Interviewing Dave Kennedy, The Matrix Movie Poster Artist

At the turn of the century, The Matrix captured audiences’ imaginations forever. The film encoded them into a digital world of gravity-defying acrobatics and dystopian dilemmas. Sci-fi enthusiasts just couldn’t get enough of the themes surrounding identity, fate, revolution, and freedom.

From the gritty hacker aesthetic and bending spoon to the red and blue pills, The Matrix became a pop culture and cinema sensation and inspiration in every way. Now, fans of the franchise can bring a piece of digital rain home with Dave Kennedy’s The Matrix: I Believe I Can Bring Him Back Movie Poster.

For an immersive deep dive into this mind-boggling print, we’re going behind the scenes with artist Dave Kennedy himself to talk about influences, perspective, and how art can continue to surprise us.

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Dave Kennedy Artist Interview

When did you first know you wanted to be an artist? What’s your earliest memory of drawing or designing?

I’ve always known. One of my very earliest memories is of me sitting with my grandfather in a sunbeam on the floor of his apartment, watching as he drew a brontosaurus with a felt tip pen in an old A4 lined pad. It was incredibly simple — drawn with just one line (apart from the smiley face), but the fact that he made a dinosaur right in front of me using just a pen and paper hit me like a thunderbolt. I’ve wanted to catch that magic ever since and I’ll never stop trying.

Also, I can still draw that brontosaurus now.

How would you describe your art style?

That’s a difficult one. I have one rule when it comes to making art: Make what you want to see yourself. I’ve always drawn things I’d like to put on my own wall, and in some cases, it’s hard to pin down what style suits each project best. If you twisted my arm though, I’d say there was a heavy element of comic art in my process, which makes sense as my main job is working on comic books with a hero of mine, John Carpenter (clannng! name drop alert). I tend to let the idea/concept dictate how something may look, and trust my knowledge of drawing to get me there.

You have an impressive career that includes graphic design. Is there a difference in how you approach graphic design versus illustration, concept art, or storyboarding? Does your history with graphic design influence your current art pieces?

I’m a strong believer that EVERYTHING we do influences our art — our taste in film, music, books, even people and relationships — everything that makes us who we are gets thrown into the mix. How can it not? There are things I have learned in every job I’ve had that still come into play when I draw now.

I think there’s a different mindset for a lot of the jobs you describe, but they all have one thing in common: Getting an idea across to someone else, without being in the room to explain it. I believe that’s the core of all artistic endeavors, be it graphic design, storyboarding, comics, poster work, or modern art. It’s such a beautiful concept — to have a piece of art represent you/your idea for someone else. It’s a connection without language, which makes it universal. Geez, sorry. Got a little deep there.

It looks like you’re a massive science fiction fan. What are some of your favorite properties and characters?

I was born in 1972, so Star Wars™ hit me square in the face at the age of 5 and has been a presence throughout my life since. It was the movie that fostered my love of all science fiction and turned me into a sci-fi sponge, trying to absorb anything I could get my hands on, like a freckled, ginger kid version of The Blob from the North West of England.

My Dad would sit with me and go through classic sci-fi movies, like Forbidden Planet, This Island Earth, and The Day the Earth Stood Still, and I’ve been a sucker for the genre ever since. Because those early movies were so unique in their vision, throwing out stories that have since probably been emulated over and over, but were new at the time, I think my heart lies in finding stories that feel new, or cover ideas and concepts I may not have seen before.I love films that occupy my mind long after the credits have rolled — e.g. Arrival, The Terminator, or Akira.

Saying that though, I just love the genre as a whole, and will happily sit through repeat viewings of Transformers: The Movie until I go blind.

I think most people know the best offerings the genre has put out over the years, which are, of course, all on my list of favorites, e.g. Alien, Predator, Back to the Future, etc., but I’ll recommend a few that you don’t hear too much about these days: Silent Running, Strange Days, The Host (2006), Primer, District 9, and Dark City are all great stories.

Speaking of sci-fi, how long have you been a fan of The Matrix? How did you feel when you were asked to tackle this project?

Since opening day in 1999.

I came out of the screening with my brother Pete and we talked about it for a week. The possibilities the concept held, the action it delivered, the mind-mashing concept that we hadn’t seen brought to life this way before. We couldn’t shut up about it. I’ve mentioned some favorites of mine, but I consider The Matrix to be a perfect movie.

It’s the classic hero’s journey, but what sets it apart is the setting. It’s set in a world that just got more and more exciting, the more the viewer discovered about it. Wait, you can jump between buildings and do a manga-landing? You can float 10 feet in the air while doing karate that you learned in 15 seconds?

Every minute of the movie builds on what has gone before it and creates an excitement for the next. I often forget that, by the end of the first movie, we’d only seen a glimpse of what Neo can do, so when he puts that phone down and zooms into the sky as Rage Against the Machine kicks in, I can’t have been the only guy in the cinema who punched the air and screamed “YES.”

I’ve been friends with James [Hobson] over at Moor-Art Gallery for a while and we’d talked about doing something together, but when he sent me a list of titles that I could pitch an idea for, The Matrix was at the very top of that list for me. And when I got the confirmation that my idea was good to go, I hit play on Rage Against the Machine, punched the air, and screamed “YES.”

There’s a lot going on in The Matrix: I Believe I Can Bring Him Back, from the tessellating figures to the unique fisheye lens. How did you go about conceptualizing this piece? Were there any challenges along the way?

I like to give my brain time to sit with ideas if I can. I worked in the games industry for a few years and one of the things I learned there was how to research your subject and come up with ideas on a schedule. How to sit and generate multiple concepts within a timeframe, and to look for different approaches.

It’s difficult to put into words my particular approach, but it harks back to what I was saying earlier with regards to my taste in sci-fi — I like to see things I haven’t seen before. I tend to spend a bit of time researching and looking at what is already out there, then I try to go in a different direction. Not because I don’t think that other art works, but simply because I like to challenge myself. I watched the movie again for the thousandth time to look for ways to visualize it differently.

On spinning something into his own version:

Whenever I draw something from popular culture, I’m looking for a way to put my spin on it — to make it MY version of something people recognize. I often do this with characters. If I pose them in ways that are unusual, then hopefully they stand out from familiar poses/reference material.

That pose can say so much about character, too. I usually pose for character work myself, so I know the pose is unique.

I found numerous pieces of art for The Matrix, (as I expected to) and then I looked for the common elements in them, e.g. a lot of Matrix posters are about the humans within the Matrix. They often feature Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, or Agent Smith — usually rendered in such a way as to be recognizable instantly. They’re such effective character designs that you can count on the viewer recognizing them. I mean, 25 years after the movie’s release, you can put a pair of shades and a long coat on someone and everyone would know it was Neo, Morpheus, or Trinity. Add an earpiece and a suit and you’ve got Agent Smith.

Knowing that the characters of the movie were so strong, I wanted to steer away from them and make The Matrix itself the star of the piece. I wanted to attempt to see the story (or a small part of it) from the perspective of the Matrix — to see a familiar world differently, as Neo himself does at the end of the movie. His eyes are eventually opened and the world he inhabits is seen anew.

I wanted it to feel alien, but familiar — like if your bearded mate turned up clean shaven and it took you a minute to process it.

The Matrix itself is just as recognizable as the characters who inhabit it. Glowing green code and a colouration that will forever be associated with that movie for millions of people. I wanted to try and think the way the Matrix does and attempt to see things through its digital eyes.

Maybe it has no concept of time? Maybe it sees everything at once? Maybe it’s seen it all before and knows how it’s all going to play out, so it’s sitting back just to see it all again?

There are numerous great sequences in the film, but the lobby scene stands out for me. It’s a marvel of detail. Every shot taken by Neo, Trinity, and the guards is accounted for. Every action has purpose (Trinity attacking guards that are firing on Neo and vice versa). It must have taken months to plan. Years even. After watching it on repeat hundreds of times, I actually appreciate it even more now.

I asked myself, “How would the Matrix see that scene?”

I remember seeing a short film from 1984 called Downside Up by an artist called Tony Hill that spun the camera over and under its subject in a full circle. I think the technique was used in U2’s “Even Better Than the Real Thing” video.

Anyway, that image always stuck with me — seeing something familiar through a bizarre, alien eye. I thought that seeing that scene from beneath would be a) something I haven’t seen before and b) insane to even consider attempting (but would be cool as hell if it worked).

The challenges:

You asked if there were challenges? The whole thing was a challenge.

First, I had to imagine the Lobby, seen from a viewpoint we had never seen it from (we never see the ceiling in the movie, for example), then I had to select key poses from all the people in the scene that would illustrate Neo and Trinity’s movement from the front door to the elevator and reinterpret everyone’s pose at those key moments, imagining what it would look like from beneath.

Any artist will tell you the challenges that foreshortening and perspective bring, and I had to do it for a bullet-ridden room and 40 people. There were countless times where I felt physically dizzy and doubted whether I was drawing someone correctly for where they were in the room. I felt like Ray Harryhausen (another hero of mine), keeping track of multiple versions of scenes, characters, and positions all at once.

But there were also times when it felt like it was going to plan, and that all the long nights of brain-warping were going to pay off.

I let myself start to believe.

Do you have a favorite section of this action-packed artwork? Or is there a detail you’d like viewers to pay special attention to?

I don’t have a favorite bit really. I’d love it if the viewer felt involved enough with the piece to revisit the movie and see if I’ve done a good job of capturing the action.

I’m a huge fan of artists like Katsuhiro Otomo, Geoff Darrow, and Kim Jung-Gi. Those guys have work that can keep me occupied for hours, just swimming in the details. The book version of Akira is mind-bogglingly detailed, and makes me want to go back and look for things I may have missed. I would absolutely love it if someone found a detail in my work a year or so after they bought it.

Finally, what message or feeling do you most want to convey to someone seeing your art, whether it’s this Matrix print, your comic pages, or another illustration?

I guess I’m the same as any other artist — I would like for people to see what was in my head, and to let the art do the talking. I’d like my art to speak for me on a subject, to show my love for the material, and to have that love be understood by someone who has a similar love for the subject.

Art is expression, and in this case it’s my expression of love for this movie.

In the case of all of my art, I just hope that people enjoy it. I want someone to come downstairs each morning, catch a glimpse of something I’ve drawn, and for it to make their day a little bit better. Also, I would love for anyone seeing this piece to crack their knuckles and go “Right! Let’s go put The Matrix on and see if this maniac got this scene right.”

If just one person does that, and comes away from the experience having enjoyed the movie again, then I’ll be a happy kid.

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How many Matrix details can you discover in this perception-bending Dave Kennedy movie poster?

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