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.