The very talented Steve Knerem is the guest artist behind a majority of the content of our vector set 22.  In this tutorial, he shows us how to assemble a rad rockabilly poster using various elements of the set, a bit like what Jeff did for us when we released Set 18. 

In the first part of the tutorial, Steve will be walking you through his process to design the poster, from concept to final piece. In a couple of weeks, we’ll publish the 2nd part, which will infuse the composition with an even stronger rockabilly/1950s feel, by doing some additional research in terms of typefaces by digging at the source: 1950′s/1960′s era gig posters (as well as more contemporary material too). Finally, a few weeks after that, we’ll publish a wrap-up piece that will provide additional tips and tricks to give a vintage finish to the poster, like if you had found it in your parent’s/grandparent’s attic after all these years.

But no more rambling, let’s let Steve have the microphone!

— Simon, Go Media’s Arsenal Manager

Hey Guys,

Thanks for reading my article on how I built this Rockabilly poster using the Arsenal’s Vector Set 22.

In this set you are going to notice that it’s all revolved around icons from vintage 1950’s U.S.A: hot rods, babes, tattoos and everything in between. As you search through the set notice I threw in a mix of styles from my hand drawn look to straight vector art (done in Illustrator). Have fun with the pack and add it to your own arsenal of goodies!

Let’s have a quick look at the set’s content

So let’s get started!

My thoughts to create this poster are keep it simple within the realms of design and content, yet pack a punch with enthusiasm and detail. When I think of design, I definitely try not to throw in the kitchen sink, but be selective and make sure I have for this project a title focus and an image focus. In addition to that, make sure your eye flows either top to bottom, in the “Z” pattern or in what I think is helpful is a circle pattern. These are the elements the the brain locks into and make the poster reads well, creates good flow and is a successful piece.

Choosing the Color Palette

I need to think about colors. When I thought about my color palette typical Rockabilly/50’s colors seem to be red, black, white, tan and a cool color. This isn’t etched in stone but what seems to be the norm. I know I want to go with a vintage look as it were designed back in this era.

I did some searching and remembered one of my favorite websites when I need some inspiration or knowledge. This is what popped up after doing a search for “vintage rockabilly colors.”

Thinking through the composition

Ok I have my color palette, now for design. I am setting up this design for a 16×20 4-5 color screen printed poster for a fictitious event in my home town Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. I worked- up a few quick ideas and am going to call this “The Rockabilly Throwdown Fest.” Imagine a huge fest with all your favorite bands, hairdos, pinups and vintage styles for one day, sounds awesome!

I’ll first set up a ½” bleed area around the poster. This guarantees me that anything within these borders will be printed, and I don’t have to worry about it getting cut off. You could probably set up a ¼” in bleed as well.

Looking at Typefaces

I’m going to then move on to the title “The Rockabilly Throwdown Fest” and search for a font. There is an endless supply of possibilities but let’s go with something that feels like it belongs.

Quick note: if I were to choose a font that seemed like it could go with a black death metal fest, it wouldn’t have the right feel. Do your research.

Down to the Nitty-Gritty

Next let’s piece this together.

Choosing the Centerpiece

My initial thought is to utilize one of the pin ups as the main character… Maybe the devil girl.

A Layout Change

Ok, so an interesting turn of design events is taking place. I was originally thinking of placing an image in the center, but because of the title design I am thinking of something else…Let’s see where it goes.

Let’s Change the Centerpiece, and Let’s Add Some Supporting Design Elements

I like this pose better, and I think she goes better with the design. I know I want some sort of starburst in the background to create a sense of depth so I grab the star tool and set it to 75 points.

I want to trim the bottom and left side so I take the pen tool and make three points in at “L” shape. Make sure the color is selected in the stroke color box. Note the purple color “L” at the bottom left of the artboard.

While the “L” shape is selected, I also select the starburst then I go to the pathfinder panel and select the divide button all with my black arrow tool. Both images will look united, but then click on the part that looks cut away with your white arrow tool and delete it. The starburst might spill over the document parameters, so you will have to select those parts and delete. From here select the starburst with your black arrow tool and choose a fill color in the color box. Most likely you will see areas fill in the where your dividing “L” line was.

These are a few extra steps, but this makes the object complete. Click off on a blank area and select the parts that are spilling over and the parts that filled in with your white arrow tool and delete them. Click off on a blank area, then click on the starburst one more time and select unite in the pathfinder panel. I like to do this just to give it a final merge of the object. Now you are all set. Now we can play with different colors of the starburst and create some background texture/depth.

Remember the arrow patterns I drew once I noticed the design took a different direction? Well, I want to keep this design going and incorporate all things related to the fest. So let’s grab a guitar, a microphone, and an old car. I also swapped out the pinstripes at the bottom for some military looking wings. Also, don’t forget to switch the starburst’s color to a red slightly brighter than the background. The yellow was too strong, and overpowered the character.

Adding More Supporting Elements

I have in mind flames also, pretty iconic piece for this scene. But something a little different… like this, from the pinstripes pack.

I know I don’t want to use the whole image, only half. So, I have to cut it in half.

Here’s how I did it:

Select your lasso tool, and draw around the part you DO want to keep.

Cut it and paste it back (CTRL/CMD + X, then CMD/CTRL + V or F). Select the image and select unite from the pathfinder panel. This is so there are no open points and you can select it and change the color any time. Let’s place it on the poster in a few open spots:

Quick note: the one placed left of the pinup had its color changed to the same red as the background. Since it’s overlayed on the starburst that’s lighter, it gives it that sweet punch through effect. One more thing to play with!

Time to Add More Copy!

Quick note: work around the canvas and DO NOT focus in one area for a long period of time. You have to work around the canvas/design and give most areas enough attention. Say I completed this bottom left part completely and came back to it in two days. Well some of those fresh thoughts will be gone and you need to think through the design once again. If you work around the canvas little by little you can give most of it attention and develop those first thoughts.

Alright, back to the game. Keep developing the text, make parts pop, and make the fonts of the bands specific. If you look at any poster the bands will have their own text font.

Time to Make Sense Out of the Mess of Items at the Bottom Left

When coloring for a spot color project such as this poster or a tee shirt, you’re limited to one color choice usually. This is where you need to be selective/creative and think this through.

All I did here is create color shapes and place them behind the character and objects.

Here is another technique that is good to use especially with my hand drawn pieces. If you know my style or if this is the first time seeing it..it’s pretty detailed… Yes? So here is a time saver. Make a copy of the outlined image and place it behind the original piece. Lock the top original piece. Select the car with your white arrow tool. Select merge  from the pathfinder panel then add a fill color to the color box then unite it using the pathfinder.

Change color and we just saved 10 minutes of using the pen tool.

Do the same with the microphone and the guitar and now we can take this to the next step.

Adding a Tad More Depth, and Other Refinements

I also wanted more dimension that just the starburst in the background. So I took the flames from the pinstripe pack pack and made this into a solid image by repeating the steps we just did for the car. You just got a free vector! Take a look under the pinup at the light red flames, cool feature and more interesting things going on.

Time to add some finesse to the border. You can taper the edges by expanding the stroke of the frame, then deleting the top point of the square edge.

I also added a stroke to each image. You have to add the stroke to a solid image that is underneath all of your layers. For the car we have two layers. One is the black outlines and one is the green color. Add the stroke to the green color. Make sense? Notice I changed the black lines to red… Looking cool!

Well I’m liking what I see, title reads well, colors look cool, feels like a Rockabilly poster.

Last Touches

Last thing I like to do is add a touch of my own flair. In this case I’ll grab some dot patterns from the symbol box.

I’ll just throw a few down and figure out what I like.

Next I’ll expand it because I don’t want to use the whole pattern just parts. So click on Object > Expand.

I’ll then take the lasso tool and cut out random parts that I want to use.

Cut then paste it then unite with the pathfinder using your black arrow tool.

I like to place these splatters behind the white stroke and make it the color of the stroke, in this case it’s white. So now we have a cool 16″x20″ – 5 color promo poster!

Let me know if you have any questions, go crazy with these vectors and send me your designs: put them in the Go Media Flickr Pool, and/or in the comments! One thing to add is that I illustrated a mix of hand drawn and vector/Illustrator images. This adds a really nice feel of that hand drawn look yet utilizing the strengths of Illustrator.

Enjoy guys!

— Steve Knerem

Note: find Steve online at: 

• SteveKnerem.com
• steve.knerem@facebook.com
• @SteveKnerem
• EstablishtheFrontLine.com

The post Create a Rockabilly Poster With Vector Set 22 – Part I appeared first on GoMediaZine.

A few sources of inspiration for this design.

You’ll notice that it looks like the dragon’s body is snaking back and forth. To create this appearance, I simply copied the body, pasted it and flipped it horizontally.

I grabbed the wings and tail from Vector Pack 19.

The Sakai family crest provided to me by Heather.

The post Sakai Vector Portrait appeared first on GoMediaZine.

Maarten Kleyne, a freelance graphic designer from the Netherlands, feels music. Kleyne believes wholeheartedly that music is a key element in the creation of his final product. Inspired by the works of Steven Wilson and Lasse Hoile, his portfolio is filled with images including cd packaging, posters and collaboration artwork. Recently, WMC Fest alum Maarten cranked up his stereo, picked up his camera and created some texture packs for Go Media’s Arsenal. We are so proud to add his texture packs into our resource library.

We’ve asked Maarten to create a tutorial based on these textures, in order to demonstrate how you might like to apply them.

— Heather, GMZ Editor

Thanks for the introduction Heather and hey everyone! A while back I was wearing my crazy ear-to-ear grin the entire day, because the lovely people from Go Media asked me if I was interested in doing “some stuff” for them again. It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of everything Go Media so I obviously said yes.

The first parts of my work have recently launched on Go Media’s Arsenal as the two texture packs: “Excluded Rough Grunge” and “Etched Into Dark”. Now – like the introduction said – I’d like to show you one way to apply these in a design through a quick and simple-to-follow tutorial. There are many other ways you can utilize the textures we’ll be using. This tutorial simply highlights one of those; a way I personally use textures quite often when creating a design.

Note: If you want to follow along with this tutorial, you will need to purchase the new packs. If you don’t you will probably still get something out of the tutorial, because I’ll try to keep it general. You will, however, get the best results from using textures from the set(s). Grab the “Excluded Rough Grunge” and “Etched Into Dark” texture packs while they’re still hot!

For this tutorial I chose to go for a 12 inch vinyl cover format. I’m truly stoked to see the vinyl record make something of a comeback, if only for the bigger canvas space we designers have! Now, back on-topic: In order to keep a focus on the texture usage, we’ll be creating an abstract – perhaps somewhat psychedelic – front cover. Here’s a preview of the final design we’ll be creating in this tutorial:

Good to know: Throughout this tutorial you can click on most of the images to enlarge them.

We’ll take our time and go through this step by step. Don’t worry, I’ve kept it a simple-to-follow tutorial. (I just use a lot of words, sorry. It really is simple though.) There’s a whooping total of 10 steps we’ll go through.

Some steps only cover the essential basics because I advocate experimentation, I want you to go beyond just following the steps if you don’t mind. Just try and experiment with the things that’ll pass along and I’m sure you’ll get a truly amazing and unique design because of it.

