Double Vison For Downton Abbey Project

It's not often an artist gets to draw two images simultaneously in one illustration. But Anton recently did just that for a project to promote costume drama Downton Abbey.

The images were to accompany the slogan 'Civility Is A Facade' for promotional posters, for the client Draft FCB, in Auckland.

‘The aim was to have the illustration show an obvious 'civil' image on first glance, but reveal the 'true' image when you studied it for longer,’ says Anton.  ‘By the time I was briefed, the team at FCB already had some good ideas about how to show the double image in one of the illustrations, but not the others.’  Together, they worked out a way to make the illustrations work, this turned out to be a more challenging part of the process then the creation of the final art itself. ‘The first illustration was the hardest, but the following ones were easier because we knew what they should look like in terms of style and we learned what tricks to use to create the double image,’ Anton says.

They needed a style that reflected the aristocratic, post-Edwardian English setting. ‘I was asked to create something quite detailed and rich-looking,’ he says. It was decided a muted, Art Nouveau-esque style would not only suit the illustrations, but its graphic and stylized quality would also lend itself to showing the double image.

‘Two images in one was challenging, but fun,’ Anton says. ‘The reward is seeing the posters around Auckland. One of them was blown up to 20 metres long! it's hanging on a high rise building across the road from TV3 headquarters.’