Comments closed
I recently created some artwork for the Walter Kaitz Foundation Dinner. The advertisement is for One World Sports and was quite fun to create. I used a technique that I recently took for a trial run with the BWF Badminton promotion and continued to play around with the abstract nature of a personally-created custom brush to draw on photographs.
I decided to write up another overview on how I went about working up this piece.
I started off with a gradient to rid myself of the dreaded blank canvas. I tend to initiate my work with black, white, and shades of gray; adding color later to match the rest of my imagery. This was a simple linear gradient.
Next, I found a nice texture from the stock.xchng and layered it into my file. I’m a huge sucker for textures; I love adding them, in some degree, to every one of my pieces.
Here are my source images. Makoto Hasebe of the AFC Asian Cup, Ma Lin of the International Table Tennis Federation, and Li Chao of the OneAsia Golf Tour. My boss provided me with these high-resolution photographs from our affiliates to use in the advertisement of our sports channel.
After masking the players out of their respective backgrounds, I took some time and tried various ways of placing the figures in an illustrative effort. I wanted them to be grouped together as one entity; eventually decided on the left-hand side of the file.
I then brushed in some simple shading to each figure to add a little more depth to the overall aesthetic of the image.
By adding in a spotlight effect, I was able to direct the flow of light even more; furthering the immersion of the various elements together. To create a light source like the one below, create a new layer in Photoshop, fill the layer in with white, then select Filter > Render > Lighting Effects, and from there you can play around with the intensity and direction of the light. Once you’re satisfied, hit OK, then set the layer’s blending mode to something like Overlay or Soft Light.
If your using Mac OSX and your version of Photoshop is missing the ‘Lighting Effects’ selection in the Filter’s list, set the program to run in 32-bit mode.
Alright, now I wanted to add some more lights and effects to the image. I brushed in some slight fog behind the spot where the figures are placed and then crafted some nifty light streaks. Basically, I used the shape tool and created a rectangle. Then, I ran Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and heightened the intensity. After that, I used the Polygonal Lasso tool and cut off half the selection to create that sharp edge on one side.
I repeated that process several times and at several different weight values.
I turned back on our figure’s folder group to see how they stand against my freshly made effects. Looking good, eh?
I wanted even more effects, though. Something a little crazier! I opened up the Brushed window (Window > Brush) and tinkered around to make an interested custom brush. Something textured that I could have fun with.
I then proceeded to use my Wacom Intuos tablet and draw in some sharp lines. Basically, I just paraded around my file and went nuts with whatever I felt looked unique enough to paint off of.
I mainly focused on white lines to contrast the dark background, however I also enjoyed using the different colors of the figure’s as a base.
The image below simply shows further contrast and brightness effects to add more depth.
I then went to work on coloring in the background with brushes and gradients.
Finally, I added in the body copy I was provided and the company logo. You view the project here: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Walter-Kaitz-OWS-Advert/2129748
