The Making of "AKA is Back" - Part 1
The "Aka is Back" campaign has proven extremely succesful for our client Nomis and we have had a huge amount of feedback about the imagery of AKA that is currently gracing billboards, sport shops and websites throughout Australia.
As a bit of an insight into our work, we thought we would graphically walk you through the steps in making this image from start to finish.
There are quite a few steps so we have split this post up in to 3 stages.
So, let's start at the end and then shoot back to the beginning.
We wanted to play on AKA's "Love me or hate me" attitude, creating an almost mythological AKA god of AFL. The concept was based around Neptune, the god of the sea, where instead of a trident, we have AKA holding his Nomis football boots - his weapons to destroy those around him on the playing field (his sea).
With this in mind the imagery had to be moody and serious but at the same time keep AKA's naturally cheekiness.
Let me just put in a sort of foot note here (obviously it's a near-the-top note but I couldn't think what to call it), for those of you who don't know AKA (or Jason Akermanis as he is otherwise known), he is one of the highest profile Australian Football players. He's well known for his great skill but also his sometimes brash, over-confident demeanor. He's a colourful, outspoken character. Perfect for this Nomis campaign!
So this is where we began. We enlisted the services of two-time winner of Australia's Editorial Photographer of the Year, Damien Breberg, to capture AKA's personality on film. Then, we got to work.
To help create a mythological image, we wanted to make AKA look like he was almost made out of stone and really emphasise his muscle definition.
We started by simply knocking all the colour out of the image to give us a base to work from.
Then we looked at creating some overlay layer effects to really adjust the brightness and contrast in the image. Of course there are a lot of tricks to this but I am keeping the explanation as simple as possible here.
The next stage above was to add some subtle colours into the skin tone. We didn't want a completely grey scale image as it was too cold. It's a little hard to see the detailed colour in these reduced images, but at the end I'll post a close up image of the detail to show the effect we were after.
As the Nomis boots needed to be a focus too of the image, we brought them back into full colour. This ensures that the Nomis products become the centre of the advertising rather than an addition to the AKA image. It also helped to strengthen the message of "I am AKA and these are my weapons".
Now the basics were out of the way we could concentrate on the finer details of the imagery. The eye area of the face was never too clear and from the image treatments we had previously done, the eye area had become so dark there was no definition. Having eye contact with AKA is extremely important to create an image that is both engaging and captivating. When you walk past this image you need to feel like he is looking at you personally.
We also tidied up the beard and other facial areas.
Next we started to work on defining the muscles. Using simple gradient shadows with overlay mask effects we were able to emphasise the toning of the body.
As it was "off-season" when we took the photography, we could excuse AKA from being slightly well-fed... With a little bit of masking and lighting effects we gave him a slight stomach sqeeze.
The final area for some airbrushing was his stomach. We wanted to over-do his six-pack to help create this "mythological" feel. Again using shadows and highlights with plenty of layer effects we suceeded in the effect we were after.
Finally we just added some more shadow and highlights to the base of his stomach. We knew we would be having a "ripped paper" edge to the bottom of the image (to tie in with Nomis' branding) so were happy to leave this as is for the time-being.
The next stage was to create the backgound and you can follow this in "The making of AKA Part 2".
As a bit of an insight into our work, we thought we would graphically walk you through the steps in making this image from start to finish.
There are quite a few steps so we have split this post up in to 3 stages.
So, let's start at the end and then shoot back to the beginning.
We wanted to play on AKA's "Love me or hate me" attitude, creating an almost mythological AKA god of AFL. The concept was based around Neptune, the god of the sea, where instead of a trident, we have AKA holding his Nomis football boots - his weapons to destroy those around him on the playing field (his sea).
With this in mind the imagery had to be moody and serious but at the same time keep AKA's naturally cheekiness.
Let me just put in a sort of foot note here (obviously it's a near-the-top note but I couldn't think what to call it), for those of you who don't know AKA (or Jason Akermanis as he is otherwise known), he is one of the highest profile Australian Football players. He's well known for his great skill but also his sometimes brash, over-confident demeanor. He's a colourful, outspoken character. Perfect for this Nomis campaign!
So this is where we began. We enlisted the services of two-time winner of Australia's Editorial Photographer of the Year, Damien Breberg, to capture AKA's personality on film. Then, we got to work.
To help create a mythological image, we wanted to make AKA look like he was almost made out of stone and really emphasise his muscle definition.
We started by simply knocking all the colour out of the image to give us a base to work from.
Then we looked at creating some overlay layer effects to really adjust the brightness and contrast in the image. Of course there are a lot of tricks to this but I am keeping the explanation as simple as possible here.
The next stage above was to add some subtle colours into the skin tone. We didn't want a completely grey scale image as it was too cold. It's a little hard to see the detailed colour in these reduced images, but at the end I'll post a close up image of the detail to show the effect we were after.
As the Nomis boots needed to be a focus too of the image, we brought them back into full colour. This ensures that the Nomis products become the centre of the advertising rather than an addition to the AKA image. It also helped to strengthen the message of "I am AKA and these are my weapons".
Now the basics were out of the way we could concentrate on the finer details of the imagery. The eye area of the face was never too clear and from the image treatments we had previously done, the eye area had become so dark there was no definition. Having eye contact with AKA is extremely important to create an image that is both engaging and captivating. When you walk past this image you need to feel like he is looking at you personally.
We also tidied up the beard and other facial areas.
Next we started to work on defining the muscles. Using simple gradient shadows with overlay mask effects we were able to emphasise the toning of the body.
As it was "off-season" when we took the photography, we could excuse AKA from being slightly well-fed... With a little bit of masking and lighting effects we gave him a slight stomach sqeeze.
The final area for some airbrushing was his stomach. We wanted to over-do his six-pack to help create this "mythological" feel. Again using shadows and highlights with plenty of layer effects we suceeded in the effect we were after.
Finally we just added some more shadow and highlights to the base of his stomach. We knew we would be having a "ripped paper" edge to the bottom of the image (to tie in with Nomis' branding) so were happy to leave this as is for the time-being.
The next stage was to create the backgound and you can follow this in "The making of AKA Part 2".
1 Comments:
Thanks for this series, fascinating stuff!
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