Go skyride London ad comp
While working in London last summer, I had the priviledge of working for some top brands including TFL – Transport For London, on what at the time was called the “London Freewheel” Campaign which was a call to action for London transit users to start riding their bikes more often and free up the other modes of transport to make them more enjoyable for everyone. While working with M&C Saatchi’s concepting team, I came up with a number of comps on my own and decided recently to bring one of them to life from the rough sketches and outlines I had originally designed.
Here is the process I took to bring this ad to life
Step 1 - Obtaining resources: I found the background High-Res London Eye image through Google Image search with the “Large” image setting. For the bike image itself, I wasn’t able to find anything that fit my vision, so I recruited my friend Eugene who’s working on starting up his own high end cooking utensil company: www.zaykastore.com. I worked with him to get the correct starting angles that would be easier to manipulate and warp later. Here are the original and prepped resource images (click for larger image)
*Tip to users, the magic wand tool, while useful, is not recommended for high-res image prepping… it generally leaves rough edges and doesn’t cut out the proper true edges even when playing with the tolerance levels. While it may take longer, I’ve achieved much more professional results using the lasso tool zoomed in at 500% and cutting out my own defined edges.
Step 2 – Warping the image: As you can se from the original image, the bike forks are bent too far out for this image’s intended use, and the angle was slightly off, so using a combination of the distort and warp tools, I modified the bike to fit precisely. The bike fork separated and warped a little too much in the process, so I retouched certain areas to make them blend back nicely into the bike.
*Tip it’s best to always work from a copy of your original layer in case you make a large mistake and need to reference the original image.
Step 3 – Layering the images: To make the image believable, I copied sections of the London eye and the bike fork and overlaid them appropriately after digitally editing out key parts of the background to let the bike fork show through. The image wasn’t sitting quite right in the bike so I lowered the opacity and retouched certain points to make it blend better. Finally, I overlaid the brake to fit appropriately around the London Eye wheel.
Step 4 – Shadows and Lighting: I realized that the bike image looked a bit dull, so I copied the layer and adjusted the levels to make it stand out more. The black elements lost some of their boldness in the process and the metal parts lost their shine, so I retouched those areas to revamp them. As well, to make it even more believable, I created a black layer beneath the bike and handlebars, added a gaussian blur, and edited around the peaks of the building so that the shadow didn’t bleed into the skyline.
Step 5 – Finishing touches: I added in the slogan, logo, and my personal mark, got some initial feedback from a few friends, and re-worked minor details to come up with the finished product.
The high-res can be seen in my newly created “Ad Comp” Section by clicking the image below:
*Note, this ad is not intended for commercial use or representative of any of the brands featured in this ad. Its intention is purely artistic.
Fresh Audio/Visual Game Experiment
I’m still looking for the perfect visual resource to complete my newest ad comp, however, in the mean time I came across a particularly exciting audi/visual experiment that peaked my interest. The game is called “Auditorium” and can be located here http://www.playauditorium.com/ and it essentially blends together some incredible visuals with a unique musical twist and a masterfully composed soundtrack. The goal is to manipulate neon flowing sound streams in particular patterns/ colors to light up musical outputs and create the final masterpiece. It’s definitely something worth experiencing, as words can’t even begin to do it justice, so I highly recommend checking it out if you’re into music and unique audio/ visual experiences.
New Page to come…
I have been drafting up ad concepts since I was a little kid, and over the years I’ve put together a rough sktech book of the different ads/ comps I’ve come up with but have never done anything with them until now.
I was inspired by a a series of creative ads that featured photographs being used in a highly creative out-of-the-box type fashion, such as one in particular for a sushi/martini bar. The ad featured a fish swimming behind a martini glass and the olive in the glass was placed perfectly over the fish eye so it looked like the olive was the actual eye, and the martini was blue so it matched the water in the background. The other ad featured a slender woman in a kimono with her hair slicked and extended upwards, and her body was positioned so that it looked like she was a paintbrush and her hair was painting the brushstrokes on a japanese style painting in this particular ad.
I have designed a few such ads myself and decided to add a new section to my blog to feature them… I’m currently working on an ad concept I developed while working in London, so be on the look out for my new page and a new post very soon…
Lighting Effects
I had some free time tonight and decided to take a break/design something for fun. The picture is an inside joke but I wanted to play with some lighting effects after coming across a new U2 video. It reminded me of an old Apple ad for the latest Coldplay album featuring a silhouetted individual with all sorts of colorful visuals in the foreground and background. I liked the concept and decided to create a still shot of my own with a slight spin… I wanted to add more vibrancy to the image with an O’Neil jacket/shirt I had because I liked the colors, so I selectively brought out the colored sections and added a glow behind the image using a variety of image screens and blurs with a diffused brush to add another subtle effect. The image itself I de-saturated and darkened/ highlighted with some simple burn and dodge effects. I tossed in a few assorted brushes as well into the background image to add more contrast. I normally tend to go for a more clean/ simple look with my designs, but this was an experiment with lighting and effects, so here’s what I ended up with.
The high-res can be seen in my Photoshop section by clicking the image below:
