We are happy to debut for the first time, the original 1964 theatrical trailer for Yuki's first movie, A Kiss From Tokyo (double-click to see in full-screen!):
Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7 is now available for pre-order! You can order it two different ways:
THE BOOK: Includes movie posters, behind-the-scenes stories, promotional artwork, productions stills, and much more. 72 pages, softcover. Pre-ordered books will come signed by Kevin Dart and the author, Ada Cole.
COLLECTOR'S EDITION: Limited to 100 copies, this package includes the following:
- The book
- Numbered bookplate
- Limited edition plastic slipcase
- Set of 4 exclusive 9"x12" mini prints
Pre-orders will begin shipping JULY 6th!
Also new in the store today are these brand new Yuki 7 t-shirts featuring the French poster for A Kiss From Tokyo!
Stay tuned to our websites this week as we will continue to post more exciting news about Yuki 7!
One night in early January, as I was scrambling to finish all of the Yuki posters, I was talking to my friend Ada Cole about the book. She did the page layout for our first book and has always been a great friend of Fleet Street. Again wanting to offer her assistance, she mentioned that she would be willing to do page layout and even some writing for the new book. I immediately took her up on the offer, excited to see what she would come up with. Just a few days later she sent me some brilliant articles which included an interview with Kimiko Suzuki (the actress who plays Yuki 7) in the made-up fashion magazine Elan, and a story about Yuki’s meticulously crafted costumes for Danger is a Female. I was sold. Ada and I had some more conversations about how to break the book apart into articles that would tell a behind-the-scenes story in bits and pieces without explicitly spelling it out for the audience. We also delved into the character and motivations of all the big players in the film franchise’s history. As she sent me more articles, I felt like I was getting to know Yuki better and would make artwork specifically to go along with what she was writing. One example is this Sakura Swimwear ad which was inspired by Ada’s idea that Yuki’s costumes might have been mass produced and marketed worldwide after the success of the movies.
During the same time, I was still working with Stephane to finish up the trailer. I had re-thought a number of the rough scenes, fleshed out the characters some more, and was ready to start painting the final elements. The way our process worked, I would paint an entire scene in Photoshop, making sure to keep all the different elements like characters, props, and backgrounds on separate layers so that Stef could animate them in AfterFX. We were pretty familiar with the process, having worked together on two previous projects already. I kept things pretty flat and simple to leave room for Stephane to add as much dynamic lighting and effects to the scenes as he wanted.
Once I handed everything off to him, Stef would animate the elements and also add lights, film grain, depth-of-field, and other effects to bring the scene to life. It was an indescribable pleasure to work with such a phenomenal talent as Stephane, and to see the vibrancy he could add to every moment in the trailer.
We worked simultaneously with an amazing composer named Cyrille Marchesseau who created a score for the trailer based on the latest work that Stef sent him. It was a very international effort to complete the film, with me working in Los Angeles, Stephane in London, and Cyrille in Paris.
February 2009
As the trailer was coming together, I also finished all of the illustrations I had initially planned and proceeded to tackle the page layout. The most important thing to me was to create a nice flow throughout the book, so I grouped all of the artwork into chapters about each movie, presented in chronological order. I did hundreds of rough page mockups in Photoshop over the next month as I tried to establish a consistent look and feel from the beginning of the book to the end. This is a sample of some of the close-to-finished mockups I created for one of the opening page spreads:
Once I had an approved mockup for each page in the book, I handed them off to Ada along with all of the high-res artwork. When she started on the final page layouts in InDesign, we spent a lot of time on the first few pages nailing down the size, color, and spacing of the typefaces, as well as page margins. Once those guidelines were firmly in place we were able to plow through the rest of the book much more quickly. This is an example of a final spread layout:
March 2009
I went through a lot of weeks with very little sleep as we tried to get everything just right. Ada’s husband Dan was an enormous help in converting image files, adding page bleeds, and just being an all-around expert in computer graphics. After sending off the final PDF to the printer, it only took about a week and a half to get the digital proofs back, and it was clear that all of our hard work had paid off. We had only a few minor fixes to make, then I packed up all the proofs and mailed them back to Hong Kong. All that was left now was to wait for the finished books to arrive!
