case study

NatureMan Digital Illustration

paul0v2 — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:07:32 +0000

This amazing digital illustration was designed by the Polish designer Michael Tomaka. Using over 20 photos to put together this illustration and on this post you can see the process and the details of the final piece. Enjoy!

For more from Michael Tomaka visit michaltomaka.pl and behance.net/MichaelTomaka

It's my first illustration, inspiration I take from Dopludo Collective they have a amazing works and you can see it on the web site dopludo.com or behance profile Dopludo Collective

Dopludo Illustration - Original version, my inspiration

This piece inspired me to create a digital illustration of the NatureMan

Process

Details

Final Image

About the author

Hi there! I'm Paulo Canabarro, 26 year old web designer - paulocanabarro.com I'm from Brazil currently living and working out of Providence RI, USA. I'm truly passionate about design of all kinds, finding and sharing inspiration here has become part of my life. If you like to know more about me or get in touch visit my website paulocanabarro.com Stock me at Twitter and Dribbble

Sponsored Links:

Big Up Cover Illustration by Saad Moosajee

abduzeedo — Mon, 14 May 2012 04:50:07 +0000

Monday is our tutorial day. We try to post tutorials every Monday showing how to create some nice effects or compositions we like. Today is not different, but instead of a tutorial we have a really nice case study by Saad Moosajee. It is an image created for the cover of the Big Up magazine.

Saad is a great contributor to the blog, always sharing beautiful wallpaper with us. Now we will be able to see how he created the beautiful Big Up Cover Magazine

Big Up Cover Magazine

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Step 8

Step 9

Step 10

Final Result

Details

For more information visit http://saadart.com/

About the author

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there, with a special selection of Photoshop Tutorials and Illustrator Tutorials. You can get in follow us via Twitter at @abduzeedo

Sponsored Links:

Thrill of Discovery Case Study

paul0v2 — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:08:55 +0000

Thrill of Discovery is a campaign for the Discovery Channel done by the guys from Ars Thanea under the direction of Peter Jaworowski. It's another amazing and very detailed piece that we will have a chance to see the steps that took to get this final image done. Enjoy!

Details

Concept

Process

Credits

Client: Discovery Networks CEEMEA
Agency: Ars Thanea

Executive Creative Director: Peter Jaworowski
Art Director: Karol Kolodzinski, Michal Lisowski
Creative Team: Ewelina Skowronska, Robert Antolak
Client Service: Tomasz Szymanski
Production Manager: Marcin Molski
Photographer: Szymon Swietochowski
Photo Session Manager: Bartosz Cerkaski
Retoucher: Piotr Fraczkowski
Concept Artists: Michal Lisowski, Krzysztof Roslan
Lead 3D Artist: Piotr Kolus
3D Artists: Anna Mierzejewska, Daniel Komuda, Piotr Nowacki, Piotr Kosinski
Lead Digital Artist: Karol Kolodzinski
Digital Artists: Pawel Nolbert, Karol Klonowski, Patryk Habryn
Designer: Krzysztof Rejek
Animator: Marcin Gibowski
Flash Developer: Tomasz Wlodarczyk

About the author

Sponsored Links:

The Artist Inspiring Design in Illustrator and Photoshop

abduzeedo — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 05:12:50 +0000

A few weeks ago I watched The Artist. Since the first time I saw and read about the movie I got curious about it, especially because it was a black and white movie. I wasn't expecting that much from the movie but I got really impressed in the end and ended up loving it. The style, the story and the little dog makes it a very pleasant experience.

So in this tutorial I decided to create a tutorial based on one of the scenes of the movie. The one in the very end in which there were a skyline while the 2 main characters were dancing.

The whole process won't take you more than 45 minutes to get the same result. However this should be considered more as a case study than a tutorial in terms of details.

Step 1

Open Illustrator and create a new document. With the Rectangle Tool create two rectangles to create the first building that will be in the center.

Step 2

Using the rectangle tool again, create a rectangle and with the Direct Selection Tool (A) modify the rectangle to sort of skew it. After that duplicate it and move it to the right.

Step 3

With the Blend Tool, create the details on the facade of the building.

Step 4

Create a rectangle with dark grey and move it below. Also duplicat the facade details and flip it horizontally. The idea is have one side with light grey (1) and another with dark grey (2).

Step 5

Create more details using the rectangle tool and the direct selection tool to add some perspective.

Step 6

Still with the rectangle tool, let's create some more buidings. Now with some perspective converging to the main building. The perspective doesn't need to be super perfect, but make sure it's good enough to look convincing.

Step 7

Keep adding a few more buildings. Move the higher ones behind the lower ones.

Step 8

Once you have one side right just duplicate it to make the other side.