Feeling reluctant to experiment? You can still create the same thing by following the steps. I would, however, like to emphasize that you should try and experiment with things to create something different. It’s one of the best ways to learn, in my opinion.

Ok, so here it goes:

Step 1: Set up your Photoshop document

Open Adobe Photoshop. I’m using version CS6, but I’m sure any version will do for this tutorial. Now go to File > New and setup your new vinyl sleeve document with the following dimensions: 12½ x 12½ inch on a 300 DPI resolution. The ½ inch is just some safety bleed space I’m keeping. You can use CMYK or RGB color mode for now. I find RGB easier to work with at first, you can always convert it to CMYK at a later point. If you go to print that’s obviously something you shouldn’t forget.

Step 2: Purchase and download one or both new packs

If you haven’t already, take a minute to purchase and download the texture packs we’ll be using from Go Media’s Arsenal. Download the “Excluded Rough Grunge” and/or “Etched Into Dark” packs. We’ll use both, so in order to get the best results I’d advise you to get both too. You can skip this step if you already have some textures you want to use. However, this tutorial is meant to show you a way to apply those from the Arsenal.

The benefit of using the premade textures from the Arsenal is that it saves you time and can help you achieve professional results. I frequently use textures myself.  Basically, there’s not a single design that I make without the use of textures. Sometimes I’ll use textures in a very subtle way and sometimes quite heavily to form a complete design. That first case will be the thing I will highlight in this tutorial; the subtle addition of textures. What you’ll hopefully come to see is that the vinyl sleeve we’re making couldn’t go without those subtle additions. They’re essential.

Step 3: Create a ‘foundation’

Before we actually start using textures we’ll need to make a basic ‘foundation’, or ‘composition’ if you will. First, fill the background with a color of your liking. I chose to go for a darker greenish (#5f7463) color.

Next, place or paste a photo/texture of clouds on a new layer and have it fill the entire canvas. Then use the filter: Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates > Polar to Rectangular (yes you can actually find a use for this).

Place or paste the same original photo/texture of clouds on another new layer. This time flip it a 180 degrees before applying “Polar Coordinates”.

Set the blending modes of these two cloud layers to: Overlay.

Step 4: Add the “Excluded Rough Grunge” textures

In this step I’ve used “Excluded Rough Grunge” textures 7 and 13. Place them into the document and have them fill the entire canvas. Add texture 7 first and set its blending mode to: Screen.

This is something I often do with greyscale/black and white images. It only pops the whites. This way we quickly start adding roughness to the artwork.

Add texture 13, canvas filling and blending mode set to Screen as well. Duplicate the texture 13 layer and rotate it 180 degrees. Perhaps move these 3 layers around a bit to find a suitable spot for the white rough spots. Add other/more textures if you feel like your design needs them.

Step 5: Bring in another color

Next, add a contrast color, something truly opposite from the green you have chosen. I used some orange colored clouds. Don’t worry, this color will not be seen later. The point of that will become obvious.

Add this color in whatever way you prefer, just make sure it’s not a solid color. It has to have a bit more variation to it. A good choices here could be to use water color, lens flare or colorized clouds textures. Or you can go mad with a brush yourself. Just make sure it has some dynamics to it. Don’t overthink it though, because like I said: it’ll be used in such a way that the colors itself will not be shown.

Place this new color layer on top of the others and set its blending mode to: Difference. (Doing this will directly show you why the color did not appear)

Step 6: Add the first “Etched Into Dark” textures

In this step I’ve used “Etched Into Dark” textures: 1 and 10. Place them into the document and have them fill the entire canvas. Add texture 1 first, invert its colors by pressing CTRL/CMD+I or by going to Image > Adjustments > Invert. After that set its blending mode to “Overlay” and its opacity to 30%.

Now add texture 10 and invert that as well (CTRL/CMD+I). Set its blending mode to “Divide” and its opacity to 35%.

Try experimenting with other/more textures and opacity levels to see which result you like best.

Now we’re going to add a ton of minor details by placing texture 1 all over the canvas, multiple times. See those little dotted spots on this texture? Add this texture with inverted colors to your document again. Set its blending mode to: Overlay.

Add a layer mask to it and brush away all the white parts until only those dotted spots show.  In order to make it blend into the background well, remove all the white stuff surrounding it. You can also try using different opacity levels.

Now scale it down a large bit to make those spots turn into little dots, or stars if you will. I call them “sparks,” and I’ve added them about 25 times all over the canvas.

Step 7: Transform the ‘foundation’ to several blocks

Ok, so now we have quite a nice ‘foundation’, right? Let’s copy it around and transform it into “something more”. Merge a copy of all visible layers into a new layer by pressing: Ctrl/CMD+Alt+Shift+E.

Now you have a new layer that’s an exact copy of what you’ve (visibly) made so far. Resize that layer to about 80% of the canvas size by pressing CTRL/CMD+T and changing the width to 80% at the top menu bar. Be sure to check the chain icon to have the transform maintain the aspect ratio. After that set the blending mode of this layer to: Exclusion. (Yes, this can also turn out pretty neat for a change. Right?)

Duplicate this newest layer (CTRL/CMD+J). Transform the duplicated layer to 80% of its original size as well. Re-select the original block layer, the one you made before this newest one. Now make a selection of the duplicated layer by holding CTRL and pressing on it in the layers panel. (Still following? I do hope so.)

Invert the selection (CTRL/CMD+I) and add a layer mask to the original block layer (that you should’ve selected). This should cutout the duplication layer from the original.

Now invert the colors of the duplicated layer by (selecting it and) pressing CTRL/CMD+I.

Go through this process a few times. Duplicate the duplication, cutout a part of it that’s smaller and invert it or not. Why “or not”? Well, sometimes the non-inverted results look better. I’ll leave that up to you to judge.

While going through this process be sure to rearrange the duplicated blocks here and there. Or not. Also, don’t cutout all the blocks. Keep some of them entirely visible. You can also try and delete the first duplication after you’ve cut it from the original. Then, you can duplicate the cutout version and re-size it as you see fit. Also, try different percentages to decrease the layers with.

There are plenty of ways to go here, all resulting in different compositions. Play with it, experiment!

Step 8: Add even more “Etched Into Dark” textures

Remember those spots/stars/sparks/whatever we added back in step 6? Well, if you like things “rich with details”; add a whole bunch more. Add them on top of all the rest though. So not inside the basic composition, but on top of the block copies. By doing so you’ll enhance the blocks themselves some more as well.

Here’s about 25 more of them added, however subtle they may be:

Step 9: Add some final touches

Most of the time I use adjustment layers to add a certain “final touch” to a design. In this case I added three to enhance the artwork an extra bit. The adjustment layers I added were: “Curves”, “Gradient Map” and “Vibrance”. See the image below for the settings I used.

Now, add some text to it in whatever way and font you see fit. It will be a vinyl cover after all! Of course you don’t have to do this. When you’ve done that (or not) and you deem the design ready, do one last thing. This is something I always do to bump up the sharpness of a sleeve and to make all the little details pop out just a wee bit more. In print that might be lost a bit, which is exactly the reason why I do the following:

Merge a copy of all visible layers into a new layer by pressing: Ctrl/CMD+Alt+Shift+E. Use the filter: Filter > Other > High Pass with a radius of 5,0 (or any other value). Set the blending mode of this layer to “Overlay” and change the opacity to something more of your liking. I changed it to 50%. Try experimenting with this little technique. Try different radius values and opacity levels.

Step 10: Present it

To help place this vinyl sleeve into context, try creating a mockup for it in order to make it look like a physical sleeve. You can easily do this via Go Media’s vinyl record mockup templates or their online mockup creation tool at MockupEverything.com!

Creating a mockup preview is an awesome way of presenting your design for a lot of reasons not stated here. It could even help you persuade clients about a design. It gives them an idea of how their product will look like as a real-world product, in this case the vinyl sleeve.

So what should you use, templates or the web tool? It’s a personal decision, yes. On one hand, the vinyl record mockup templates will give you a (near) print-ready image. You could print it out and show it to a client while meeting. If you’re sending the preview over via email or a website then http://mockupeverything.com/ is probably best for web-ready presentation. It also keeps the file size lower. Clients might like that. It saves them some space, and makes sure it won’t max out their inbox quotas (and yours!).

In case you don’t know how to use Mockup Everything or the templates, Go Media has put some neat demo material together on how to use Mockup Everything.

Mocking up the artwork we just made – in my case – results into this:

That’s it, you’re done!

You should now have applied some quick techniques while using the textures from the new “Excluded Rough Grunge” and “Etched Into Dark” texture packs to create an abstract 12 inch vinyl sleeve.

Hopefully this tutorial was simple to follow, helpful and even inspirational. Aside from that, I hope the textures will prove of great use to you in many designs. If you create(d) your own sleeves, or something else, using these textures, I’d love to see it. I’m very curious to find out and see how you apply them, so feel free to share those designs. There’s actually a special Go Media place for that!

Show off your results

On the Arsenal Facebook Page, you can post the images you created using Arsenal vectors, textures, fonts, etc.  Please show me how you’ve used these products in the real world. It’s not often that we – as in Go Media – see the work you create with Arsenal products, so take this as a call to action to share it with us on the Facebook page.

For even more exposure, you can post your image in the GoMedia User Showcase on Flickr and/or comment on this tutorial below and link us to it!

Thanks for your attention and time! It’s much appreciated.

— Maarten

The post Tutorial: Creating an abstract vinyl sleeve with graphic textures appeared first on GoMediaZine.

You can buy one of these stickers at our web store for only $1.00.

Step 1: Sketches!

Way back when I started WMC Fest I used the phrase “defy the hand you’re dealt” quite a bit. I wanted to bring that back this year. A couple years ago Brandon Rike created an image for WMC that featured a hand stuck with two arrows. It’s a clever way of illustrating the idea behind the phrase. I wanted to expand upon that and combine it with images of friendship, togetherness, and community. Those are frequent ideas people have when they think about WMC. I started sketching and I came up with a pair of holding hands with a sword through them. You know, like we’re fighting this struggle together!

Step 2: Photoshop Prep

Since this artwork is going to be used in lots of ways, I created my Photoshop document at 18″ x 24″ at 300 DPI.  Why didn’t I use Illustrator you ask?  Just personal preference mainly. This design could have been done in either program to be honest. Since we are setting up the files for CMYK sticker printing, I chose the CMYK color mode. Once I got my new document set up, I copied and pasted my sketch in the document and sized it accordingly.

Step 3: Gathering References

Before I start illustrating, I need to find a reference image for my holding hands. While my sketch is OK, I want the proportions to be accurate. I asked Bill to shoot a photo of my wife and I holding hands. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but I want to at least get the pose correct so I can manipulate and illustrate it in Photoshop to my liking. Here is our reference photo:

Step 4: Blocking it Out

After I placed my reference photo into my document, I rotated it and cut out just the arms and hands. The rest of the photo is unnecessary. I also went ahead and blocked in some additional reference like perfect circles, real fonts, starburst lines, and framing for the die-cut sticker.

Step 5: Start Illustrating

I reduced the opacity on my reference to something like 25% so I could start drawing on top to create the illustration. I use my Ye Ole Wacom Intuos 3 tablet and my brush settings are below. There are better drawing tablets out there, but this has served me well since 2006!

