What does PeZ do all day long?

Mosaic Children's Line catalog, January 2009
For Taevas Ogilvy / AD: Veiko Õunapuu / Photography: Hele-Mail Alamaa / Copy: Lauri Tikerpe

This post here should serve as a helpful example of what happens when the post production guys (in this case, me) aren't included in the planning of the shoot. While there is nothing really wrong with these images, we had planned a lot more - shooting from a low angle to emphasize the huge scale of the children, using props to create contact points, and match the lighting to the stock imagery. Then, a few days before we had planned to shoot, a disk with the images showed up. Straight on shots with even lighting, and with no consulting from us.
I don't know what happened, but I tried to make the best of it and used what I could. And as I said -- the outcome is ok, but could have been a LOT better with some planning and preparation, and would have taken half of the time it did to put it all together.

sanofi-aventis Magne B6 Campaign
For Taevas Ogilvy / AD: Helis Podnek / Photography: Kalle Veesaar / Copy: Lauri Tikerpe / Stylist: Ester Kannelmäe

This one sure was fun to do. First, we drew and planned out the shots, then headed to The Three Sisters hotel (apparently a hotspot for local celebrities getting photographed in a tub), where we did the background. After a few tries and even considering doing an HDR take, we settled on a long exposure, which gave the perfect "Michael Buble in the background" mood.
The garbage bag was added so I didn't have to fake the shadow or scale of the liver later, making the compositing that much easier.
So, when we had that one, we headed off to the studio to shoot the liver, which was a large pig one. If you've ever handled a raw liver, you'll understand what trouble we had to go through to get it to take any sort of shape resembeling a human organ. Finally, we ended up nailing it to a wall, as you can see from the close up.
After that it was fairly straight forward compositing work, removing the lights, soap dispensers etc. The hardest part were actually the bubbles, and while I did have a number of source images, I ended up straight up drawing most of them.

Final:Source:

A. Le Coq Special Red Launch Campaign
For Taevas Ogilvy / AD: Anni Mäger / Photography, Initial Compositing: Herkki Merila / Copy: Arno Jürjens

While the original image was beautiful in it's own right, there were some issues to fix. For starters, being an advertisement for red beer, the overall tonality needed to be a bit more reddish. The other big change was to the model, who seemed a bit too young for the theme, so I emphasized the shadows on her face and inflated her chest a bit (a collective decision, please believe me). But overall there wasn't much else, some small fixes to the sofa, and rebuilt the background so there would be more of the image for the special fold-outs in magazines.

Some time in October 2008 I had some downtime, and since I finally managed to buy copy of one of my all-time favorite NES games, Ufouria, I decided to create some fan-art. And I specifically went for a no-outline look, for a change, and tried to sketch out the characters before starting with color. Though in hindsight, I should of really planned a better background, too.

Amserv Used Cars Campaign "Used Car Paradise"
For Taevas Ogilvy / AD: Reimo Õun / Photography & Intial Compositing: Kalle Veesaar / Copy: Lauri Tikerpe

Not anything too special, but I think the idea and final image is quite funny. Mostly stock images here, except for the cars.

Final images:




Source images:


Lexus Baltic Print Campaign
For Taevas Ogilvy / AD: Kerstin Raidma / Photography: Kalle Veesaar / Copy: Lauri Tikerpe / Martin Palm / Some cleanup work: Egert Ots

At first, the plan was to have the price made in 3D or Photoshop, but as we did some tests and deadline was pushing on, we saw that the fastest and all around best way was to shoot the physical thing. It was then made out of styrofoamm,covered with plaster, sunken into an aquarium, and the photographer tried to match the lighting as best as he could. The rest was just cleanup, and bits of different stock images. I actually prefer the gray version of the moon one, but the Lexus branding blended too much with the image, so a bit of blue hue was added.

A birthday card for a friend. As all my stuff, drawn, then scanned, inked in illustrator and colored and textured in Photoshop. I know some people also ink in Photoshop, but I just can't do it. Not to mention on paper.

Final images:

Alecoq Dry Ice Õllesummer Stands
For Taevas Ogilvy / AD: Helene Vetik / Photography: Kalle Veesaar / Copy: Karl Saluveer

These aren't anything too special on their own, but I like how they turned out. Also, you can see what a difference some contact makes. That fur would have been an awful amount of work to mask and make look natural, but it blended into the stock image really nicely. Also the skin tones turned out the way I like them, with enough texture. I don't really understand why magazines in particular feel the need to blur out every single detail, making the skin look like plastic and fake.

Yeap, I'm back to buying and building LEGO.