Digital Compositing
Last week I finished my first significant digital compositing project. It was significant in its production, not necessarily in its application. In other words, it took quite a number of fun steps to complete, but it ended up producing a small JPG that I sent out in a mass advertising email.
The purpose of the image was to promote a canvas sale at C2F, where I work. I was given pretty much free reign to create some eye-catching graphics to send out in the form of a mass email to all C2F's customers, along with some promotional information. I talked back and forth with one of the marketing VIPs and came up with the idea of representing a large sum of canvases in a store-like setting, as if someone was going on a shopping spree of sorts to take advantage of the special promotional blowout pricing.
Several ideas surfaced, and I needed to figure out a way to either shoot the picture at work or find an appropriate offsite location. And who would be the shopper? Certainly not me. Since I was under a time crunch to get the email sent out as soon as possible, I opted not to get anyone else involved in the project. I have discovered that more heads are not better than one if you want to avoid time-consuming opinions. Yes, get feedback and be sure your ideas mesh with those of your superiors, but asking about every detail will simply delay more and more, unfortunately.
In the end, I decided that I would use imagery found around C2F's offices and warehouse. Instead of using a human model, I came up with the idea of using art mannequins, another of C2F's products of the same proprietary brand as the promoted canvas. So my challenge was to create a scene where one or more mannequins are shopping for canvases.
The process of compositing the final image ended up being quite the interesting and highly entertaining progression of creative steps and imaginative solutions. I employed many digital techniques I had never before attempted, including a crude blue screen masking method, and with much success to my surprise and delight. I don't claim the final image to be perfect by any means and will point out the errors later, yet I was pleased with the results.
The key to creating a somewhat believable composition is only to trick the average eye, not achieve perfection. Depending on the audience, there is a varying level of forgiveness. Since I was working with a fictitious environment that would never happen in the real world (and a short timeframe), my margin for error was slightly higher. When photo-editing with real source photographs, people and backdrops, there is much less margin. I have dabbled with such photo-editing on numerous occasions, but nothing on this scale. I will be working on a slideshow for EsoShow to outline the various steps necessary in creating a composition like the shopping mannequins. Hopefully I will present some useful tidbits for hobbyists and professionals of many skill levels. For now, here is a link to the final image. See the Shopping Mannequins here.
For a step-by-step description of how I created this final composition, see this album.