Jerilyn Lee | Akira Alternative Movie Poster 
One of the most beautiful thing about this poster is the attention to detail and the craftsmanship–and this all adds to the design's concept. Because Akira is such an achievement in animation and artistry, this poster really honors its legacy. As a design piece, it is visually striking and engaging. The message and themes of the film are apparent, even if the audience has not seen the film, and that is because of the successful composition, color palette, and concept.
Hello! My name is Jerilyn Lee. I am an Asian American illustrator and designer based in the Bay Area. My creative process is heavily based on narratives that stem from experiences from my life.

Akira is a Japanese animated film released in 1988. It is a very intense sci-fi story which utilizes extremely smooth animation, iconic world building, and a crazy detailed art style. I chose to create a poster for this movie because of how it has influenced my art making journey. Akira is extremely influential on a lot of animations and artists to this day despite it being released over thirty years ago.

I chose to focus my imagery on the power dynamics within the film by choosing one of the main characters who becomes corrupt with power, and the metal facility that contains the pure energy that he only gets a fraction of the power of. He sits on a throne featured in the film underneath the ball in a beam of eerie light. I used colors that allude to otherworldliness to portray the fears of such a power being introduced to society.

The original movie poster for Akira is very sophisticated and is designed very well. The only difference between my design and the original is that it focuses on a different character in the story and where they each draw their powers from. The main character from the official movie poster is symbolically placed with his bike, which represents his position as leader in his bike group. It also has a much lighter color palette and is extremely simple and pleasing to look at. My poster is very much the opposite of this, which actually functions quite nicely as a representation between the two character's relationship: rivals and friends.


Jerilyn's favorite movies–currently– are The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Spiderman into the Spider-verse, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Spirited Away.

You can view Jerilyn's work at jerilynlee.com and on Instagram, @jebnart
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