The illustration that I will be taking you through, is just one of several illustrations that will be used on packaging for "Purina One." The type of printing that will be used is flexography and the reproduction size of the illustration will be very small. I will talk more about flexography and the things to consider when preparing art for that printing process in step 8.

All of the dogs will be shown in profile and with out perspective. The client wanted the dogs to look majestic and the illustrations clean, open and realistic, but somewhat stylized. The clean, open and stylized part of the direction was to accommodate for the limitations of flexography printing.

My client at Ralston (Renee Walsh), works with several dog trainers and was able to get one of the trainers to pose an Airedale and shoot some Polaroids. The reference is not perfect, but it has the correct breed, angle and pose, a lot closer than the reference I could find. With a little PhotoShop manipulation, the reference photos will work just fine, especially since the illustration will be somewhat stylized.