey Kings Arm coming down into the scene holding the scrolls. this kept most of the story a mystery, but intrigue the audience enough to want to know more. So i blow this thumbnail up and then traced it onto a new piece of paper. Then i went in and strengthen the composition. Once that was done I painted a Value study of it to get it to the right look. If it worked as a black and white then it would work in color.

Then from there i painted it.

I wanted the whole feel to be Chinese inspired, have a vague Chinese brush paint feel to it. I had to make sure that the scrolls read as rolled up sheet of paper and Instead of just painting the lines in I got a photograph of rolled up paper and Image Manipulated it to work in the illustration. This turned out fairly well.