Step 6: Hand Lettering

Once my outlines are created, it’s time to start drawing the type. Now it took me many tries to get the letters correct for “Defy the Hand You’re Dealt.” My sketch itself wasn’t detailed enough so I had to improvise a lot. I knew I wanted “defy the hand” on the left arm and “you’re dealt” on the right arm. It was just a matter of making the letters fit! It was a lot of trial and error. Some tips for your own lettering would be to block in the letters first. Try a rough draft and get the letters in there how you want. Then you can turn that layer’s opacity down and draw it again over top while being more creative with the letter forms. Since I don’t have a very steady hand (often a little jittery from coffee and anxiety) my letter forms are not perfect. They’re a little wobbly, which is ok considering my entire design will be slightly imperfect.

The rest of the lettering was easier because I had a font to base it off of. For the words Cleveland, I set my reference type up with ITC Caslon and warped the type and got it into place. Then I drew over top of it my own custom version of it. For the dates, I loosely based my letters on the font, I drew it in rather quickly. Check it out:

Step 7: Shading and Stippling

Once the drawing was complete, I printed it out and used a good old fashioned light box. I placed my outlined drawing down first, then placed a blank sheet of paper directly on top. The light box allowed me to see through the paper so I can have precise detail when stipple shading. I used a set of fine-detail Micron pens. There is no shortcut to stipple shading, believe me I’ve tried!  I actually tried using my Wacom tablet to do this, but I didn’t get as natural and consistent results. So I went analog for this! To be honest, stipple shading is much easier using Micron pens and doing it on real paper than trying to do it digitally. My intention was to scan my shading into Photoshop onto a different layer. Then I could do whatever I wanted with it!

One trick to note: I did a separate scan for any stippling that would be “highlights” or “distressing” on my image. For example I did the stipple shading on my text on its own piece of paper and scanned it separately. That way I could change its color easier. I did the same for all the abstract dots that fill the background. In the end those were going to be lighter than the background, but it is still nice to have it on its own layer.

Step 8: Coloring!

Now that I had my outlines and shading complete, it’s time to fill it with color! I knew I wanted to go with my tried and true WMC Fest color palette. With my outlines and shading layers on top, I made a new layer underneath everything for each element. I started with the left arm first and colored it with the WMC pink color. Then I made a new layer and started coloring the right arm an orange color. By having the outlines on a layer above your colors, all you have to do is get close and color between the lines. It doesn’t matter what kind of brush you use, I’m just painting in solid colors. To make sure I’m using the same consistent colors throughout the design, I use “color overlay” layer style on each layer.

Also, since I made my background dark, notice how I changed the colors of “we are weapons of mass creation” and “until the end” to something brighter. Also, take a look at how I colored the little flag in the middle and the rays shooting out from the center. I just selected those layers and changed the “color overlay” setting to the color I wanted. No additional coloring needed.

Here is what our design looks like without any outlines on top.

And here is our finished design when we turn back on the shading and outline layers. Note: you might see some subtle distressing on the type. What I did for that was duplicating some of my stipple shading layers and placing them strategically on top of the type. Since the shading layers are the same color as the background, I was able to achieve a slightly distressed look.

Step 9: Prep for Die-Cut Sticker Printing!

The design is done! Now I just need to send it to print! But before that I had to make sure I was adhering to the specs that Sticker Robot calls for on their website. They actually screen print their stickers, but use a CMYK simulated process print. They literally screen print tiny dots of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black to get the exact colors in your design. So all I had to do was send them a high res CMYK .tif file and they did the rest. No complicated color separation work for me!

The trickiest part in setting this up for print was creating the die-cut layer. This was just a single color outline that on a separate layer that tells the printer where to cut the sticker out from the background. Since we aren’t going for traditional square-shaped stickers here, you need to specify the shape of your sticker!

It’s pretty easy. See below:

One thing to note was that there should be at least a 1/8″ safety area separation from your artwork to your die-cut line, and an additional 1/8″ bleed  area beyond your die-cut line. This will ensure your sticker has enough room to move around slightly on the press.

Another cool thing with Sticker Robot is they are one of the few sticker printers that allow you to print a grayscale design on the back of your sticker! To set this up with my custom shape sticker, I mirrored my sticker shape horizontally and designed the sticker back. I used a collage background I designed for the festival last year as my background and added our website URL. The only catch is the design had to be black and white. Check it out:

Step 10: Print up the Stickers!

The design was sent off to Sticker Robot and here’s a few photos they took of the sticker printing process, from film to packaging:

Film for the black plate.

Film is printed for each color. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. The film will be used to expose the screens.

The film is exposed.

A bright light is used to expose the film through the emulsion to the silkscreen itself. Each color will have it’s own screen.

Silkscreen Sticker Printing

A squeegee pushes ink through the screen onto the vinyl substrate, one color at a time, one sheet at a time.

a close up of cyan ink on the squeegee

Cyan and Magenta Ink

The cyan and magenta ink have been laid down. Next will be yellow, then black and finally 3 coats of clear UV protective ink.

Silkscreen Quality Ink

Silkscreen ink is notoriously thick and durable, typically 10-20 times thicker than digital ink. This is magenta:

Doesn’t really LOOK like bright magenta we know does it?

Magenta, Cyan and Yellow

The basic colors are coming together… we’re just missing the final color, black.

Black ink is laid down…

Now it’s starting to look like a sticker!

Sticker Diecutting

This is a tedious process, where each sticker sheet is literally cut one at a time – a truly custom sticker. See the video below that shows the process on creating die cut stickers.

Sticker Packaging!

Here are the final stickers. WMC here we come!

this is what a couple thousand custom die cut WMC stickers look like…

Conclusion

So there you have it, that was how I created the artwork for the 2013 Weapons of Mass Creation Fest and how the stickers were created. You can get your own screen printed, die-cut vinyl stickers created with your designs through Sticker Robot. If you want to attend the upcoming WMC Fest and see a ton of great bands, speakers, and designers, tickets go on sale soon at http://wmcfest.com.

A simulated time-lapse of the illustration

The post Tutorial: How to Design and Print Custom Silk Screen Die-Cut Stickers appeared first on GoMediaZine.

Fonts Used:

Boston Traffic

Birth of a Nation

Brushes Used:

Watercolor Splatters

Introduction

Last year, I was commissioned to create a poster/flyer for a heavy rock venue in the UK. The instructions I got were that they wanted something “edgy” and “hardcore”. Punk rock artwork is something that I typically do and I had created similar images for bands in the past, so it was the perfect project for my particular skillset.

Original thumbnail sketch

The Ink Stage

I started the project with a few thumbnail sketches of a man in a mask surrounded by various surreal and bloody elements. The band had just released a record called the Nightwatchman and I wanted to create my image based on this plague era image of a masked man.  I always produce my illustration projects in this manner; creating the rough layout and concept idea before jumping headlong into any ink drawing. It helps me to cement the idea in my mind before I start any inkwork. I have little concern over “how good my thumbnails look.” I merely need to put some ideas down on paper. In fact, I don’t even use a pencil to sketch and create most of my thumbnails in biro on whatever bit of paper I have handy!

Reference sheet created for the project that includes pictures of my own hands and ear!

The next step in my process is to gather all the reference materials I need. Because I barely do any pencil sketching apart from a very basic outline, I rely on solid reference materials. Some of these I find online and some I create myself (an iPhone is a seriously useful tool for taking reference shots)

Finished inked artwork

The reason why I don’t pencil sketch is because I like to ink on a clean canvas without the distraction of pencil marks. This makes the need for good reference more important and I always have the copies of my reference materials in constant view. To ink my artwork, I use three kinds of ink pens; a Paper Mate Flair pen, a medium Sharpie, and a Pilot Fineliner for the finishing details.

Illustrating directly in pen creates a particularly “energetic” style.  The fact that you are forced to edit and rethink the composition as you go is very liberating; if I make a mistake and I have to adapt the artwork to incorporate the mistake. The errors you make become as much a part of the illustration as the intentional ink lines.  It also generates the thick, black, and “dirty” style that I like.

The Digital Paint Stage

After creating my Photoshop canvas as an 8.5”x11”mini-poster (300dpi in CMYK mode), I scanned, dropped, and resized my ink drawing onto my Photoshop canvas. 

Once the scanned image was on my artboard I used my curves menu to consolidate the black and white in the layer and get rid of any loose grey pencil lines and uneven black (insure that the channel is set to CMYK and use the settings below as reference.)

The next step was to knock-out the white in my black layer.  I used my eyedropper tool to sample the white in this layer. I then went to select>color range and brought up my color range menu. To select all the white in this layer, I used the fuzziness toggle bar to ensure that all the white areas in this layer were selected.

After okaying my color selection, I deleted the selected white from my black layer.

The next step in the process was to start painting the piece. For this project I used a pack of watercolor splatter brushes (see top of article) – adding them to my default wet brush menu. I love this brush set that very closely mimics a loose watercolor paint style.  I also find the wet ink brushes particularly useful for digital painting in a very natural paint style.

I used a limited color palette of yellows, pinks, blues and browns to create my image; using the lightest to darkest tones first, and gradually moving into the central face image. Each major color layer was separated, starting with my “yellow layer”. Once my yellow layer was created, I used a selection of my watercolor splatter brushes to add random splatter shapes. I set my brush opacity to 70% to mimic a more “watery” effect

The painting process I use is very “free” and “casual” I separate each color layer and try to put colors down as fast as possible without thinking about it too much. The watercolor splatter brushes are ideal for building this type of loose paint texture. I ensured that each color layer was set at least to 50% opacity in this artwork and built realistic textures by turning the opacity down on particular brush strokes.

As well as using the watercolor splatters, I built texture using various wet brush effects to add splatter details in each individual layer.

To finish the background portion of my digital painting, I added a very opaque white layer (27%) and brushed in some white to tone down some of the harsher paint areas and knock-out the darker shades in the central character area.

For the main mask and face image, I created a new layer and painted my central character.

Once the central character was painted and the white highlights added, I wanted to add some finishing touches of dripping ink to complete the illustration. After creating a new layer, I drew some basic lines with a wet brush.

I selected these lines with my magic wand and using the warp tool (edit>transform>warp) bent and curved them to mimic the flow of dripping lines.

I then created a new layer called “small drips” and using the same technique as before for individual lines, drew and warped thinner lines to finish the paint project.

The Copy and Info Design

The big challenge in this particular project was the amount of copy they required on the poster; the client’s intent was to use the artwork as both mini-posters and flyers and they were very adamant on the copy elements they wanted to include.

With this in mind, I figured that I’d create a simple layout that compartmentalized all the copy elements in the head and foot of the artwork.

After re-sizing my artwork to free some space up in the head and foot of the piece, I created a new group and added a new layer. In that layer I drew a simple square with my polygonal lasso tool.

I then simply flooded the marqueed area with a solid black using my bucket fill tool to create a cut-out “punk-rock” style graphic.

I created a new text layer and used the font Boston Traffic to give my copy that stenciled punk rock vibe – laying the copy element inside the cut out shape.

The other font I used in this design was Birth of a Hero to further the destroyed and distorted look. After creating a new layer, I then continued this design approach by creating another cut-out shape with my polygonal lasso tool.