Step 9

Time to Photoshop. Copy the main building and paste it Illustrator.

Step 10

Copy the other buildings and arrange them in the document. The main building in the center will be behind the others.

Step 11

For the main building, create a layer on top and then go to Layer>Create Clipping Mask. With the Brush Tool (B) and a very soft brush, paint with white to create a sort of radial light effect coming from the bottom. Repeat the same for the other buildings.

Step 11

Select all buildings and light effect layers, then duplicate them. Go to Layer>Merge Layers. After that go to Edit>Transform>Flip Vertically. Then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 10 for the radius.

The idea here is to create the popular wet floor effect.

Step 12

Fill the background layer with black.

Step 13

Add a new layer and fill it with black. After that go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Use 45% for the Amount with Gaussian for the Distribution and Monochromatic.

Step 14

Go to Image>Adjustement>Levels. Change the black input to 160 the grey to 1.00 and the white to 205. That will create some stars in the black background.

Step 15

Add a white frame to your design. To do that is pretty simple. Create a new layer and fill it with black. Go to Layer>Layer Styles>Stroke. Use 70px for the Size and white for the color. After that just change the Blend Mode of this layer to Screen. What is black will be invisible and what is white will be shown.

Step 16

Now just add your text. I used a font called Andes for that. Also duplicate the background and the buildings then merge them into a new layer. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 10 for the amount.

Change the Blend Mode of this layer to Overlay at 50% Opacity. Duplicate it again and change the Blend Mode of the new one to Soft Light at 60%.

Conclusion

Time to add some paper texture on top of the all layers to add the nice vintage look. I used two paper textures using Overlay and Multiply for the Blend Mode.

The result is simple but it looks the way I was envision since I saw the movie. I got really impressed by the classic style of the movie and wanted to make a nice interpretation.

Download the Photoshop file

Download Photoshop file used for this tutorial

About the author

Sponsored Links:

Humanity's Last Hope - Case Study

paul0v2 — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:32:05 +0000

Humanity's Last Hope is an unbelievable wallpaper designed by Adam Spizak's in collaboration to Desktopography where the theme for the wallpapers were "Nature's Design on Your Desktop". The details on this wallpaper are absolutely amazing and on this post you see some of the steps of how it was done. Enjoy!

Had a great opportunity to be part of the 2011 Desktopography exhibition, I was thinking for a while about what I want to make my message to be about, but also how I want to make it a bit different then lots of previous sets. Thought that maybe going a bit dark and serious might be a fun way, but also building a bit of a different feel to it. A tad sinister.

Download the Wallpaper

Close Ups

Animated Case Study

I've used Zbrush/Cinema4D/PS, the rocks were sculpt in Zbrush and rendered in Cienam 4D, water was pre-rendered, but was replaced with hand painted further down the line, the pods also were build in Zbrush and rendered in Cinema 4D using base reflection maps from the pre-painting to get inner reflections of the enviroment. Foliage was half-half painted and build from photographs.

At the final steps of the process the idea of the rock frame was introduce to give the wallpapers better place on the screen and make it more legible, total of 16 rocks were made to avoid pattern repetition.

About the author

Sponsored Links:

20 things from 2011

paul0v2 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:08:12 +0000

20 things that happened on the internet in 2011 is an amazing image illustrating 20 facts that happened last year on the internet and you have to guess what they are. You can also check the step by steps of how it was done, and see detailed shots of this amazing piece.

The Artworks is created by Peter Jaworowski & Michal Lisowski of Ars Thanea together with Syzygy a digital agency from London.

Perhaps you’ve seen 20things from 2010. This year’s incarnation works much the same way: 20 of the greatest, funniest and most insane internet events from 2011 have been united in a single illustration. It’s an open challenge. Last year a few people guessed 19 out of 20 – we’re hoping someone will crack all 20 this year.

Details

Process

About the author

Sponsored Links:

Antonio Bay Case Study by Falcon White

AoiroStudio — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:59:29 +0000

It's always a great thing to see how a designer works, it's a great way to learn and also to progress with your own skills. Now I wanna share a case study from Ralf Krause aka Falcon White, who did this piece for Desktopography 2011. I hope you will enjoy it and free your mind on new knowledge.

To know more about Ralf Krause, you can check out his website at FalconWhite.com or check out his Behance.

In Ralf's Words

Like all the other elements, I cut out the main image.

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

For the hair I used a masked picture of a woman.

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

A cracked texture, some colour corrections and increased contrast came into play.

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

I opened a second document to build the background with 2-3 ocean pictures that where blended together by masks.

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

More rocks and a ship where added and on some spots I brushed some „Fog“ and turned the whole background to orange.

