The flyer didn't take me more than an hour twenty to make. Not because it was easy to make [or because I'm a boss like that] but because the idea came to my head relatively quickly. I usually have an idea, make something, mess up in the process, and then find something better while fixing it/starting fresh. This time I had an idea, made something, and liked it.
So I started with a couple specific concepts/theme:
- Black and Gold color scheme
- Light blue or maybe silvery secondary color scheme
- Valentines Day
- Alpha
- Frozen
- Grown and Sexy
- Lounge
After I figured I had enough to work with conceptually, I started to put them together. I was initially gonna find some big booty chick, make her black and gold, and get on with my life. But I don't like half-assing anything that's going to be shown to the public and definitely don't like half-assing things done for clients. After a couple minutes of searching, I found an appropriate picture... I guess.
I personally didn't like the picture because the girl is busted as I don't know what, but thankfully, she was not the focal point of the image and there was going to be a lot of manipulation done to the photo, so I decided to march on.
I don't have graphic step by step images, but what I did was increase the contrast on them A LOT, making the dark areas darker and the light areas lighter. Then I applied a filter that gave the lighter areas a glossy look to them. Then I applied another curves layer to increase the contrast, making it look like... extra glossy. Then I added a hue/saturation layer and turned them gold, which made them look more metallic than anything.
I wasn't exactly feeling the NegrOscar statue look, so I decided to implement the "frozen" concept here since black and gold were already covered. I duplicated the gold layer and turned it icy blue, changing it from glossy to frosty. From there, I masked out the blue layer around where I imagined there'd be a lot of body heat like... melting off the ice. Anywhere that was masked turned back to the gold color, giving it the effect you see.
For finishing touches, I experimented with a super curvy beveled layer style for the text to make it look frozen/metallic. I think it worked out okay, but could have looked better. I'll perfect that in the future. I also added a noise layer [you can sort of see black speckles all over their bodies] to add some grit to the overly smooth skin and then added clouds and difference clouds [You can sort of see a cloudy texture on his jeans, but its all over their bodies] to make it look a little more icy. [Burr!]
And that was it.
[Click the image to enlarge. It's kind of a must.]
I got a call later saying that they wanted to make print pluggers. Unfortunately, the pluggers were not 4x6 inches like the e-flyer. The resolution of the pluggers/the necessity of a 1/8" bleed on the edge would have made it necessary for me to make so many changes that I might as well redo the flyer from scratch.
...That's basically what I did other than the text, which I had to mess with a little as well. I wanted to follow the same theme, so I enlarged some floral patterns to the point that they just looked like colored curvy lines and then I centered the text and made it look uniform/pretty again.
And there you have it. I hope the party is good. [I'm sure it will be]
Congrats Alpha Mu and thanks for the opportunity. I look forward to working with you guys again in the future.
[Yes, I am aware of the typo. Thank you, though.]
pretty tight. i feel that. & 1.5hrs is good stuff.
ReplyDeleteall of the font and lettering is really, really nice.
Thanks. Means a lot coming from you because that FMO website is absolutely beastly.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading about your process. Its great to see graphic design being broken down in unarbitrary means. Anyways, I'm interested in how visual and/or graphic artists function at Northwestern, so I appreciate your blog.
ReplyDeleteMuch love.
ReplyDelete