By :
Ahmad Anis b. Mohd Fauzi
Faculty of Creative Multimedia,
Multimedia University
63100, Cyberjaya.
anis.fauzi@mmu.edu.my
Ten leading illustrators and digital artist give you their tips on creating better digital illustrations. I’ve covered it all-from vectors graphics to composition and structure.
Being a professional illustrator is one of the more satisfying professions. But while it’s rewarding in terms of job satisfaction, it’s also very challenging. If the creative juices aren’t flowing (the visual equivalent of writer’s block) your work can become bland, repetitive and a chore to produce.
And if you’re unfortunate enough to have a difficult client who is simply trying to express their own stunted creativity by hiring you and telling you how to do your job, well, it’s like selling your soul to Satan.
To make the way forward that little bit easier for digital artist, I’ve rounded up some of the most experienced and creative mind in the illustration business and asked them for their tips on specific areas of digital illustration.
If you’re new or aspiring illustrator you’ll find these tips invaluable.
If you’re an established illustrator or creative professional, these tips should be of interest. They may help you brush up on some of your ideas, or u can just compare what our pros say to your own experience.
Vector illustration
As with any form of drawing, you need to be comfortable with the media you are using; so practice, learn the ins and outs of the software and push your own capabilities. Don’t expect the software to do all the work. Vector programs make it easier to draw more accurately, not necessarily better. Domanic Li of The Organization is an experienced vector illustrator. Here are the tips…
1. Plan out your images beforehand and use scanned drawings as templates. Most drawing packages enable you to bring in an Illustrator 8+, open an image and choose Template from the Layer palette. This will automatically lock and dim the layer. To change the dim settings just use the layer options.
2. Start off simple and build up complexity in stages. When creating your illustration it’s usually easier to start by ‘blocking out’ any large shapes or areas of colour, and adding details on separate layers. This way you can break down the illustration into more manageable chunks. Working with layers helps you manage your work as you go.
3. Learn shortcuts and keyboard modifiers to speed up workflow-you’ll be able to work much faster when you don’t need to keep up moving the mouse to menus. The latest versions of vector packages also enable you to create your own shortcuts too.
4. Use pathfinders to create complex shapes from smaller, simpler shapes. Pathfinders are filters that enable you to take two or more separate shapes and combine or intersect them in different ways to create new, more complex shapes. You can also usually use an unfilled path to bisect or divide another shape with much greater accuracy than just using Knife tool.
5. Use blends to create merged shapes. Blends are great for creating multiples of the same shape, or for merging one shape into another. In Illustrator 8+ you can also blend groups of objects too-great for creating animations. Expand the blend afterwards and you can also edit the blended objects or groups too.
6. Create your own libraries of often-used things like shapes or objects, as well as colour schemes, swatches and so on. If you’ve spent time creating something quite complex, save it for possible use in another project. Rather than starting from scratch you may be able to just edit something you’ve created previously.
7. Create your own startup file. In Illustrator you can edit the existing file or use it as a template to create your own. This file determines what swatches and gradients appears in any new file you create, as well as the default settings in page set-up and document set-up dialog boxes, and view preferences.
8. Create multiple views to speed up navigation. In Illustrator, if you create a new view it will remember not only the view position/magnification, but also any layers or objects that are locked or hidden or displayed as artwork. This way you can just jump from view to view, rather than having to manually unlock or hide things.
9. Sometimes you may need to make a path larger by an equidistant amount. You can usually offset the path but this can sometimes give unexpected results. A cleaner method is to stroke the path by the amount required, then outline the path and merge the results. You can also use stroke settings to round-off the path.
10. No matter what program you use, remember that it just a tool. No matter how feature-heavy an application may be, the work that you produce is more dependent on what your computer or your software is capable of.
Natural media
Curiously enough, generating and manipulating real-world textures and tactile elements is a very popular practice among digital artist. The question is, do you want your digital work you ape things that are better done using pencils, pens, oil, paints and all the rest? Or do you want your illustrations to use digital technology to take the next step? Derek Lea lights the way…
1. The first thing to do is to start collecting things. Pick up bits of old paper, leather, and rusted metal… things that you can throw on your own scanner. Also begin compiling photos, shots of cracked concrete, crumbling brick, peeling paint, or anything tactile you find appealing. It’s good to have a library of different textures.