The thing I still can't get over when I look back and reflect on this whole process is how much my friends came through for me. No matter what I needed, whether it was a layout artist, a compositor, an author, or a translator, I always had a friend who was willing and able to do it at the drop of a hat. I can't thank everyone enough who helped make Yuki 7 come to life.
Come back next week on Tuesday, May 26th for the world premiere of the trailer for A Kiss From Tokyo and to get a first glimpse of the finished books! I will actually be seeing them for the first time on Tuesday as well, so we can find out the conclusion to this story together!
A few months ago I was asked to do a poster for the summer No Doubt tour. It was one of those dream freelance gigs that's almost TOO easy. They had come up with the theme A Clockwork Orange for their tour, and wanted the band portrayed in a 60's suspense-movie poster based on the song Spiderwebs. Here's what I came up with:
The band was really happy with the poster, and I couldn't have been more thrilled. They were so happy, actually, that Elizabeth and I got to go to their "Friends & Family" show in Vegas over the weekend, which was basically a dress rehearsal for a small audience the night before the real show. The costumes, the set, and the video displays were all gorgeous. Gwen even had three outfit changes throughout the concert. We got to watch the whole thing from the front row. It was a pretty memorable night. For all the doubters out there, the band is as good as they ever were. And for all the No-Doubters out there, you won't be disappointed when you see them!
I'm not entirely sure what their marketing plan for my poster is, but I found these pictures on the No Doubt forums (courtesy of kerli-fries and beacon-street.net) showing it printed on a cool-looking tote bag. I read that it was sold out even before The Sounds came on! I'm hoping they eventually stick it on some other merchandise too.
The whole process went so smoothly that I thought I'd share some of my early work on the poster. These are some of the rough comps I first sent off:
The first one was turned down because it made Gwen overshadow the other band members too much, the second one is the approved thumbnail, and the last is the approved color study. After that I just went to work painting the final poster. Here's a GIF animation showing my progress:
I want to give a big thank you to Jolie Clemens who did an amazing job coordinating everything, getting concepts approved, and hooking us up with the concert tickets! Go check out the band on tour, it's totally worth it!
Finally, a shout out to another super cool band and a really addictive website - Phoenix on YooouuuTuuube.
Around November last year I explored book design specifics with the printer. I created this mockup to give them a rough idea of what I wanted. At the time the book was square (9”x9”) and 60 pages. From early on, I had the idea to create a cover with the title on a “belly band”, or wrap-around paper slip. This idea stayed pretty much unchanged throughout the process.
As I completed more artwork and further fleshed out the story, I decided to increase the size to 9x12 to enhance the cinematic feeling evoked in the art. The outline evolved and the book grew to 72 pages. Once I was sure of those specs, I made the changes official with the printer and signed some additional papers. They sent me the first book dummy, which is a copy of the book made to spec, but without any printing.
The first dummy was the right size and had a nice cover stock. As expected, there were some issues to correct. The belly band wrapped around the entire cover instead of attaching to the inside flaps, and the text stock was too thin. The printer sent me more paper samples, and I found a nice, heavy matte stock that I liked. Once the corrections were made, I received the final approved dummy. Holding the dummy in my hands was great. It was as though what I envisioned was slowly becoming real.
December 2008
While working in London, I met an incredibly talented animator named Stephane Coedel. He had a brilliant sense of timing and attention to detail, and I hoped that we would have another chance to collaborate after that project wrapped up.
