Meet Ollie, the fast little app-controlled robot built by Sphero. If the name Sphero sounds familiar, it’s because they are the same brilliant minds behind the Star Wars droid BB-8. But this is the little terror that took over twitter, instagram, facebook, and pretty much every other little cranny of the internet during the last few months of 2014.
This project was intentionally shot 100% with a camera phone to replicate the realism that usually comes with a social picture. #Ollie used indirect subtle advertising through prominent internet personalities to entice viewers. Exaggerated retouching was added to ensure curiosity. Over 34,000,000 impressions were made. Perks of the job?… I have one of these myself now!
Most of the Photoshop work was quick and dirty. The benefits of working with (relatively) low-res and low-quality images is that I can fly through edits much quicker. For the most part, the editing simply involved enhancing the original image with some action blurs, smoke, debris, etc. The creative director, Hunter Clawson, and I were debating on making the final images look snap-shot-believable, or over-the-top … In the end we definitely opted for over-the-top. It’s a lot more fun to edit, and much more eye-catching.
Special thanks to my buddies Will Keown and Corey Jenkins for helping with the 20+ images for Ollie to sufficiently take over the internets.