2. Don’t be afraid to just use small sections of your textures. Also, visualize things in grey scale, think of how useful something could be as an alpha channel. Open an image or photo in Photoshop and look at the channels independently-sometimes the data, in a single channel can provide the basis for a custom alpha channel.
3. Start with lesser technology than your computer. Experimenting with a photocopier can create interesting grey scale images to use as channels. Using a hairdryer on thermal fax paper can make a cool burnt paper effects on scanning. The best way to create natural media is to use natural media; the best way to create crumple paper is to scan crumpled paper.
4. Create your own brush in Photoshop. Face it, no real brush is as perfect as those round default brushes in Photoshop. Convert some images to grey scale and use rectangular sections to define custom brushes. You can crate some irregular and unique custom brushes this way. Imperfection and diversity is the goal.
5. To get a smooth stroke while painting in Photoshop, reduce spacing in the brush options to 1. If you don’t, the brush will stagger on the canvas. To paint convincingly in Photoshop, a pressure-sensitive tablet is essential. It enables you to take advantage of brush dynamics and to vary size and opacity with pressure.
6. Be subtle and gradually build up layers. For instance, if you have a photo of a stone wall and you want to blend in an image of rusted metal, don’t simply leave the mode of the rust set at Normal and reduce the opacity. Duplicate layers, and use combinations of layers with various blending modes and opacities.
7. Take advantage of Painter. Painter has some really great tools, especially the chalk, oil pastels, watercolour brushes and coloured pencils. Take an in-progress Photoshop file into Painter, the pick up existing colours in the image and use some of the natural media tools to start to paint over certain areas or blend things together using paint effects. You can often bounce back and forth between Painter and Photoshop.
8. Create custom alpha channels using Painter. By using Painter’s tracing paper and in your in-progress Photoshop file as a clone source, you can paint using your original image as a template. Try painting in greyscale-that way, when you finish you can use the finished file in Photoshop as an alpha channel that lines up nicely with your file, try creating Adjustment Layers using this channel as a mask, or fill the selection with colour on a new layer with a different blending mode.
9. Make your own brushstrokes using India ink. The best way to get a nice dye-brush stroke is to paint it and then scan it. Use your scanned brush stroke as alpha channels to create borders and frames. Create many, as diversity is what makes them appealing.
10. Use real paper or canvas scan for overall surface textures. Stay away from patterned fills or tiled paper textures. Tiled surface textures are quite unnatural. Try making alpha channels out of greyscale versions of your scans, and use channels to create a series of layers and Adjustment Layers to apply the highlight and shadows of the surface texture to your image as a whole.
Photo manipulation
Some illustrators use Illustrator, other use FreeHand, and others till use Painter. Somewhere along the line, however, nearly everyone uses Photoshop. Our tips collection wouldn’t be completed without considering the kinds of illustration that can be achieved thanks to the photo manipulation. Benedict Campbell is a big exponent of this form of illustration…
1. When starting with a scan of a transparency, the better the quality, the more you can do. The ideal scan should have no sharpening, and good shadow and highlight detail. Make sure the file size is big enough for the end result. If working for print, take into consideration any cropping. Keeping this scan as un uncompressed file, like TIFF, is a good backup idea.
2. When you think you have all the elements you need, try doing a low-res dummy run. This is like doing a sketch. It will enable you to work very quickly, to try out new ideas.
3. Doing a low-res dry run gives you an idea of how you can even drag and drop some of the elements from your low-res such as paths, soft masks, and if you are using Photoshop 6, things like Adjustment Layers.
4. Another useful aspect of working with a low-and-high-res version of the same image, is low-res airbrushing. Even the fastest machines slow down on a 900-pixel brush, making it tricky to see what’s going on. Having a low-res to work on, of the same proportion (just lower dpi), makes it much quicker and easier. When you are satisfied, drag the layer on to the high-res and resize the dpi of the low-res, then copy and paste. It sounds long winded, but it works.
