My brother Ryder and I had a blast the past two weeks preparing for our two entries to the Toy Clicks Photography Contest for the  6th Annual Philippine Toy Convention held at the Megatrade Hall from June 16 to 17, 2007.  

We decided to work on capturing a realistic take on two of the most famous robots in the Philippines namely Voltes V and Optimus Prime.  We chose these two robot characters primarily for the appeal they have to many local fans whose age segment spans across both our generations. Born in a CGI-less time, our childhood years were spent dreaming of seeing these two robots in a live-action setting. Despite the upcoming Transformers movie (which I believe has nicely rendered & very cool CGI robots), we opted to make our childhood dreams into reality by joining this contest and make our toys come into life.

We basically went thru four stages in getting our final artwork entries done.  First we had to choose the poses we wanted for the toy robots. After which, we had to execute the actual photo shoot amaking sure that we have the perfect lighting. Next we had to search for the appropriate background sources and elements that would match the angles and light sources of the photos taken.  And finally we had to do extensive Photoshop manipulations not only to make the toys look like they’re in the background environment but also to render most of the plastic parts to look visually enticing and photo-realistic by adding grime, oil stains, chipped paint, bullet holes, ambient refelections, and metal textures.

After a lot of trial(s) and error(s) and after several Gigabytes of hard drive space, we were able to achieve a realistic take on Optimus Prime’s classic transformation sequence as well as an awesome “What If Voltes V was in a real battle in the city” scenario. We never expected that we could achieve the final rendering we were able to create but everything just fell into place without my brother and I ever getting into an argument on creative takes. I guess, we just clicked as team and complimented each other in terms of technical acumen and creative style.  Overall, it was a great learning experience for both of us and we enjoyed spending a lot of time collaborating with each other. Although we did not win the contest, we both feel that the time and effort spent was well worth it. Thru this experience I have gained profound respect for my brother’s talent and I just can’t wait to work with him again in future endeavors.

Credit is due to Jervy Santiago for helping us photograph some of the subject references, Jose Lieban for the city background and ILM for the missiles, grime and metal texture effects we used. Posted are the ‘before and after’ manipulation takes on our final entries.

Click here to view the Mulitply album for the alternate versions of our final designs.

Click here to view other entries to the Toyclicks Photography Contest of the 6th Annual Philippine Toy Convention .