Odyssee Digital Images -> Press Release

A Virtual Marketing Group- Artists in Cyberspace
The Internet has become the incubator for a number of new types of working relationships. Musicians make music, stock market traders buy and sell, medical practitioners compare diagnoses although separated by countless miles. Now a new kind of marketing group has been formed which brings together a number of talented individuals who are only separated by time and space.
This new virtual marketing group is called Odyssee Digital Images and is the brainchild of commercial photographer John Swain. Swain envisioned the possibility of creating a group of exceptional artists to produce surrealistic images inspired by the images created by Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali, but for commercial applications. And do it in Cyberspace…
Swain saw that in the current market many of the top companies were defined by their intellectual property rather than what their products actually looked like. After all, the products of many of these companies have become indistinguishable in appearance—one computer looking very much like the next. The same can be said for software…
It is the potential use of these wares that is the focus of comparison. How best to create identities for these corporations and their products? The images created to define these ideas could not simply be the beauty shots that defined advertising of previous eras.
What a wonderful switch! It is always more fun and challenging to deal with ideas. The use of the computer in advertising has allowed images to be created and manipulated with such fluidity that the only limit is the imagination.
Swain approached friend, colleague, and mentor, photographer Michael French with the proposal to begin working on creating such a company. The two then enlisted the help of a number of others whom they’d worked with over the years and found especially talented. This resulted in an outstanding group of artists with a wealth of experience.
The Odyssee "team" has grown to include members who live in Dallas, Sacramento, Maui, Tucson, San Jose, and Toronto. Within the group are a web master team, a publisher who specializes in tabletop books and writing interactive CD ROMs for the retail market, three graphic designers, a computer aided technical illustrator, a technical and advertising copywriter, two digital photo illustrators, and two traditional media illustrators.
"Odyssee has become a vehicle which allows each of us resources that none of us has individually," says French. "It will also enable us to compete for national, and eventually international, commercial work." Together the Odyssee group offers a range of services and images which can be customized to a client's particular needs.
The Odyssee continues.