A huge thanks to our own Michael Rot for forcing me to not get anything else done today but browse through the pages and pages and pages of amazingly awesome fan artwork of fake Criterion release cover art over at “The Auteurs” web site forum.
I know this isn’t really anything new and that these types of things are all over the internet in various forums and if you do a Google search, you’re likely to find hundreds more. But these are actually on the Criterion website which means the artists are probably a little bit more hard core in their fandom. And it also makes it easier to browse through them much more quickly.
Now usually when looking at fan art you get a bunch of kids who think they know how to work Photoshop and you’ll stumble across one or two really good images as you browse; but most of them are usually pretty shoddy. I was amazed to find over at this site that 99% of these things are genuinely fantastic and Criterion needs to start looking at hiring some new hands just from the fans on their own forums.
What makes these interesting is not only the quality of the artwork, but also the diversity of titles. It can be frustrating to look at some of these and scratch our heads as to why these aren’t already a Criterion release. While some of the other more baffling titles (Transformers, Norbit, Howard the Duck, etc.) are simply just amusing (but still well done!). Sure there are a couple of clunkers in this collection and hell, even a few that are already Criterion releases; but for the most part these are fairly high quality and imaginative covers.
I’ve stuck a couple I really like (so hard to choose!) underneath the seats but for a much easier browsing experience, we’ve put together several pages of compiled imagery right here at RowThree. So while you should definitely head over to their site to give props to the original artists, here is an easy way to look at all (actually it’s only about a third of them so far) of these titles without having to browse through all of the fan commentary and bunk image links. Have fun. Which one is your favorite?
CRITERION FAN ART PAGE 1
CRITERION FAN ART PAGE 2
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