Friday, February 15, 2008

Further Adventures in Advertising

Update: Replaced the image with a new one fixing some minor shading and masking problems that I'd overlooked. February 14, 2008.

I first made this collage after I spotted the original source image, which was just begging me to try to do something with it. I mean, seriously, an attractive, athletic, woman, teeing off on a golf-ball resting on a man's puckered-up lips? How could someone like me possibly resist. The source image was challenging to work with though, mostly because the man's legs were actually not in the frame and I had to cobble them together using a combination of copied sections from visible parts of his pants, and shoes from some other image. I also had to figure out some way of filling in the background sections that were obscured by the original man's body and also to make shadows and lit areas on the ground conform to his new size. All of this, of course, compounded by the fact that I had just started collaging, and was really just blundering around.

I learned a lot making this image. I also swore a lot.

I've returned to it quite a few times since. My first fix was to make the man smaller, to be more consistent in this world. In an initial spate of laziness, I'd only shrunk him down to about four and a half feet tall because I wanted to avoid large areas of empty space to have to fill in. Thankfully, I'd come back to this image after more than a year of collaging experience. More recently, I've modified the woman to make her appear taller and more muscular. I also thought it would be more fun if the image was an actual advertisement, you know, one of those amusingly risqué and chauvinistic ad campaigns that occasionally cause an uproar in your world.

Not as much uproar in this world though, except from a small number of unattractive, yet extremely vocal men who would shut up if they could just get laid every now and again.

2 comments:

  1. Wow. I can just imagine the kind of heck it must have been to modify the original image. But some things are like that; you have to change them and make them your own no matter the cost, or the time spent getting to know image editing software.

    I've developed new swear words and combos from my times collaging. :)

    This collage is very cool in that it makes me feel that oncoming swing of the club, in empathy for what that little guy must be feeling. You know, gentle thoughts and all that.

    The "cobbling" job is excellent, as is the filling out of background. I'm also doing a thumbs up for creating more muscle in female legs, as model legs are often incredibly skinny, in an unappealing and non-powerful way.

    Good work!

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  2. Thanks Undersquid. Your comments are always very detailed and always let me figure out (gently) what things I can improve on. For instance, your thumbs up on stronger-looking legs. Yes. I will redouble my efforts.

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