Africa's Premier League : Kickstarter
"The story of Africa's long-distance love affair with English football, told by fans in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya & DR Congo. Africa is obsessed with the English Premier League. The continent may be divided by old colonial borders, thousands of different languages, and major cultural, political and economic differences. But Africa is united every weekend around the spellbinding spectacle of English football..."
That's just a little snippet from the Kickstarter page for this new project helmed by Phil Harrison, director of the Sherryvallies project, On Going Home, that we did a feature on last year. Watch the video below and click through to the page to find out more about this new film, made in unison with Africa is a Country.
Of course, there are some great rewards on offer; postcard sets, t shirts, photo prints and even the chance to win a Nike APL football jersey. We were asked to come on board after the Kickstarter was funded in all but a week. With more time left to make some stretch goals, we were asked to create a new reward tier, a beautiful giclèe print, merging some visual impressions from the stimuli available with our own style of illustration.
The process started by scrubbing through and trying to capture the emotion from the guys featured as they appeared on screen, enjoying the beautiful game. Once initial sketches were done, we started to create layers for each element to scan and then edit digitally. What you're essentially looking at is five drawings per character, 25 in total, scanned, vectored and coloured. The idea was combine all of these facets of culture into one image, exploring identity and distilling what it means to wear your team jersey, no matter where you're from.
If you like what you see, head on through to the Kickstarter page and make a pledge. With a week left, the guys are hoping to stretch their target and make things happen a little faster. Check out an additional print idea we made that went unused below. Cheers for reading and hopefully supporting.