Again, I flooded this shape in black with my bucket fill tool. I then copied and flipped this same shape (edit>transform>flip horizontal>flip vertical) and placed it below my copyline.

I then added new text layers to finish off my header copy.

After creating a new layer, I repeated the process of drawing a shape with my polygonal lasso tool and bucket-filling with black. With this particular shape, I went back to my polygonal lasso tool to draw and delete a section from the top of my shape.

I then added new copy layers using my stencil font.

Using the band font styles I was supplied, I added new layers and built a text treatment in the lower left of my design.

I then copy and pasted the cut-out layers from the design header and used them in the footer copy to add some design synergy.

To complete my punk rock layout and to create some extra-footer space, I added a new layer to create a border around my design. Using the polygonal lasso tool again, I drew a cut and distorted shape around my design.

With my selection still active I then flooded the border by first inverting my selection (shift+ctrl+i) and then using my bucket fill to make it a solid black.

To complete my design, I added the remaining copy to the foot of my layout.

The post Illustrate & Design an Alternative Gig Poster in Photoshop appeared first on GoMediaZine.

A Better Way to Clear the Cache

Sometimes Chrome seems to tenaciously hold onto cached files. The old way of clearing the cache and reloading was to do a Control + Shift + Delete to bring up the Clear Browsing Data window, check off the appropriate items to be cleared, hit the clear button, and finally refresh the page. This process is a bit clunky.

Instead, simply click and hold the refresh button. As long as you have the Developer Tools panel open for the page you’re refreshing, you’ll see a little dropdown menu that allows you to clear the cache and do a hard reload all at once. This is very handy!

Make sure you have Developer Tools open, then click and hold reload.

Docking and Undocking the Developer Tools panel

By default, Developer Tools will be docked to the bottom of the window.

Default docking location at the bottom of the window

You can dock it to the right side of the window by clicking the docking icon, located in the lower left hand corner of Developer Tools.

Dock Developer Tools to the side of the window.

Developer Tools docked to the side of the window

Alternatively, you can undock Developer Tools, giving it its own window entirely. Just click and hold the docking button, then choose the Undock icon. (The docking button will cleverly let you toggle between your last 2 docking preferences with a single-click, and will require the press and hold technique to access the third choice). I prefer the undocked option when I need to do a lot of window re-sizing. For instance, when working on responsive designs.

Dock to separate window

Developer Tools undocked

Dropdown Menu Tip

OK, time to kick it up a notch. Manipulating CSS using the Elements > Styles panels is a great way to preview CSS changes.

Use the Styles panel to test out CSS changes. How did we live without tools like this?

Sometimes it can be a pain to modify the CSS for elements nested within dropdown menus or other UI elements that require hovering. Sure, you can right click an item and choose Inspect element, and the element will be selected within Elements panel. That part is pretty straight-forward. However, once you move your cursor off of the element that you’re inspecting, the dropdown menu (for example) will collapse. At this point, you could manually start working your way up the HTML tags within the Elements panel and use the Toggle Element State icon to apply the hover state to your menu item’s parent, but this is tedious.

Here’s a better approach:

1. Hover over the item that you want to inspect, and choose Inspect element. This will highlight the targeted element within the Elementspanel.
2. Now for the real magic. Hover over the item again. This time, right click it. Don’t choose anything on the context menu that appears. Instead, move your mouse over to the Developer Tools window/panel. Now the dropdown menu will remain opened and the targeted element will be selected within the Elementspanel. It’s now much easier to change the styles of the targeted item as well as its siblings while keeping them all in view.
   

   Right Click > Inspect Element > Right click desired item, then move mouse over to Developer Tools without selecting anything in the context menu.

Console Quick Tips

1.) When you’re on the any of the panels within Developer Tools, you can use the Esc key to quickly toggle the JavaScript console.

2.) With the console focused, you can clear its contents with Control + L. This is handy when you have youtube or vimeo videos embedded on a page via iframes, as they tend to add noise to the console.

3). The console is handy for seeing any errors that a script may be generating, but there’s way more to it than that. For example, it can also be used to run JavaScript snippets.

Example: Show an alert box.

alert('This is neat!');

Use the console to run JS commands

If the page is using a JavaScript library such as jQuery, you can use that in the console as well. Give it a shot!

Example: Using jQuery, change the color of all links to MidnightBlue.

jQuery('a').css('color', 'midnightblue');

Links before running our jQuery snippet

Links after running our jQuery snippet

Move Elements Within the Page

You can easily move elements around on the page by clicking and dragging them within the Elements panel. This can be handy when experimenting with the order of elements within lists and menus or for moving entire sections of a page around.

The news item is currently second from the bottom. Let’s move it up.

Clicking and dragging the News li upwards…

News in its new location

Wrapping up

I hope you were able to find something useful here. For a more general overview of Developer Tools, take a look at the official documentation. Feel free to share any quick tips of your own in the comments. Cheers, and thanks for reading!

The post Quick Tips on Using Google Chrome’s Developer Tools appeared first on GoMediaZine.

To illustrate the word “Historiaster” with the meaning of the word reflected in the design. The meaning of the word Historiater is a petty or contemptible historian, and my idea is to create a petty (yet respectable) attempt to recreate the vintage type treatments.

Research

As the idea is to make a petty remake of a classic styling of a historic lettering, it’s paramount to remain faithful to the styling of the period. The International Association of Mater Penmen, Engrosser and Teachers of Handwriting (or IAMPETH for short) has a collection of scanned rare books on penmanship and engrossing in their online collection that is free to the public.

One book in particular called The New Zanerian Alphabet has fantastic type specimens within it and we shall use a couple specimens from the book as the starting points for this piece.

Sketch

From those two specimen you can create a rough composition in Photoshop by cutting and pasting each letter together to see whether the combination would work.

I sketched out a rough of the composition to resolve the details and tighten everything. There is some legibility issues with the capital H and the lower case t.

A quick preview to the client and she recommended adopting some of the stylistic approach of the Sanborn Insurance Maps for the background. I quite like the look of this particular design for St. Joseph Missouri.

Ok, with references collected, we’re ready to jump on the computer.

Step 1

Open up a New document (⌘+N) on Illustrator and Place (File>Place) the reference image and change that layer setting using the option menu from the layer panel into template. Create another layer and call it “Type Build”, this is where we’ll construct the letters and general storing area for elements that we want to keep but remain hidden.

Open up the ruler bars (⌘+R) and place some guides over the top and bottom of the letters to help us trace the letters.

Step 2

Start with a red rectangle and set the transparency to multiply to trace the letter O and give it a round corners effect through the menu Effect>Stylize>Round Corners and give it a value of 2mm in this case.

*quick tip: You can give similar commands through the Appearance panel Fx option, and you can turn effects on and off here*

Draw a couple of small circles with the Ellipse tool (L) and with the line tool (\) draw a line between the centre of the two circles and set it 1.5 pt, now we roughly have the letter O. Make a copy of this letter by dragging and holding the option+shift key. Expand the line and the rectangle on one of the O’s you’ve just created using the menu Object>Expand and place it over the letter S here and draw a diagonal line using the line tool again to create the letter S and expand these line as well.

*quick tip: set up your keyboard shortcuts so menu commands are just a multi button press away to increase productivity. Expand is a command that I often use so this is assigned a keyboard shortcut*

Step 3

Erase part of the middle line by selecting it and using the Erase tool (shit+E). Tidy up the anchor points between the corresponding diagonal and vertical lines using the direct selection key(A), once you’ve done that select all the white elements and click Unite in the Pathfinder panel then create compound path out of them (⌘+8)

Select both the white and red elements and click minus front on the pathfinder menu to create the basic shape of the S. Copy this across by dragging and holding the option and shift key.

Step 4

Select one of the S’s and give it a rounded corner effect Effect>Stylize>Round corners (or through the Appearance panel) and give it a radius value of 1 mm and click ok. Expand this appearance Object>Expand Appearance.

Select the other S that hasn’t had the effect applied to it and with Erase tool (shift+E) erase its middle section by selecting it, holding option and dragging the selection you want to erase. Once you’re done select both S’s and with the Align menu click Horizontal Align Center to put one shape on top of the other. Select them both and click Unite on the Pathfinder panel.

Step 5

With the Pen tool draw up some accents on the tips of the letter S, the best thing about this is that if you add a rectangle on one side and delete the the accent I’ve just made and unite them using the Pathfinder menu I would get a letter a and e by simply reflecting them using the reflect tool (O).

Step 6

Copy another one of those rectangles with the Rounded Corners effect applied to them and place it over the i and expand it’s appearance Object>Expand Appearance in the menu. Using the direct selection tool (A) select all the points on the right hand side and drag it over to the left. Draw a circle right on top of it and you’ve got the letter i.

Note: I have to say at this point that it’s within the designer’s personal preference to add character to each of their letters. Each letter that we’ve drawn here are starting points, if you wish to alter any elements and can justify it then feel free.

Step 7

My solution to solve the problem of making the letter t legible is to work within the reference and add elements together. In my research folder I also came across another reference that has a solution that I’m quite happy with.

Draw a rectangle that corresponds with the letter i’s stem and copy that over to the letter t. Trace the ascender and descender of the letter using the Pen tool and combine them with the rectangle that we drew just before.

Grab one of the rounded rectangles and copy it across, make sure that they are touching and combine them using the Pathfinder menu. Draw another rectangle above them and click Minus front on the Pathfinder Menu.

Now rotate that shape and combine all of the elements together. I added some extra points to give it a bit of character, once you’re happy combine everything using the Pathfinder Menu.

Step 8

Copy the stem of the letter i over to trace the letter r, with the Pen tool trace the letter.

Copy the resulting shape (⌘+C) and delete a part of it using the Eraser tool (Shift+E), Offset the remainder shape with 0.5mm value.

Select the result and the stem and subtract the shape using the Minus Front button on the Pathfinder menu, Paste in front (⌘+F) the original shape. Use the eraser tool (shift+E) and delete a point, and combine everything using the Pathfinder Unite option.

Step 9

Combine all the letters to create istoriaster in the Artboard in your desired size, set the kerning here and give them a white fill and a black stroke colour (D). Set the align stroke setting on the outside, the corner settings on round, and the stroke 3pt.

Group everything and give it a flag effect Effects>Warp>Flag with the value on -16. Save your file if you haven’t.

Step 10

I wanted to create a more detailed filigree ornament so I printed the reference of the capital H and traced it on an A4 tracing paper with pencil and pens making sure that all the lines joined together. I scanned the sketch at 300 dpi and seeing the result in context I wasn’t too happy with the H because it looked like a lower case h.

Open the drawing in Photoshop and select the white area using the magic wand tool (W) you should be able to select the entire white area all at once. Create a mask layer from the selection, and paint using the the brush tool all the parts that you want to mask with black and in white to reveal.

Click and hold option on the layer mask and create a new colour fill with a grey colour, move the masked sketch layer to the top and set it to multiply. Create another layer and call it shading, option click the fill layer mask and with a soft brush draw the shading using shades of grey and black at 50% opacity.

You should end up with something like this, save the file as a tiff and place it on to your Illustrator file on a new layer called H ornament.