As I worked on book design and artwork, I began to plan out an animated trailer. I imagined just what Stephane could do with Yuki’s world, and the idea was so enticing, I gave him a call. Luckily, he was excited about the project and available to help me make a short animated trailer. It only made sense that the trailer would be for the first Yuki 7 movie, A Kiss From Tokyo, and I started immediately roughing out a small storyboard on paper:
I spent a day turning the storyboard thumbnails into these small black-and-white scenes:
I passed them along to Stef and he timed them out into a rough animatic with music. After seeing it all strung together, I went back to my storyboards and tightened everything up before moving onto final scenes.
You can see from these scenes that Yuki was still being called Yuriko. Yuki went through a variety of names before she finally became Yuki 7, including Yuriko, Agent Y, and Ishime 6. I also hadn’t yet settled on a name for the movie at the time I drew those boards, so I just grabbed a temporary title for placement from one of my old posters, Secret Agent Girls of Danger Cove. It’s interesting and rewarding to see which ideas, like the belly band, stay consistent from the very beginning, and which ones evolve, and which ones change completely.
In addition to developing the trailer with Stephane, I began talking to a few of my friends about the project and inviting them to do artwork for the book. My friends have all had a big impact on my life and my art, so in a way they were all responsible for the creation of Yuki 7. I couldn’t wait to see each of their unique interpretations of Yuki, and I wanted her world to grow bigger through their ideas.
The response was really positive. So many talented people wanted to be a part of the project, it made me feel great and humbled. I have very generous friends, whose encouragement was as vital as their contributions.
It was a tough request to ask them to create artwork for a book of which no one really understood the complete vision yet but me. I did my best to explain it by sending out my latest artwork and story outlines. Part of what made it so exciting though was to get their completely fresh takes on this character that I’d been living with for so long, but who was completely new to everyone else.
Ever since I first met Don Shank a few years ago, he’s always been extremely generous with his time and words of advice and encouragement. When I was interning at Pixar in 2007, I used to ride a scooter over to his office to chat and see if he had any cool stuff to share with me. I knew he liked the work I was doing on Yuki, so I was really excited to ask him to join the project. I remember after I received Don’s artwork he actually seemed relieved that I liked it. That was hard for me to comprehend because first of all, everything Don touches is genius and I had been studying his work for years before I ever met him. Also, he had taken Yuki to a place I never would’ve thought to go myself, and had given me exactly what I wanted - his unique vision of the character. I received the same kind of reaction from all the other artists when they turned their work in. It showed me just how much everyone cared about the project and wanted it to succeed. I could see that Yuki was coming to life in other peoples’ minds, and not just my own.
Coming up in Part III:January to March - Bringing the artwork together on the page, the trailer is completed.
It’s just a little over 3 years since Chris and I made our debut as Fleet Street Scandal and almost exactly a year since the idea of Yuki 7 was born. From the first spark to sending off the final proofs, Yuki 7 has been the biggest project I’ve ever undertaken. Even though the book is just about to enter the world, for me, Yuki has just turned one. So much has happened, and I wanted to share some of what goes on behind the scenes when a self-published book is made.
I’m going to start in June of last year… (Cue wavy hands transition ala Wayne’s World)
June 2008
While I was in London working on the BBC Olympics commercial, I was soaking in a lot of new inspirations and thinking deeply about where I wanted to go next with my art. When I returned, I was simply struck by an idea: creating a globe-trotting female superspy. In my head she was incredibly cunning, beautiful, and always impeccably dressed. As she came to life on paper, she felt very familiar. She embodied a lot of qualities that I’d been trying to capture in my work for some time.
Looking for more inspiration, I combed through some folders of reference I had collected over the last few years, immersing myself in campy Euro-spy film posters, 1960’s Thai pop music album covers, and mid-century modern architecture. I went back and re-watched some of my favorite spy films like You Only Live Twice and discovered new ones like Deadlier than the Male. A world slowly started to form in my head and I could feel hundreds of backlogged ideas and unfinished stories suddenly collide into one cohesive mass. Later on, I realized Yuki 7 had been building for years even though she arrived in a flash of insight.
