Akira Kurosawa's RAN has been a favourite of mine since it floored me when I first saw it as a teenager. But it was when the 4K remaster of the Japanese epic was released last year that I decided to pay homage to it by creating a series of images inspired by it.
The colours and the designs (particularly the costume design) are mind-blowing. But what I love the most from Kurosawa's films are his characters and the way he lets images tell movement using nature as a device... in this case, smoke.
The process of researching the posters included much more that just watching the film. For instance, Emi Wada was awarded an Oscar for her amazing costume design and I wanted to make sure, the prints reflected on her work as much as possible. Also, Kurosawa is a master of using every resource at hand to help tell the story, like wind in this particular story. And finally it is widely known that RAN is an adaptation of King Lear; but it is also based on a real feudal lord, so I decided to dig a bit into the real story in which the movie is based.
