Online illustration is big business these days. A quick look at roadside billboards, club flyers or magazine covers should be enough to coerce anyone that the art of the digital designer has never been in higher demand from customers, and its popularity just keeps on growing.
But defining what digital illustration is proves tricky. We all know what the words necessarily mean, yet the myriad of ways in which illustration can be applied makes it one of the most multipurpose of the creative arts and as such, it’s pretty difficult to pin down.
That has a strong creative vision and the right software, concepts can be articulated in limitless ways; each video game opening new doors just for expression. The one crucial skill that ties it all together would be the need for some innate artistic ability. You don’t need to be a virtuoso that has a pencil to be good at computer art, but there’s no doubt that a lot professional illustrators are proficient with traditional art techniques.
The basic fundamentals of image structure are the same across mediums, after all, and with program increasingly able to mimic traditional drawing methods, the transition to help digital has become almost seamless. Let’s take a closer look at the important branches of digital illustration and discover a little more about how the experts put them together.
Vector art
It’s no great accident that vector illustration is currently one of the trendiest and easily recognisable of the digital fine art disciplines. The signature flat colours and clean lines are easy to spot and quick to grab attention, which of course makes the form hugely popular with advertisers looking to catch the eye of potential clients. In addition , their reduced colour palettes and scalable technology would mean they are perfect when it comes to artwork for the Web.
Created with precision by means of manipulating Bezier paths, the mechanics of vectors are based on mathematic principles that make them infinitely scalable without suffering degradation. The trait is extremely attractive to illustrators because it means images can be shrunk to a stamp or stretched to a billboard, without having to be remade. Paths are also easy to edit at a later stage, making vector images quick to tweak and rearrange if need be.
Vector models are often produced with photographs or hand drawn scans seeing that templates, digitally tracing as much of the outline and detail like needed. Programs such as Flash can even create vectors automatically by way of tracing over photographic or pre sketched material, allowing snapshot elements to be created quickly and with little effort. However , the best artistry comes when choosing which elements to take to the digital appearance, and knowing how to colour and arrange the final illustration.
Keeping up to date is crucial and, since digital artists typically spend a lot of time in front of a screen involved in their masterpieces, it’s all too easy become isolated from what’s going on around you. Styles ace constantly shifting and trends can come and go at great speed, for that reason keeping your finger on the industry pulse is vital. Not only is it make good commercial sense, but it can also act as a high muse from which to draw ideas
Mixing media
While vector art focuses on clean shapes, simple forms and bold chunks of colour, other digital illustration techniques take things on the opposite direction. Since the arrival of Photoshop in 1990, musicians and artists have been able to digitally manipulate photographic material and combine it all with other visual ingredients, and when layers arrived with Photoshop 2. 0 five years later, the stage was set for that new form of digital image. In 1995, digital photo illustration came to be.
Based on the traditional method of using scissors and glue to cut and also paste photos and artwork together in new arrangements, sanctioned technique that has always been popular with children but has now become the favoured strategy of many an adult illustrator. This is primarily due to Photoshop’s tailor-made, yet accessible and intuitive, toolset, but also reflects the being successful the strategy can have when attempting to convey a complicated collection of strategies.
Sketching toons
While everyone knows that Photoshop is the king connected with detailed mixed media illustration, less well known is the fact that it’s also amazingly good at producing line and comic style artwork. Deftly sidestepping the need to use intricate filters and effects, the hand utilized, hand coloured look is gaining favour with artists along with art directors alike.
Because of the time saving tools that Photoshop offers, professional comic book artists are beginning to use the software that will colour their hand drawn sketches and are taking digital craft into previously unexplored areas. Using a mixture of both hand fascinated and digital painting, new styles are surfacing that are coming up with a massive impact on the established illustration industry.
Realer than legitimate?
But for many artists, the Holy Grail of computer art is definitely realism. Recent advances in graphics technology have enabled software package developers to accurately simulate
real world drawing and painting gear by modelling how inks, chalks, oils and paints take action when they are applied to different surfaces. Using random particles to create all natural looking strokes on simulated materials, you can now produce painted shots that are all but indistinguishable from their hand made equivalents.
Since you can also get hold of a graphics tablet and paint directly onto your digital canvas, digital painting is less a description of an illustration style and more a good literal possibility. As well as further mimicking the traditional within the digital setting, it’s also easy to pick up and get started. To this end, having certain experience with real world painting is a definite advantage.
Because the concept behind natural media is so intricate, there are only a handful of services that can actually achieve believable results. The most specialised is Corel Painter, which takes the possibilities to extremes by providing an array of assumed traditional drawing and painting tools. It even goes so far as to model the way that watercolour Paints behave when wet, through drips, runs and splashes. However , with some crafty brush invention and expert manipulation of layers, equally exciting effects will be replicated in your humble copy of Photoshop.
Pixel power
However , although illustration software is advancing, it would be a mistake to think that the community is focussing purely on pushing the undiscovered boundaries with digital imaging. In among the simulated paintings, clean vectors in addition to intricate photo collages, a resurgence of old school pixel techniques can be proudly celebrating the humble beginnings of computer art.
Pixel planche is arguably where the whole digital illustration shebang began, back in the days or weeks when computer screens could only display a small number of colours on a low resolution. But , like so many limitations, this situation forced originality and produced a unique style that’s now being snapped up inside an industry that’s constantly on the lookout for something different.
Because low resolutions signify large pixel sizes, pixel art uses geometric rules the fact that ensure perspectives are correctly maintained. A by product for this is the familiar isometric view that’s so common in this sort of illustration, yet it does lend itself surprisingly well to conceptual art.
Pixel art continues to gain momentum, with increasing numbers of marketing editorial commissioners looking to capitalise on its retro style types. The bold use of colour and scrutinising detail also become a success ideal for clients wishing to attract close attention and its popularity illustrates no signs of slowing.
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