Some are more complex than others, so today we'll cover several words at once.
Interestingly all of these words have something in common. That thing being I had a lot of trouble coming up with an idea for every single one of them. In some ways I still think I lack an idea for earring.
However I managed to overcome the lack of ideas using a couple different methods.
Word: Button
Imitating previous art sometimes works to generate ideas. I happened to own a life sized baby Groot, so I decided to take a page from a scene from Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2. The scene where Groot presses the button on the bomb... you know the one.
Once I had the concept, it was a quick setup and shoot to come up with this image:
Word: Chocolate
Food items tend not to excite me creatively. I'm more of a food eater than a food shooter. As a result this was one of the last images I shot.
I have a trunk full of 6" action figures. In search of ideas I was digging thru my collection, playing around with figures and accessories. Sometimes just playing with figures, trying poses, and seeing how accessories look is a good way to generate ideas.
In this case I picked up Thors hammer, and thought to myself that it could look like a chocolate bar. Then I thought I could show the hammer with a bite taken out of it, or something. Playing around in Photoshop I eventually came across the idea that a lightning bolt would be the best effect. Of course, lightning is powerful, and hot, so the chocolate would melt and splash.
Word: Donut
More food. Nerts! This was one of those few times where my first concept was finished before ultimately being abandoned. I started with the idea of using donuts as elements in a landscape, and adding in a subject. I sacrificed a dozen donuts and came up with this:
Before this round of the hunt began I bought a 12" Iron Man figure, in his Mark 4 suit. This is the suit from Iron Man 2. In the movie Iron Man is shown eating donuts, while sitting in a giant donut. The figure came with a donut and a box.
I decided that maybe I should try to recreate that shot. However then I remembered that a Dunkin Donuts had opened up in town, and I could take a shot of Iron Man eating a donut in front of an actual donut shop, using forced perspective to make it look realistic.
So that is what I did. I grabbed my son and my wife and headed to the donut shop. My wife helped hold a Lume Cube to add in some fill light, and my son help clear some grass from my shot, and hold a reflector.
I set up Iron Man on a concrete parking stop, about 100ft away from the building.
The final shot required just minimal touch ups, adding the Dunkin logo to the box, and adding a texture overlay to match my preferred style. Pretty easy, overall.
Word: Earring
Another word I had no attachment to, so ideas were hard to come by. The only idea I could think of was taking a shot of an earring in an ear, but that seemed predictable and boring. However as the deadline approached I had no other ideas so I went with a shot of an earring in an ear. However, to keep the theme, I used toys, so I grabbed the only action figure I had with a well defined ear, Iron Man (same one as used for donut).
I then used actual creative thought to determine what sort of earring Tony Stark would wear, and decided it should be an Avengers earring. Lacking one, I created it using the 3D editor in Photoshop.
This is the final image. It is my weakest one this round from a creativity perspective. It is, however, not the only time I would craft props using the 3D editor in Photoshop.
Next time I delve into a pair of images that share a concept, based on the colour words, so stay tuned.
