Senbatsu poster fanart
So this is what I've been up to instead of writing 48 Family Member Meta 2012.
Every year, the OOO48 franchise holds a franchise-wide popularity election, and every member of every group, including the trainees, gets to release both a video and a poster to beg for votes appeal to fans. Here's this year's official posters. This year, several of the international fan-forums are holding an inter-forum senbatsu poster-making contest. There were four categories: Best Original Senbatsu Poster, Best Team/Unit Senbatsu Poster, Best Remixed Senbatsu Poster, (editing one of the official posters) and Best Humorous Senbatsu Poster. I had a shit-ton of ideas, so here they are, with some commentary.
WARNING: SHIT-TON OF 1366x380 SIZE IMAGES. READ AT THE RISK OF YOUR OWN BANDWIDTH
Original:
Other than the Takamina poster, I'm quite satisfied with these, and even hope that their subjects see them. (One of the contest judges has promised to print all entries out, card-size, and send them to the girls as a gift.)
My first creation. Masuda quite possibly is the best voice in the franchise, and most threads dedicated to her in fan-forums are titled "the VOICE of AKB48!" So I thought a parody of the reality show The Voice logo would be appropriate. The screenshot I ended up picking worked so well as a kind of lighting-blue-contrast to the white text that I ditched rest of the original logo and applied that to her name, instead. Technically, it would be the simplest design, as all I had to do was fiddle with the alignment of the text and just stroke around the kanji.
Lol herpderp I learned how to do fades in photoshop! The right-most Takamina should be moved left. Oh well, too late. This poster is really quite amateurish-looking, especially the stroked text. It's very cluttered, too. Even though I spent a shit-ton of time on this, trying to get the fades right, it's one of the worst results for the effort. And it's basically the same concept as the official Takamina poster, which is so much better made in composition and execution.
Airi is known for her art skills, so I thought it appropriate to do a hand-drawn poster for her. She's mentioned admiring Gundam's Char Aznable before, so I drew her and two of her original creations, chibi-Airi and Gugutasu-san, (a character she made for Google+) dressed in three of Char's more iconic outfits. The text is also a take on one of the Gundam logos. Unfortunately, I fucked up Airi's torso proportions. %$#@&! Chibi-Airin turned out the best, and just for that I do hope Airi gets to actually see this, although the print size is probably going to fuck up the detail on Gugutasu-san's outfit, too. @#$%&%$#@*!
Will upload the sketch in its scanned size after the contest is over.
Photoshop lightning skill get!
Airi's so notorious for her otaku-dom, that for her birthday stage, the staff got her a red lightsaber instead of the usual bouquet. I knew that I HAD to do a poster based on that. At first I was going to shoop Airi's head onto an existing Jedi image, but scrapped that, as that would require ripping off the artist of the original picture. My next option was to rotoscope a blade onto something she was holding that could look plausible. The problem was, the best pictures I found for a while for that were pics of her holding a pen. Um, mini lightsaber-chucks? Eeeehhhh...Then I remembered my old Darth Hyo pic, in which I had shooped a lightsaber handle to place her mic. But most concert pics of Airi are of her singing, which wouldn't work. Luckily, I found pics of the time she judged a cosplay contest in China, and found the picture you see in the poster. The outstretched hand drove me to learn to shoop lightning. Kind of wish I had downloaded a better Star Wars font, though as it discouraged me from putting in more time to make the parody of the Star Wars prequel titles more authentic.(Metallic texture text) This is one of the most successful posters in terms of execution of concept, though.
Mayu has pretty much been cemented as the future face of the franchise, as the older members graduate. They set up her next-gen-ace image in the Manatsu no Sounds Good PV, and the fan's acceptance of that role was shown by her ranking #2 in the election. So the comparison to Obama was apt, imo. Really, though, I cheated so much making this, compared to how the parodies of the HOPE poster are supposed to be made. Instead of hand-drawing vector graphics with the threshhold pics as a guide, I simply selected black, refined the edge, and filled it in with the chosen color. This still took massive amounts of time to do, though, simply through learning how to do it, doing an entire version that looked extremely rough and nasty before I discovered refine edge, fixing that fucking earring, and her ear, which did not like refine edge at all, forcing some tentative brushwork with the mouse, which is a horrible idea. It's my favorite poster of the bunch, of course, because of all of the work I put into it, and imo it does have the intended effect. And watching the layers come together was just damn cool. Couldn't resist inside jokes, though, so OSHIRI.
