The poster is credited to Geof Darrow and Jerry Tiritilli, also a highly-regarded artist.

This was produced very early in Darrow's career and is absolutely beautiful!

"Geof" Darrow is a comic book artist, best known for his work on Shaolin Cowboy, Hard Boiled and Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, which was adapted into an animated TV series. He worked as a concept artist and storyboarder for The Matrix series of films. Darrow's approach to comics and art has been cited as an influence by a multitude of artists including Peter Chung, Frank Quitely, Seth Fisher, Eric Powell, Frank Cho, Juan José Ryp and more.

During one of their stays in Los Angeles, Moebius introduced Darrow to Frank Miller, which led to a friendship and a number of comics collaborations. Darrow, Miller and Steve Gerber started developing a Superman series as part of the Metropolis proposal, then after the idea fell through, Miller offered Darrow to work on a Daredevil story he was writing that would delve into the character's origin. Eventually, Miller realized he didn't want to be the person to bring Darrow into the world of Big Two work-for-hire, and the two focused on developing their own story. As Darrow has never worked with a writer before, he often strayed from the script, prompting Miller to make a number of significant changes to the story. Between 1990 and 1992, Dark Horse published the three-issue mini-series titled Hard Boiled, which earned Miller and Darrow the 1991 Eisner Award in the "Best Writer/Artist Team" category. After Hard Boiled, Darrow wanted to do a superhero story, specifically, an Iron Man story, although Marvel wasn't interested. Miller and Darrow started developing the concept into their next project, The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot.

Meanwhile, relative unknowns the Wachowskis (having only directed the 1996 film Bound, as a low budget "audition piece"), impressed by Darrow's art for Hard Boiled, wanted to work with him on their production for The Matrix. Warner Bros. contacted Darrow, and after reading the script he agreed to work on the film.