Contest Poster Story

A few weeks ago…

Bodybuilder Hubby:  Hey, do you think that this weekend you could make up a mini version of the 2011 contest poster for me to use on some promotional stuff?

What I Thought:  The contest poster?  You mean the poster that last year took me four weeks to finish?  The one that I have set aside the entire month of November to work on?  That poster?

What I Said:   Um, sure.  I think I can do that.

Normally I really enjoy projects like this.  It’s fun to create something visual, to see what new tricks I can learn to use.  When there’s a time crunch, however, or when I don’t have a clear picture in my head of what I want, then it’s not as much fun.

Sometimes the best ideas come from looking at what others have done and thinking of changes or improvements to come up with something new and better.  So I started by Googling “bodybuilding contest poster” to see what other people were using.

I was a little surprised to recognize Bodybuilder Hubby’s body on one of the posters that came up in the search.  Not surprised that he was on a poster, but surprised that I recognized his headless body on a thumbnail image.  I wonder if most people would be able to recognize a picture of their spouse’s body; something about that just seems sort of odd to me.

Many contest posters include pictures from the previous year’s contest.  So I started by looking through last year’s pictures and selecting my favorites of each Overall and Pro winner.

Photoshop is my friend.   It’s lots of fun to play with and does some great things.  For example, when I’m making a family Christmas card, I don’t need one picture that’s good of all of us, I just need one good picture of each person in the same setting and lighting.  And the holiday picture of extended family from a few years back where I suddenly looked about 10 pounds thinner?  The Photoshop Diet!

For the pictures of the competition winners, I take out the background so that I have just their images to use on the poster.  This is a fairly easy process, but sort of a weird one.  In some cases, like when the background color is similar to the color of the shadow on a leg, I have to zoom in and clean up the lines.   Once I was working on a picture while I was on an airplane.  I was zoomed in really close on a competitor’s suit so that I could digitally remove the badge with the number on it.  I realized after I’d been working on it for a minute or two that it probably looked really strange to the people around me that I was working so intently zoomed in on a pair of briefs. 

This year’s poster actually came together really quickly.  In the Google search, I’d found a couple of posters with some black and white and some color pictures, so I stole that idea.  I already knew that I wanted to use a bright green color, especially since most of the other posters I saw were blue or red.   My latest favorite Photoshop trick is to use bevels and “strokes” to accent lettering, so I used a lot of both. 

I was really pleased with the end result, which only took a total of about four hours.    I showed Bodybuilder Hubby as soon as I printed a copy.  He smiled when he saw it, which is usually a good sign.  Then he had one comment:  “Are you sure you want to use green?”

Yes, I am.

The poster isn’t finished.  By contest time next spring, there will likely be more than 25 different versions, as we add sponsors and finalize the decision about the dates and times.  We may change some of the pictures.  I really like the pictures that I chose of last year’s Figure winners, but neither is in a “traditional” Figure pose.  Not sure if that matters.

But for now, it’s good.  According to me.  And the best part?  Maybe now I can use the month of November to work on some projects of my own…