I didn’t want to get ahead of myself with illustrations, so I started to write down movie ideas. At first they weren’t even storylines so much as concepts that fit together – a car chase, a mysterious masked villain, an ambush on a boat, etc. Eventually I had 4 basic but intriguing movie outlines. I printed them out so I could scribble all over them. I couldn’t seem to get the ideas out fast enough – Yuki’s world simply poured out onto the page.
July 2008
I first introduced the idea of Yuki in a mini print at Comic-Con that year, calling her Secret Agent Y. But I knew I had only just scratched the surface of a much bigger idea. I began to wonder how people would have felt about this silver screen vixen during the heyday of her popularity in the mid-1960’s. I imagined a trendsetter and fashion icon, capturing the world’s attention and even inspiring imitators. Her world became real to me and I started falling for the illusion I had set out to create.
August - September 2008
By August, I had plenty of raw material and a grasp on the story. I roughed out an outline and set an initial goal to do an English, Japanese, and French poster as well as a soundtrack album cover for each movie. To keep things organized, I worked from big to small and roughed out each illustration before starting any finals. The roughs were finished by the end of September, and at that point, I set some deadlines. I wanted the book done in time for Comic-Con in July, but I also wanted to debut in a local gallery. I got in touch with Gallery Nucleus and gave them my half-hatched pitch for the book and some ideas for the art show. After we discussed it, they gave me a firm date of July 3rd for the opening.
To hit the show date, I needed about 4 months for printing, proofing cycles, and shipping. From there, I worked backwards: the book needed to be finished by February 28, and art by January 31st, giving me a full month for page layout. Previous experience creating our first book was an immense help in this planning process, but even so, this project was larger and more complex in every way.
We decided to go with a new printer for this book, Global PSD. Global has an impeccable reputation for producing art books, and several of our friends have had beautiful books made with them. I called them to discuss the project, the schedule, and get a quote. They sent over a contract, which contains rough numbers and requires a signature to commit both parties to the production of the book.
Chris and I estimated the total cost of the project – it amounted to everything we had saved in our business account. We were probably both a bit skeptical at that point, but we have always trusted each other and I think Chris sensed that the project had ignited my passion. Even though at the moment Yuki 7 was nothing more than an idea and a few illustrations, we decided to take the risk. Chris gave me approval to commit all of our resources and move forward with production.
We sent the signed contract back to Global PSD. I had already invested a lot of myself and hundreds of hours in Yuki, but as the deadline became more and more real and time ticked on, I realized the enormity of the commitment. Truthfully, there were times I couldn’t help but wonder what I had gotten myself into, but my vision for Yuki 7 was very specific, and I had to make it come together no matter how immense the project seemed at times.
Coming up in Part II:September to January - Work continues, friends join in, and Yuki 7 gets a trailer.
Everyone's favorite jet-setting spy girl and style diva Yuki 7 now has her very own Facebook Fan Page! Become a fan and you'll receive all the most up-to-the-minute Yuki news including events, production updates, and more!
I've also increased my connectivity (as well as decreased my productivity) by at least 20% in the last week by starting my own Twitter! Now you can see just how "exciting" my life as a freelance illustrator really is. Follow me at twitter.com/kevindart!
There's some BIG things coming up to look forward to. On Tuesday, May 26th, an appropriately summery day for the perpetual summer girl Yuki 7, we're going to start pre-orders for the book! To mark this special occasion we'll also be premiering the theatrical trailer for "A Kiss From Tokyo" online! For those who don't know, Tokyo was the 1964 movie which shot Kimiko Suzuki and Yuki 7 to international stardom.
In the next few weeks leading up to that date I'm going to be doing a weekly series of behind-the-scenes blog posts detailing what went into the production of our new book. We're also planning lots of exciting things following that as we gear up for the book release and art show at Gallery Nucleus on July 3rd, but you'll have to wait to find out more about that.
To satisfy your immediate Yuki cravings though we've added all 4 of the Japanese movie posters to our store! Check them out only at Fleet Street Scandal!
