Wandavision completely captured my imagination and so I quickly set to work seeing what I could come up with.
My initial instinct is to always try to pin down the central conceit of whatever property I am approaching so with this Wanda poster I needed to communicate the level of her control on Westview in a visual sense. So the mechanics of the poster work as so; her status as a witch is sent up a bit by presenting her as the wicked witch, an iconic character the viewers can easily recognise and get a small laugh. This detail leads into her colouring which is green, the same as the wicked witch. Then I’ve portrayed her power and influence as these white radiating lines which double as a TV broadcast metaphor and contour lines from a map. So these two visual allusions speak to a) the nature of the show, this being the retro tv broadcast and b) the geographical boundary she is creating with her mind. The fact that the lines radiate from her pearl earring was another reference to the happy place she used to go to with her family when watching old US tv shows. The earring seemed to be a good visual shorthand for that era and allying it with the radiating lines seemed to anchor it as the source of her comfort.
With Vision not as active (or knowing) a protagonist within the drama as Wanda his poster needed some subtle visual method to show his situation. The puppet strings are evocative when noticed but they’re rendering leaves them as something you may notice as you look at the image, rather than jumping out at you like the rare sources of colour. The enduring moment of the series seems to be his line ‘What is grief, if not love persevering?’ so I used the infinity stone as a method of showing what powered his conception throughout the show. Unlike Wanda he’s rendered in black and white because he is trapped within the show and the other splash of colour, her lipstick on his cheek, acts as a slightly ambiguous signature of the creator.
I also created weekly pieces for each episode of ‘Falcon and The Winter Soldier‘.
