Poster for Diggy Bones & The Tokens of Love for their show for the Melbourne comedy festival Return To Greatness. They are a really tight funk band with the very talented and versatile Comedian/Singer/Actor Diggy Bones (Ben Sutton) out the front. Their standout tracks are Benobo, a slow groove about the exploits of benobo monkeys, Foot Fetish, a number which includes a well crafted sonnet and the rock’n We Fix The Munted. If you get a chance check these guys out as dark horse up-and-comers in The Melbourne Comedy Festival for 2009, it’s on April 1-30.

The poster itself was great fun, the guys had a ball getting into character for the photos, we ended up with some real classics. The lighting setup was a simple cross lighting job with front softbox, just off line with the camera and a SB800 flash pointing straight at the camera but obscured by the subject to give the haloed back lit look, at 1/2 power.

Capture

Nikon D2Xs, Nikkor 17-55mm f2.8, Front soft box, rear SB800 pointing at camera, with a slight fill bounce of either side.

Post

A bit of a deep etching nightmare, especially as it needed to look good on the 6000 x 4000 px composite poster version, but after a coffee, some good music and the stroke of 4am it was looking sweet. Each component was pretty much spot on for the composite, thanks to Diggy giving good help art directing during the shoot. Then only a few minor skin touch ups. I was going to try some crazy treatments but they were only detracting from the image by competing for focus with the highly animated poses, so I ended up deciding on a very clean look to aid recognition.

Graphics

I also did the graphic elements for the poster including band logo. These guys have a strong funk flavour, but didn’t want to get stuck emulating the existing mould, as they also draw influences from many varied sources. Diggy really liked the idea of an Art Deco influence when we were throwing ideas around for his logo, so I tried the combination of sophisticated Deco geometry with some bold psychedelic splashes, and out popped Deco’delia. 

A couple of other images from the shoot. Introducing Colonel Fingers …

Coco Sugar Lips …

Busta Ridd’mns …

And Diggy Bones himself.