57 Starchief vert up next

It's not a VW!!!! Seriously....it's not!!!

lol

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_1.jpg

pencils pretty rough again but I'm pretty comfy after drawing it 5 times...lolol...so it's time to dive in...wish me luck.

-Lemorris

dosent work.......

Nice! :)

oh, this one is going to look great. just one thingh though (yeah, i know i'm :screwy: ) but the front wheel casts a shadow both to the front and to the rear of the car ... or is that just me? The stearing wheel isn't round too, but i guess that's what you meant by 'rough'. the chroome around (esp on top of) the head lights is also 1 mm wider on the left than on the right.

Joey

Looks great Lemmons, but I have a feeling it's going to end up as some sort of draft for a VW related car... I know it D<

lol

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_2.jpg

I used the (consistent width) pen tool set at 1.5 points to do the contour. The pencil rough is really just a place holder guide. The entire thing will be redrawn. Is this the first time you've seen one of these from me up here 1986?

I could really explain if you need it. Every line that is on the rough may not be rendered it's kind of like sketch notes. I'm really big on feel over form so what is "realistically accurate" or "perfect" doesn't carry as much weight with me. I like flaws and exaggeration.

I'm sure you also noticed that the front tire itself is larger than it would be in real life. It's done for look. Foose kinda does it as do many automotive illustrators. The wheels are one of the coolest parts so you make'em larger or set the car down over them for effect. The back tire is completely wrong but once again this is the rough base. When redrawn many things get worked out...or not.
Look up some of my other posts and it may help you see what I'm talkin about.

-Lemorris

Wow!

Yes, this is definitely not a VW hehehehe
Nice!

Magliano

Nice one, you have really piled the details on this one.
Interested to see how you handle the reflections for all of the chrome.

Chrome should be fun...we'll see

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_ani.gif

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_3.jpg

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_4.jpg

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_5.jpg

had fun gettin the inner wheel ridges kinda close so I blew it up to share.

ellipse-axle line-rotate copies 3 degrees-mask shape-convert lines to paths no fill .5 point-expand-pathfinder divide

Still not done with the wheel but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately the trek has to wait until tomorrow. I gotta go to work in the morning.

-lemorris

I love your in-progress pics! My eyes go nuts just looking at those inner wheel ridges...can't imagine rendering them... You might as well explain the process in Chinese, 'rotate', 'copy', 'mask', 'convert', I don't understand squat what you just said. Looking forward to the coloring!

Lemorris, that's just wild!

You're going to have as many vector objects in this image as the
real car has parts.
I'm taking notes on your detailing.

i'm sorry if i have in any way insulted you by making you think i've never seen any of your previous works :frown: . you do however seem to be tracing your pencil drawing (your left headlight is still wider than the one on the right). and no, i hadn't noticed the wheels: i have never seen this car before in my life. lol, please go back to drawing VW's or any other type of car i know :iceslolan .

Joey

here's a closer look at that wheel with the pencil rough turned on.

http://www.58vw.com/af/starwheel.jpg

as you can see I use my pencil work as a guide. On the computer I can draw perfect ellipses...not so easy by hand. I know this so I keep my pencil sketch pretty rough.

I know the headlights are basically elliptical and when I draw the Illustrator lines I can resize and reshape to what ever I want.

I'm not offended at all, there just seems to be a miscommunication going on here. The pencil sketch drawing is not the final. It's just a rough sketch for the most part. What is in the pencil drawing will not necessarily be in the final. The drawing is still very much a work in progress. I'm aware that the pencil rough is not perfect...if it was it would be the pencil final...lol...oh and I'd be rich. lolol

That is not to say that when it's done it will be "perfect". I've never done a "perfect" drawing. I've only done 3 total that I really like and that was back in 1989.

lol

I hope to get 3 solid hours in this starting now so we'll see how close we can get.

-Lemorris

Omg that's totally crasy!

Where do you take the patience from?? Anywasy the result is great.
I'm glad you always show your work in progress. I wouldn't notice how many details it has and how much work and passion you must have put in there.