Step 11

Create a new Layer called main H, I used a typeface by Arthur Vanson through Letterhead Fonts called Hindlewood as reference. Create a new calligraphic brush through the Brush the window with the below settings.

Start with loose brush strokes to get the feel of the shape making sure that it fits with Filagree ornament, once you feel confident tidy up the lines or retrace it with a Pen tool as I’ve done here.

Step 12

Select certain points and Copy it (⌘+C) and Paste it in front (⌘+F) and delete the unnecessary points but keep the ones that would flow into the next shape. Reduce the stroke weight on the bottom curls to 0.25 pt to suggest some foreshortening and expand everything Object>Paths>Expand.

After that Simplify the paths to make it manageable through Object>Path>Simplify and tidy up the shapes. Copy the entire Shape (⌘+C), Paste it to Front (⌘+F), Expand Appearance, and Combine it all using the Pathfinder Unite option and give it a black fill. Send it to the back (Shift+⌘+[ ) once you're done.

Once you're happy with everything give it the default appearance (D) and change the stroke to .2 pt, give it a custom grey gradient and position it accordingly to suggest the light and shade.

Step 13

With the rectangle tool (M) option click the art board and create a 5x5mm square. Rotate it 90 degrees and copy the shapes using the squares and the line tool create these two patterns. Group them separately to have a long one and a short one. Make copies of these patterns and create an Envelope Mesh (option+⌘+M) with these settings.

Manipulate the Mesh by skewing it using the Free Transform Tool (E), click the middle right handle of the bounding box and then hold both ⌘ and option together. Then use the Direct Selection Tool (A) and the Convert Anchor Point Tool to wrap the patterns around the corresponding individual shapes that make up the capital H.

You can modify the shapes within the Mesh by double clicking it and coming back to the Mesh by clicking the Envelope Mesh Dialog. I made one of the vertical lines thicker in this case to further suggest foreshortening. You can also expand the Mesh altogether (Object>Envelope Distort>Expand) you can then manually adjust the shapes therein.

Once you're happy with how everything looks, Copy (⌘+C) individual shape that Meshes are wrapped around and Paste it in front (⌘+F) and send it to the front (Shift+⌘+] ). Select the shape above and the Mesh and make a Clipping Mask (⌘+7). Repeat the process to mask all the Meshes and group everything together.

Step 14

Hide the H layer and open up the H ornament layer, Copy (⌘+C) that placed document and Paste it in front (⌘F). Click Live Trace and set it with the following settings, click Expand, convert it to compound path (⌘+8), send the result to the back (Shift+⌘+[ ) and fill it with red. You should be able to see a hint of red as shown below.

Step 15

Open up the H main layer again and extract the black filled H that we sent to the back a couple of steps back and copy it (⌘+C). Lock the H main layer and select the placed tiff file and create a mask layer through the Transparency panel. Double click the blank area on the right of the preview area and your selection should disappear which is what is supposed to happen.

Draw a white rectangle that should cover the image and your image would reappear. Paste to the front (⌘+F) the black filled H that we copied earlier and create a compound path out of it (⌘+8).

Go back to the H ornament layer by clicking on the left preview window on the Transparency panel, select the vector tracing of the filigree and Copy it (⌘+C) to take to the Clipping Mask.

Head back to the clipping mask and Paste to the front (⌘+F) the filigree vector tracing, send the black filled H to the front (Shift+⌘+] ).

Select both the H and the Filigree shape and click Divide on the Pathfinder Panel which will cut the shapes into sections. Ungroup the result and select the sections you wish to reveal by deleting them. After you’re happy with everything change the results the fill to black. You should have the following result where the vine seems like it’s curling through the H, once you’re happy hide the ornament layer.

Step 16

Create another layer called “Drop Shadow” Copy the silhouette of the H and the istoriaster text into this layer using the (⌘+C and ⌘+F) commands so it is placed directly where it is on the other layers and re lock their respective layers. Expand the appearance of the istoriaster and combine everything using the Pathfinder panel’s unite button .

Select the the entire Historiaster text and duplicate it using the Transform dialog (Shift+⌘+M), enter the following values and click copy.

Select both shapes and create a blend (⌘+option+B), with the blend tool (W) hold option and click the blend image to bring up the blend dialog or go through Object>Blend>Blend Options and enter the following. Go to the menu command Object>Blend>Expand then use the Unite command through the Pathfinder panel.

Step 17

Let’s clean up this vector shape as there should be ragged edges. With the Lasso tool (Q) select the unnecessary points and then remove the points with the menu command Object>Path>Remove Anchor Points.

*quick tip: set a keyboard shortcut for the Remove Anchor Points command. I’ve got (⌘+Shift+option+0) on my computer, you can set it to your own preference*

These are the areas that you want to concentrate on, once you’re happy with the result turn on H main layer and the istoriaster layer to see whether you’re happy with the result.

Step 18

Draw two horizontal lines on top of the shape we’ve just created and create a blend (⌘+option+B). Use the blend tool (W) to prompt the Blend dialog box again to select specified amount and enter 250.

Prompt the Move dialog box (⌘+shift+M) and enter the following and click copy. Hover the Blend tool over the result to prompt the Blend Setting Dialog and reduce the amount to 200. Repeat the steps and set the blend amount to 150.

Step 19

Turn on the H main layer again and select the H silhouette shape in the back and give it a white stroke, a 3 pt stroke width, and Align Stroke to the outside.

Turn on the H ornament again to grab the filigree silhouette shape. Keep it selected and drag it to the Drop Shadow Layer on the Layer Panel. Fill it white and add a white stroke with a 2 pt Stroke Width and set the Align Stroke to Outside.

Step 20

Create a new Layer called “Flourish” and draw a rectangle behind the H. Fill the Rectangle in red and give it a Round Corners Effect (Effect>Stylize>Round Corners) give it a 50 mm radius. Keep the rounded rectangle selected, right click>Transform>Scale enter the following values and click copy.

Open up the Brushes Library menu on the Brush Panel by clicking the lower left hand corner and select Borders>Decorative and select the Rectangles 2 brush.

Select the outer rounded rectangle and Expand its appearance, delete right horizontal path and create the following using the Pen tool and draw a circle to create this shape.

Step 21

Select the inner rounded rectangle and prompt the scale dialog box (right click>Transform>scale) to create another rounded rectangle at 94% and click copy. Select both rectangles and create a blend (⌘+option+B) between the two, I’ve put 5 steps on the Blend option dialog. At this point you can manipulate shapes to get the right spacing between them, once you’re happy Expand the appearance so you have the rounded rectangles permanently applied to the shapes. Expand the blend (Object>Blend>Expand) once you’re satisfied with everything.

Expand the outer most rounded rectangle and Expand its appearance. Give it a black stoke and your desired stroke width. Combine the ends using the Pen tool and create the following.

Delete the right horizontal path of the the inner rectangles and create these shapes. Try to correspond with the top shape as uniformly as possible. With the Pen tool and Ellipse tool create these shapes that were referenced from the Sanborn Insurance maps.

Step 22

Create a vertical line using the Linte tool (\) and in the Stroke panel select a width profile 1. Give the line a Zig Zag Effect Effect>Distort & Transform>Zig Zag with the following settings. Draw up this shape using the Spiral tool, Ellipse tool, and the Pen tool. Expand both results and group them together.

Draw a circle below the group and use it as a reference point to rotate 90 degree and copy the drawn objects. Rotate the result another 45 degrees. Create a tear shape by manipulating a circle and rotate it the same way and group everything together and give it a white stroke with the Corner setting set to Round and the Align Stroke setting set to Outside. Place this object on top of the red spiral we just made.

Create accents on the other end of the rounded rectangle shapes as well using the Pen tool, Spiral tool, and the Ellipse tool.

Still in the Flourish layer create a series of objects using the Line tool (\) and the rectangle tool (M), give it a white stroke and group it all together. Place it between the and the Drop shadow layer.

Step 23

Turn on the istoriaster layer and select the text. Open up the Offset Path dialog box Object>Path>Offset Path and enter the following settings. Cut (⌘+X) and Paste in front (⌘+F) the result and create a Compound Path (⌘+8).

Give it a linear Gradient Fill and adjust it accordingly using the Gradient Tool (G). Once you’re happy with the result give it a Grain effect (Effect>Texture>Grain) with the following settings and set the Transparency setting to Multiply.

Give the same effect to the gradient fills on the H main Layer.

Step 24

Go to the Flourish layer and draw a horizontal line and use the rotate tool by holding option clicking the lowest anchor point. Give it a 6 degree value and click copy, repeat this until you get the following and group it together (⌘+G).

Use the rotate tool (R) again and give it a 3 degree rotation and click copy. Use the Scale tool (S) and give it the following value. Select the lowest line using the Direct selection tool and delete it. Group (G) everything together. Compose this flare around the composition.

Step 25

Create a new layer called Background or Bg in my case, draw a couple of vertical lines at 1 pt weight and create a blend between them. Prompt the Blend dialog box using the Blend tool (W) I’ve got 400 at this moment, but I later changed it to 600.

Keep the resulting Blend selected and bring up the Transparency panel to create the Clipping Mask by clicking that empty area again.

Step 26

Access your Brush Library Menu and open up Elegant Curls and Floral Brushes Panel. Drag that flare shaped Scatter brush icon on to the working area, delete the bounding box around it and give it a white fill. It should also have lines within it, select it using your Direct Selection Tool (A) and give it a white stroke.

Select the unnecessary Elements of this shape and place the remainder behind the flares we’ve made earlier.

With the Brushes available from the Brush Libraries we’ve just opened draw around the letters, flourishes, and drop shadows.

Step 27

I use a font called Penman Birds and Ornament by Intellecta Design. I grabbed a couple of selected glyphs Expanded it, Ungroup (⌘+shift+G) and give it a white fill and a black stroke at 4 pt width and Align Stroke Outside.

Compose it around the layer and ended up with something like the following.

Step 28

Grab a copy of one of the flares and rotate it. Create the following shape using the Pen tool to mask the flare. Before Masking it use the Direct Selection Tool (A) to select and copy it (⌘+C).

Select the flare and masking shape to create a mask (⌘+7) paste the path (⌘+V) and give it a width profile 1. Add some more lines for character with the same width profile to get the following result.

Step 29

Create a new layer and call it texture to place a paper image. You can download it here. Set the transparency of the image to Multiply. Create a rectangle on top of the Placed image and give it a circular Gradient fill and set it to multiply to create a soft Vignette.

Step 30

I gave the filigree ornament the same grain effect as the H and the istoriaster offset path. On top of that I added a drop shadow on the filigree, this left to the last minute to keep from having illustrator to render it every time you switch between layers.

I also made a little mark for this fine fine zine. Good luck with it.

The post Vintage Typography Tutorial appeared first on GoMediaZine.

Website: www.petemaric.com // 3D animation demo reels: www.vimeo.com/petemaric

Let’s get started!

As always, it’s a pleasure working with Go Media! I was excited to create his illustration for their headquarters exterior renovations, and my main goal was to make it look as good as possible.

In this tutorial I’ll walk you through the process for manipulating photographs, compositing 3D elements using Cinema 4D, establishing perspective grids, and using elements of the existing photo to create an accurate illustration.