5. CMYK or RGB? People ask whether you should start with a CMYK scan, and work in CMYK for CMYK print? Since colour trannies or digital camera files start life as RGB and print repro is generally CMYK, there will have to be a conversion at some stage. My preferred way of working is to scan for RGB and work in RGB with the CMYK view on. In Photoshop, that’s View and then CMYK Preview, converting to CMYK when you’ve finished. This gives you all the fine control of RGB, with an idea on how it will print in CMYK.
6. Grain. One thing to bear in mind when retouching photographs is film grain. For in stance, if you are smoothing out someone’s skin by airbrushing on a layer above, you’ll need to add some grain or noise with a little blur. This helps blend in the grain of the photograph. To produce quality retouching, this detail is essential.
7. A great way to check your retouching for flaws is to use levels to preview the image. Dragging the Black and White sliders beneath the histogram towards each other will pronounce any glitches you’ve missed that might show in print later. If you’re working with Photoshop 6 you still can use the new Adjustment Layer/levels. You can check your works as you go by clicking the layer on or off.
8. Vectorising a photograph. If like me, you’re a fan of pop art, turning photographs into vector images and removing bits is very exciting. Start by simplifying the image using filters like Cut Out in Photoshop, and then auto tracing them in a Vector program such as Illustrator, or ideally Adobe Streamline. Now play.
9. Composition. The best way of composing your art work is to look it small-about size of a playing card. If viewed full screen for instance, your eye will have to travel about the image, not giving you a clear snapshot. When you think you’re happy with the image, go away, and don’t look for a while. When you come back to it, if it doesn’t do it for you, it won’t do it for anyone else. Change it.
10. When using photography in illustrations, you don’t have too think too literally: anything goes. An abstract detail of the most mundane thing can be fantastic. One picture can be cut up, smudged, inverted, blurred, desaturated, over and over again. Make endless works of art-let yourself go!
Pixel art
It might be retro, it might look jaggy, but the pixel art style is going strong. It speaks to a generation of video-game-playing mobile-phone freaks, and interest in pixel art is fierce. In fact, illustration studios specializing in the style are as busy as ever. Engine took time out between clients to send in these ten tips. All relate to pixel art in Photoshop…
1. Preparation is the key to pixel illustrations. Whether it be whole scene or just a character, you’ll need to sketch it out first. This will determine all the views, angles and details you’ll need to create your won image.
2. First your illustration will have to be produced as a 72dpi document. You’ll need to create a pixel grid. This is done by going to the Preferences>Guides &grids settings. Make sure you use a light grey, dashed line with a gridline everyone pixel with Subdivision also set to 1.
3. Remember to turn off Anti-aliasing when using the Circle, Marquee or Lasso tools. This will give you defined edges to all your shapes. You don’t want or need any stray pixels.
4. it’s best to work on your illustration at between 800 and 1600 per cent zoom. This means you’re not going to be able to see exactly what you’re working on, so always have a new window at 100 per cent sitting next to it. To do this jut go View>New View.
5. There are two ways to create an illustration. One is to use the Pen tool set on the pixel, and you then draw the elements you need. The problem with this method is that it’s not very accurate. The other way is to use the Marquee tool and select all the areas you want to fill. This way is a lot slower in production, but you have a lot more control over what you’re doing.
6. When creating an object or character, it’s important to use as few colours as possible-too many can look messy. Start with the black outline and then fill this with a flat colour. Then use two progressively darker shades of that colour to crate the shadowing, and two progressively lighter shades to create the highlights.
7. A great way to save time is to set up various alpha channels, each one containing re-occurring shapes, for example different diagonal lines which are used regularly. So if you need a top-left to bottom-right line, highlight the alpha channel and cut it to the length you want. So why not just use Line tools? It isn’t very accurate, and can easily put pixels out of place.
8. The first of a couple of quick points. Take note: lighter pixels look bigger than darker ones, so use this to your advantage in small areas, and always use levels to create shadowing around the edges of an object-it’s quicker an gives better effects than trying to colour the blocks.
