Best way to achieve this look?

[Engstrom Graphics]

Hello - I have a picture of one of my cars that I would like to draw to create the effect of the blue car on the right. I want each panel to be editable (hence maintaining vector properties). What is the best way to achieve this? I do have a trackpad to draw - opposed to a mouse. But any suggestions? I am using Illustrator CS5. Thank you in advance!

 

[jfiscus]

Just start drawing it; it's gonna take a while. drawing things this complicated it is best to use a different layer for each part of the car (say a door), and to go ahead and set up a custom pallette to maintain color consistency across the piece. I redrew this artwork for a customer from a scan of an old shirt. It took quite a while.

 

[Engstrom Graphics]

Thank you for the response - and awesome job on your example! Which tools do you recommend using to draw - just the simple pen or pencil tool? One over the other?? Any specific process you would adhere to?

Thank you!

 

[jfiscus]

Always the pen tool. You will get intimately familiar with it if you do this project.

However, if you don't have the time/energy; then I might suggest cutting the car off its background in photoshop and then trying out live trace in Illustrator. That will get you a rough/grungy effect.

 

[ddarlak]

pay jfiscus to do it, he is a master....

 

[J Hill Designs]

jfiscus' example is quite a bit more detailed than yours. Joe Diaz did a webinar where he took a photo and used different level black/white bitmap conversions to create the look of your example. maybe someone has the link handy.

 

[Engstrom Graphics]

Thank you - yea his example is awesome, but I for sure don't need that much detail. For working with Illy and Photoshop for years, I do not have much experience with the Pen tool and it is annoying just to figure out how to close a path. In addition, when I make a series of anchor points it makes a solid color in the negative space of the anchor points I am making. I made the object solid (which I have via Photocopy filter in Photoshop - then traced in Illy and filled it all in) - but now I need to "draw" all the panels. Maybe this is easier in Photoshop then re-trace to vectorize once all my drawings are complete?

Thank you guys!

 

[oksigns]

Watch some speed art runs on youtube for vector illustrations. You will see the basic construction for yourself. It takes patience and, for the uninitiated, lots of practice. If you already do illustrations, you will enjoy the speed to witch you will get results.

Use layers to organize yourself, and make sure to label things as you go so you don't waste time trying to find pieces floating around your layers. I would recommend to not rush it. Always find a stopping point and evaluate if you are going in the right direction, because it's easy to enjoy knocking stuff out with progress only to find that you missed something.

This ought to be very straight forward since you are only dealing with black shadows and one straight midtone and no highlights(the exception is the grill..)

 

[jfiscus]

Send me the better quality pic and I'll doctor it up to give you a better starting point if you're only trying to get from photo "A" to image "B". jfiscus224(at)msn(dot)com

 

[Engstrom Graphics]

Thank you oksigns - I appreciate it!

And jfiscus thank you - I sent you an email.

Thanks everyone I appreciate you taking the time to respond. Just trying to get better!

 

[jfiscus]

here it is, shot it back to you also. just did a couple different lives traces and layered it.