Step 1: Fix the Photograph

Drag guides next to the building walls, double click the background layer. Edit > Transform > Skew. Drag the corners of the image using the skew function until the walls are lined up with the vertical guides. Flatten image. Use the crop tool to resize the canvas, dragging the handles past the edge of the image to the desired aspect ration/composition. Save image.

Step 2: Create 3D Elements

In Cinema 4D, create a new material and import the corrected photo inside the color channel, uncheck ‘specular’. Create a background object and place the new material on the background. Now the photo should be visible in the perspective viewport. If the photo looks disproportionate, too long or too narrow, you’ll have to match up the output size of your file with the aspect ratio of the photograph. To do this, open the render settings and background material so you have both windows open next to one another. In the material editor, color tab, the resolution size is right under the imported photo. Type these numbers into the render settings output width and height.

Step 3: Create the Bike Racks

To create the Go Go Go bike rack, start with a spline text object and type in the letter ‘G’ using Frutinger font. In the front view trace the center of the ‘G’ with a Bezier spline. Next create a profile with a circle spline, then drop the Bezier and profile splines into a sweep nurbs object. Change the ‘G’ text spine to an ‘O’ and repeat the same process. Group the ‘G’ and ‘O’ into a null object, then duplicate using a Mograph cloner to create three ‘Go’ bike racks.

Step 4: Compositing

To composite the bike rack into background, add a floor plane and use the grid in Cinema 4D as a guide to match the floor plane and ‘Go Go Go’ bike rack to the perspective of the photo.  Add the background material onto the floor plane and use a frontal projection. Right click on the floor plane > Cinema 4D tags > Compositing Tag. Inside the compositing tag, check ‘Compositing Background’ so the floor plane is not visible in the final render. Add a camera, right click the camera > Cinema 4D Tags > Protection Tag.

Step 5: Light the 3D scene.

Create two omni lights; one for the main light source with hard shadows turned on and the second as a fill light without shadows, and position them into place. Use the photograph to determine where the light source is coming from, this is where the main light source should be placed (top right of photo). In Photoshop, pick the color of the light (sky) using the eyedropper tool and enter the RGB values for both of the omni lights colors in Cinema 4D. Additionally, use a sky object with an HDRI material for reflections on the bike rack.

Step 6: Render the Cinema 4D Scene

Open the render settings, make sure the output size matches the resolution of the photo. Click effects to add a Cel Renderer effect. Check ‘Outline’ with edge color set to black and background color set to white. Specify a save path and render the line drawing.

Next, create a multi-pass render. In the render settings, check ‘multi-pass’, then ‘add image layers’ with the multi-pass button. Turn on Global Illumination and Ambient Occlusion via the effects tab. Check Save > Multi-Pass Image > Check ‘Multi-layer File’ > specify a save path, name your file > hit render.

Step 7: Establish the Perspective Grid

Since the perspectives in photographs are usually not 100% accurate, it is important to establish a perspective grid to work off of prior to creating the final line drawing.

In Photoshop, create two new layers; one layer filled with white and opacity set to 50% and a new layer for a rough perspective grid. On the perspective grid layer, choose a red color and start laying out the perspective grid using the line tool. First establish the horizon line which should be at approximately 5’-6” above the ground (5’-6” is the average person’s eye level). If there are not any people in the photograph, you can use other elements to approximate this height such as doors (6’-8” average height) to get as close as possible to 5’-6”.

The next step is to find the vanishing points, where the perspective lines converge. In this illustration, based on a 2-point perspective, one vanishing point would be on the left side (as shown in the illustration below) and other point on the right, way off of the canvas and not visible in this illustration.

Once the horizon line and vanishing points are established, draw in some general perspective lines for important architectural elements such as building lines and top and bottom of windows. Continue to block in the new elements like signage and awning.

Step 8: Create a Final Line Drawing

Open the cel render created in Cinema 4D > Select All (Command A) > Copy (Command C) > Paste (Command V) into the illustration file. To create the rest of the line drawing, use 4 different line weights all on separate layers; 3pt, 2pt, 1pt, and an additional 1pt w/ 50% opacity. Start by drawing with the heaviest line (3pt) on the bottom of the building and bottom of sidewalk. The 2 pt line can be used for the building outline, 1pt line for interior details like windows and doors, and thin line for corbels/crown, garage door, and background trees.

When creating the line drawing, we can take a little bit of creative liberty from the existing site conditions. For instance, in the existing photograph, the telephone pole by the corner of the building is slanted and blocking the new awning. Let’s straighten this so it’s completely vertical and move it over to the right a few inches so it does not block the new awning. Additionally, we can slim down the foreground telephone pole and move the street names down so they are visible in the illustration.

Remember, we are trying to create an idealized representation of this building. If a few elements need to be shifted around for the sake of clarity, feel free to exercise your creative license. Just make sure to run these changes by your client and get their approval prior to proceeding to the final rendering.

Step 9: Establish a Color Scheme

Use the eyedropper tool in Photoshop to select a brick color from the existing photograph. Launch the website www.kuler.adobe.com, input the brick color’s RGB values to create a custom scheme, then play around until you come up with a good looking color palette.

For this illustration, I started with the color of the existing brick, played around with Adobe Kuler, then experimented with different sky gradients in Photoshop until I came up with a scheme that worked for this building.

Step 11: Set Selections

Before adding color to the illustration, set selections for important architectural elements. Use the pen tool to draw a path around the building > Command + click the path in the path palette to activate the selection >  Select > Save Selection > name the selection ‘building’ > Hit OK. This will create a new channel in the channels palette. Repeat this process for the windows, go bike rack, and foreground telephone pole.

Step 12: Render the Illustration

Start the rendering by creating a custom gradient using the blue color from the color scheme with a yellowy/orange color. Create a new layer, set it to multiply blend mode, and drag the gradient from top to bottom to create the basic color for the sky. When rendering, starting with the sky color is a good idea because this sets the mood for the entire illustration. Next, add a layer mask to the gradient > command/click the ‘building’ selection in the channels palette > paint away the building, but let some of the color on top and bottom bleed into the building.

Next, create additional layers for the sidewalk and street, set blending mode to multiply, pick colors from the existing photo, paint in street and sidewalk.

Step 13: Render the Windows

Window Color: Duplicate the sky gradient layer > Layer > Layer Mask > Delete, and rename the layer to ‘windows’. Create a new layer mask in the layers palette > Command/Click the windows selection in the channels palette > Select > Inverse > use a large brush and paint away everything, leaving just the color for the windows. Duplicate the windows layer and reduce the opacity to around 50%.

Window Reflections: Open a photograph of a cityscape to be used for the window reflections > Select all (Command A) > Copy (Command V). Jump over to the illustration file > Command/Click the ‘windows’ channel > Edit > Paste Special > Paste Into. This will paste the photo into the window selection. Click the window layer > Edit > Transform > Skew > manipulate the pasted photo until it somewhat matches the perspective of the illustration. Add a 4pt gaussion blur to the photo and reduce the opacity to around 40%.

Window Light Rays: Create a new layer > use the pen tool to draw some light rays > fill with an off white/yellow color > add a layer mask > mask out all areas leaving the light rays only in the windows.

Step 14: Render the Brick

For the building, we’ll use as much of the existing photograph as possible. Duplicate the background photograph > add a watercolor filter (Filter > Artistic > Watercolor) > and drag the layer to the top of the layer stack. Add a layer mask > activate the building selection > Inverse the selection > paint away everything except the brick. Activate the window selection > mask out the window area to reveal the rendered windows from the previous step.

Step 15: Create a Brick Pattern

On the duplicated background layer, select a portion of brick using the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Create a new file at 11×17 inches, drag the brick selection in to the new file. Use the skew transform tool and align the top and bottom so they are horizontal, not slanted. Duplicate this layer to create a consistent brick pattern.

Next, create a new layer and draw grout lines using the line tool in Photoshop.

Step 16: Fix the Inconsistent Brick Pattern

Flatten the new brick and grout pattern > Select All (Command A) > Copy (Command C) > jump over to the illustration document and paste the brick for the front of the building. Use Edit > Transform > Skew to match the new brick pattern to the perspective of the illustration > mask away the areas for the windows, doors, telephone pole, and signage. Repeat this process for the corner of the building and left side.

Find a brick pattern on www.cgtextures.com and use this texture to render the building on the far right side.

Step 17: Add Background Trees

Duplicate the original brick layer (the one with the watercolor filter applied) > Mask out everything except the background trees, cars, and grass > set the layer to ‘Multiply’ blend mode > Reduce opacity to 90%. Fix any blotchy grass areas with the clone stamp tool. Duplicate this layer > flip horizontal > move to right side of illustration > mask out unwanted areas to create the right side tree.

Tip: Keeping all of the elements of the illustration on separate layers will give you complete control over the final look of the finished piece.

Step 18: Render the Go Bike Rack

Open the multi-pass file that was rendered from Cinema 4D. Double click the ‘diffuse’ layer > drag all layers into a group > name the group ‘Go Bike Rack Render’ > drag the entire group into the illustration file. Mask out each multi-pass layer individually and place the group into position.

Step 19: Render the Telephone Poles & Signage

For the telephone poles, use the background photo with a watercolor filter applied, mask out each telephone pole individually and keep all poles on separate layers. For the ‘Lorain’ & ‘W.45 St’ signs, use the text tool in Photoshop and skew each word into position.

For the ‘Go Media’ main sign, use the original reference image and cut/paste the sign into the illustration. Use Edit > Transform > Skew to match the perspective of the illustration.

To create the front awning, add a new layer, set it’s blending mode to multiply and paint in the black part of the awning. Copy/paste the Go Media logo mark from Adobe Illustrator into Photoshop. Use Edit > Transform > Skew to match the perspective of the illustration. Create the address in Photoshop using the text tool.

Step 20: Add People and Cars to Populate the Illustration

Turn on the perspective grid that was drawn prior to creating the final line drawing. Open your people and cars stock files > add watercolor filter to each file > place into illustration. Tip: Make sure that the eyes of every person are lined up with the horizon line.

For this illustration, stock files were used from www.realworldimagery.com and www.doschdesign.com.

Step 21: Add Shadows

Turn off all layers except the final line drawing and entourage (people & car). Create a new layer and manually paint in the shadows using a hard brush and a cool grey color. Set the shadow layers blend mode to multiply. In this illustration, the light source would be coming from the upper right.

Step 22: Final Touches

Street Reflections: Duplicate the original photograph > flip vertical > move down so the building is reflected in the street > add a gaussian blur > mask out everything except the building > reduce the opacity to 18%.

Birds: Use a custom brush > turn on scattering in the brush palette > choose a blue color from the sky > turn layer to multiply > paint in a group of birds.

Highlights: Create a new layer > use the line tool with a 1pt line > paint highlights on the right side of all architectural geometry.

Light Bursts: Create a new layer > set blending mode to overlay > pick a yellow color > paint with a soft brush over the front of the building > reduce the opacity to 60%. Create a new layer set to overlay and paint with an orange color on both right and left sides of the illustration.

Border: Fill a new layer with a dark blue color set to multiply blend mode > mask out the center of the layer.

Texture: Drop a watercolor paper texture on top of the entire illustration and turn the blend mode to multiply.