9. When your illustration is ready to go to print, you’ll need to up the image size from 72dpi to around 300 or 350dpi, so the image-setter can handle the file correctly. But you can’t just size it to any resolution, it has to be a multiple 72dpi, otherwise you’ll get some wonky-looking pixels. Within Photoshop, go to Image and change the resolution to either 288 or 360dpi, and the bottom where it says Bicubic, change that to the nearest neighbour-this process ensures that your pixels won’t anti-alias.
10. For your first attempt at isometric views, don’t try and create a whole scene, just try a character. A great way to test your skills is to take a flat image of a character and try to recreate it as a three-quarter pixel image. Give it a go. But remember, be patient-it may take along time.
3D compositing
The variety of illustration tools available today means that creating 3D renders is becoming an increasingly viable option for all computer-based artists. However, diving into 3D can be tricky both technically and creatively. Some never manage to pull it off. One very experienced company in the field is Studio Liddell-here are its tips for 3D illustration…
1. Gathering all the required images and renders together at the outset, and planning a well-constructed composition before any Photoshop compositing is started, will give a clear mental picture of what you’re trying to achieve.
2. Always create renders and choose images with the final printed size in mind, ensuring that all the foreground imagery is of similar resolution and quality. Background image sizes can always be interpolated up and softened with blur or median filters in Photoshop.
3. Keep the lighting consistent on all the renders, making sure that shadows fall in the same time direction and light colours and intensities are similar. Also, creating a focal point with the lighting can help to frame an important area (see Jorvik Viking Center image below).
4. Alpha channels. When using many 3D elements to create a composition the alpha channel can be hindrance as most packages render the environment black, invariably leaving a fine, black halo around the render object. Try rendering on a background which is coloured similarly to the colour the object is being placed on.
5. Perspective. When rendering separate 3D models for composition try using the same camera throughout, keeping the objects’ position and distance from the camera as they will appear in the final composition. This will result in a well-ordered appearance.
6. Layers. When compositing the final image, keep each main element complete and on a separate layer. Use layer to masks to remove any unwanted areas. If any compositional changes are required later they can be dealt with quickly and painlessly.
7. Effects and glows. Piecing several dominant images together can lead to a lot of confusion within the image. It’s important to clearly separate the boundaries between each element. Try introducing a glow around the object’s edges or adding some mist or smoke to distance objects from the foreground- see the effects in the main image above which make the text stand out.
8. If the image is looking like there are too many cut-out, elements pieced together, a simple remedy is to apply a fine layer of noise over the entire image. This will help to soften the transition from one element to the other.
9. Its good to get the habit of saving many different layered versions as the job progresses. Doing this can save a lot of heartache if a file gets corrupted or mistake goes unnoticed, or maybe you just prefer what was created two days ago!
10. Hardware. The job’s finished, you’ve waited 20 minutes for the machine to prepare to save, and now you are being told that you scratch disk are full. It’s worthwhile investing in new technology. But a huge hard drive and as much RAM as possible-this will save hours in the long run.
Commercialism and creativity
Changing an image at the whim of a client is difficult. And there’s a difficult choice between putting aside your own judgment, and sticking to your creative principals. This feature wouldn’t be complete without tips on treading the fine line between commercialism and creativity. Jacey is one of the best in the business her it comes to creating stunning images that fir the brief…
1. Have a style. You’ve been to school, collage or university, and hopefully you picked up someone relevant skills in the years you’ve been there, but most of the important thing you need is a style. Make sure you have a look of your own. be sure it’ not out of date, and try not to follow trends when everyone else is moving on to the next big thing. Having a fresh cutting-edge style will bring you interesting work.
2. Understand production work. Learn to differentiate between a creative open brief and a production brief. If clients like your style, they may want you to join them as a sort of art-machine, churning out images-this sort of work. It can b your bread and butter. There may be no creative freedom, but if you what you’re getting into the beginning there’ll be no tears or upset.
