From the first time I pitched by ad campaign, I was all over the place. I had no idea if I wanted to do Banksy, or Banksy inspired pieces with political themes, or dancing, street movement, or sending out messages to those that live in the slums. In short, I was all over the place.
But one thing I knew was that I was going to spray paint all my pieces. Clean up the sketches in Photoshop, print them all out, and using an X-Acto knife, hand carve out shadows, reflections, patterns, and using these to create a layer on top for texture and lines.
When I was creating my final presentation, I was able to work my way by slowly questioning myself every step of the way. Which shoes did I want to focus on? How are the color schemes? What's the primary purpose of each type of shoe? Is it dance, aesthetics, or fitness? Who is the target audience? How are the color schemes related to each collection of shoes, and how will colors affect consumer base/profits?
I knew I still wanted something dance related, so I I kept the words on the sheet. As I was listening to Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque,, I remembered another composition of his called Cloudburst, and I thought, perfect! Jeremy Scott's Wings for Adidas! Clouds match the scheme of the general shoe colors as well!
I knew it'd be interesting when I was able to spray paint as well.
HOWEVER, when I went to Michael's, a can of spray paint in the colors I wanted started at $9/can. By the time I finished putting all the boards and cans in the cart, I realized my total would be close to $100. Dreams were shot. Sadness commenced, and alternatives had to be reached. So I chose to buy paint instead. The advantages to this would be that I could work with a clearer board, and mix my colors well. Collective damage came close to $40, and once I started mixing colors, I was able to get a feel of what I wanted. My workspace looked like below for several days as I had to practice with colors, mixing, and diluting acrylic paints.
To understand the process of how I reached the final, I included only a few of my relevant sketches. Below is one using Jeremy Scott's Iridescent Wings. I liked the bubblegum pink, but I also needed to add other colors, so I chose purple, mixed with silver. Since I was running out of black, I had to use brown for her hair color. I didn't like this color combination at all, so I scrapped it.
I began with the pink and purple again- this time, using similarly hued and saturated green and blues for a mood that's lighter and less serious because this piece wasn't as serious. After about 10 tries, every single one still looked sloppy, no matter what I did (thin paintbrushes, thicker paint, less paint, etc). I still didn't like this composition, and the way it turned out, so I scrapped this one too.
Here is an example of texture by paint, one of the biggest advantages to painting.
So at this point, I thought about dance. What I felt when I danced, what happens when I was performing for an audience, and the elation after finishing some difficult choreo. I'm always sweating, overjoyed, and unraveled after every performance I do well. The colors that came to mind? Red, black, and gold. I played around with red and black, and there was a lot of white space that detracted from the picture. There was no harmony, so my next question was, what could I do to fill this space?
I realized I didn't even have a company logo for Cloudburst! I devised one based off the waves of the girl's hair, and they are the initials "CB". It had to be huge, it had to be immediately visible. What better method than making a huge, trademark background, as well as a common theme on all the ads? Repetition is one of the most effective advertisement techniques, afterall.
In the end, here were the final paintings. Be sure to download the pictures to see the textures and close detail.
No comments:
Post a Comment