Step 23: Revisions

One thing that you should always anticipate when doing illustration work are client requested revisions. This is a very important thing to keep in mind when setting up your working files. Although assigning each line weight and all aspects of the rendering to it’s own separate layer may be a little bit more time-consuming up front, it pays off when you have to go back and revise your files. Tips: Keep everything on a separate layer, organize your layers into groups, and name all layers.

A few of the revisions to this illustration were to replace the side brick with a painted grey color, change Go bike rack to a brushed metal finish, and add clouds and a hot spot in the sky behind the building.

Change brick to grey: First turn off the new brick pattern in Photoshop to reveal the existing grey brick color. Next, use the clone stamp tool to touch up any wires, unwanted poles, and grass/weeds growing on the bottom of the building.

Change bike rack to a brushed metal finish: Open the Cinema 4D file and replace the Go bike rack yellow material with a stainless steel found in the content browser. Re-render the multi-pass file and replace the existing yellow color in the illustration with the new stainless steel.

Step 24: The final illustration!

Pour yourself a coffee warmer, you’re done!

The post Creating an Architectural Illustration Using Reference Photography appeared first on GoMediaZine.

Earlier this year I was commissioned to come up with a series of character illustrations for Cohort Pictures new film project; ‘The Northern Mist‘, a suspense horror set during the Roman occupation of Briton. The illustrations would be used to help the rest of the creative team cast the roles for the film, aid in costume design and provide a bit of promotional material to drum up interest from investors and audiences. It was a great chance to really flex my creative muscles and get into some good ol’fashioned doodling. My favourite piece to come out of this one was what I nicknamed the Lady Briton sketch, so I decided to run a quick step by step tutorial for anyone interested in how I took this illustration through from brief to final concept.

The Brief

So the brief for this character went something like this (and this is me paraphrasing pretty extensively)-

“she’s a feisty female Briton, easily equal to her male counterparts, she get’s captured early on in the film so it’s important to try and get her fighting spirit across in the design as much as possible. Also- she is the only female in a movie full of dudes, so she really needs to not be a troll.”

After a bit of pleading, Patrick (the director working on the film) also sent me through this rough sketch he’d put together. It makes such a difference getting some rough input from a client as it means I have a starting point- even the crudest stick man helps me to get a result closer to what they originally envisioned. Anyway – from this, I gathered she needed to be in pretty light armour, probably leather or cloth and covered in dirt. Nice.

The Concept

The next step is getting a rough sketch together. My initial sketches are always pretty awful (I think I drew this one whilst on a bus in Spain?), but the point of them is very much like the concept Patrick sent me: to quickly get an idea across. If you spend any massive length of time on them, then (if you’re like me) you’ll resent any changes that need to be made, at the end of the day: time is money after all. In this version, Patrick could see I’d gone for a cloth wrap that showed off more skin in a way that wasn’t too obviously sexual, and made the hair very loose, long and straggly. I also gave her two swords, but Patrick felt that a crude sword and shield might work better, so we went with that.

The developed sketch turned out like this. I tried to stay aware that whilst this character needed to be feral and wild, she also had to be quite attractive in her own way. To keep that appeal in there, I pretty much sketched her naked outline and started adding clothes after so as to keep that core feminine silhouette to the design.

Inking

Once that got approved I moved onto inking- I ink right on top of my pencils, but I always make sure to have a scanned copy at a decent resolution just in case I slip up. A lot of top inkers recommend brushes to help you get a good line weight into your artwork, this can make your drawings a lot more dynamic and it really helps to give a sense of depth. Originally I just used digital inking via my Wacom tablet, but at my first comic con in Boston, a few editors from DC comics tore my portfolio apart, saying I had great talent but I really needed to use brushes to ink my work. Since then I’ve tried my best to use brushes, but as with all things it’s easier said than done and I ended up ruining a few sketches with spilt ink pots and the like. Now I’ve found a happy medium in the Pentel Brush Pen- which is what it sounds like; a pen with a brush nib. I think it’s designed for Chinese calligraphy or something, but to my mind, there is no better pen out there for inking your artworks (at least for the major lines anyway).

So now my inks are nailed down, it’s time to erase the pencil underneath and get the inks scanned into Photoshop. I use the Levels Tool (Ctrl+L) to try and clean up my image a bit and get rid of any paper grain. Basically I just move the black and white cursors a little closer to the centre until I’m happy with the definition I’m getting. It’s useful to zoom right in here to make sure I don’t have any pencil trails still knocking about. A trick I sometimes also do (but not for this piece) is run my linework through a Live Trace in Illustrator, then just save it as a PDF and open it back up in Photoshop. This can really help smooth out my lines and can make a huge difference if I’m going for that ultra polished look.

Colours

For colour I generally duplicate my line layer and set the top one to multiply. For the lower level I go to Select > Colour Range and choose black to select all the lines. Then Select > Modify > Contract and contract by one pixel. Now I invert the selection and delete. This means that the lower layer (which will become my colour layer) has slightly thinner lines than my top layer. This way I can just use the paint bucket tool on my lower level to quickly fill the areas I need with colour. The downside of this is that the lines on the lower layer are now very jagged, but fear not- that top layer is still perfect and will keep the ultra smooth lines. Smart.

Shading wise I do love my gradient tool, but I’m trying to broaden my horizons and so, with that in mind, for this piece I decided to use Copic Markers. Now I’m no pro with these things yet, but I’ve seen some amazing artwork from guys like Adam Hughes and Mahmud Asrar, so I figure it’s well worth my time getting to know them. They’re basically watercolours in a pen minus the mess (are you seeing a pattern here?). Seeing as I wanted this piece to be really gritty, I figured it didn’t matter too much if I wasn’t perfect yet as it’d probably add to the effect I was trying to achieve anyway.

So here’s how I work- I go back to my inks in Photoshop and place a ‘screen’ layer over them and fill it with Non Photo Blue (#A4DDED – thank me later), this changes all my inks to a special type of blue that is really tough for scanners to pick up (meaning the lines won’t show up as much when I scan it back in and I’ll just have my sexy Copic shading). I print this out and then start going over it with the Copics. I only use grey as I already have my basic colours in Photoshop. Copics have two types of grey- warm and cool. Warm is generally for skin and ‘warm’ things, and cool for clothes and ‘cool’ things (duh!), however, for this character I really wanted to make her as pale and cold as us Brits really are and so I swapped them over, using cool greys for the skin and warm greys for the clothes. This contrasts well with the olive skinned Romans I illustrated later.

So the technique I use is just to start with my lightest colour and keep adding until I’m happy. I apply each colour a few times to get really slight gradient differences and then switch up a pen for more defined shadow and light sections. Another cool tip is don’t worry about going outside the lines- we have our perfect inks saved on Photoshop now, so if needs be we can always use that as a mask to clean things up.

Some other gadgets I have are these Sepia pens. Again, these come in warm and cool greys. They’re not quite as washy as the copics but they have a much finer nib and are great for detail.

I use these for any sections that need real precise details like on the leather strips or strongly defined shadow. They’re great for hair as well.

Finally I have a couple of white ink pens for highlighting any areas. Generally I like to do this digitally as these inks can run a bit, but sometimes it can be helpful to get the whites in whilst I’m ‘in the zone’ and am pretty familiar with the illustration and lighting etc…

Now for the fun part; get the Copics scanned in and throw them into Photoshop.

I grey-scale them up with Ctrl+Shift+U to get rid of any colours that have shown up (or not if I like the effect, I call it as I see it depending on the illustration).

I put this layer above my colour layer (but below my smooth ink layer) and set it to multiply. What I’m left with is my digital colour mixed perfectly with my Copic shading. Sweet.

Finishing Touches

Now is the time to take a good look over the illustration. I often notice some bits I want to be darker or lighter. Not to worry though, I just hide the Copic layer and start editing my original colour layer. I wanted the eyes much darker and I think I wanted the clothes to cast more of a shadow too, so all I did was highlight those sections and darkened them with either the Lightness Bar on the Hue/Saturation Panel (Ctrl+U), or with the Gradient tool set to black.

Likewise I wanted to brighten up a few sections, like on the sword, so I did the same thing but with white. When I’m creating a glow or a shine, I make sure to do it on a new level above my smooth inks, stuff like this really helps blend a work of art and brings a piece together.

I know what you’re thinking- “this chick is way too clean, where’s all the mud we were promised?”. I know, and I’m way ahead of you. I have this great texture in stock from the Go Media Arsenal Grime Set 2 pack, I think it’s actually concrete, but it works really well for adding a natural, dirty looking texture to things. Normally when I’m working with textures I like to desaturate them so they taken on the colours of whatever layers I apply them to, but in this case I thought the bluey grey colour worked pretty well (having flashbacks to Braveheart!) so I decided to keep it as is.

To apply the mud effect I simply throw it on above the colour layer, delete any part that isn’t over the skin and set the layer to multiply- this ensures that all the dark bits of the texture stay dark whilst the light bits show through the skin colour underneath. After that it’s just a case of playing with the opacity to get the muddiness to a level I’m happy with, I think I opted for around 50% opacity in this piece. Another cool trick I do here to add a bit of depth and volume is to select the erase tool and a really soft brush with a low opacity and just go to work erasing bits of the mud texture on the parts of the skin that would be either naturally lighter or catch the light (since the mud layer is set to multiply, and only the dark bits are showing through, erasing them will make that area lighter). In this case I erased around the shoulder and hips, as well as on the top of the thigh to make those areas seem a bit more rounded and curved.

Now the brief asked for a character illustration and didn’t really mention anything about backgrounds, but I work to the Bill Beachy mantra of “under promise and over deliver” so whilst not going overboard I am going to try and produce a background that’ll help set the tone for this illustration. The basis for the background is very simple. Another texture from Go Media’s Arsenal, this time from the Rust 3 set with a blue tint and a black gradient coming in from above. I’ve also included just the hint of a pattern from the tribal vector pack in order to make that background a bit more dynamic. Also since the illustration is for a movie called ‘The Northern Mist’ I figured it’s probably a safe bet to put some mist in there too. This is basically created on a layer above the background (but behind the character) by using some of the sexy Smoke and Cloud textures from the Arsenal. I use a few of these mixed together and set the layers to ‘screen’ (removing any blacks from the texture and just showing the white misty goodness), this gives a sense of volume to the mist in a very authentic (and quick!) way.

To add a bit of depth and to create a foreground, I duplicated the mist layer and moved it above the character illustration to give the appearance that my Lady Briton was stood amongst the mist rather than in-front of it. I also added a bit of light in the top left corner to help show off a bit of light direction and some cheeky dust particles to make the light look a bit more dynamic and to add extra depth. One last cool little trick I did here was to put all the character layers in a group (Ctrl+G) and then apply a gradient mask to that group from the ground up, effectively fading out her feet. The result of which made her look as though her feet were disappearing into the mist, but still allowed me to keep the mist fairly fine.

So there it is, my finished Lady Briton illustration. Patrick and the guys from Cohort Pictures were really thrilled with how this, and the other illustrations turned out. In fact, they even hired me again right away to produce a short comic book in lieu of the traditional storyboards, so that they could use it as a marketing tool for the film!

The post Some Like it Dirty: Comic Book Inking and Coloring Tutorial appeared first on GoMediaZine.

