case study_2

Ninots indultats

Between years 2017 and 2021 I have worked for El Señor Miyagi franchise, a merchandising distributor and producer, and a clothing brand, with about 30 stores throughout the national territory. T-shirts and products with original designs inspired by cult movies, famous series, animes, comics…etc. I carried out multiple functions in that job, being mainly the illustrator of the brand and making great contributions in graphic design, maintenance and web design, collaborator in social media management and online marketing, participating in product logistics, order preparation and warehouse management, small and large format printing management and traveling throughout the national territory to help open stores. A well-designed corporate image and a well-defined window dressing style were one of the brand’s hallmarks.

There was also artisan manual work for decorative purposes that frequently occurred mounting printed canvases on frames for sale to the public or to decorate stores. In this case, I present and comment on a unique complete restoration work of 2 ninots indultats: Bat-Minion and Spider-Minion that Paco Sales (CEO El Señor Miyagi) bought after finding out that they were abandoned in a garage, sad, broken, dirty, scratched, collecting dust and with no chance to save the world. Ninot indultat comes from a Valencian expression that means “pardoned doll or puppet”, since they are falla figures that are saved from being burned. The images below show the initial restoration work, applying putty to fix damages or remodeling complete parts of the ninots such as Spider-Minion’s feet that where missing or part of Bat-Minion’s cape. Those areas were sanded to polish the surfaces and prepare them for the next phase.

After making the first tinkering with putty on both figures and safely repairing the broken anchorage to the ceiling in Spider-Minion’s feet, it was time to almost completely repaint the ninots. I had the boss’s confidence to give the figures a renewed look: I painted the specular glitters on Bat-Minion’s suit with original triangular patterns and on Spider-Minion’s suit the specular glitters applied gave relief to its arachnid design, which was previously very flat, its black lines were thickened and if you compare the before and after states you can see that I intentionally painted a lot of glitters to make it look like the ninot is illuminated from above. Many details were improvised and a better finish than the original was obtained; For example, the Bat-Minion base changed its color from a desaturated green to a very pretty emerald green tone. The chain seen in the images would be covered with cotton to simulate real spider web strings. Painting Spider-Minion, hanging upside down was a unique experience, as I could easily spin him as if he were standing on a ceramic lathe.

These little superheroes were ready to act as a claim, accompanying the wide range of El Señor Miyagi’s products in some of its shop windows, attracting the attention of small and not so small public, promoting the influx of potential buyers inside the store and favoring sales.

Diorama 3D

My work at El Señor Miyagi produced many original pieces based on Marvel superheroes and famous cult sagas such as Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, which had a very varied purpose; The accompanying Star Wars samples, show one of my creations for t-shirt printing and another piece with promotional purposes on social networks.

In this case, we have complementary work executed to improve the window dressing designed for the El Señor Miyagi – Málaga store. It was about creating an attractive background for the storefront, based on the legendary Star Wars saga, trying to create the impresion that El Señor Miyagi’s products were arranged inside one of Death Star’s corridors, the terrible and hulking Imperial planet-destroying weapon. It was necessary to ask the franchisee to take an exact measurements of his storefront and to communicate efficiently, I sent the image that accompanies of the storefont seen from inside the shop. It was not a very large storefront and had 2 doors as a background.

3 images had to be created and printed in large format, one for the background and 2 more for each of the sides. This case’s originality and technical difficulty resides in the fact that for the sides of the storefront it was thought to create an optical effect that would vary depending on the position of the viewer while taking a look, causing a unique sensation. The aforementioned effect was inspired by the one that occurs with advertising sometimes installed on both sides of a soccer goal area, which is distorted but can be seen correctly from the camera at the top of the stadium.

To achieve the objective, the first thing was to locate or produce images in the style of a Death Star’s corridor, but with very high resolution, since the final artsworks would have dimensions large enough to completely cover the different parts of the storefront. The best solution I found was to create the images from the edition of one Star Wars 3D object, which I found in a free collection created by Video Copilot and which can be found and DOWNLOADED HERE (OBJ files with DDS and JPG textures). The image below is a preview of the created 3D scene, which I lit and rendered properly; The white boxes seen on both sides of the hallway are additional 3D area lights placed in the scene, in the exact places where the texture indicated there were side lights, convincingly illuminating the floor and the ceiling.

The following image is a 3D preview of the effect actually achieved walking by the storefront, with the final artsworks applied. In this 3D scene, the storefront was recreated scrupulously paying attention to its real measurements and a camera was placed right in its center, at an average height of approximately 1.70m (very tall or very short people would see the effect with a slight mismatch… ). The lateral textures were the ones that required most attention, a preliminary reference texture was applied to both lateral parts that I could deform inside Photoshop until I achieved the appropriate modifications that would make the corridor perfectly visible from showcase’s central point. A simulation of what would actually happen in the viewer’s gaze!.

This example has been titled “3D Diorama”: A diorama is a type of composition that shows figures, animals or objects presented within an environment, for the purpose of representing a scene. Offered products and figures by El Señor Miyagi would be those objects and the environment a science-fiction corridor generated in 3D.

Image number 1 below, shows the final artsworks with the appropriate deformation applied to A and C parts. The frontal B area, actually had to be divided in half since storefront’s background had 2 doors that needed to be opened to place the products from inside the store but in any case, it was such a large image that it could not be printed in one piece with the available plotter. Image number 2 is the 150dpi render obtained from Video Copilot’s 3D corridor, which took a long time to render due to its large size and whose A and C areas had to be deformed to achieve the desired effect.

To end this case study, I present another Star Wars universe based image that was also designed to decorate another El Señor Miyagi store interior. It stands out for being super panoramic and for its selection of the saga’s mythical spaceships such as the Millennium Falcon, the TIE Fighters and the X-Wing. The image could be backlit so it would be printed on translucent vinyl.