Those six dreaded words

Small update from my last post: after those seven attempts to make perfect tentacles, and then add about four more, I finally got the perfect look for my campaign, but before I could even stand up to do a victory dance I was back to illustrator for execution number two. This one involved a statue of liberty, seen only from her crown up since she's buried in a popcorn bucket of epic portions (yes, I did just work the tagline into my blog). Before I got started on that, I was doing my best to turn a kernel of popcorn into the look my copywriter envisioned for these executions, aka a vague combination of  vectored but not too cartoony, painted but not too textured, and realistic but slightly more cartoony except not really. With all that in mind, I did my best to create the perfect popcorn kernel which would be worked into all our executions several times over to fill this bucket of epic portions (oh look, I did it again!). We realized after a good amount of time that the only way to get it right would be to vector it then apply about eight different effects, much like we did to the tentacles. Not at all in the mood to undertake that task, I worked on illustrating a statue of liberty. The crown was easier to recreate, but when I began with the torch, the thought of tracing all the intricate engravings, as well as the fingers wrapped around it made me want to vomit. So instead I dove straight into applying the effects to the photograph I was illustrating from. I knew right away that it wasn't gonna work because the style would look completely different, but wishful thinking won me over and I gave it my best shot. I showed my copywriter the result, and he confirmed my fears with six dreaded words- "You're gonna need to vectorize it."
This whole thing has just taught me that when it comes to advertising, there really are no shortcuts. There's no such thing as the easy way out, and even though there's seventeen things I'd rather do right now then vectorize a popcorn kernel and a statue of liberty torch, that's exactly what I'm about to do the second I press 'publish' on this blog post.