Photographer. Digital Artist. Motion Technician

In the spring of 2011 Eden Robbins was asked to create a challenging image for Guinness and their freshly launched Extra Stout brew. The art director on this project, Simon Newman from Grip, had a vision of a place that didn’t quite exist, except in his head. I codenamed this project “epic” in my mind since it reminded me of imagery and architecture that I associate with Greek epics.

(More info after the jump…)

I realized I would need to build a three dimensional space that we could tweak and adjust until we nailed to concept. Eden photographed architecture samples to start us off. I decided than rather that trying to generate perspective in Adobe Photoshop, After Effects would be my tool of choice in this scenario. I built all of the rough architectural elements on planes and used a 3D camera to get consistent and realistic perspective. Adobe After Effects also allowed me to use 3D lights which gave me a consistent look and helped me to bring all my elements together.

One issue with working with After Effects was image size. For print I will always work with images that are at least 5000px long/wide in the dominant direction. Although After Effects does allow me to do this the performance constrains became quickly apparent. Even working at 1/4 scene resolution on a 12 Core Mac Pro with 18 GB ram was slow going. However strategic use of outline mode made it all possible.

I took a trip to a Zoo with Eden and Simon, armed with a team of assistants and booked a photo session with a Lion and Vulture. We were locked in a cage with the Lion where we set up a green screen to facilitate a better mask process for the fur, however I ended up generating a slightly better looking edge with custom brushes. The Cobra was shot at our studio. Dealing with image elements that have perspective gets very tricky when building a 3D environment based on flat planes.  Once the After Effects process was completed a lot of retouching had to be done to get the shadows in the right places. After Effects lights did provide the architectural shadows and a good guideline where the animal shadows should fall.

This project was at times difficult to visualize with its unusual workflow; however, it was well worth the effort as it allowed us to push photographic boundaries and create an ‘Epic’ image.