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

Time for a third document. There I placed the skull and the background scenery in front of a green coloured cloud layer and started to add some smoke behind the skull‘s hair.

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

Cut out pictures of a neck and a knight‘s armour completed the fog walker. Birds appeared in the back and the skull got a green coloured touch.

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

In this step some shadows where brushed and using Dodge and burn I increased the contrast. The palm leaves where placed and a little bit more fog moves in.

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

Time to place the parrot...

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

that went through dodge and burn. The skull also got a little bit more hair..well, actually it‘s feathers. Then I made everything darker and gave the whole wallpaper a more violet colour…

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

That changed in most spots into blue...

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

and ended up with a green color mood with flat black tones.

Antonio Bay by Falcon White

This wallpaper “Antonio Bay” was inspired by the movie “The Fog” – a true ‘80s classic by John Carpenter. By the way you’ll find a lot of great wallpapers on Desktopography.net initiated by Pete Harrison.

About the author

My name's François Hoang and my alias's Aoiro Studio. I am a self-taught freelance graphic designer from Montreal, Canada. I've been designing for the last 4 years and really have a huge passion for creative work that makes a difference in our world. If you wanna requests some posts; I can be found on Twitter or feel free to contact me.

Sponsored Links:

"Erínye" Case Study

paul0v2 — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:40:53 +0000

Erínye is another piece by the Polish illustrator Wojciech Pijecki. His works are amazing and he loves to share his process which make us a big fan. In this case study he will show step by step how "Erínye" was done for the SlashThree XVII Quote Unquote Exhibition.

For more form Wojciech visit synectic.pl or twitter @wojciechpijecki

SlashTHREE XII Exhibition: Quote Unquote

Illustrations created for international art collective Slashthree. Released and featured within Art Pack XVII: Quote Unquote.

About Exhibition

The idea of this theme was to interpret a famous quotes in an illustrative manner. Profound quotes can often provoke deep reactions, but lets not forget "a picture speaks a thousand words". We are hoping that interpreting the quotes as images & music, we will be able to convey the initial meanings of these quotes but with other nuances that you may not have been aware of.

Erínye

Quote

"Metaphor for a missing moment."

A Perfect Circle - Orestes

Breakdown

Case Study

About the author

Sponsored Links:

"Silhouettes Of Life" Case Study

paul0v2 — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:08:25 +0000

Silhouettes of Life is a piece by one of my favorite digital artists Wojciech Pijecki from Poland. This piece was created for the SlashTHREE XVII Exhibition: Quote Unquote" and the result is simply amazing. Check out step by step how this image was done and enjoy the process.

For more from Wojciech Pijecki visit synectic.pl

About Exhibition

The exhibition theme was "Quote Unquote". The idea of this theme was to interpret a famous quotes in an illustrative manner. Profound quotes can often provoke deep reactions, but lets not forget "a picture speaks a thousand words". We are hoping that interpreting the quotes as images & music, we will be able to convey the initial meanings of these quotes but with other nuances that you may not have been aware of.

Silhouettes Of Life

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
William Shakespeare

Details

Case Study

Photo approach

faces struggle

We had two quick photo sessions for this concept. First didn't work out quite well, as the concept was still in a developement stage. It kinda changed few times, so I didn't use any of the photos we shot that day, but I still would to thank Patryk Piechocki for shooting this.

Second approach was the right one. It was pretty rushy, without enough equipment and time but the face shapes were caught pretty well to integrate them with the illustration. Also thanks to Anna Kwa?niewska and Tomasz Pijecki for participating in this.

About the author

Sponsored Links:

Reader Tutorial: Wrestlerish Album Artwork by Chris Valentine

abduzeedo — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 05:32:44 +0000

This is a short case study on the album artwork I did for the South African band, Wrestlerish. There were at least 8 different illustrations for this album, so I've decided to focus on the portraits which I combined for the poster design and booklet.Apologies for the low res process pics, but I only had access to my phone during the drawing process.

Step 1

My first step when drawing portraits is to make sure all of the elements of the face are accurately positioned. I first block in the rough shape of the head, and then go in and add in rough positional marks for the nose, eyes, ears etc. I always work very closely from my photograph at this point and use my pencil to measure spaces and convert to the page accordingly. I use a Faber Castelle 0.5mm mechanical pencil with corresponding 2B lead and a putty eraser.

Step 2

I now begin fleshing out some of the details. Once I am 100% sure that the landmarks of the face are accurate, I can start detailing without worrying too much about likeness. I carefully analyse each element of the photograph & try to reproduce exactly what I see onto my drawing. This takes a lot of practice, but with time you start relating value in the photograph to different pressure levels with the pencil and it becomes easier to get your drawing true to the photograph.

