Drew Struzan

At 77 years old, Drew Struzan physical status not available right now. We will update Drew Struzan's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Drew Struzan (born March 18, 1947) is an American artist known for his more than 150 movie posters, which include The Shawshank Redemption, as well as films in the Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, and Star Wars film series.

He has also painted album covers, collectibles, and book covers.

Early life

Struzan was born on March 18, 1947 in Oregon City, Oregon. In 1965, at age 18, he enrolled at the Art Center College of Design, then in West Los Angeles.

Personal life

Working from a backyard studio, Struzan lives in California with his wife, Dylan. He has a son named Christian and since retiring from full-time work in 2008 spends much of his time caring for his grandchildren.

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Career

Struzan was questioned about his interests and told him he had the opportunity to choose either fine art or illustration. Struzan told Struzan that as a fine artist, he could paint whatever he wanted but as an illustrator, he could paint for money. Struzan chose to be an illustrator, saying, "I have to eat." He married and became a father in his first year. Struzan gained a degree in art by selling his artwork and receiving small commissions. He enrolled in five years, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction. After the campus moved to Pasadena, California, to teach for a short time, he completed two years of graduate studies and then returned to the school in later years.

Struzan has written a book about his time in life, "I was poor and hungry, and illustration was the fastest way to a slice of bread relative to a gallery display. I had no interest in children. With pencils, I drew on toilet paper – the only paper around. Probably the reason why I love drawing so much today is because it was just what I had at the time."

Struzan stayed in Los Angeles after graduating from college, and a trip to an employment company led him to a career as a staff artist for Pacific Eye & Ear, a design studio. He began designing album covers under Ernie Cefalu's direction, relishing the 12x12" size that the record packaging gave him. He'll produce album cover art for a long line of musicians, including Tony Orlando and Dawn, Bee Gees, Roy Orbison, Black Sabbath, Glenn Miller, Iron Butterfly, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Liberace over the next five years. On the front and back cover of his album Toledo Window Box, he also illustrated George Carlin's t-shirt.

Among these, Struzan illustrated the album cover artwork for Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare, which Rolling Stone will select one of the Top 100 Album Covers Of All Time. Despite the burgeoning demand for his services, Struzan was still only earning $150 to $250 per album.

Struzan formed Pencil Pushers, a small business that would last eight years, along with a friend with a background in film. It was during this period that he perfected his one-sheet style and first became an airbrush expert, who would later distinguish him as a master of the art. In 1975, his first film poster works appeared, but Struzan did most of the B-movies, such as Empire of the Ants, Food of the Gods, and Squirm. Although his talent slowly increased in demand, it was his job on a large science-fiction film that would truly establish Struzan and his career in the public eye.

Charles White III, a fellow artist who is best known for his own airbrush prowess, had been hired by David Weitzner, Vice President of advertising at 20th Century Fox, to create a poster for the 1978 re-release of Star Wars by 1980. Struzan was contacted by white, who was uneasy with portraiture, and the couple needed his assistance on the project. Struzan drew the human figures in oil paints and Whites concentrated on the ships, Darth Vader, C-3PO, and all of the poster art's mechanical details.

The unusual poster style, popularly referred to as the "Circus" poster, depicts what appears to be a torn printed bill on a plywood construction site wall. Struzan says, "It was necessity that invented it." "They discovered that there wasn't enough space for typography and the billing block," the designer had left in the layout. What can we do to make more space on a poster that has already been printed? Let's pretend it's posted so they can print the word below the actual poster. To make it bigger and deeper, we painted Obi Wan down the side and stuff across the bottom.

Struzan produced poster art for such films as Blade Runner, The Thing, The Cannonball Run, the Police Academy series, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, and the Last Crusade, E.T. The Extraordinary, The Muppet Film, First Blood, Risky Company, Washington, D.C. Cab, Stroker Ace, An American Tail, and The Goonies are among the extras included in the Extra-Terrestrial. Struzan was releasing about ten poster designs a year by the 1980s.

Struzan continued his involvement with Lucas by concering the original Industrial Light & Magic logo and producing the associated one-sheet artwork for both the continuing Star Wars saga and the Indiana Jones series of films. Struzan's drawings became, in the public eye, the series's iconic visual representations. As such, he was also looking for new artwork for re-releases and reissues of video and DVD, book covers, theme-park rides, and video game titles for those brands.

Struzan was influenced by the decline of traditionally illustrated poster art in the 1990s, with the emergence of computers and digital manipulation of images used to create poster art. While creating artwork for such 1990s and 2000s films as Hook, Hellboy, and Harry Potter's Stone's American poster, he began to look at other markets for his art, including comic books, limited-edition art, and the collectible market. As a result, his work has appeared on such diverse items as Franklin Mint collectible plates, a twelve-piece set devoted to Princess Diana, the 1996 cover for Parker Brothers board game Clue, and more than 30 US postage stamps, including the 2004 John Wayne stamp and the 2007 James Stewart stamp.

In an e-mail exchange, Struzan once lamented about the demise of traditional art.

Struzan's work was seen in Japan throughout a series of one-man exhibitions, which included his one-sheet film of Lucas and Spielberg films in a lucrative limited-edition program from 1995 to 1997.

Struzan had over 65 works of his art on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1999.

George Lucas argued that Struzan's poster was the only art the foreign distributors could use, and that other than the text, it could not be changed in any way.

Struzan's official poster for the 80th Academy Awards was produced in 2008 by Struzan in collaboration with his art director son, Christian.

Struzan resigned on September 3, 2008 after finishing the extensive artwork required for Indiana Jones' campaign and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Struzan (in collaboration with Jim Sanders of Reel Ideas) produced a DVD titled Conception and Creation of the Hellboy Movie Poster Art in 2009, as a step-by-step record of his artistic process, techniques, and industrial experience. The DVD, shot in his studio, is supposed to give an over-the-shoulder look at the research and techniques that go into Struzan's posters.

Drew Struzan: An Artist's Vision at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, California, featured selected works of the artist's for the first public display in ten years.

In September 2009 Struzan released an image for publication in Mattel's Barbie's Kurv magazine in honor of the doll's 50th anniversary year.

Drew: The Man Behind The Poster, directed by Erik Sharkey, looks at Struzan's life and work as well as interviews with filmmakers and actors involved in films for which Struzan has produced poster work, including Frank Darabont, Harrison Ford, George Lucas, Michael J. Fox, Steve Guttenberg, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Spielberg, and Thomas Jane. Award-winning composer Ryan Shore scored the film.

Struzan came out of retirement to create posters for the 2015 film Batmankid Begins: The Wish Heard Around The World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Robert Townson, Varèse Sarabande, and the Golden State Pops Orchestra produced the tribute to Drew Struzan's birthday, which included an introduction to his artwork in addition to the live orchestral performance of related film music. As guest conductors, composers Thomas Newman, John Debney, Brian Tyler, Marco Beltrami, Robert Folk, and Michael Kosarin appeared on the program.

The Hidden World Struzan came out of retirement to produce three separate posters for the How To Train Your Dragon film trilogy in January 2019. Struzan did an exclusive Comic-Con poster for the launch of How to Train Your Dragon 2 in 2013.

Struzan illustrated the book A Bloody Business ISBN 978-17857702 about proscription and organized crime, which was written by his wife Dylan Struzan in 2019.

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Awards

• 2002 Saturn Award
• 2010 Inkpot Award
• 2014 Saul Bass Award
• 2015 Art Center College of Design Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2016 Sergio Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS)
• 2020 Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame