Tutorials
Create a Kill Bill Style Movie Poster in Photoshop

As you might have noticed from the other photoshop tutorials on this site, I am a bit of a movie buff and enjoy recreating movie posters. In today’s tutorial I am going to show you how to make a cool Kill bill style movie poster complete with bloods, swords, and girls.

Step 1

Create a new document with the following settings: 10×8 and 72dpi.

Step 2

Find a cool close up picture of a female ninja or something of the like. I used this stock photo from Shutterstock, but there are plenty of free images just like it on Deviant Art.

Kill Bill Poster

Step 3

The one color that is associated with Kill Bill posters in yellow. Create a yellow Fill Layer under the image of your main subject.

Kill Bill Poster

Step 4

Delete any white space in your image so that the yellow background will show through.

Kill Bill Poster

Step 5

Now we want to Desaturate the main image. This is under Image > Adjustments > Desaturate

Kill Bill Poster

Step 6

To give the main image a little more punch, we are going adjust the levels to the following settings:

Image > Adjustments > Levels

Kill Bill Poster
Kill Bill Poster

Step 7

Now we are going to prepare the sword for the blood. Select the blade portion of the sword. Then create a new layer above your main image.

Kill Bill Poster

Step 8

For adding the blood you can easily just use some blood or paint Photoshop brushes, but I wanted to use this image from Shutterstock.

If you use a stock image, use the Paste Into Layer function on the layer we created in the last step.

Kill Bill Poster

Step 9

To make the blood look more realistic set the layer blending options to Multiply

Kill Bill Poster

Step 10

I still felt the main image was lacking as far as movie poster style goes. So I decided to spice it up a bit more by up the contrast:

Kill Bill Poster

And adding some noise with the Noise filter:

Kill Bill Poster

Step 11

Now Im going to add the main movie title text. I used the following settings:

Kill Bill Poster
Kill Bill Poster

Step 12

I wanted to make the movie release date look as though it was written in the blood on the sword. So I wrote the date with the following setting and rotated it slightly.

Kill Bill Poster
Kill Bill Poster

Step 13

Rasterize the the type on the date layer by Control Click on the layer and selecting Rasterize Layer. Next you will Command click on the layer to mask it

Kill Bill Poster

Step 14

Withe the text layer still masked, click on the blood layer we created earlier and then hit delete. This should cut out the lettering in the blood layer. You will need to go back and hide/delete the original text layer.

Kill Bill Poster
34 Comments
Onur Oztaskiran

July 20, 2009 9:38 am Reply

I’ve done something like that about 2 years ago: http://scottrenevejr.deviantart.com/art/Sword-Mistress-Bride-12201347

custom copy

July 21, 2009 1:01 pm Reply

Great tutorial and nice design @Onur

UPrinting

July 21, 2009 10:57 pm Reply

Cool! I love that movie. And the process looks fairly easy. Thanks for sharing this tutorial. :)

Eugene

July 22, 2009 12:40 pm Reply

Nice tutorial. If I may be allowed to be pedantic, though, I’d like to point out that the blood is a bit too close to the hilt. I would suggest starting it where the current swoosh of blood ends. That (imho), would be more plausible putting the mechanism of kendo in mind.

Guy

July 22, 2009 4:07 pm Reply

very neat and simple effect

Michael Thomas

July 23, 2009 4:11 am Reply

I love your movie poster tutorials, they are fantastic. That is a great technique. I just checked out Deviant Art, what is it exactly? From the way you described I thought it was a free stock image site but looking at it, it does not seem that way.

    Sara

    July 29, 2009 3:59 pm Reply

    Deviant Art is a site where any type of artist can upload their creations and create a portfolio of sorts for others to view. This also includes stock photographers who upload their photos for download and use.

web designers

July 27, 2009 5:43 pm Reply

@Eugene You sound like you have experience in slicing people up =).

    Eugene

    July 29, 2009 11:15 am Reply

    @web designers , The only slicing of that kind I do is in Photoshop and I intend to keep it that way =D

Poster Printing

July 28, 2009 2:32 am Reply

Thanks for sharing. This technique could be easily applied to many advertising posters for various campaigns or topics. Preserving the movie poster theme for non-movie advertising in this format could result in some killer posters! This would be a great, simple poster project for beginner-level do-it-yourself designers, making it very easy for a small business to compete with larger competitors.

Sam

July 28, 2009 8:59 am Reply

Great tutorial, was very precise and easy to follow, thanks.

Paul

July 31, 2009 2:50 pm Reply

Nice tutorial! In my opinion it’s too simple and the final image is not very detailed but it’s easy to follow and well explained :)

Thanks and keep up the good work!

frankie

August 6, 2009 10:14 pm Reply

Alex

August 11, 2009 5:40 am Reply

I like verry much yhis work,

Waiting you for visit my web and rate my works :)

http://www.dai-media.com

Regards from spain!

Nathan Pope

August 11, 2009 6:12 pm Reply

What a good tutorial. Its always fun to learn about new ways to use my photoshop tools and to find out how people use them in different ways. I probbaly would have done the July 6th part differently. But thats the beauty of Photoshop, being able to do one thing 4 different ways.

Jonathan Bennett

August 28, 2009 3:39 pm Reply

Great tutorial — now all I need is a cool picture of myself with a sword. Hmmm.

lyn

April 1, 2010 8:15 am Reply

kill bill 3. . .
I always waiting. ..

Clipping Paths

March 18, 2011 9:43 am Reply

Nice design.

dentist london

April 25, 2011 9:42 am Reply

you know if i get a chance to make a movie.. what would i like to create ?
a homage to kill bill m’ QT the man :D

Leave a Comment

*