120 [m ] : Ben 10: Ultimate Alien Launch Billboard

2010 - Another Ben 10 series, another launch campaign. This time Ben goes ultimate, or more precisely, some of Ben’s alien hero transformations from the previous series, Alien Force, go ultimate.

At the conceptual stage, I think Matt, Clint and I pitched some of the more diverse selection of visuals since the original series (above). This is probably because we were consciously avoiding any thing that looked like a Ben 10 poster or DVD package used by Cartoon Network (CN) prior to this point.

And the winning design to advance to the rough layout stage - features heroic Ben, popular alien, Humungousaur, and new variant alien, Ultimate Humungousaur (above). Stated like that, it sounds like we just fulfilled a marketing wish list.

The final digital painting was done out of house by artist Phillip Hom, under my art direction.

Presented here (above) is the “final” version of the poster - straightened out, cropped wider and green cosmic flames added around the figures. In animation, the green flames expand out from the chest Omnitrix badge on Humungousaur in Bonanza fashion to reveal his ultimate incarnation. Without animation, you wouldn’t know what it has to do with the show or its characters. The lesson here is, “hey, you artist working for a company, this is not your art.” The final poster was displayed outside the Atlanta Turner buildings facing 10th Street, had limited internal CN distribution as a poster, and served as the visual basis for all launch materials including on-air and on-line.