Since its inception, critics have derisively labeled Apple’s iPad as a device suitable for consumption but not content creation. Early on, such criticisms were arguably well-founded. But over the years, app developers have continued to push the boundaries of what one can accomplish with an iPad. Further, the release of the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil essentially dispelled the tired notion that the iPad is only useful for watching movies and playing games.
Today, a wide assortment of media professionals – from musicians to video editors and of course illustrators – use Apple’s iPad to help them create and bring art into the world. Case in point: the poster design for Netflix’s hit-show “Stranger Things” was initially created on an iPad Pro.
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In an interview with Mashable, artist Kyle Lambert explained that the poster art for the nostalgic science fiction show began as sketches on his iPad Pro. Upon starting out, Lambert said that he was given a general sense of the overarching plot, a few still photos and a few rough cuts of some of the earlier episodes. With that information in tow, Lambert took out his iPad Pro and Apple Pencil and got to work.
“This was a very exciting project for me,” Lambert explained. “As an artist that trained with oil paints, I really enjoyed the challenge of reproducing this traditional painting style using digital tools.”
Here’s what one of the early sketches looked like according to Lambert.
“I used the iPad Pro to do the preliminary composition ideas and the sketch that became the final Stranger Things poster,” Lambert continued. “I chose to use the iPad Pro for the drawing stage of the poster because I find that I am able to sketch in a very natural way on the device using the Apple Pencil. The device in general is nice to hold for long periods of time, it is really portable and Procreate, the app that I used, has some really great Pencil brushes for drawing with.”
Of course, the final touchups to the poster involved Lambert exporting his sketches to Photoshop and then exporting them back to his iPad for further refining. As Lambert tells it, when you have a painting that has hundreds of layers, you still need to rely on a “ desktop grade application such as Photoshop to pull it off.” Still, the bulk of Lambert’s work appears to have been done on Apple’s trusty iPad Pro, a feat in and of itself given the echoes of naysayers who have long dismissed Apple’s tablet as a competent content creation device.
As a quick aside, if you haven’t yet watched Stranger Things, it’s well worth checking out. Some have dubbed it an “instant classic” and we’d be hard-pressed to disagree, especially if you grew up in the 80s or happen to be a fan of 80s movies like Stand by Me and E.T.
Lastly, here’s what the final poster art looked like.
