So as I promised friends and family I am posting the process of how I made this year's Macy's Day Parade Poster. The poster went through many "changes" as I'm sure you will all see.
This project started back in June when the art director for Macy's saw a parade illustration from my book "The Guild of Geniuses" and wanted something similar. So I started with some really loose thumbnail sketches. (You can click on any of these images to see a larger version of them)
Their main emphasis was on a few things.
1. They wanted the Macy's info integrated more into the scene (apparently they were just laying nice type over a pretty image and they wanted to shift gears a bit)
2. There was a preferential order for licensed characters. Apparently the Snoopy people shelled out the most bucks for the biggest exposure on the poster and they are of of the two the newest floats in the parade this year (Sorry Pikachu)
I was personally a big fan of the Macy's poster with the Macy's sign on the drum but they just liked the feel of the one they chose much better.
After the decision was made on which direction to approach I then started revising the drawing and making it look cleaner.
and one more......
Now, the art director warned me ahead of time that I would be dealing with a committee of people rather than just one art director (which is always pleasant) and that we would most likely be going through MANY stages of changes and so it was requested that I work digitally and in layers.... MANY layers. (The end poster unflattened reached 2 gigabytes) Therefore, my next step was to draw each of the floats and characters in separate files and drag them each in individually onto the final poster layout....
From there, I then started laying in colors and merging them back into the file and slowly began tightening the poster as you will see in the various stages below.
one...
two....
three...(there were many more but I'll spare you the redundancy)
And here are what a few of the individual colored files looked like before being merged......
till finally I got to a final piece....
Basically, most of the changes came down to a few things... All the licensed characters had particular pantone colors and structure that I had to adhere to (With that said it was hard for the poster to really fully look like my style considering I had to follow strict restrictions) with that said, it's a pain in the neck to try and create any depth or separate objects from one another when all the colors have to be so saturated The Macy's banner was darker before as you could see earlier but there was a particular Macy's RED that I had to adhere to. Also, one of the last minute changes you will see is that they wanted the Energizer Bunny's head turned and they wanted me to move some clowns around.
Well from now on I'm a Duracell man.
So that's it!
If you happen to live in the New York area and happen to see this poster posted up anywhere in the city please PLEASE PLEEEASE take a snapshot of it and send it to me via email so that I can have it as a memory of this project that I had the honor and was so fortunate to do.
Take care!
