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On-the-Job “Training”
by John Redhed

I wasn’t exercising particularly good judgment when I proposed to Mike Hall a Christmas card concept for 2006 that was, on a technical level, at least twice as complex as any of our previous cards for Hall & Company. But the idea was irresistible: all the employees would be riding a toy train around a Christmas tree, surrounded by gifts. Mike loved the idea and gave me the go-ahead, generously assuming I could pull it off.

For the first time, I decided a mockup (detailed sketch) was absolutely necessary. I had to know ahead of time exactly where each employee would be, so I could pose them accordingly during the photo shoot. Some things can’t be fixed in Photoshop; for instance, if a person is facing forward instead of to the side, Photoshop won’t help a bit.

In addition to being a great brainstormer, Willma happens to be a fantastic illustrator, while my drawing ability peaks just below ‘chicken scratch,’ so our skills are quite complementary. As we sat down to work on the basic layout, she sketched, while I directed placement of the main elements (train, tree, presents). We wanted the people to be as large as possible, for recognizability, but still fit in, on and around the train. So how close in could the camera be? How many train cars, and what types? How much of the tree can we show without covering up the train? How high should the camera be?

At right is that initial sketch — a critical first step in the design process.

After deciding what types of train cars to use, we now had to acquire them. We discovered that one Hall & Co. employee owned a gorgeous large-scale locomotive and a few cars, and we ordered two others. In the meantime, I worked on a photographic mockup (at right), using a combination of snapshots and photos snatched from online retailers.

To experiment with the placement of all 26 employees, I used a specialized app called Poser, which allows me to adjust every detail of a human body. With the above mockup in the background, I created 26 copies of a generic figure and ’posed’ them in various positions, eventually ending up with the image at right.

Mike Hall had suggested a jug band on the flat car; the four figures you see here are apparently standing around wondering where the heck their instruments are.

Next, I numbered each of the figures, and began talking with employees about which position they’d like to be in. I was a bit worried that everyone would want the up-front “fun” positions, and no one would want to be stuffed in the coach car, with only their face showing. But as it turned out, the coach positions were the first to be claimed. It then occurred to me that not everyone is a natural-born ham like me. As we went along, a few shy types had to be coerced encouraged to accept a more prominent role.

With all positions now assigned, each person decided on their clothing and gathered whatever props they needed.

Late in October, the big day arrived: employee photography.

Armed with a copy of the numbered mockup, I cycled the employees through my makeshift studio in a large room in Hall & Company’s headquarters. For many, I photographed two or three different poses, in case I needed some flexibility during compositing.

This was the first card to include Huckleberry, the dog owned by Mike & Becky Hall. She has been featured regularly ever since.

(Darn — should have used her to fill the empty box in the last year’s card!)

I spent the next two days photographing the train, the presents, and the tree. It took many, many tries to get exactly the right angle on the train, as well as an arrangement of presents that would work with the employee photographs.

I had initially put several ornaments on the tree, but after rearranging them a number of times, I concluded they would clutter the image, so I stripped off everything except the lights.

The “Happy Holidays” letters were rendered in a 3-D app, and the strings and hangars added in Photoshop. It’s amazingly difficult to scatter letters so the arrangement doesn’t look too contrived.

The silver “Hall & Company” pendent was created in Photoshop.

After approximately 2.7 gazillion hours of compositing, here’s the completed image:

Whew! All done, right?

Uh, no. Still gotta do the front of the card. Sigh.

Like the previous year, I wanted a ‘teaser’ on the front — in this case, a close-up of the train, without it being obvious it was a miniature.

With my slowly-getting-better-but-still-very-amateur photography skills, getting an extreme close-up of the side of the locomotive was a significant technical challenge. But after four photography sessions, I finally figured out what I was doing and got the image I wanted (at right).

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. In Photoshop, I painted over the two stickers, then added some vertical space between the window and the wheels to make room for the “Holiday Express” logo. After compositing the employee into the image, I spent some time “distressing” the locomotive — adding water drops, oil stains, even a round access plate — to make it look less pristine and hopefully less like a miniature train. I stopped just short of adding bird droppings.

Below is a magnified detail of the final image.

And here’s the complete front image:

For a detail-oriented guy like me, this card was like a case of bourbon to an alcoholic — an unhealthy indulgence.

But as usual, the appreciative reactions from Hall & Company’s employees and clients were highly gratifying both for me and for Mike Hall, again vindicating his investment in this yearly tradition.

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