Unit:
I like how most of these turned out, but I do think they're all too simplistic in composition, especially compared to the other posters. They're also the least interesting, imo, lacking the photoshop skills displayed in some of the Original category, (these are basically variations of a picture with text pasted on it, with some effects put on the text) but without the cleverness that humor posters have to make up for it. But the forum I submitted these to didn't have any other entries in the Unit category, so one of these is guaranteed to go to the inter-forum round. @_@ Currently, the one with the most votes is also the ugliest imo @_@@_@.
Of the unit posters, the one with the best results imo. The text effects on the kanji are directly replicating the test effects used in the opening theme song to Majisuka Gakuen 2. Couldn't resist the Star Trek pun, though. This poster is slightly off balance in composition, now that I look at it.
Ugh. Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy. Should have put more effects, like warping and noise, to make the text more realistic graffiti, and to make the middle text work with the flow of the pictures much better. Needed to fix the positioning and color contrast between the pictures and middle text, as well. Probably the poster I'm most disappointed in, since I really wanted to do Team Hormone justice. (Especially since a Province Buddies poster wasn't going to work, as their pictures were all too small, or landscape orientation.)
Damn! The concept was gold, the execution turned out pretty nice, and I'm not sure how I could have done any better, yet I don't feel it with this poster. It's so simplistic, so empty. Maybe it's just a case of my WMatsui bias making me feel unable to do them justice. Also, the fade-work is kind of shitty.
Why are people voting for this!? @_@ It really should have gone in the humorous category, but I didn't want the unit category to be so lonely. Seriously, this poster was so lazily made. The color balances are shit, too.
Humorous:
Most of these are quite lazily made, but I wasn't going for these to be particularly pretty, anyways. Just wanted to convey the punchline.
One of the two humourous posters I put genuine effort into. It's possibly the worst joke, with the worst delivery, as well, since most people aren't going to make the Tetris=Russia connection, (cue forced laughter) but this joke is kind of my baby, anyways. I put a lot of little text touches on it, as a result, which again, most probably won't notice. Score is the date she joined HKT, high score is her birthday, round is her height, and credits is her age.
These two are the ones most like the original election posters.
The Masana one is oh so cheap. But hey, I knew that there was going to be a Sugamoto Boobies entry, so why not? On reflection, knowing that I was going to use lion!Hana as the picture, I should have gone for broke on the humor and just pasted GAO all over the thing, and save the original-poster parody stuff with a better looking picture.
Jokes that should have been simply macros masquerading as posters. NO EFFORT. And yet somehow, Yuko on a horse is getting votes. @_@ (And actually, too much time was wasted on the JurinaAiri poster, trying to balance the composition of the two pictures in the lower right. Ended up clone-stamping one, for fuck's sake. After I finished the poster, of course I found more larger JurinaAiri pics I could have used instead. -_-
Spent some good time fucking around with shadows on this one. Should have had another panel open to reveal that a part of Mayu is made of 2D. But I was kind of tired at that point, having spent quite a lot of time going through various photoshop cyborg tutorials before picking an easy method. Kind of pissed that I couldn't color-correct the clockwork background of the text, but again was too tired to fix it. Kind of hence why I threw a half-assed snark comment at the bottom and stuck this in humorous instead of original.
Should have put Miichan's name in kanji in place of the OH SHI--, but I wasn't thinking straight at the point, as shown by how I also chose not to change the color of the MII in assimiilated to really make it stand out. Good concept slightly ruined by lazy execution.
The other humorous poster I'm proud of. Both of them are race jokes. I am a horrible person. Really wish this one would win and go to the inter-forum stage, though, because I really am proud of the replication of the Wikipedia style,(especially in the writin) and want to see the reactions of the people at other forums to it. But no one else seems to like it. :(
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So if I could vote for myself,(one per category) it would be for OSHIRI, WMatsui, and 48 Halfie Alliance.
