If I told you “I just saw a black and white cow,” you probably wouldn’t care. If I told you “I just saw a purple cow,” you would probably give it some thought.
That is how a marketing meeting started out. We were trying to find a way to make our GeneMate brand equipment stand out from the crowd. One of my co-workers made the connection between GeneMate and G’day Mate and the purple cow quickly became a purple kangaroo. Thus GeneMate Joey came to be.
We started out using some stock 3D illustrations but quickly realized we needed to have full reserved rights to Joey. A local marketing firm was contracted to give us a few iterations of our purple kangaroo in various poses, some with lab coat and some without.
Joey quickly gained a lot of popularity and was featured more and more prominently on our bi-monthly catalogue.
Since I was tasked with designing the catalogues I developed a bit of a relationship with Joey who turned out to be a rather adventurous marsupial.
Depending on the season of the next catalogue release I often got to choose what Joey’s adventures would be. Apparently Joey spent some time surfing and kayaking in the summer went sledding in the winter and even played some American Football.
Using a combination of the images provided to us, stock photography and stock illustrations I would create the scenarios. It could be quite tricky shifting Joey’s arms and hands to fit the scenario. Sometimes adding additional accoutrements as well. Doing my best to maintain perspective and lighting. At one point I even added ripples to a stream where I had added a kayak.
For me it was a lot of fun. Both deciding on the adventure and then how to make the image. One thing I can tell you is there were a lot of layers involved as well as some judicious use of the clone tool.
Sadly that company BioExpress was absorbed by its parent company and now Joey is just a happy memory.