Sunday, February 3, 2008

Sex in Advertising

When I started on the idea of this world, I played around with the idea of creating magazine covers that would reflect news and culture that would exist here, and also, advertising images that would grace the pages of such magazines. Advertising, in particular, interests me, because it's such a part of our media-saturated existence. Some popular ad campaigns have even become cultural touchstones, adding to our everyday speech catch-phrases and new vocabulary.

My other interest in advertising imagery is of course, all the implied sex.

C'mon, whadja think I was making all these collages for? Political and artistic comment on our consumerist culture? Please. It's mostly about the sex, and there sure is a lot of it in advertising. And power too, because power is sexy. And the threat of violence, because the withholding of violence is power. And boots, because... well, just because.

2 comments:

  1. Magazine covers, yes! I remember someone at Giantess.com produced a few of those and uploaded them to the image library. I forgot to save them before the place shut down, but even before I ever saw a "fake" magazine cover, or a real one like those Stern ones, I had thought of them as well.

    Ads were part of that, of course, as were movie posters. I have yet to collage any ads, but they are in the slow, sloooow works. This image of yours is a Trinket classic, I think. I do know I've admired it since you shared it at GDC. You managed to place that boot sole on precisely the right place to hide his profile, which does a lot to intensify the dominance message of that boot, of that leg that is longer than his tiny body.

    I imagine you had to move the wall and clone some of it as well to create enough dimension to insert the shrunken man's body. The B&W, typical of these Anne Klein ads from what I've seen, also adds to the dramatic effect. I love those boots! And that coat is nothing short of fabulous, so thumbs up on your selection of the female element. Really good work, trinket!

    Excellent shadow placement. I'm always looking at those shadows. :)

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  2. I can haz a classic? Thx!

    This one has actually changed quite a bit from the original in the details, but not in the overall image. The main change is the boy's height. He used to be around mid-thigh to her, because that was convenient for me relative to her foot placement, but now that I'm trying to be consistent, I had to make him taller. I liked where her foot was on him though, so that meant I had to reposition her leg, tilt her foot more and so on. Then there was extending the top of the image upwards since his new height had outgrown the original source image. Finally, I removed the little purse. Women in my world don't carry little purses.

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