Great job...

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_6.jpg

I had to take a few days off, my "real" job stepped in.

Back at it.

I made a short 1 point line on one side for the hood vents. Then I made another one on the other end. I converted both lines to outlines and adjusted the nodes so they kinda lined up with the hood line and the centerline. I used the blend tool to create a 29 step blend from one outlined shape to the other across the hood on the driver's side. (29 looked pretty ok to me...the passenger side is 25). There was a little tweaking to kinda get it close, but not much. Then I expanded the blend. After that I just copied my entire blend object and moved it to the back. I nudged it over a bit to create the recessed opening. Then I selected both blended/expanded objects and hit the Divide on the pathfinder pallet. Then I just used my direct select tool and selected the segment of line outside my vent shape and deleted it.

Sounds like a lot but it wasn't.

-Lemorris

The blue lines will be black in the final. The redlines are for hilights and shadows.

I included a detail on the chrome cause I usually get questions on it. I really just wing it and throw in cool shapes. Once I start to render all shapes may not be included but it's sorta cool to have them there I guess.

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_7.jpg

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_8.jpg

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_9.jpg

Wow! Lemorris all that detail, awesome and complicated.

i'm jealous.

damn.

you're a funny man Bonz

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_10.jpg

whew!

I feel like I had a man baby!

starting color after I wash my car

-lemorris

That is a ton of lines!!!!! How long did it take you to get to this point?

lol

takes me forever.

I get 20 - 45 minutes a night to work on a drawing so...

I'm looking at 30 hours total in this one. It's alittle more detailed though cause it's for a comission kinda thing. I figure I'll never "make" money until I get to do this for a living so I just enjoy the ride.

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_11.jpg

I'll give you a quick overview on how this color in channels thing works for me.

First I drew a box around my car in Illy. Then I saved out my lineart layer and my hilight shadow layer with the box in separate files. I changed my outline color to black and then resaved those files.

I open the Illy files with PS at 300dpi and then select all on the background layer and copy.

I go to the channels pallet and click the add a channel button. I make this channel spot color 100% black, and name it black lineart or hilites or whatever it is.

Then I paste the copied layer info into that channel. repeat this to get the hilite channel in. After the hilite channel is in I duplicated my lineart channel and ctrl+clicked on my hilite channel which selects all the info on that channel. Then I select my duplicated lineart channel and hit ctrl + backspace which fills the selection black. I name this channel selections.

From there it's on. It's alot like a coloring book. I use the magic wand tool and select the emptay areas between lines on my selection channel. Then I can add other channels like black tones or body base color (make them whatever color I want them) and then render in those areas on those channels.

whew!!!

you know what...go buy Jeri's tutorials.

http://www.motorsportsillustrated.com she taught me and is a great friend. The price is a steal (I've told her that) once you get the method down you can apply it to rendering anything you draw.

In the screenprinting world this method is magic. I printed t-shirts for 7 years and the majority of my car crap is t-shirts stuff so I dwell in those places. If you render your designs in channels it is very much like cutting rubylith. Each channel is a separate color so as you render you also create your separations.

Once done rendering split the channels and you got individual films. Convert the films to the right size and line bmp and burn'em to screens.

I'll post more on this.

Sorry for being long winded if this is crap you already know...just sharin.

-lemorris

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_12.jpg

as usual it looks damn good, i wish i could do that

lol

you know what...go buy Jeri's tutorials.

http://www.motorsportsillustrated.com she taught me and is a great friend. The price is a steal (I've told her that) once you get the method down you can apply it to rendering anything you draw.


Ain't this da truth.

But you gotta have heart, perseverance, you gotta want it (to learn how to use AI and PS). After learning this than you can go on to other types of rendering like perhaps Ben's

You would think I get kick backs from Jeri, nope, just her stuff changed my life. I didn't know a thing about PS and AI before learning her methods.

I love the progress shots. At any point in this process you could sell what you have as a finished masterpiece...very very cool!

Looking freakin Schweet!! Even now, the paint has a really cool oily look to it.

