EVOLUTION OF THE KNIGHT RIDER FESTIVAL II POSTER

Stage 1. This is the original poster for Knight Rider Festival from last year. In this poster we wanted to spotlight the KITT's in their original and altered modes. Since this was the first event, we really needed to convey the feeling of Vegas including where the event took place (downtown Fremont Street) - I chose very vibrant yet darker colors to push the neon feel of Vegas's casino signs. The concept here was that KITT was rolling into Vegas for the show.

One of the more talked about features of this poster was the hidden details I put in, making sure every KITT from the Knight Rider series was represented somewhere in the piece.

This poster was great but I wanted to follow the rules of a sequel and make the new poster different, bigger, and better than the original. Something less Vegas showman and more dynamic like a movie poster with characters, a setting, and so on. I try to tell a story through my work when possible and keep things vibrant and eye catching.

Stage 2. So began the first and most important step in this creation process of mine - before I even touch a camera or photoshop, I do research. It is very important that you do your research so you can break out of the tunnel vision of what you want to do - versus what you need to do. While you may have the greatest idea in the world, you have to think three steps ahead to assure you can bring it to life and since we're dealing with realistic elements connected to reality - you have to make sure the details are as close as possible to what people will recognize.

Usually I don't like dealing with too much realism, but when it comes to Knight Rider, it cannot be avoided with respect to the cars. You can put KITT in any environment or lack of environment you want but if the car looks wrong, it's going to look bad no matter how much you dress it up.

With research in mind, I searched my reference books on movie posters such as Drew Struzan artwork, current movie posters of today, and even the older classic posters.

I came across this really interesting image of two cars racing down a rainslicked highway and it caught my attention right away. The minute I laid eyes on this reference photo, I said to myself, "That's what I'm going for."

The dynamic diagonals and perspective was perfect to keep the focal point of my poster concept on the cars first and everything else secondary. Now having found this image, it was just one of many other ideas I was tossing around at this point - but having done the research, I wasn't looking at a figurative blank canvas. I was already constructing the look in my head and trying to find the elements to bring it together.

Stage 3. Having found the look and angle of the cars I was looking for, I wanted to look up desert highways to figure out how they tend to look. Many times you'll find you have an idea of how something is supposed to look and then you miss cruicial little details that throws everything off.

I found this image for the blu-ray of Vanishing Point, another action packed film featuring a custom car. While I love the perspective in this poster, I didn't want a typical straight on shot which would not work with two cars, rather than just the one.

Dealing with the original KITT and the new Shelby KITT, I had to take into account getting the cars as close in frame as possible and then work the background out around that since this was going to be a vertical poster and not so much horizontal.

Stage 4. So then my first task was to get the angle that I wanted. As much as it might sound fun to render two KITT cars from scratch to some car illustrators out there - I simply didn't have enough time to take that approach. Wanting to cut at least some of my work, I decided the only way I was going to get the cars in this angle that hasn't been availible anywhere else was to create it myself.

Originally I wanted to use realistic 3D models on a plane with a road texture on it. Unfortunately time was ticking away and that approach didn't pan out. Part of being a designer is problem solving and finding the best and most efficent way to complete a project.

So then I realized I had my joyide 1:18 KITT model but I didn't have the Shelby 1:18 GT500KR. I went looking for it in stores but ultimately I decided just to order the car online and get reamed on shipping.

Fortunately Amazon.com had some decent sellers with reasonable pricing. Still not as cheap as finding something in the store and picking it up like the old days but eh - you do what you have to, to get the job done.

With my cars purchased, I went and modified the Shelby a bit, trimming down the snake badges and painting over the SHELBY letters on the hood. I wasn't concerned with putting in scanners and all that because these cars were just to get the basic shapes of the cars, the angle, and so on which I could then touch up and enhance later in Photoshop.

Taking a large piece of foamboard, I drew a grid on it and made the traffic lane so I would have a guide to get the perspective right later in photoshop for the road I was going to make.

Originally I wanted to emphasis the blues and sunlight, so I took this photo outside where I would get natural lighting and environmental reflections. Later, I changed this idea and it took me time to compensate but when I did this set up, I was going for one thing. When you do design work, don't be afraid to deviate from your original idea if you find a better solution. Try not to get too locked into tunnel vision. You should also keep in mind when you're setting things up to take into account what your skillset is and if you can make the vision you have in your mind transpire at the level you wish it to be.

If you go for realism, it's incredibly difficult because people will know right away if something is off. Keep these things in mind but don't let it discourage you either - always move forward with a strong concept in mind, then worry about the details you can fix later - but make sure you have patience and skill to fix them before assuming everything will work out.

My initial thought here was just to focus on the cars, get some realistic lighting, and replace the background later down the line. Having drawn a grid, I had an idea of where the perspective needed to go. I also placed the Shelby KITT halfway back from original KITT as I wanted to emphasis the original KITT being in the lead and the greatest focal point of the poster.

