The comp artist in my day was the visual creator of the one-sheet design, laying out the visual ideas for the movie campaign in league with an Art Director generating “concepts”. When I finish a campaign, I drew 20 to 40 sketches, 5 to 10 black and white paintings and often a color painting. All design issues have been thoroughly completed by the Art Director and myself. A photographer is then employed to photograph talent, body doubles and locations. Production photos or special shoots are spliced together into a single image and retouched to match my painting. Or a “finish” artist would take over instead of a photographer, as on BACK TO THE FUTURE and LEGEND.) Type is added and the finished one sheet is printed.
Very strangely, the graphic designer or production company adding the type or commissioning the finish painting would take “designer” credit. The photographer or finish painter takes poster credit. The one sheet image, though entirely created by Ken and I, usually went out with no credit. A close friend talked with illustrator, Drew Struzan. about Back to the Future and Struzan was completely candid that he designed no part of the image, he was handed my color painting and did his handsome polish of it.