Background

        To save time, but also to maintain the depth of colour and quality of texture from the original advert, rather than paint my own background I chose instead to use Photoshop to digitally remove Dahl from the advert and use that as a backdrop. However, as my animated figure would stretch further than Dahl's pose, it was necessary to expand the original backdrop.

 

There is not much room around Dahl to depict her stretching.

         The area around the edges are largely dark, and so it was relatively easy to merge the image into a single dark colour, as areas of lighter definition mostly fade before the edges of the original images. However, the pale blue areas above Dahl do extent to the edge, so to accommodate this I combined numerous copies of the advert, and blended the edges using the eraser and blur tools. It is by no means perfect, but the focus is drawn to the female model, and the result is better and more textured than if I had digitally painted it myself.

 

 

        So that the contrast between the photographic background and my hand drawn figure is not to great, it has occurred to me that I could begin the animation with the original image, and use After Effects to fade from the original to the hand drawn. I had also pondered keeping the original hair until the model lifts her head, but on further reflection I believe that this would only draw attention to the difference between the photographic and painted hair colours, whereas merging the two entire images together allows the transition to be gradual.