Caltex Men's Health Message

The brief was to create an image that was so appealing to men it would remind them to think about their health more than, say, how well their car was running.

The client, Y&R NZ, wanted to merge themes of masculinity, tuning and power by showing car parts made to look like internal organs. A high degree of realism was needed to keep the analogy strong, and to appeal to mechanically minded men.

‘We had five days to turn the image around so we knew we had to nail it first time,’ Courtney says.

Working closely with creative director Scott Henderson at Y&R NZ, Courtney began by blocking out the organ shapes, based on a client sketch, to work out lighting and the camera angle. After feedback from Scott, they agreed a camera angle and main areas of interest.

Courtney then built up models in increasing detail. ‘Once the modelling was almost finished I worked up the textures and tweaked the lighting to better show off the surface properties of the different parts,’ she says. The final high resolution A3 render was processed in Photoshop, allowing Courtney to tweak each organ separately.

‘I quite often find 3D modelling to be like building Lego or Play-Doh sculptures as a child - where you have a faint visual idea and you build it up in a physical way, tweaking and evolving the concept as you happen upon obstacles or happy accidents, which solidifies the original vision you had in your brain.

‘I really enjoy this process when bringing client's ideas to life - especially ideas that are not ‘real’ - by building up layers of 3D polygons, materials and lighting to convey metaphor, mood and texture,’ she says.

Despite the tight time-frame and challenging task, Courtney enjoyed the project. ‘Mad props to Scott, too. He was awesome to work with.’

The final image was used on a poster at Caltex service stations around New Zealand to support Men's Health Week.