Invisibilia

A few days ago I was having an argument with Rhodri Marsden on Twitter about how the mainstream press rips content off the internet without crediting or paying the original creators. I was arguing that the mainstream press treats the Internet as a treasure trove of material it can “borrow” without payment. I was mostly refering to text. Anyway, I forgot about the argument until tonight…

Back in 2004 I was playing around with a technique in Photoshop that involved tracing people. I’d always enjoyed drawing/tracing and generally fucking around with photos. This time I decided to trace a person but leave the background intact. It looked good. The figures had an odd, slightly spectral quality. I assumed loads of other people would have already used the same technique, but I couldn’t actually find any examples. There were lots of traced or rotoscoped images, but none in which the background had been left untraced. Similarly, there were lots of instances where cartoon characters had been drawn on photographic backgrounds, but none where a real photographed figure had been “removed” through drawing. Hooray.

I did about 10 or 12 of these images, either using family snapshots or photos I’d found on the internet.

I gathered them together and made a gallery for them on my website. I called them: Invisibilia. Boosted by an unashamedly pretentious piece of introductory prose (I’ve since toned it down) the pictures turned out to be really successful, with loads of linkblogs (this was the days before Facebook and Twitter) pointing traffic towards my website.

People really liked the pictures. I did get quite a few comments saying that the pictures were reminiscent of the classic A-HA video for Take On Me. In fact, the Take On Me video is more like rotoscoping. There’s lots of tracing and there’s merging of live-action and animation but the visual style is very different – a loose, sketchy pencil style – and a lot of the video is just old-fashioned animation with no photography involved.

I kept getting emails asking me how to recreate the style, so In 2005 I created a simple photoshop tutorial explaining how I did it. Over time, the Invisibilia series has been linked to thousands of times, and thanks to the tutorial, lots of people have tried their own versions of Invisibilia pics, as this Flickr search demonstrates.

Since then I’ve continued to do the Invisibilia pictures – because I enjoy it. Even when I’m sick of writing, I rarely get sick of drawing.  I stopped using photos from the Internet and started using only my own source photos. And the pictures continue to be very successful, as these links suggest.

This afternoon I was at my mother’s house and happened to see the back cover of this week’s Time Out London magazine. The back cover was an advert for Madrid, courtesy of The Spanish Tourist Board. It looks like this:

In terms of style and overall effect, it is very, very similar to my Invisibilia pictures. And the odd thing is that the advert doesn’t really explain itself – it’s not really apparent what the point of the ad is. It’s almost as though a designer has just said: “Hey, this is a good visual gimmick, let’s use it on an advert” and the client has agreed.

Now, I am not saying that whoever designed the advert ripped me off. It’s entirely possible that they developed the style independently. More importantly, is it even possible to “rip off” someone’s style? All artists borrow techniques and styles from one another. One artist will paint lines inspired by Picasso, another will use brushstrokes taken from Cezanne. There’s always been a lot of debate in the world of comics as to when a tribute becomes a blatant steal. And it’s not like I was the first person to trace someone in Photoshop. Still, the overall effect of the advert is oddly similar to that of the Invisibilia pics. And the advertising industry has a very bad reputation when it comes to borrowing ideas from artists and writers. There are whole blogs dedicated to pointing out the similarities between original work and copycat adverts.

I don’t know if I have a leg to stand on or not. Maybe the designer just saw the Invisibilia pictures and decided to do some of their own. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Anyway, I am curious to investigate, so on Monday I’m going to try to find out which agency commissioned the ad. We shall see where it leads…

This advert annoys me

Most television adverts are annoying. Some are annoying because they are painfully unfunny, or misleading or offer a lifestyle that is clearly only unobtainable through credit fraud or a job in the city. This particular advert is annoying because it confuses me. Every time I watch it I think: “Why? Why did they choose that scenario?”

The advert is for Ford Commercial vehicles and it follows in a long line of Ford Commercial vehicles in which a scene unfolds and as it does, the protagonists and supporting characters are beseiged by large CGI labels explaining how Ford Commercial vehicles contributed to their life. In this case the advert depicts the final moments of a football match, with a vital goal securing glory for one of the teams. Rather than staging their own football match, the makers of the advert decided to use an archive match. As something of a footballing purist, it’s the choice of goal that annoys me.

Now, if I were making an advert that depicted a dramatic goal, I would choose a) two teams that the British public were familiar with b) a blockbuster goal that would be incredibly memorable and c) a scenario where the goal actually mattered.

Instead, we get the following:

• Two unknown teams (I think they are playing in the Greek league. I suspect one of the teams is Panathaniakos)
• A really terrible goal. The ball is chipped in to the striker. He doesn’t hit the ball very well and the goalkeeper saves it, pushing it out to his left. Another striker follows up the shot and hits it goalwards.  Except the goalkeeper reaches it, but fumbles the save and both ball and goalkeeper end up in the back of the net. It’s a really shit goal. The manager on the touchline is craning and even he can’t tell at first whether it’s a goal or not
• Still, even if the goal is rubbish, perhaps it’s an important goal. Maybe the score was 0-0 and this goal makes all the difference. But no. The commentator excitedly yelps: “It’s 3-1! And that’s the goal that seals it!” so it wasn’t even an important goal. The goalscoring team were already winning anyway

Every time I watch the advert, those thoughts pass through my head. It annoys me.

The worst advert of the year

I haven’t paid much attention to adverts this year, although I’m always stunned by just how awful razor ads are. Particularly the one that mentions “conquering the neck”.

Still, very little can compare to the horror of this Pringles advert. It’s the bit where she says: “It’s in a bag! It’s in a bag, which is amazing!” that does it for me. It makes me want to punch her in the eyes.

Crisps in a bag. Not amazing.

Prodigy and adverts

I keep on thinking of little things to blog about – from newspaper headlines to the price/strength of cheese – but I never quite get round to it. I should buy myself a BlackBerry and blog on the move. Except that I’m not going to. Maybe I should just blog more often. Ho hum.

The week has been work and drinking and I’ve spent the weekend feeling tired and confused, which is not in itself a bad thing. This afternoon my girlfriend and I wandered around north London, in a desperate attempt to just get out of the house for a bit. It was one of those days when you spend 3 hours looking for somewhere to eat and then spend half an hour eating. Still, I managed a discreet celeb spot in Hampstead, near the Royal Free Hospital. It was none other than Liam Howlett of The Prodigy. He was dressed very strangely, like a pantomime punk in a rubbish BBC sitcom. I hardly recognised him. From the giddy heights of Hampstead, we ended up in Finsbury Park, trudging along Stroud Green Road, trying to avoid Arsenal fans.

Whilst out and about I saw an advert on a bus. It’s an ad I keep seeing for cervical smears. Now, you might imagine that such an advert would show a picture of a lady’s private parts. But no, that would be rude. So, you might think that instead they would show a picture of a lady smiling, happy in the knowledge that she’s had her smear and is as healthy as a duck. But no, instead the advert is this:

Now, I don’t quite understand the point of it.

The only possible explanation is that the man in the advert does look like a bit of a cunt, if you’ll pardon my language. If anyone does have a more logical explanation for the ad, please let me know.