Attracting a fair bit of praise on the internet at the moment is the poster for Tyrannosaur, the first feature film by Paddy Considine. Considine is the British actor best known for his work with Shane Meadows; he also played the fearless Guardian journalist in The Bourne Ultimatum, and New Order's manager, Rob Gretton, in 24 Hour Party People. Considine's film is a grim-sounding Leeds-set drama about an angry, violent widower (Peter Mullan) and his relationship with a charity shop worker (Olivia Colman) and her abusive husband. At this year's Sundance film festival it won the world cinema drama directing award and the special jury prize for acting for both veteran character actor Mullan and for Colman, who played Sophie in the TV series Peep Show.

The poster was designed by Massachusetts-based Dan McCarthy, whom Considine lists as one of his favourite artists. It is sepia-toned and formed of several different layers, like the overlapping sheets used in some methods of animation, each less dark than the last and fading gradually into the light brown sky behind. A man stands between two large, bare trees, holding what seems to be a bunch of flowers but could just as easily be a weapon. The names of the lead actors, the title of the film and the director's credit are all half-buried in the earth beneath him. The viewer's eye is drawn gradually down into the ground – the colours at this point becoming inverted – past the roots of the trees to the enormous skeleton of a tyrannosaurus rex, which, according to Consadine's website, has "something ominous in its jaws", although I'm not sure I can see that.

The image is undoubtedly stark and cold, but it somehow manages to come across as rich, even beautiful. It is perfectly composed in the way it leads the viewer's eye to "discover" the dinosaur anew each time. I haven't seen the film, which is out on 7 October, but apparently the title comes from Mullan's character's nickname for his wife, an appellation that seems equally fitting for him, given his fierce temperament. The poster establishes this idea well, the figure suddenly seeming not just still but tense, perhaps ready to strike, as soon as one's eye lights upon the skeleton below him. The image perfectly captures the idea that something awful or unexpected lies buried beneath the surface – and not that deeply either.

As Adrian Curry points out at Mubi, the Tyrannosaur poster is "very much of a piece" with McCarthy's previous work, which has more often been used to promote concerts than films, and which you can see on his website here.

McCarthy frequently uses silhouette – even, as here, the repeated silhouettes of trees – although he seems to have abandoned his preference for a starry night sky in favour of a chillingly blank one for Tyrannosaur. The comic touches that can be seen in this poster for Sonic Youth and this one for Massachusetts band Harry and the Potters have understandably been dropped for Considine's film, as well as the sense of Rob Ryan-ish romance McCarthy can display from time to time.

But dinosaurs have been a constant theme, from this poster for a screening of The Lost World in Austin, Texas, to this lovely concert ad using a striking black-on-black silhouette, to these dinosaur skeletons in his paintings. Far from seeming lumpen or unsubtle in its visualisation of the metaphor behind the film's title, McCarthy's work has proved an inspired commission from Considine and his team.

1 August update

Thanks for all your comments. I have finally managed to make contact with Dan McCarthy and he has told me a bit about the process of creating the poster.

McCarthy said that it was the film's director, Paddy Considine, who is a fan of his artwork, who asked him to design the poster. "I was completely honoured and happy to say yes." Considine also came up with the concept: "The idea was presented by Paddy, and I just needed to draw what he had in mind."

I asked McCarthy what he felt the poster was trying to express about the film. He said: "The main character of the film lives a tortured life and the main reason is because of the death of his wife, nicknamed 'Tyrannosaur'. The idea behind the poster was to show the main character and beneath him have the bones of a giant tyrannosaurus rex. I wanted to try to express that something buried (metaphorically) by the main character was clearly visible by the viewer. showing that what he buried did not disappear from his life."

McCarthy said he was very happy with the finished product. The text was laid out by All City Media, and McCarthy said: "It's always cool to see how others use text and I love what they did."

Asked about the difference between creating this poster and some of his posters for concerts, McCarthy said: "This was fun for me because I didn't need to think about separating colours for screen-printing. My gig posters are screen-printed and I usually try to limit each design to four to six colours. With this design, I was able to layer things differently and use more subtle half-tones that would be difficult to screen-print."

He said the poster fitted in well with his previous work. "I use dinosaurs and dinosaur bones often and I like to explore the relationship between buried things and above-ground things."