After taking 100 different photos, this was the shot I chose to move forward with. While it's not exactly like my original reference, I take pride in trying to keep things as original and one of a kind as possible. I didn't want to just clone my original source, I wanted to start with it and make it my own. This shot also allowed me to get as close to the cars as possible and still keep them in focus.

With a brightness/constrast adjustment in photoshop, I was ready to take these cars to the next step. At this stage, they look like models.

Stage 5. Having taken my shot, I start to look at how to touch it up. With my photo I noticed there were reflections of plants and powerlines along the shiny surface of original KITT's hood - so before I could even think about working on the poster itself, I had to clean this shot up to be as pristine as possible. I took out reflections and dust particles at this stage.

Stage 6. Going back to my Knight Rider research, I was aware that the 1:18 joyride KITT has superb details except for one serious flaw - the front nose is inaccuate to the car on the show.

KITT's bumper has two details that were missing from the model and that is the grooves for the front turn signal blackouts and the die cut grooves in the bottom fender.

This image here, I am using the linetool in Illustrator in order to make these areas and make sure they're following the proper perspective. I had to decide if I wanted to make complete covers like a Season 1 KITT. make grills/slats like a Season 2 KITT, or leave the three foglights and go with a Season 3/4 KITT.

Being Vegas, I thought about the episode "Goliath" (which was partially shot in Vegas along with the original pilot) and I decided to go with a Season 2 nose with the grills/slats.

Well I personally find the linetool in Illustrator superior to that of photoshop (at least less frustrating) so I made sure to create some thick lines and then I just dragged and dropped the final lineart over the original photo so I had a visual template to work with.

I find myself jumping from one program to the next like an artist does with their different brushes and color palletes.

Stage 7. In this shot, you can see that I have painted in the additional details and taken great steps to make them close the original KITT details as closely as possible so they feel like they blend in. I have also upped the contrast to bring out the dynamic color range of the cars as well.

While I was going for realism in the poster, I didn't want to be too on the nose since this is still an artistic piece of art and I didn't want my poster to come across as some pieced together collage of photos in photoshop.

Here I have also started laying in temporary placeholders for both KITT scanners. At this stage, I've finally got the original KITT looking closer to the look I wanted - always using my reference photos (screengrabs mostly) to keep things as accurate as possible.

Stage 8. Here's where I sort of skipped a step in the process which was building the road and traffic lane. This process was so extensive to get right, I'll just briefly say I had to build the road from scratch, do more research on traffic lanes, and then figure out how to handle the background elements.

The road was made with various photos of concrete layered on top of one another, some noise put in and then dodged and burned in places to make the road darker as it moves away from the viewer and brighter towards the sunlight.

I made the traffic line was slightly out of focus and had some grime on it to really give it character and not just look like it was just a cutout slapped on.

In this stage I was dealing with bringing the KITTs to another level of realism and I realized that while doing so, the blue was just not going to work with the purple-orange sunset background I was constructing.

I used a purple sky as a nod to the opening titles of the original series which was recurring through all four seasons. Although in latter opening titles the sky was really a saturated purple - I wanted something that blended in with the orange sunset skyline, so I opted for a less saturated look that I felt was more visually appealing and three dimensional.

Having taken the cars from the photo to this stage now, I am touching up details and starting to recognize the light placement, making sure the sun is off center to match the lighting on the Shelby hood.

Originally I was going with a natural blue sky with an intense sunlight but now I realized at this stage that my original idea just wasn't going to give me the look I wanted to achieve. So I had to go in and remove most of the blue and shift it to purples and oranges. I did a lot of this using the "color" and "overlay" layer modes in photoshop.

Another problem I noticed quite quickly is that by colorizing the cars in regions, I had no black left especially in the shiny sleek body of the Shelby KITT. I had to go back in and restore the glossy look of the black on the Shelby body and bring some black back on the original KITT as well and find a balance between the colors of the sky and background and still keep in mind lighting sources, reflections, etc.

I didn't go with a pure black on the original KITT because I wanted my KITT to look closer to the color scheme of the original KITT in the desert in the opening titles as well which was not as pure black but more a range of purples, deep browns, and a touch of black here and there.

It was a very difficult and tedious task but just when I thought things would work out, I realized that I had to rebuild the hood of the Shelby completely because I couldn't emphasize the signature matte black racing stripes (which look silver when the light hits them) with the light source blown out.

I also couldn't bring out the excitement of the scanner with the white intensity washing my colors out. Pulling up some pictures of the Shelby from the newer series as well as looking at details of photo #4, I spent quite a bit of time just rebuilding the hood.

Additionally as I had taken the attention to make the original KITT's bumper more realistic - I noticed that the grill work on the Shelby 1:18 KITT was too thick and plastic looking so I replaced the grill with the grills from my Shelby KITT artwork from last year's Knight Rider Festival based on the blue-white promo art of the backdoor pilot. This took some thought to get the perspective right but the distort tool in photoshop is great for this kind of thing.

Lastly, since the cars are racing down the road, I added a spin blur to the Shelby rim to convey movement. I didn't want to completely blur it out into just a silver ring because I wanted to preserve as much detail as I could with these cars to make them feel more like real cars and not just the original 1:18 KITT models I started out with.

