Sam Gilbey draws Jaws

Our resident film buff (while quite the dab hand with an ad campaign) Sam Gilbey has returned to familiar waters celebrating all things bitey. Here he explains the continuing allure of everyone’s favourite filmic fish. 

"Jaws is just one of those incredible films that I can never get tired of watching. As an artist, it’s also a film that I can never get tired of painting.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to make two licensed limited edition prints for Jaws with Universal twice, firstly with Fanattik and Zavvi (the ‘looking down’ print from a good few years ago now), and then very recently with Vice Press and Sideshow. The first print had been well received, so I was slightly cautious about trying to follow it up, but once I knew what I wanted to make this time around, my passion for the film soon put any doubts to the back of my mind.

Although the release technically didn’t quite make the 50th anniversary in 2025, it was very much in my mind, and I was inspired to make a celebratory and nostalgic piece. I figured, what better way to do that than via a golden sunset?

Of course fans of the film will instantly recognise the scene. It’s a very brief insert shot after the first day of hunting, before the iconic scene where the three men in a boat compare scars, and Quint (Robert Shaw) delivers his spellbinding USS Indianapolis monologue.

This led to a very quick sketch, with the plan being to utilise the height of the Orca for the 24x36” print format. I shared this with Vice Press. Thankfully they saw the potential, as did Universal, and I was able to proceed.

Translating this into a fully painted poster was quite the undertaking though. As a wide shot, even in 4k, in the low light there’s just not a lot of information to actually work from. So I set about the very painstaking process of figuring out what I could from the main shot, and then researching exactly what part of the boat (and figures) I was looking at, by combing through the film looking for different angles, and cross-referencing that with my developing understanding of the Orca. In short, it took ages!

We also considered various ways to somehow include the shark’s fin. At one point I thought it might work as an inverted shape representing the shadow and/or wake of the boat. I even explored having a shark shape in the clouds. With so many fantastic Jaws posters already out there though, in the end it just felt like everything ‘clever’ in terms of representing Bruce had already been done. In the end, just placing a very small fin in the distance, following the placement of the W in the title, felt like the best way to go.

Talking of the type, it was great to have Matt Ferguson’s experienced poster eyes on the artwork, and it was his superb suggestion to have the title partially obscured by Quint and the Orca on the horizon.

I always love to see the official logo and associated type being used on official posters – I suppose in a way it feels like the literal seal of approval that you had the chance to make it. Vice Press also suggested releasing a variant which was just the artwork, and I’m trilled to say that both versions sold out pretty quickly from both Vice Press and Sideshow.

I was honestly quite overwhelmed by the reaction to the print. I mean, I was proud of it, but you never know how it’s going to be received, and this one really seems to have connected with folks who love the film as much as I do. I’ll have a small number of artist proof copies in a few months, but other than that, hopefully at some point I can make another!”

More amazing from Sam here.

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