The Making of a Banner

What's actually involved in making a banner? This article is about looking at it from the request stage, through the liason stage, to production stage.
Not everyone will do this the same way. It's just how I do it!

Part One - The Initial Contact

Part Two - Brainstorming

Part Three - A Colour Scheme

Part Four - More Enquiries

Part Five - Messing about with Ideas - First Impressions

In view of the subject, we need to keep the colours subtle, and attempt to bring a light, meditative atmosphere to the image.
This is the first thing that came into my head, so I sketched it down.


What does it represent?

You'll see later, but for the moment, the bump in the middle is Ayers Rock.
A not insignificant aboriginal symbol. Either side are two aboriginal men in silhouette. Above the rock, circling and soaring around the rock are two eagles. A symbol of power, majesty and all seeing. The two men are projecting their thoughts and dreams through the eyes and flight of the eagle. Their very consciousness carried high above this very powerful and sacred symbol. They await the return of the eagles, as they attune themselves to the vibrations of the rock, awaiting the divine gift of intuition, higher wisdom and insight.

This became a powerful vision in me and so I set about creating it.

Part Six - The Background

Part Seven - Picture Elements - Ayers Rock

Elements of the picture that are missing include:- some aboriginal men, Ayers Rock, an eagle, some clouds and text. The next job is to set about creating or acquiring all the various elements that will make up the finished product.

I have dozens of image CD's, collected over many years, which are royalty free, and an image collection set of 750,000 images, most of which, it has to be said, are useless cartoons. However, there are some 80,000 odd high quality photographs to choose from.

From these we can acquire Ayers Rock, the profile silhouette of a man and an eagle silhouette.


Using Paint Shop Pro (4,5,6 and now 8) I can cut out Ayers Rock to separate it from its background. As the cut out tool though, can be a little harsh, it's easy to 'fudge' the edges, to give it that 'anti-alias' look.
Then we add this to the main image and fade it out to around 48%.


Ayers Rock is a bit barren, so we add a little green along the bottom edge to give it some form and life.

Part Eight - Picture Elements - Aboriginal Man and Clouds

I took the sideways view of a man, cut it out and made it black, and in this instance, removed the hat. Extra work, but it was the stance I needed. Next, was to add the spear and shield with the paint brush tool.
Now shrink the whole thing down proportionately to fit the banner image, plus make a mirror copy. Next was to add this image on either side of the rock and fade out to 68% so as not to have them jet black.


Notice that they appear to be slightly orientated toward the rock with their spears resting on their foreheads in a kind of reflective or meditative pose.

Next, Paint Shop Pro has a really neat cloud tube which can be set to any scale, in this case, size 10. Use sparingly!

Part Nine - Picture Elements - Text and Eagles

Next we add the text, and used as our reference, the type of text already present on the website, with just a hint of a drop down shadow, in white.

The eagles were cut out of their silhouettes with a freehand cut tool and then had their edges smoothed so they weren't ragged. I copied, mirrored and flipped the single image, so there was two and pasted them onto a transparent layer. I then proceeded to mould them and give them form by sculpting them in gold. These were then added and the image was complete.




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