Introduction

One of our clients Disciple Clothing needed a “logo” and business card designed for a ministry they are a part of. The Ashish Mubarak Ministries to be exact. They sent me their current business card along with the illustration they are using as their “logo.”

Wow! That’s technically an illustration and not a logo. As an illustration, it’s gnarly 90s gold and obviously in need of an update. Lauren Kusant from Disciple recognized this and asked me to simplify this into a logo, modernize it and add the word “Revivalist” to it. But in my professional opinion, if I reduced this entire scene into a a logo (what is and what isn’t a logo), it would ultimately lose all the different messages its trying to communicate. There’s a lot going on here!

Sidenote: If you’re interested, I suggest reading the article A Logo is Not a Brand.

You can’t fit a flaming sword, a bible, mother Earth, a dove, a scroll, and some stalks of wheat in what is traditionally called a logo. Sure you could take ALL of those elements and identify its core message and communicate that single message with a single mark. Sometimes when I do this, the client often feels that it’s too simple and too far removed from their vision. It loses some sort of wow factor. Now, a logo is meant to be a placeholder for a brand. A simple icon or wordmark that represents the brand that can be resized and repurposed for any application you can think of. It should be easy to spot, easy to recognize and easy to reproduce. Sometimes, clients will incorrectly ask for a logo, when what they really mean is “a cool looking graphic design that represents them.”

I once had a client ask for five different “logos” for their apparel line. What!? After talking more with them, they really wanted five different t-shirt designs. Specifically, five different typographic t-shirt designs. In other words, cool ways of writing their name mixed with other graphics.

So how was I going to tackle this project?  I felt the best solution would be to maintain the integrity of the elements but simplify the illustration entirely into more basic shapes and iconic forms. I decided to go with a thick line art style. It won’t be a “logo” per-say, but it will still be a simple and iconic design that can be used on a variety of applications to represent the ministry. So without further ado, let’s get into the design process!

TIP: For this style, stick with ONE line weight for a uniform look. We aren’t going for “realistic” here. Don’t over-illustrate. Simplify and keep things spaced evenly.

Step One: The Sword

Since we’re aiming for iconic and simple, always start with basic shapes and add detail from there. If you start going crazy with the pen tool, you’ll have a harder time making things “perfect”. You’ll see what I mean later. For the sword, I started with a box and used my pen tool to add a point. Then I used my Direct Selection Tool (white arrow) to select the three points at the tip of the sword. To make sure they are evenly spaced and my midpoint is exactly in the middle, I used the align tool “Horizontal Distribute Left.” Make sure “align to selection” is checked and not “align to artboard.” Otherwise you’ll spread out your points all across your artboard and you don’t want that.

To make the tip, I wanted a perfect 45 degree angle. Why? Because I feel it’s more iconic when angles are in good harmony with each other. Angles like 45, 90, 60, 30 are all good angles to use. To get the 45 degree angle, I held shift when creating my line. I lined it up with the left point and then selected and repositioned the “tip” to match. There might be a more exact way of doing this, but this way gets me close. I also drew another vertical line down the center of the sword and aligned it with the rest.

To create the handle, I did a lot of the same techniques as above. I started with a basic rectangle, created a midpoint, and moved it upwards slightly. I used a 15 degree reference line instead this time. How did I get it exactly 15 degrees? I started with a horizontal line, then used the Transform palette to rotate it exactly 15 degrees. Get used to this tool because it comes in handy!

I gave the handle guard a white fill in addition to the black stroke so I could position it on top of the blade and cover up parts I don’t want people to see. To create the rest of the handle I did more of the same. For the pommel (bottom tip of the handle) I made a rectangle and used Warp > Bulge to get it a slightly bulbous shape.

Step Two: The Book

For the book, in this case The Bible, I kept things simple by illustrating only the essential elements. The page, stuff on the page, and the dimension or thickness of the book. I started with one half first and then mirrored it.

I’ll create temporary vanishing point guidelines to make sure I get my perspective angles correct. You can fake this of course but I wanted to make sure. And one technique that’s very common is designing one half first and then mirroring it so each side is symmetrical. Then center it up perfectly with the sword using the align tool.

Step Three: The Fire

Truth be told, this took me many attempts to get right. I had to imply the sword was on fire without over illustrating it. The fire had to look like fire and not a leaf or some other decorative doodad. And it had to be symmetrical, but I didn’t want to have the same flame on both left and right sides. The challenge was to make it FEEL symmetrical without actually being exactly the same on both sides.

I started with a flame on the left side. I made sure the bottom part of the flame followed the contour of the book below it. To communicate a flame instead of a leaf, you need to have a few tendrils. You don’t need a lot, but if you have just one (like a candle flame) it doesn’t look like a flame. Unless of course a candle is underneath it. But I didn’t want any more than three tendrils or points to keep it simple.

Once I got one I liked, I mirrored it for the right side. I used my pen tool and adjusted points around until I had something different but still similar. I kept the bottom part the same which helps create the illusion of symmetry. I only adjusted the top two points. Once I was satisfied with my flanking flames, I put in the smaller whisps on top of the sword and behind. These don’t need a lot of tendrils because there are other flames around it that communicate “this is fire”. Without the more complex flames to the left and right, you can’t be sure whether it’s fire, wind, or some other decorative swoosh.

Step Four: The Banner

I purposely left room at the top for the banner. This is where the text “revivalist” is going to go. I started by using the font Modula Sans as a base. Since I want everything to have a consistent line weight I’ll need to create new lines from scratch. Before I did that, I roughly set things up how I wanted it using the Warp > Arc Lower tool and distorting the text into position. Once it’s close, I lower the opacity of my reference and start drawing lines as simply as possible. It doesn’t have to match up exactly with my reference and it’s ok to adjust later. For the A, I actually used an upside-down V.

I positioned the banner on top of the sword and made sure it was perfectly centered. I also added the back “flaps”.

Step Five: The Wheat Stalks

I knew I wanted the wheat stalks to circle the design in some way. Instead of trying to draw a curve by hand, I started with a circle as reference and added a single point at the top of my stalk and then deleted other parts of the circle until I was left with the part I needed. To create the head of the wheat stalk, I took two overlapping circles and used the Intersect tool in my pathfinder palette. That gave me a perfect shape. I rotated it 30 degrees and mirrored it so I would have a symmetrical shape to work with. I then duplicated this shape vertically by holding Alt+Shift while I dragged it down some. After that I pressed Ctrl+D five times to repeat the last action and duplicate the shape. I added one more of those shapes on top. For the sprout-like things coming out the sides, it’s just a simple path that was duplicated and mirrored on both sides. Easy.

I moved the head into position on the stem and then individually rotated the shapes along the curve slightly. Just to make it look like it was bending along with the stem. When I was satisfied with the position, I copied it, rotated it, and positioned a second wheat stalk to the left of it. And finally I grouped the two of those together and mirrored it on the other side while making sure my wheat stalks were perfectly aligned to the center of the design.

Step Six: The Dove

Since I am not a pro at drawing a dove, I wanted to make sure I was close! So I grabbed a reference image from iStockphoto. It’s more of an illustration, but I liked the position and symmetry. I thought it would be an excellent starting point for my design.

I started out with extreme basic shapes. Circles, ovals, ellipsis, whatever you want to call them. I tried to make as few lines as possible while still capturing the essence of the bird’s body. When they are properly layered, you can create the illusion of depth very easily! Make sure the head is on top of the body, the feet on top of the wheat. The body behind the wheat, etc.

For the wings, I made one on the left side before I mirrored it to the right. Here’s a good rule of thumb for creating vector illustrations: Use as few points as possible for the cleanest curves. It’s so much easier to manipulate that way. For my wings, I made sure they were behind the body but in front of the wheat. This gives the illusion that the bird is kind of leaning forward.

For the tail feathers, I used the same technique I did in creating the head of the wheat stalks. I used two overlapping circles to cut out a basic feather shape. I used the rotate tool and held down ALT while I clicked the bottom of point of my shape to set the new pivot point. When the rotate dialog box pops up, I used 30 degrees and checked the preview button to make sure. Instead of hitting “ok” I clicked “copy” to duplicate the shape instead. And then I pressed Ctrl+D to repeat this process a bunch more times until the shape copied itself in a full circle. Pretty cool technique!

I deleted the shapes at the top that I didn’t need and set the fill color to white just so they overlapped and didn’t look transparent. I also adjusted the layering of the feathers to keep it symmetrical on both sides. With the bottom feather being furthest behind, the next two features being second, and then the top feathers being in front or on top. Does that make sense? See the image below for a breakdown.

Step Seven: Fine Tuning

In reality, there was a lot more trial and error in the process of this illustration. There was a lot nudging lines around, moving and rotating, and asking “does this look right?” Use your eye and keep the shapes and lines in harmony. And my final design was inverted (white on black) to match the colors the ministry was using on its old business card and website.

But before I made the color change, I wanted to “naturalize” the illustration a bit. Make it slightly rougher and analog. Here is a simple technique for making your vector art look a bit more natural.

Roughen it up a bit.

I selected all my strokes and went to Effect > Distort and Transform > Roughen. This took some tinkering to get to look just right! I was aiming for a subtle wobble to my linework, but not too much.

Photoshop Trickery

This looks pretty good, but I want to take it a step further. I’ll copy my entire design and open Photoshop. I’ll start a new document at about 2500 x 2500 and paste my artwork as pixels. Make sure it takes up most of the document.

After you’ve got it pasted in there, merge it with the background layer. Then go to Filter > Add Noise to about 15%. Then give it a Gaussian Blur of 2%. And finally apply a Smart Sharpen to about 140% with a 34 px radius. Now adjust the levels to eliminate the grey noise in the background.

Repeat this process about 3-4 times tinkering with your settings to get the best effect.

Aside from the fact that the lines are slightly rougher than before, notice the joints between lines. The areas where lines meet up are now a bit more blended together. It doesn’t look extremely precise and perfect. More natural. Now this isn’t always appropriate for every situation. If you wanted to keep the clean look then don’t do this. But in my case I like the analog look and felt like it worked for this project.

Back to Illustrator

At this point, I will copy and paste this back into Illustrator and give it a live trace to convert it back to vector art. I’m ok with some amount of smoothing or “quality loss” here. My image is 2500×2500 so it is pretty high res. A Live Trace will work fine. But if I wanted to keep a lot of those rough details, there is the “lettering” preset under Live Trace Options which works wonders for keeping your rough details, but is terrible for CPU performance. Your resulting vector art is often loaded with thousands of points and that’s not really good here. So I just keep the default settings.

Step Eight: Finish!

That’s it. That’s all there is. I hope you learned a bit about creating iconic vector art in Illustrator. It’s really about being able to simplify the elements as much as possible, using basic shapes as starting points, and keeping things simple, balanced, and consistent. Everything in this design has one stroke weight. Even my text. That’s the beauty of this style. This won’t work for a logo, but this illustration can be just as versatile in many situations.

Here’s my final design on black and then the finished business cards.

Mock it up!

Here are the designs mocked up on some of our templates. You can buy this tri-blend template pack from Go Media’s Arsenal. These other mockups are from our site Mockup Everything.

The post Thick Line Art: Creating Iconic Vector Art appeared first on GoMediaZine.