3. Be willing to adapt your style, and even create new styles. You can’t be a prima donna in this game. To make money you have to be ready to sell your soul. You do need an element of consistency in your life style-but varying your style a little can help maintain your creative integrity.
4. Get out there. Hen you’re busy you tend to go with the flow and keep the regular clients and similar jobs. But when you do the same work over, you start to get bored and disappear and a machine-like process sets in. when this does happen, find new clients and get out and about and show other people what you can do and have done. You must regularly update your portfolio to keep it interesting.
5. Push regular clients to allow you to develop your designs. There‘s a good side to having regular clients especially the ones with an open minded. Show them new styles and let them adapt to your creative process. A good client will accept that you’re an artist, and shouldn’t expect you to keep doing the same old thing.
6. Being polite to your client is one of the best way to get your own way. Explain why you feel a company’s comments are not right. Work together to sort out the problem. This way, the company is more likely to trust you, and less likely to reject your piece.
7. Organise your finances. This is just as important as doing the illustrations. Make sure you’ve spoken to the right people: bank managers, friends, family other artists. You have to pay all kinds of things: tax, VAT, agents, National Insurance.. the list is endless. Find a good accountant who will show you ho to save and make money; and most of all who needs paying, how much and when.
8. Use an agency. Finding a good agent can be hard, if you are a busy artist and you need someone to take care of your portfolio and financial matters-like billing clients and dealing with purchase orders-then go for it. Agents can help you find or get work from places you wouldn’t think of. A good agent will push you as an artist and push your style.
9. There are other artists out there ready to do your job, and accepting this will keep you on your toes and give you the edge and drive to make sure you’re producing the best you can do. Make sure you see what others artists are doing for their clients. See how they are mixing the creativity with the commercial aspect. They might be doing something tat you didn’t think of. Feed off other artists, but don’t rip them off.
10. Just say no. being able to say no to a client whether you are busy or just don’t want to take on the job, can help your creative process on jobs you’re doing, or on others you have planned. Worrying about fitting in new jobs or doing something you don’t want to do will show, either to the client or to you.
Character design
Putting human or character forms into your imagery is a way of bringing it to life, introducing eye contact and essential elements of facial body communication. A character can ruin the feel of a picture, or completely change its focus. Bill Fleming is a computer artist with vast experience, who develops characters for animated and still work in the US…
1. Character biographies. Nothing is more valuable or necessary than a detail character biography. Before you embark on your character illustration you should invest time in developing a comprehensive biography on the character, such as where does it live, what does it eat, what hazards does it face, etc. only after you develop the biography can you truly realize the ideal character. Everything you do with your design is then based on the biography.
2. Character proportions. Quite often artists will make the head of their characters too large for their bodies. A good rule of thumbs is that a norm al human is seven to eight heads high, with a superheroes being more in the nine-to-ten heads range. Unless you are making a monster be sure the head is no more than one third of the width of shoulders.
3. The eyes are most critical detail of a character. Non-expressive eyes plague too many character illustrations. If you want your character to grab the viewer you need to focus on the eyes, which means you need to add plenty of detail. Spend the time to create a complex iris-the result will be worth your time.
4. Character expression. Your viewers will tend to focus on the face of your character, making the character’s expression crucial. The expression must exemplify the emotional state of the character, reinforcing its posture. Spend time at the mirror exploring expressions before you develop your illustrations.
5. Hands. The hands also need to work hard to reinforce the mood of the character. They should also be detailed in comparison to the rest of the body. An oversimplified hand will quickly undermine the integrity of your character illustration.
6. One shortcoming of many character illustrations is poor representation of fabric folds in clothing. Your viewers will be very critical of these details, since they are constantly subjected to them in reality. The best course for ensuring your fabric folds are perfect is to photograph a subject wearing a similar clothing in a similar pose and to use the photos as references.
