Sketches of various dresses and poses during art direction of the photo shoot.

Backstage

First rough sketches off the different styles were drawn in the studio at the end of the shoot.

Rune Spaans and his team commenced to do the 3D-work. Firstly, the body had to be rebuilt in 3D to get the stance right. The dress was then modeled onto the frame. To the left: The flat sketch. To the right: The draped 3D-model.

When the shape was ready, the UV-map was passed over to us so that we could start working with the text layout.

The typography was meticulously filled in.

It required a lot of testing and “alternative kerning” to get the typography exactly in the right spot. With the UV map ready, Rune could now make a render of the final dress. Here are the results.

The ads were published in a nationwide campaign that ran in magazines, newspapers and on boards .

The campaign was commissioned by the creative team Ole Henrik Stubberud, Heidi Mittun and Elin Dorum Bengtsson at Kitchen.
Foto: Massimo Leardini
Model: Kari-Anne / Team models
Hair & Make-up: Agnes Guldbrandsen/Pudder Styling: Linda Myrseth/Pudder
3D work: Rune Spaans/SuperRune (Light, render og compositing) Christer Sveen (Modeling)

1) The disturbed suburban house wife Betty Draper from Mad Men

2) The disturbed vigilante mom Sarah Connor from Terminator 2

3) The disturbed redneck vigilante mom Sarah Palin

4) The absolutely fabulous safari huntress Veruschka von Lehndorff for YSL

The choice seemed pretty obvious, but a quick sketch revealed that the look sported by Veruschka von Lehndorff did not translate very well to an illustrated format. In the photograph she is an immaculate example on how to dress glamourously in khaki. In the illustration it did not look like smart khaki anymore. It looked like, well, dull plain khaki…

A few more sketches on the Veruschka theme.

I moved on to Betty Draper thinking that a baby doll could make for some interesting semitransparent effects. Below: Awkward posture, but the kimchi recipe is nice though…

Having already used the see-through effect in the “Marrakech” illustration, I felt it was to early to play the transparency card again. I left suburbia and headed into redneck territory, swapping semitransparent for semi-naked. I was really happy with the sketch to the upper left, but it bothered me that the keyword “stylish” was nowhere to bee seen anymore.

My pondering about female gunners came to a close. I decided a simple colour scheme had to do the trick. Basically red tights and lips, and a simple black and white striped dress. The watercolour to the left was transferred with a few alterations to the final illustration (bottom). Rock’n roll.

Below are the two original scans before they were mashed together in Photoshop. The watercolour of Thor worked quite well on its own terms, but it needed some extra “pop” to stand out in the magazine lay-out. The original watercolour was pushed to the limits colorwise, and for some reason or other, it did not fall apart…

On our first meeting I presented these sketches – pastels on coloured paper. Although well received, there were expressed concerns about the “crudeness” of the sketches – admittedly, there was a certain “art-schoolish” flair to them (which I thought were rather funny, at the time). Moreover, the editors wanted to show perfumes through the decades – as well as celebrity endorsement – thus establishing a need for a historical take on the subject.

This was the last shot at a typical still life rendering with pastels on coloured paper.

With the new brief in mind, I searched vintage perfume ads for inspiration – particularly the eminent work of  still-so-fresh fashion illustrator Rene Gruau (1909-2004).

After some tinkering, it became obvious that pastels on coloured paper were not going to give the contemporary shtick we were looking for. There was clearly a need for an edge, which (quite literally) led to the addition of paper cutting. Confident that the combination of scissor sharp shapes and natural textures would do the trick, I  proceeded to make some more elaborate sketches.

First coloured cut-outs: A bottle of  L’Eau d’Issey by Issey Miyake and a pretty Mitsouko-inspired face. Further down some tests with watercolour-blotches.

Sketches for the perfumes of the 80′s, drawing inspiration from the cut-out style of Grace Jones’ album art and quintessential 80′s artist Patrick Nagel.

As things go, the brief eventually changed – uncomfortable with the retrospective angle, the journalists dropped the initial idea, turning to the “here and now” of perfumery instead. This was a brilliant move – definitely all for the better – but it meant that I had to do some serious rethinking and also had to scrap most of what I had done so far. The illustrations would now focus solely on the experience of smelling and applying perfume, which opted for a much more contemplative, uncluttered design.

Below are the last sketches, many of which can be seen in the final editorial. It was particularly interesting to depict men smelling perfume, without being overly effeminate. Furthermore, all the perfume bottles from the different perfume houses had to move away from the front seat in order to give the single page illustrations enough breathing space. To see them up close: Click here.