Monday 10 March 2014

File Cards

As a companion to the Total Retaliation Book we've been working on some file cards for the Retaliation 4" figures. Here's a sneak peak at what's coming down the line . . .



Tuesday 4 February 2014

Photographing Accessories

As a professional designer, I have a lot of respect for anyone who works in the visual arts fields. However, my respect for photographers - and in particular product photographers - has increased ten fold over these last couple weeks.

The biggest challenge I've encountered while working on Total Retaliation is how to light and shoot the accessories that come with the action figures, while keeping them to scale. I've experimented a lot since the holidays (and have looked at a lot of tutorials on Youtube, including how to make your own light tent) but I'm finally getting the hang of it.

You can check out some of the G.I. Joe Retaliation Wave 1 accessory shots here.

- BH


Thursday 9 January 2014

Some designs just don't make the cut

A key part of the design process when working on a book like Total Retaliation is exploring different design and layout options. The image below is an example of one option that didn't make the final cut. Here, I experimented with animating the character (Roadblock) by adding adding effects and muzzle flare to the image. It was a lot of fun to create but it doesn't really showcase the toy. The cleaner page design, that you can see in some of the earlier posts here, is much more effective at letting the action figure and it's accessories take centre stage.

I hope you enjoyed this little look behind the scenes of the design process. :-)
BH