aerial view

[rutherford]

Hi everyone!

This is a photomontage i did for a client. I had to illustrate an aerial photo of a road junction in the shape of a guitar for a poster. To do it, the road was rendered in 3D max and then manipulated in photoshop. The aerial landscape is constructed with bits and pieces of pictures we in the studio took from a helicopter. the pictures, along with the 3D rendering of the road was put together and manipulated in order to create the image with the colour cast the art director chose. the cars placed on the road were extracted from the actual helicopter shots. i thank you in advance for your suggestions.

Cheers!

George Rutherford

[Mike]

To me (for whatever its worth ) I think the scale between the road and the buildings is wrong. The buildings are too big. Also it appears that the buildings were shot from a rather low altitude with a wide angle lens, while the road is shot from higher up with a more normal angle lens.

I like the idea, but would hate to try to drive a large truck around some of the curves in that road

Mike

[rutherford]

Hi Mike!

Thanks for your reply! I agree with you on the curves, but since we had to illustrate a guitar, we couldn't have made them differently.

on the buildings scale, you are right again, but although we saw this as a scale problem on the image, it was the client's decision to make them that size.

All the pictures were taken from a helicopter in different altitudes but with the same lens (can't remember wich specifically now) and the road was modeled on 3D.

Thanks for your comments!

Cheers,

George Rutherford

[Panpan]

Hi George

I like it!

The biggest problems for me is the shadows not matching and the too high contrast for an aerial.

If the client gives you the leeway, I would try to make it more realistic. After all, you got to the trouble to assemble this from photographs; you don't want it to look like it was drawn.

Pierre

[Kraellin]

rutherford,

i love it. very clever!

and whereas i dont have any problem with the critiques above, i think they are mostly moot here. your eye is so drawn to the 'guitar' that the other things dont really matter that much.

i do have one small thing myself, though. you've got the white dashed lines on the 'neck' of the 'guitar', but on the curves you seem to have lost them mostly. probably an effect of the twisting and curving.

i hope you charged him a bunch for this. that's very cleverly done

i've one question too, why 3d max? this seems like it could have all been done in PS or even psp.

Craig

[rutherford]

Craig and Pierre,

first of all, thanks for your posts. It is always inspiring to hear the opinion of experienced retouchers on a job.

I had a total of 48 working hours (started on a saturday morning and ended on monday morning with about 8 hours sleep in between) to complete this job once I had the material to work at hand. We produced a total of four images on different themes. We divided the work between the team in the studio in order to make it possible to accomplish the deadline. We decided it would be faster to have the roads rendered on the 3D and build the background from the pictures we took.

due to this rush, some shadows are on a different perspective. the dashed lines are there, i think you can't see them due to the resolution of the picture posted (I am posting a detail so you can see better).

Along with this post, i post another of the images that was done by my boss here at the studio and a detail of the guitar image to show the dotted lines on the road.

cheers!!!

George Rutherford

PS: If you wish, i can post some aerial shots of Rio's beaches and Landscape.

[Bujo]

Man...what a gig.

Very cool stuff...I know it's only an illustration, the consumer (my wife) would never notice these items and these same items routinely make it to print, TV etc. Thanks for the other posts too. The mic is great and all of this is going to be shown to our designers tomorrow at my work.

I realize you may have seen all this stuff before I've posted my reply, but it doesn't hurt to have another set of eyes.

A. Shadow on wrong side of the bridge
B. No building or tree shadows
C. Tree shadows missing from this side, but are present on elevated roadways and
other trees

***blah, blah, blah***

D. This area is too...flat or low. Something's not right with the perspective.
Can you reduce the shadow depth to bring the roadway down a bit so it's
not towering over those buildings...?
E. This auto looks like it's curved...with the shadow and shape of this car
plus the curve of the road helps create this.
F. Where is the Guitar Cord to the GIANT AMP???
G. I like the large circle (looks like a fountain) but you need a few smaller
ones to simulate the knobs on the guitar and where is the "wammy bar"?
lol
H. I think the lane divider lines help simulate "strings" and think if you
added some other lines ie. darker lines for tires or oil you could get
more strings on the guitar.
I. I LIKE IT...nice job...

Now a question or two. What is the final size of these pieces? Where are they to be used, web, print etc? Have you ever heard of Zoomify?

Thanks for posting. Good luck with the rest of you work too. Creativity Rocks...

[Kraellin]

thanks rutherford,

not having ever worked with 3d max i can only guess that it was easier to manipulate the roadways than in ps or psp or something else. is this the case? could you take a piece like a roadway and simply pull and curve it around like that and keep the image integrity? if so, that's something to consider for the future for me.

as for the dashed lines, yes, i can see them in the other picture; they just arent as pronounced as on the neck. that isnt all bad, though, since the places where they are less pronounced is further away in the image. i point it out because i think i just cant stand perfection

and like i say, the cleverness of the manipulation outshadows any of these other minor points.

thank you for showing it to us. and kudos to your boss on the microphone image also

Craig

[rutherford]

bujo and criag,

Thanks a lot again for the tips!

Bujo,

Like i said on my last post, we had a very tight deadline and due to the complexity of the job, some details were missed. But thanks again for your notes!! The final pieces were a CD sleeve and a Poster. The job was done for Mccann Erickson / Esso Motor Oil.

Craig,

we use 3D as a toll for illustrating many things here at the studio (pack shots, scenarios, etc). It gives us total control on creating images such as the road - wich could be done with photoshop CS2 mesh distort quite easily. the only problem with it is that it would take more time do be done, and we were ona tight deadline.

Once again, it is very nice to have this exchange of ideas with you guys!!

Cheers!!!

PS: Attatched I send some aerial shots of Rio for you!

[Kraellin]

nice shots, rutherford. thanks

Craig