Every year, the OOO48 franchise holds a franchise-wide popularity election, and every member of every group, including the trainees, gets to release both a video and a poster to beg for votes appeal to fans. Here's this year's official posters. This year, several of the international fan-forums are holding an inter-forum senbatsu poster-making contest. There were four categories: Best Original Senbatsu Poster, Best Team/Unit Senbatsu Poster, Best Remixed Senbatsu Poster, (editing one of the official posters) and Best Humorous Senbatsu Poster. I had a shit-ton of ideas, so here they are, with some commentary.
WARNING: SHIT-TON OF 1366x380 SIZE IMAGES. READ AT THE RISK OF YOUR OWN BANDWIDTH
Original:
Other than the Takamina poster, I'm quite satisfied with these, and even hope that their subjects see them. (One of the contest judges has promised to print all entries out, card-size, and send them to the girls as a gift.)
My first creation. Masuda quite possibly is the best voice in the franchise, and most threads dedicated to her in fan-forums are titled "the VOICE of AKB48!" So I thought a parody of the reality show The Voice logo would be appropriate. The screenshot I ended up picking worked so well as a kind of lighting-blue-contrast to the white text that I ditched rest of the original logo and applied that to her name, instead. Technically, it would be the simplest design, as all I had to do was fiddle with the alignment of the text and just stroke around the kanji.
Lol herpderp I learned how to do fades in photoshop! The right-most Takamina should be moved left. Oh well, too late. This poster is really quite amateurish-looking, especially the stroked text. It's very cluttered, too. Even though I spent a shit-ton of time on this, trying to get the fades right, it's one of the worst results for the effort. And it's basically the same concept as the official Takamina poster, which is so much better made in composition and execution.
Airi is known for her art skills, so I thought it appropriate to do a hand-drawn poster for her. She's mentioned admiring Gundam's Char Aznable before, so I drew her and two of her original creations, chibi-Airi and Gugutasu-san, (a character she made for Google+) dressed in three of Char's more iconic outfits. The text is also a take on one of the Gundam logos. Unfortunately, I fucked up Airi's torso proportions. %$#@&! Chibi-Airin turned out the best, and just for that I do hope Airi gets to actually see this, although the print size is probably going to fuck up the detail on Gugutasu-san's outfit, too. @#$%&%$#@*!
Will upload the sketch in its scanned size after the contest is over.
Photoshop lightning skill get!
Airi's so notorious for her otaku-dom, that for her birthday stage, the staff got her a red lightsaber instead of the usual bouquet. I knew that I HAD to do a poster based on that. At first I was going to shoop Airi's head onto an existing Jedi image, but scrapped that, as that would require ripping off the artist of the original picture. My next option was to rotoscope a blade onto something she was holding that could look plausible. The problem was, the best pictures I found for a while for that were pics of her holding a pen. Um, mini lightsaber-chucks? Eeeehhhh...Then I remembered my old Darth Hyo pic, in which I had shooped a lightsaber handle to place her mic. But most concert pics of Airi are of her singing, which wouldn't work. Luckily, I found pics of the time she judged a cosplay contest in China, and found the picture you see in the poster. The outstretched hand drove me to learn to shoop lightning. Kind of wish I had downloaded a better Star Wars font, though as it discouraged me from putting in more time to make the parody of the Star Wars prequel titles more authentic.(Metallic texture text) This is one of the most successful posters in terms of execution of concept, though.
Mayu has pretty much been cemented as the future face of the franchise, as the older members graduate. They set up her next-gen-ace image in the Manatsu no Sounds Good PV, and the fan's acceptance of that role was shown by her ranking #2 in the election. So the comparison to Obama was apt, imo. Really, though, I cheated so much making this, compared to how the parodies of the HOPE poster are supposed to be made. Instead of hand-drawing vector graphics with the threshhold pics as a guide, I simply selected black, refined the edge, and filled it in with the chosen color. This still took massive amounts of time to do, though, simply through learning how to do it, doing an entire version that looked extremely rough and nasty before I discovered refine edge, fixing that fucking earring, and her ear, which did not like refine edge at all, forcing some tentative brushwork with the mouse, which is a horrible idea. It's my favorite poster of the bunch, of course, because of all of the work I put into it, and imo it does have the intended effect. And watching the layers come together was just damn cool. Couldn't resist inside jokes, though, so OSHIRI.
