Vector Experiment

[dougal.s]

Made this as an experiment for a client. Was done in Adobe Illustrator CS2, took about 30 minutes. Is a vector, so fully scalable.

Is Dutch footballer Dirk Kuyt btw.

Enjoy, and please criticise.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Nicely done!

[Impossible]

Very pretty, good work :D

[tony-inpo]

Very nice

[Rob Veteran]

That's actually really nice, thanks for sharing.

My only criticism, if any, would be the fist - could do with a touch more work, though I myself can't visualise how it could be improved - that's the only part that looks a bit 'off'.

[eddieboy]

Nice :D

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

May I ask how much you charged for that, as I would like something produced...

[Digitalx]

intresting how pure shadow can define an image..

[Daniel Tablas]

That looks awesome (Y) Good job

[dougal.s]

Rob - I had doubts about the fist as well, but when you make the same shape with your own hand (Thumb outside fingers) and look at it carefully, you can see it makes the same shape.

njlouch - In this case the client was charged ?20. Although this piece only took 30mins of actual solid work, he gave me a full hours pay anyway. I generally charge about ?20/hr of worktime (Not my time, why should you pay for me browsing neowin??).

Digix - I hated art at school, but one thing I was told always stuck with me"Without shadow, there is no light"i>.

Thanks for the praise guys. If anyone has anymore questions I'd be happy to answer.

Dougal.

[jackwanders]

May I ask what you did with his upper arm/shoulder? In the photo, his shoulder is about the same level with his open mouth. In your vector, his shoulder appears to be up around his eye. Once you notice it, the arm seems to become detached from the head.

[+StevoFC MVC]

i'm pretty sure he did that to give better definition of the face, because without it there would be no shadowing on that side.

[Von_Beard]

well done i like the style

[waddle5000]

wow looks good well done

[dougal.s]

Jack31081: Well spotted mate! It is in fact a mistake on my part. I went back and look at the post-process version of the image I used as my template. Turns out the set of filters I had use to make the dark and light areas more obvious had also picked up on a small variation in the sky behind, creating a large shadow are. Have corrected this, with my first version on the left, and the fixed version on the left.

Cheers for that! ;)

Dougal.

[JMA_PN]

Cheers for automation! It took less than a minute to do. Anyway, your artwork is sure better than this : Nice work.

Edited February 11, 2006 by JMA_PN

[stncttr908 Veteran]

A very nice job. (Y)

[masterren]

  JMA_PN said:

Cheers for automation! It took less than a minute to do. Anyway, your artwork is sure better than this : Nice work.

What did you use to make the automated version?

[Intention]

Look neat, what is it for? (website, poster..etc)

[needsoftware]

Thats actually pretty easy to do as you can just click on LIVE TRACE and it does the job for you, is that what u did?

[Mosqutus]

Looks like Ryan Giggs

[JMA_PN]

  needsoftware said:

Thats actually pretty easy to do as you can just click on LIVE TRACE and it does the job for you, is that what u did?

Exactly, but before doing so, I've converted the bitmap to grayscale in Photoshop and tweaked the curves to get the desired effect. Then it was just a matter of opening Illustrator, convert the bitmap with Live Trace and do some quick and simple cleaning.

[dougal.s]

My process was:

1) Convert to greyscale in PS

2) Adjust brightness and contrast to get rough effect

3) Trace the dark areas in Illustrator using the pen tool.

Livetrace is fine for lots of things, but I wanted a more fluid look to my work.

Needsoftware: Was for a t-shirt design primarily, but the client will also be using it for posters and flyers as well.

Dougal.