Great Lemorris!

Doing art and teaching it too!!

May i ask you something (besides that lol)? I do something like that you do with channels. But i use Layers. You know whats the difference? i mean...if it is a difference. Or why use channels, what they can make that a layer can't.

Man i freak out with the quantity of reflections...your car was almost red hehehee
Another Amazing Job! waiting anxiously to see it Ready!

Bye
Magliano

Magliano,
I think I know what you're talking about, that's the way I do it.

One layer for solid body color (easily changed)
One highlight layer
One Shadow layer
One Sky reflection layer
One ground reflection layer

Various stripes/graphics on other layers

Magliano,
I think I know what you're talking about, that's the way I do it.

One layer for solid body color (easily changed)
One highlight layer
One Shadow layer
One Sky reflection layer
One ground reflection layer

Various stripes/graphics on other layers

Exactly!
Layers for "chrome parts" or glasses and others...

Right....by the time the rendering is finished I have about 50-60 layers. Each component has a layer (for selection and color changes)+a render layer above it (for shading or highlight). If a client is undecided about color, wheels, stripes or body mods, I can have nearly 100 layers sometimes!

Luv the detailing!

I've also got Jeri's tutorals and even though I don't use Illy and PS with the channel techinque, I've picked up more tips from her stuff (and some of Lemorris's posts) then any other reference I have.

I too "build" in layers as the program I use doesn't have the channel feature.

I'm in spot color channels because I'm mostly in the world of creating film seps. I work with a very limited pallet. many times no more than 8 specific colors. It's an old school shirt thing. The same principles can be applied to layers.

A friend on another board recently explained Channels and layers. These are his words...and his opinion. It may help.

************************************************** ****

Channels are the heart and soul of a Photoshop image. It's where all the action is happening. Layers are for manipulating and composing the image itself, Channels is what the image is actually made of.

CMYK: One channel each for Cyan, Magenta, Yeller and Black.
RGB: One channel each for Red, Green, Blue

Make a selection, go to SAVE SELECTION, and it becomes a NEW Channel.

Make a Layer Mask, and it too is actually a Channel.

If you want to sep a piece of art into spot colors, then they need to be Spot Color Channels.

You can add, subtract and merge channels together like film positives and negatives in the darkroom to mask, isolate and generate items and colors in a piece of art.

To learn the power of channels, you need to experiment and research and experiment some more. Get Jeri Clow's tutorial at motorsportsillustrated.com, it shows how to draw an entire image using Channels and is a good place to start understanding what they do. Once you start messing around with them and learning how they work, you will realize the true power of Photoshop.
************************************************** ********

Once again those are his words and his opinion. Like many artist he's pretty passionate about what he does.

Here's one of his pieces:

http://www.portfolios.com/Pics/scottseibel/scottseibel_1_p.JPG
Scott Seibel

he's a cool guy too.

-Lemorris

lemmoris, would it be safe to make the analogy that channels are the bitmapped photoshop equivlanent of using vectors in illy? kinda sorta?

from a certain perspective yes.

They contain the black and white information that makes up every color in photoshop file.

When you create a RGB file if you look at the Channels pallet you will see 3 channels. One containing each colors information. Same for a CMYK file.

The method that I use to render in channels lets me create my own "spot color" channels. These are actually black and white information. (Perfect for screen printing films...though not the only way to get them...preference) I can also assign a color that the spot color channel represents. This allows me to see how all my spot colors will look when printed.

Each spot color is black and white and the process of splitting the channels for print takes them right back to a raw bitmap stage so once again....yep.

Here's a spot color channel turned on by itself.

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_15.jpg

I should change the spot color name to Nancy Pants blue but I haven't yet. In my drawing I will render everything that is this blue color on this channel. In layers I would seperate by objects. You know...tires on this layer, top on another layer.

You can also use channels to mask off areas. Just like frisket film. As a matter of fact when you create a layer mask....you're actually making a channel.

Very cool stuff.