Unit:
I like how most of these turned out, but I do think they're all too simplistic in composition, especially compared to the other posters. They're also the least interesting, imo, lacking the photoshop skills displayed in some of the Original category, (these are basically variations of a picture with text pasted on it, with some effects put on the text) but without the cleverness that humor posters have to make up for it. But the forum I submitted these to didn't have any other entries in the Unit category, so one of these is guaranteed to go to the inter-forum round. @_@ Currently, the one with the most votes is also the ugliest imo @_@@_@.
Of the unit posters, the one with the best results imo. The text effects on the kanji are directly replicating the test effects used in the opening theme song to Majisuka Gakuen 2. Couldn't resist the Star Trek pun, though. This poster is slightly off balance in composition, now that I look at it.
Ugh. Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy. Should have put more effects, like warping and noise, to make the text more realistic graffiti, and to make the middle text work with the flow of the pictures much better. Needed to fix the positioning and color contrast between the pictures and middle text, as well. Probably the poster I'm most disappointed in, since I really wanted to do Team Hormone justice. (Especially since a Province Buddies poster wasn't going to work, as their pictures were all too small, or landscape orientation.)
Damn! The concept was gold, the execution turned out pretty nice, and I'm not sure how I could have done any better, yet I don't feel it with this poster. It's so simplistic, so empty. Maybe it's just a case of my WMatsui bias making me feel unable to do them justice. Also, the fade-work is kind of shitty.
Why are people voting for this!? @_@ It really should have gone in the humorous category, but I didn't want the unit category to be so lonely. Seriously, this poster was so lazily made. The color balances are shit, too.
Humorous:
Most of these are quite lazily made, but I wasn't going for these to be particularly pretty, anyways. Just wanted to convey the punchline.
One of the two humourous posters I put genuine effort into. It's possibly the worst joke, with the worst delivery, as well, since most people aren't going to make the Tetris=Russia connection, (cue forced laughter) but this joke is kind of my baby, anyways. I put a lot of little text touches on it, as a result, which again, most probably won't notice. Score is the date she joined HKT, high score is her birthday, round is her height, and credits is her age.
These two are the ones most like the original election posters.
The Masana one is oh so cheap. But hey, I knew that there was going to be a Sugamoto Boobies entry, so why not? On reflection, knowing that I was going to use lion!Hana as the picture, I should have gone for broke on the humor and just pasted GAO all over the thing, and save the original-poster parody stuff with a better looking picture.
Jokes that should have been simply macros masquerading as posters. NO EFFORT. And yet somehow, Yuko on a horse is getting votes. @_@ (And actually, too much time was wasted on the JurinaAiri poster, trying to balance the composition of the two pictures in the lower right. Ended up clone-stamping one, for fuck's sake. After I finished the poster, of course I found more larger JurinaAiri pics I could have used instead. -_-
Spent some good time fucking around with shadows on this one. Should have had another panel open to reveal that a part of Mayu is made of 2D. But I was kind of tired at that point, having spent quite a lot of time going through various photoshop cyborg tutorials before picking an easy method. Kind of pissed that I couldn't color-correct the clockwork background of the text, but again was too tired to fix it. Kind of hence why I threw a half-assed snark comment at the bottom and stuck this in humorous instead of original.
Should have put Miichan's name in kanji in place of the OH SHI--, but I wasn't thinking straight at the point, as shown by how I also chose not to change the color of the MII in assimiilated to really make it stand out. Good concept slightly ruined by lazy execution.
The other humorous poster I'm proud of. Both of them are race jokes. I am a horrible person. Really wish this one would win and go to the inter-forum stage, though, because I really am proud of the replication of the Wikipedia style,(especially in the writin) and want to see the reactions of the people at other forums to it. But no one else seems to like it. :(
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So if I could vote for myself,(one per category) it would be for OSHIRI, WMatsui, and 48 Halfie Alliance.