Toy Mountain
October 9th, 2008
The Toy Mountain was Piñata's first ever assignment and it was commissioned by Art Director Jouko Laune of King. It was a pro bono illustration for Lastenklinikoiden Kummit - The Association of Friends of the University Children's Hospitals, phew... In short, they're a charity organization supporting childrens' hospitals and medical research in Finland.
Tuomas Korpi began by doing pencil sketches of the overall composition for the picture. We had an initial idea of the child sitting alone on the floor in an empty valley between mountains of toys. He would be far from the world and deprived of human contact. We compared the two approaches with Jouko and decided the original idea of the mountain with an exaggerated amount of toys still supports the original message better.
We didn't even have our studio space yet, so Tuomas and Mikko Vormala worked out of their own homes. Mikko drew sketches of the child and the toys on paper, photographed them with his Ixus and emailed the pictures to Tuomas, who was at his place working on the big picture with line art and colour sketches. He was experimenting with the broad lines and decisions such as the composition and colour.
We went through a huge amount of toy references to get a truly genuine feel into the picture. The Brio clown was an inspiration from Mikko's own home as was the compulsory skateboard. The baseball t-shirt was his catch too, maybe reminding the parents of today of a bit of their own childhood.
While the elements were being chosen Tuomas was busy painting everything together. He began by first doing an under painting of the whole picture that made managing the entity easier while still getting the huge amount of detail in the picture. "The painting itself was a slow and meticulous process proceeding towards its inevitable outcome.", says Tuomas. "Once the painting was completed we once again did some fine tuning with different balances of colour and light to capture the right mood."
"The Toy Mountain was the first real-life test drive of the Piñata team and our way of working.", says Mikko. "Our goal is to establish an exceptionally open team-work environment that will produce results none of us could accomplish alone. I feel it worked pretty well even the first time around."
Credits
Client: Lastenklinikoiden KummitAgency: King
Creatives: Jouko Laune, Sami Kelahaara, Olli Hietalahti
Account Manager: Laura Schmedes