Creative Point of View■ BY K ATRIN EISMANN

Attending tradeshows can be overwhelming with blaring sounds, crass graphics, and crowded booths. Recently, I felt tradeshow numbness setting in when suddenly a series of beautiful posters caught my eye that contained playful graphics, fitting hand lettering, and quirky colors.

Structured Creative Chaos

› ›

ph

ot

os

ho

p u

se

r ›

oc

to

be

r /

no

ve

mb

er

20

07

062

Photoshop from the creative to the practical

For anyone interested in motion picture special effects, 2D and 3D animation, and digital arts education, the SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Graphics and Inter-

active Techniques) conference is a must-attend event. As an artist and educator, I concentrate on the Emerging Technolo-gies, Art Gallery, Computer Animation Festival, and Guerilla Studio sections, all of which allow me to explore cutting-edge and creative uses of digital technology.

This year, the conference was held in San Diego, California and after the heat and humidity of a long East Coast summer, the conference had to compete with San Diego’s welcoming Mediterranean climate of clear blue skies and mild tempera-tures. Thankfully, the artwork kept bringing me back into the convention center where I was lucky enough to meet the finalists and winners of the 2007 Adobe Design Achieve-ment Awards (ADAA). They’re a diverse group of talented and engaging students from around the world who were interning onsite at the Guerilla Studio.

Claire Erwin, the Senior Community Manager for Worldwide Education for Adobe Systems manages the Adobe Design Achievement Awards and she explains, “It’s very important for Adobe to reach out to students from all around the world. This year, we called for entries in nine categories ranging from Digital Photography, to Interactive and Web Design, and Motion Graph-ics from 30 different countries. Additionally, all of the collateral materials, including posters, postcards, entry forms, and com-petition websites, were produced in eight languages. The entry period spans half the year from November 1 to April 30 to allow schools with a variety of academic schedules to participate. For the students, the first step in participating involved an online submission form and uploading low-resolution files, which the international group of judges viewed online. All in all, 2,593 sub-missions were made and the judges chose 475 as semifinalists, who had to then submit final artwork for the final judging.”

The finalists and winners were flown to de Young Museum in San Francisco for an awards gala and then two short days after-wards, they went to San Diego to intern at the Guerilla Studio, which is an interactive, hands-on art studio where conference attendees can work with Wacom Cintiq 21UX drawing tablets, 3D scanners and printers, and a large-format printing studio managed by color expert, Karl Lang (pictured above with a poster for the print studio).

You want it when?Just 36 hours before SIG-GRAPH opened, nine of the ADAA winners and finalists were given their assignment to conceptualize, illustrate, design, and produce a poster for the 12 areas of the Gue-rilla Studio using the “Circus Freakshow” theme. Working intuitively, the students had to rely on their diverse skills.

Sean Dekkers, hailing from New Zealand and a recent graduate of Roches-ter Institute of Technology School of Film and Animation—and winner of the ADAA Live Action cate-gory—explains their creative pro-cess: “We started by researching old circus and carnival posters and as it turned out, the reference work was the key to making the posters look authentic.”

KAT

RIN

EIS

MA

NN

CREATIVE POINT OF VIEW

› ›

ww

w.p

ho

to

sh

op

us

er

.co

m

063

Katrin Eismann is the author of Photoshop Restoration & Retouching and Photoshop Masking & Compositing. In 2005, she was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame and is pres-ently Chair of the MPS in Digital Photography department at the School of Visual Arts in NYC (www.sva.edu/digitalphoto).

ALL IMAGES EXCEPT AS NOTED COURTESY ADAA AND GUERILLA STUDIO.

After printing the reference materials, the visual concept began to mate-rialize and each student worked on assigned tasks with lead illustra-tors Axel Broetje (winner of the ADAA Animation category) and Jörg Block (winner of the ADAA Digital Illustration category) who are both from Germany. Sung-Ho Bae, Print Design Multi-page finalist from South Korea, and Julia Bruns, Digital Photography finalist from Germany, both worked on the typographic elements in a Pablo Ferro-like style. Gertrude Wong, born in Hong Kong and raised in Toronto, created the banners while Sean Dekkers and Marcos Ceravolo, Live Action finalist from Brazil who is about to graduate from Vancouver Film School, fell into the roles of colorists and project managers.

I spent an afternoon with the students and all I could see was joy in the process or as Print Design Single-page finalist, Christian Eggenberger puts it, “If you don’t have any time—you can’t question the decisions.”

From start to finishThe students started by sketching the primary figure, which they then scanned. And the process began…

• They added flat colors in Photoshop and, rather than obsessing on exactly which color was best, established the initial relationships, then used Hue/Saturation or Levels adjustment layers to refine the color relationships.

• Next, they used a separate highlight and shadow layer and a 3% white or black, soft-edged brush to add dimension.

• Finally, the banners, text, and roughened paper texture were added before the posters were printed and featured throughout the conference to draw attendees into the Guerilla Studio.

Designing relationshipsAfter the awards ceremony in San Francisco, and working at SIGGRAPH in San Diego, one could think that the experience was over for the finalists and winners. On the contrary, this year’s group has already been briefed on submitting propos-als to design the collateral materials for next year’s com-petition. In other words, the Adobe Design Achievement Awards are more than just a prize—it’s an opportunity for both Adobe and the participants to establish creative and business relationships with promising talent whose images, design, and animations we’ll be enjoying for years to come.

2007 Adobe design Achievement AwArds

To view the work from the 2007 Adobe Design Achieve-ment Awards visit www.adobe.com/education/adaa/win-ners and for additional information on SIGGRAPH, go to www.siggraph.org. Special thanks to Claire Erwin and Lyn Bishop for introducing me to this year’s ADAA winners. ■

KAT

RIN

EIS

MA

NN