Set — Illustration
March 20th, 2011
Set is a drawing that I have made into a digital illustration. I blocked out the shapes in Corel Draw, then recoloured, gradient-ed and brushed into the final image in Photoshop.
The digital painting process was fast for a while, but I did get bogged down by progress already made and the last half took three times as long as the first half. Even choosing a colour scheme took a long time. Not a problem you have when sketching!
Here’s some Work in Progress images.
I’m quite happy with how it’s come out though. Do comment.
Your work looks so good and fun to make. Do you have any tutorials? How much is done in Corel? Thanks
@Wes Thanks Wes. Computer Arts published a tutorial which was the basis for how I started working the vector shapes in Photoshop. Here is their tutorial: Create complex shades
Basically I imported a scan of my drawing into Corel Draw (could easily be Illustrator) and drew over the main shapes with the pen tool. I gave each major object a distinct colour to make it easy to select in Photoshop. Then exported a high res file to open in Photoshop.
There I moved the major objects into their own layer groups, locked the transparency and brushed the detailing and highlights, shading and shadows. I also used gradients to apply shadows and the pen tool to create some shapes such as the big glossy reflection on the top curvy part of the form.
So only the shape tracing was done in Corel Draw. All the colours and lighting you see were brushed in Photoshop. I started quite quickly, but got a bit too slow and careful as the piece went on. Next time I’ll try to be speedier throughout and not get too precious about the piece.