-Lemorris

it's the digital equivalent of amberlith or rubylith. i get it now. cool. you're making seps for 4 color-process printing. the more things change, the more they stay the same ;)

EXACTLY!!!

I'm from the old ways of cutting rubylith for t-shirt film seps. I still have stacks of Format shade film laying around! lololol!

The spot color channels I create are individual colors and each will be burned on it's own screen for screenprinting. The shop I use has a 10 color automatic so I can do an 8 color design and have 2 screens left for a white base and a hilite white on dark shirts.

When I made the transition to digital rendering the Channels method made more sense to me because it is very much like cuttin ruby.

lolol

I'm so happy you get it. Technically rendering in layers creates the same thing except for if it's CMYK you have 4 channels. these to can be exported and a screenprinter can do a "process" print or CMYK 4 screens. Another method many people use is index seps. They take the cmyk image and convert it to an index file. You select the color range (individual spot colors) that you want the image to be made out of. Photoshop then converts each color range to a spot color channel and puts you exactly where I'm at in my channel rendering.

once again...all very cool stuff.

-Lemorris

Oh

Let me add

If I place 3 empty alpha chanels at the top of my channels pallet when I'm done and tell photoshop to convert my image to rgb, it will make 3 rgb channels at the top of my pallet. I then shift+click each of my spot color channels and select Merge Channels from the pallet menu.

Photoshop then takes all my chaneels with their spot color information and separtaes them into rgb channels. Then I can work with the image in layers if I want.

there is a color shift sometimes depending on your channel percentages. This can be corrected in the layer world by adjustments (which work in channels too...lololol)

Basically when I finish my rendering I can turn it into a 300 dpi rgb file with no problems and then go get a print which is what this is for.

-lemorris

Hi !

Could Art be better ,, I dont think so .. your art is like a Photo !

Congrats !

Challe / :smokin:

good

:lol:

almost done...hopefully tonight will be it.

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_17.jpg

-Lemorris

You really have given depth to the black body.
That's a hard color for me to draw.
The blue highlighting is so subtle, yet very effective.

Not sure which windshield I like better. The Blue makes more sense but the Orange has greater impact.

To change the color all I do is double click the channel then click the color picker and select a color from either one of any of the color libraries available in Photoshop or my own values.

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_18.jpg

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_19.jpg

I like the orange contrast to the blue body highlights, better than the blue tint.

I like the orange too! Great work!!

Blue, but I would add a tiny bit of violet to it. The orange looks unnatural. Looks great!

Thanks for all the input guys.

I'm liking the purple Ben. Thanks.

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_20.jpg

still got a couple tweaks but it's done for the most part. I'm kinda tired of messin with it. I learned an awful lot.

Next up VWs VWs and more VWs

lolol

-Lemorris

Not sure which windshield I like better. The Blue makes more sense but the Orange has greater impact.

To change the color all I do is double click the channel then click the color picker and select a color from either one of any of the color libraries available in Photoshop or my own values.

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_18.jpg

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_19.jpg

i like the orange more too.

Jin

umm...sorry orange lost

http://www.58vw.com/af/starchief_20.jpg

Without a background or some other element bringing those colors into the drawing it just didn't make sense. I could have still gone with it anyway sorta like I did on that VW bus a while back but that Bus has other design elements that carry those colors.

If I had stuck with the orange it would have been best to change the colors in the chrome which isn't difficult to do via channels but this piece didn't seem to want that. I'm really pleased with the purple hints on the backside of the reflection graphic. That's about all I do like but I learned an awful lot on this piece. Time to move on.

-Lemorris

I actually like the pruple better than the blue or orange. It looks great! Keep em comming!

That is awesome my friend ..let me guess the VW is in the trunk huh ? lol

Again, never disappointed. Love it. Got to see how u did it. enjoyed that. Nice work!

The purple does just fine. It's another great one.
I can see where you would want to redo the reflections if you picked orange.
The sunrise/sunset effect tinting (that's what I thought of with that color)
would have been seen in the body and chrome too.

sweeet car. i'd drive that.