In December, the last year of 2002, KFC Cinema held its Asian Cinema DVD Cover Design Contest in association with neighborhood Korean Film guru, MrKwang. The challenge was to take a film of your choosing and design a completely different DVD cover for it, front and back, and make it better than the original. Many entered, but only one have conquered the samurai stances that is DVD cover creation!

[1st Prize Winner]
Masen Ma
ASHES OF TIME
- Prize -
BiChunMoo MANHWA series (6 books re-release, OOP ones)
BiChunMoo DVD
BiChunMoo OST FULL

[2nd Prize Winner]
Shahar Gross
HERO
- Prize -
2 CD: Jang Jin movie OSTs [Spy Lee] + [Guns & Talks]

While we had many worthy entries, it was a pretty unanimous decision as we found Masen Ma’s ASHES OF TIME cover to be the best. “Why?” you ask? First of all, the current covers for this Wong Kar-Wai masterpiece do very little to show the stylishness and beauty of the film. Though it does present the many stars that occupy this picture, there is little to be desired in really capturing and evoking emotion and intrigue.

Masen Ma’s stunning artistic design shows a forlorn cover about lost love in a war-torn world. The silhouette in the bottom right is symbolic as this mysterious swordsman looks towards an endless dawn, a sky reminiscence of love hidden in the hues of the sullen clouds above. The colors are rich with red, obviously to represent love, but it does lay in contrast to the black and sandy yellow, making it stand out even more.

Another design compliment we can give is the extra careful layout of the lettering and titles. The ASHES OF TIME titles appear perfectly within the bottom right shadows in blood red. The lettering of THE WONG KAR-WAI COLLECTION suggests influence from the CRITERION COLLECTION fonts. Ultimately, the back cover is equally well planned as it shows the players involved, continuing the motif of the red dawn as background.

The second place winner is Shahar Gross for his beautiful and unreleased HERO DVD cover. Using media and notes he found around the web on the current release of this anticipated Hong Kong blockbuster, Shahar designed an elegant wrap around cover. It has the look of a professionally designed DVD case and even sports a 2-Disc edition. Bravo, Shahar!

Thank you everyone for their submissions.

Here are the other fine submissions :