The legends of Greek Basketball (for HWBF)
A series of mosaic portraits of the top Greek basketball players of all time. Created for HWBF's (Hellenic Wheelchair Basketball Federation) campaign to fund the Greek national team.
It was a great honor to work for HWBF (ΟΣΕΚΑ), the Helenic Wheelchair Basketball Federation, on this social responsibility project. To raise funds to purchase the necessary equipment for the Greek national team, HWBF's people approached me to commission a series of portraits of the top Greek basketball players. Then they auctioned these artworks to noble donors. HWBF formed a team of journalists, public relations specialists, advertisers, and we even had the valuable support of OPAP, the leading lottery company in Greece, a long-time HWBF sponsor. We all collaborated for months, gathering press clippings, photos, and documents from every athlete's history and creating these artworks. We printed these mosaics on metal using special printing methods, UV coating, and surface treatments to simulate the effect of a real collage. We also created an Augmented Reality version of the mosaics. So every portrait comes to life, and the viewer can watch short videos of important games being played across the mosaic. Around the 5 portraits, we created a huge advertising campaign, involving the 5 elite athletes, the players of the Greek national wheelchair basketball team, volunteers, and many more. The campaign went all around Greece and tried to involve as many Greeks as possible.
Every artwork has an augmented reality version. All you have to do is download the Artivive app and point at any of the portraits. All of them come to life. :-)
P.S. Following the success of this project, I decided to keep it ongoing. I want to add many more elite Greek basketball players to the collection. I am already adding Dimitris Diamantidis, and I vow to add more in the future.
Nikos Gallis mosaic portrait
Panagiotis Giannakis mosaic portrait
Theodoros Papaloukas mosaic portrait
Giannis Antetokounmpo mosaic portrait
Fragiskos Alvertis mosaic portrait
Dimitris Diamantidis mosaic portrait
Legendary Captain (as a player) and Head Coach of the Greek National Team, Panagiotis Giannakis, and the President of the Hellenic Wheelchair Basketball Federation, Takis Kaloudis, are posing with Giannakis' portrait.
Legendary player Thodoris Papaloukas in front of his portrait.
Me with members of the Greek National team in front of Gallis' portrait.
Digital mosaics are printed on aluminum with special varnishes and inks.
Many, many thanks first of all to all the athletes. It was a great honor to work with your images.
Many thanks to everyone at HWBF (the Hellenic Wheelchair Basketball Federation), Libero S&T (the Events Management and Sports Marketing partner), OPAP (our gracious sponsor), and everyone at QLTY for your amazing printing services, and to Giorgos Kogalidis (the soul of this project).
Anni, Thanasis, Stratis, Thanos, Takis, Dimitris, Spyros, Giannis, and everyone else contributed to this. A big thank you to all of you.
