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Conceptualization and Sketching for an Illustrated Look

3:10 with Mat Helme

Learn how to create an illustrated design based on photos found on the web. Look for inspiration by browsing and shortlisting images on the web. Once you have your images then create a pencil illustration and ink your final creation.

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    [? Music ?]

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    [Code Racer] [Illustration: Sketching & Conceptual]

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    This project is the walrus project.

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    We're going to be creating a walrus illustration

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    with kind of a kiddish, thick line

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    illustration look to it, a real simple layout.

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    Right now we're going to be referencing images to work with

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    to create our own, so usually what I do is

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    use Google search, Flikr, to search through image libraries.

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    Sometimes I use references like books, magazines,

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    kid's books, go to Barnes & Noble.

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    But for the majority, I use the Web.

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    So, we'll jump in to Google Images

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    and see if we can find some good walrus images.

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    Usually I start off pretty generic.

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    Usually what I'll do is grab the image.

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    Let's see, what do we have here?

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    I'll grab this guy, just drag it to the desktop.

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    And I'll just start a collection on the desktop,

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    and then we'll organize it later.

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    This guy, grab this one right here.

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    This process used to take quite a while,

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    and you can spend days, weeks on research

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    just going through libraries of either books

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    or stock images on disc.

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    I remember doing that a while back,

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    but now everything is pretty much shared,

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    and it's pretty simple to get good references.

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    Screenshot that.

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    We've got some fine art stuff on here. This will work too.

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    Yeah, I mean, it could take hours, days.

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    But for this, it's pretty straightforward. Pretty simple.

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    And it's going to be very original.

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    I'll take all the images and put them in some sort of image manager

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    like iPhoto, Bridge, or just Folder in general.

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    Cool, so the next step is going to be sketching,

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    and I'm going to use the images that we grabbed

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    from the image library of Google and Flikr

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    and just start sketching.

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    Usually I start off with the actual shapes themselves.

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    The walrus is pretty round, so I'll start off with the head here.

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    [sketching noises]

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    I sketched some stuff out, and I found something I want to work with,

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    so the next step is I'm going to ink it,

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    so I've got some tracing paper and some markers.

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    And we are going to ink this guy right here.

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    [sketching noises]

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    Yeah, that'll work.

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    The next step is going to be taking a photo with my iPhone.

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    Usually we just use a scanner, but we don't have to now

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    because we can get a high enough resolution shot with the iPhone,

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    and then I'm going to email it to myself and then pull that image

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    into Illustrator and use that as a reference.

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    There, that's it.

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