60′s Horror Poster Design

Rosemary’s Baby, Psycho, Peeping Tom – the 1960′s was a great decade for intelligent horror films. But it also had an enormous amount of less intelligent, low-budget B movies, like Zombie Cats! for example. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to recreate the style of a 60′s B movie poster in Photoshop.

Open a new Photoshop document 1600 x 2500 pixels.

Create a black rectangle in the centre, leaving more space at the bottom.

Rasterize the rectangle layer by right clicking on it, then use the Magic Wand tool to select the rectangle. Invert the selection.

Create a new layer then use the paint bucket tool to fill the selection with white.

You can delete the background layer now, so you are left with just the white border layer and the black rectangle.

Next draw a white rectangle to act as a border for the poster.

Double-click on the rectangle’s layer to bring up it’s Layer Style box.

Choose Stroke and set the size to 2px, and change the colour to black.

Change the layer’s blending mode to Multiply.

We now have a template for the poster, so we can now begin to add some images.

For the moon choose a red colour ‘ef490f’

Use the ellipse tool whilst holding Alt to draw the moon.

The graveyard stock can be downloaded here.

Open it in Photoshop, and use the Quick Selection tool to select the graveyard, then paste it into your document.

Position it below the moon, and resize it.

Increase the Brightness and Contrast.

Then go to Image>Adjustments>Posterize, and set the number of Levels to 25.

Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, and set it to 0.6 pixels.

Next we will add the zombie cat.

The cat stock can be downloaded here as a precut Psd file.

Place the cat into your poster and increase it’s size so it fills the background.

Increase its Brightness and Contrast.

And Posterize it as you did with the graveyard image.

Next use a soft eraser to tidy up the edges of the fur…

…And fully erase the tail.

Select the paintbrush tool and hold Alt to pick the brightest colour in the cats eye. Then with the brush’s Hardness at 0%, paint over the pupils.

Position the cat layer above the white border layer, and give it a layer mask.

With the layer mask selected, go to Image>Apply Image…

Choose your white border layer and tick the Invert box.

This will have masked out the areas of the cat that overlap the white border.

Keep the cat layer mask selected, and use a white brush to paint the front paws back in.

You can download a bat silhouette here.

Place a couple of bats above your moon layer, then rotate and resize them. Then change their blending modes to Multiply.

Create a new layer above your cat, and use the same red colour as before to paint the blood dripping from it’s mouth.

Next we will add some text to the poster.

Click on the Text icon and create a text box across the top of the poster.

Use Arial Black and type your cheesy tagline.

Then another text box in the lower left corner for the film title.

You can download the bloody font here, and use the same red colour as before.

And add another text box for the credits at the bottom.

Finally we will give the poster some creases.

Download the paper texture form here, and select an area to apply to your poster.

Take the contrast right up…

…Then invert the layer.

Change it’s blending mode to Screen and decrease its opacity to 50%.

And here’s the final poster design.