You can really see a firm evolution between the original photograph of the cars in photo #4 and the development to what they've become now.

Now I had considered adding speed lines and dealing with depth of field but actually for the purposes of detail, I wanted to keep as much of the cars in focus as possible. I decided it was better to motion blur the road and have a softer focus in the rear of the cars, rather than use speed lines which would look more cartoonish than I would like.

With this particular angle, speedlines wouldn't be as noticable except maybe along the sides of the cars.

The last detail I did in this step was put in the reflection of the traffic lane into the lower bumper of the KITT cars to add that extra detail make them feel like they belong in the environment I've created for them. None of the background is an actual complete photograph, it's all pieced together.

Finally I delt with the sky but I'll get into that in the next step.

Stage 9. In this stage, the car's are pretty much done. I had the road done and everything was looking good. I went in and tightened up the shadows so the cars didn't feel like they were just floating over the road and not as sloppy and comped in as the previous shadows which were pretty much black feathered blobs of various transparencies.

So here I focused on making the background come up to the level of the cars. After having my layered sky in place, I put in a dynamic sun and mountain range. Lastly I put in the desert brush because this highway I didn't want to just look too abstract or out of focus like my original source photo in #2. I kept some of that rugged artistic texture in my reference photo of #3 but I wanted a balance between realism and expression.

I originally had a paint dabs like texture on the KITTs which later bit me in the butt because I lost my crucial details and realistic reflections (too many hard, jagged edges). So at this stage I had to go back in close on the cars and smear and blur as much of the texture as possible out of the cars - but since the sky has texture, I left most of it in the rear of the cars so they blend into the background.

With my background worked out, road looking good, light sources in place - finally I reached a stage I could start dealing with the next phase of making this artwork go from a digital illustration to a full blown event poster.

At this stage I wasn't ready to put in the hidden details until I had everything else worked out first - this would then make the hidden details the icing on the cake.

Stage 10. In this step I have touched up the cars as much as possible, adjusted the darkened windows to obscure any driver details, and put in some sexy glints and low level lens flares (so it's not just plain cheesy) where they showed in the original photo in #7

Aside from some minor touch up along original KITT's window and some smoothing out, the cars at this stage were finally complete. My task now was to figure out where to put the event details and the main logo.

I had figured early on to put the KRF II logo in the skyline but with the sun addition, it created too much of a visual clash between the whites and yellows. It's like slapping a billboard over a beautiful panoramic view.

For this reason I brought the entire image down and made more room at the top and put the logo down there. I brought everything down, rather than up so the KITT's would be closer to the logo and not create so much open dead space in the road.

Wanting to mimic the original poster in #1, I also put the Paul Casey Productions info below that.

While I tried to keep the scanner red smears and text from the poster in #1, I found that this did not work with a purple-pink sky. It kept getting washed out, so I changed the text to be more sunset like and play off the purple-white sky - going with using the matching purples, orange, and red-oranges of the background for the vibrant smears which I still wanted to feel were light beams.

I think these color really work nicely and still allow the cars to remain the focal point of the poster. Keeping them the biggest element in the design would still draw your eye to them above everything else at first glance.

Now came the fun part!

Putting in my hidden details! It was a very exhausting and time consuming process to slip in these hidden things and not make them too obvious. With Glen's face in the clouds, I had to decide how much was too subtle and how much was too noticable.

While I had him hidden pretty good up there, too much detail was getting lost so I found a middle ground keeping his face colors blended into the colors of the skyline.

I also put my NRN Design and copyright info into the traffic lane with the opacity turned down so as to not distract from the rest of the poster details - but take that extra step to protect my work.

At this stage, Paul Casey wanted me to include a hidden reference to The Lone Ranger as a nod to Glen's original inspiration for Knight Rider. I put a pic of The Lone Ranger and his horse Trigger in the windshield of the original KITT on the far left in such a way at first glance you might miss it there and yet done in such a manor it looks like a reflection on the glass and not them inside the car which would just be plain weird - a horse inside KITT!.

Something very subtle.

Having spent about 4 and a half days on this thing - I sent off my comp to Paul for his notes. Most things were locked down at this point and while I put in some hidden bits at this stage - I knew there was room to put in a lot more and still not distract from the cars.

FINAL STAGE - Here it is! The final poster in all its glory. With this final step, Paul asked me to replace the Lone Ranger reflection with another image of him which was quite challenging but I think also rewarding as well. I added in some more hidden details into the sky and other portions of the poster which I'm going to keep annoymous so you can find them yourselves.

Some hidden details are more obvious than others and are either nods to Knight Rider or popular shows Glen A. Larson has created.

There are approximately 8 hidden details in the final poster, (counting Glen's face)

Anyway, that's a rundown of how I came up with this poster and I hope you enjoy it. You should check out the larger version in my gallery, especially if you want to find the hidden details for yourselves there.

Enjoy!

-Nick
tdk