Travel and Visit: USA basketball

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

USA basketball

This US team took a lot of critique, which was fairly annoying considering that these were the guys who said "Yes, I'll play for my country", while the team's original members were making every excuse not to play! In the end, 9 of the team's original players found some reason not to go. For the new players, the opposing teams were against them, the international rules were against them, the threat of terrorist attack was against them (they had to sleep on a ship guarded by Navy SEALs), their own country was against them, they were playing without 9 of their best players, AND they only had one week of practice together. While dragging all these boat anchors they still reached the medal round where they took the Bronze. Anybody who complains about this team is a shithead.
# Advertising agency Leo Burnett USA contacted me early in the year to illustrate this poster for Allstate Insurance--a great compliment since the poster has been traditionally photographed since 1992! They had gotten my name from Wieden & Kennedy who has the Nike account (I did a Lebron James billboard ad for them previously). Due to various circumstances, we did not have a final roster for about 3 months as many players dropped off the team. Once we were given the final roster date, we realized there would only be 1 week to turn in the completed art!! Yikes! Not enough time to create a painting with this much detail and likenesses, so I came up with a plan to get the illustration done in a timely manner: First, I painted the Parthenon, sky, and rocks in advance with no players at all. Then, I painted the jerseys only. This way, as we found out who the players were, I could simply paint them into their uniforms in the final week! This was an incredibly awkward way to paint, but it worked and everybody was happy.