7. Use plenty of colour. Consistent tones ruin the depth in an illustration. To keep your characters from appearing stale you should ensure your colours have many subtle variations. For example a red shirt should have many subtle colour changes over the surface, such as oranges, purples and yellows to break up the monotony. Colour detail makes illustrations more compilling
8. The balance or even presence of light in an illustration is critical. All too often there is an absence of specular highlights on character surfaces, or conflicting highlights that don’t conform to a single source. To achieve true lighting of your characters, use a simple action figure and adjustable lamp to stimulate your lighting effect before you apply it.
9. Colour theory. The colours you choose for your character define it’s personality. Batman’s colors are black and purple, which reflect his link with the darker things in life. While he’s a good guy, the colour he wears are very similar. Creating a strong character biography will mean you are less likely to dress it inappropriate colours.
10. Symmetry cause many probs. Perfect symmetry just doesn’t happen in reality and when it occurs in illustration the characters to be asymmetrical. The easiest means to accomplishing g this to make the clothing, particularly accessories, different on opposite sides of the body.
Illustrations for online use
Illustrations are crucial element for any Website. They make the click-happy viewer spend a bit more time looking at a page. No one likes to be confronted with a page full of text with no pictures and very often artwork will grab the imagination and take up far less bandwidth than photography. Here are ten tips by online illustrator and animator Andy Wyatt…
1. Use a suitable colour palette. Unlike print, where you have complete control over the colour, there is no way of telling what monitor a viewer will be using , so always reduce the risk by sticking to the standard Web palette of 216 colours, which will look pretty much the same on all computers and through all browsers.
2. Take care with colour graduations, and be careful if you use any graduations or blend between two colours. Even if they are Web-safe colours, the blended in between colour may turn nasty and murky. Check what they look like with your monitor set to 256 colours.
3. Keep things simple. The illustrations that seem to work the best online are the ones that are bold, simple and colourful. Intricate details and subtleties are likely to be lost, so don’t make the illustration too busy by outing in background action or lettering and expect it to be seen.
4. Be original. There are plenty of good illustration programs available, but all seem to create a very similar style by default. Experiment and develop your own unique look. Try using pens and pencils to begin with and scan your work in. then take it ti your illustration application. Sometimes it is great to get back to basics.
5. Scan artwork, if using traditional illustrations, always scan your artwork at the highest resolution (600dpi is safe free bet), then manipulate and shrink it ready for the web. Never publish an untreated scanned image, as there are always adjustment’s to be made. Badly scanned illustrations do you no favours.
6. Answer the brief, or keep the context in mind. A good illustration should be relevant to the text it is a accompanying. The illustration should give a clear indication of what the text is about. Test your roughs on people unfamiliar with the text you’re illustrating, to see if they can tell what it supposed to be about.
7. Protect your art work against piracy. You can safeguard against your artwork being stolen by placing a copyright symbol and your name, with the date, somewhere on the illustration. As an extra precaution, various software is available to digitally watermark your work, tracing unauthorized use on the web.
8. Create your image in the correct file format. Irrespective of how you created your illustration, always save your image in the most suitable compressed file format, the images with solid colours and sharp lines are best save as GIFs and illustration with gradients and blends work best as JPEGs.
9. Your image should download as quickly as possible. It’s no good having a lush illustration if it takes forever to download. With careful manipulation, it should be possible to reduce an illustration to the recommended size of 30-50K without losing noticeable quality.
10. Why not create an interactive illustration? Many illustrators/designers do not exploit the full multimedia potential of the web. Add interactivity to an illustration for extra effect. A picture of a sheep for example, could be made to ‘baa’ when the visitor’s mouse roles over the image, and it doesn’t detract from the text.
Mood and emotion
So much computer-generated artwork ends up looking flat, unfeeling and distant. If you want an illustration to engage your viewer, there are subtle tricks you can employ to play with their emotions, or to create a mood and atmosphere within your image. Freelance artist, Christian Tucker specializes in this sort of work, this is what he suggests…
1. Do not allow the machine to dictate your artistic direction. It’s extremely easy to exploit the power of technology to create something visually impressive, yet in doing so true artistic emotion doesn’t carry through. Think of the computer as a tool like any other and control it.
2. Use sketched work before employing the machine. My personal method of working is to sketch y ideas in pencil before I use photography or Photoshop. This enables me to gather and record my feelings and ideas for a piece when the muse strikes, and recall them later.
3. Think in terms of visual metaphors. Visual expression is a personal language that you can create, so try to interpret your feelings using your own imagination. Much more of my work explores male and female nudity, because I found endless ways of using form as an emotional metaphor.
4. Incorporate mixed media. Using a computer is the process of creation can be combined with traditional methods and different media. Use your own photography, paintings and sketches in your own work as these organic processes carry with them a mood of sensuality and physicality that cannot be achieved using the computer a lone.
5. Understand shape and forms. The contours of your subject matter will generate different feelings. Obtuse and circular shapes offer an organic feel, while sharper angular line can convey aggression. Use this knowledge as a guideline to expressing your ideas.
6. Use depth of field. Obliterating parts of the detail within an image using blurring techniques in Photoshop will bring an element of depth to your images. Used correctly can draw immediate attention to those parts of the image that remain focus.
7. use colour as expression. Colour can be used as a very powerful way to articulate emotion and atmosphere, using vibrations of hue and saturations. Use these controls with great care and consideration for the impact they will have on a final piece.
8. To create both dramatic and ambient moods, experiments with brightness and contras in Photoshop. Contrasting light indicates drama, where values that are closer together generate subtlety.
9. Use composition to achieve feeling. Symmetrical composition can give an impression of ease whereas asymmetry can create the feeling of tension. I use many forms of asymmetrical formations, separating subject matter from large areas of darkness which creates an air of enigma.
10. Use texture to reinforce concepts. Depending in the type of feeling you wish to convey, try using texture to enhance, rather than create, mood. Detailed texture can create dynamics and lack of textures create feelings of space, the ratio between gives a feeling distance.
Composition and structure
Creating images is only part if the purpose of the illustrator. As pretty or innovative as your pictures are, the basic function of an illustration is to communicate. You are a visual communicator. One of the best ways of ensuring your images speak with clear voice is to take a controlled approach to image composition. The illustrators at Magictorch provided the following tips.
1. Have a strong focal point to catch the viewer’s attention. This may seem obvious but it’s often neglected, leaving you with a bland piece of digital wallpaper.
2. Creating a pretty picture is only a half battle- remember that if you’re illustrating for print, your job is to communicate. You’re creating an image to advertise and complement a piece of text or product, so make sure your image has relevant meaning, it may be a cliché but it’s worth bearing in mind: a picture is worth of thousand words…
3. Successful internal geometry is key to reeling in the viewer-lead the viewer’s eye around the image as if telling a story. This is especially important if you’re aiming for quite a narrative-driven image.
4. Whether you’re using 3D or going for more flat graphical approach, set up a strong diagonal to draw the eye into the image and add a sense of movement to the composition. A further angled element running opposite direction may further increase the dynamics by setting up a conflict.
5. When using 3D for your images, it’s important to go for a dynamic angle rather than a central face-on view. Twist your camera and move the target (and therefore the vanishing point) away from the centre of the canvas. This gives an instant dynamic composition.
6. Placing the vanishing point roughly in the area where any text may sit will aid internal geometry dramatically-the perspective of the image will lead the viewer’s eyes towards the text.
7. Plan the structure of your image carefully from the outset, especially when working across a double-page spread. Think about the placement of key elements and their relationship with the magazine or editorial-steer clear of the page fold and keep your key elements away from any text if possible. Your image will lose impact if it clashes with the text.
8. Give through to any text that may accompany your image. If the text is going to run over your image on a magazine for examples, make sure you leave uncluttered areas for headline and copy. These areas should be tonally consistent-either light or dark so text can be easily read.
9. Make good use of your canvas area-use little imagination and you can double the impact of your image easily. Experiment with negative space and try breaking out of the canvas with your image. But make sure if it’s ok with your client first.
10. Don’t over do it. An image can be loaded with too many disparate elements vying for the viewer’s attention, so don’t be afraid to mercilessly chop things up or remove unnecessary elements. As a result you’ll have a purer, more concise image with a clear meaning.