Step 3

In this step I started with the beard. This was the most painful part of the drawing as it involved hundreds of tiny little pencil marks with different areas of light and dark. Always remember, the devil is in the details. I try to pick out the dark and light areas of the beard and shade accordingly, using tightly packed strokes for the dark areas and more sparse pencil marks for the light bits.

Step 4

Step 4 is essentially the polishing phase where I add in final details and make sure I've got the likeness right. If it doesn't look like the guy by now it's a bit of a problem; so always try and leave your dark shading until you're sure you have the likeness correct! This step is all about adding the finishing details and highlighting the smaller features of a person's face that aren't immediately noticeable.

Step 5

As you can see in the image, I like to work on A4 (29.7cm x 21.0cm) paper, normally 200GSM as it's heavy enough to handle acrylic inks without warping. I always use masking tape to attach the page to a hard board working surface to press on. Once I have finished my drawing, I scan it in at 600DPI and bring it into Photoshop.

Step 6

This is how a drawing typically ends up looking once it's ready to be integrated into my digital piece. I will normally drag the scan into a new document (with a size relative to the job description), and I'll use the levels adjustment layer to bring the darks out and improve the general contrast. I'll also go around the piece with a soft eraser and remove any marks I may have left on the page. It's also important to note that I set the layer's blending mode to 'Multiply'. This removes the white from the layer and leaves your pencil marks so you can work underneath them. Blending modes can be found in the dropdown menu above your layers palette which will say 'Normal' if you haven't changed it yet.

Conclusion

Once I had done this for each of the band members, I brought them all together into one huge canvas and messed around with various paint splatters and watercolor scans, as well as the cover artwork of the Johannesburg skyline. I would love to answer any questions you may have, so feel free to get in contact.

For more information about Chris Valentine visit his site at http://valentinedesign.co.za and follow his Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/christhecook

About the author

Sponsored Links:

Battlefield 3 Poster Case Study

paul0v2 — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:43:52 +0000

This poster is a tribute to Battlefield 3 designed by the Polish Grzegorz Domaradzki. On this post you take a look step by step on how this amazing poster was created and you will get some insights and ideas on how to take on you own project. Enjoy!

For more from Grzegorz Domaradzki visit iamgabz.com

Battlefield 3 Tribute

Close Ups

Case Study

1. SKETCH - Tablet made. Always helpful before you start drawing.

2. DRAWING - Made with Faber Castell 0,5mm mechanical pencil with Rotring 2B leads and Koh-i-Noor 2h pencil. When scanned I used Levels (Ctrl/Cmd + L) to clean it up than zoomed in to around 250% and used hard Brush ( B ) and white color 100% to clean all dirty areas.

3. BASE - I used Magic Wand ( W ) on the drawing layer to select white background area. Than selected inverse (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + I) and used Select / Modify / Contract with 1px. Filled the selection with grey color on a new layer below the drawing( Multiply layer style ). Than zoomed in to 250% again and used tablet and hard brushed Eraser (E) and Brush (B) to polish up the edges of the grey selection.

4. MIDTONES - I used soft Brush (B) with low opacity( around 5% ) to create shadows on a separate layer and lights on another one to give the image more depth. Placed both new layers below the one with Multiplied DRAWING.

5. BLUE - I needed the selection of the whole main motive: I Select / Color Ranged ( Fuzziness 200 ) the white, than selected inverse and added the selection of the BASE. Saved it. Used it to create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer with blue colorize applied. Erased (E) with soft brush on the right side and at the bottom. Than I changed the background color to light grey.

6. FIRE - Graphic needed fire-like colors to look more like a Battlefield tribute, so I used the saved selection again, to apply Gradient (G) made lights on few more layers and played with various layer styles, like Hard Light and Overlay to get the best result. Used soft brush Eraser (E) where needed.

7. FINAL TOUCHES - I drew some extra lines, scanned them and repeated the process used on the main DRAWING. I than used Select / Color Range with Fizziness 200 to remove the white and leave only the lines. Placed the lines on top of all layers and filled them with the background light grey color. Finally added logos, title, quote and my signature.

About the author

Sponsored Links:

Retro Movie Poster Case Study

paul0v2 — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:33:03 +0000

Streets of Fear is the name of the movie poster and it was designed by the German; Ralf Krause a specialist in photo illustration. In this Case Study you will see step by step how this awesome retro action movie poster was done and get a feeling of how you can do yours.

For more from Ralf Krause visit behance.net/eyeofthedesigner and falconwhite.com

Case Study

Final Result

About the author

Sponsored Links:

Insane Clown Case Study

paul0v2 — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:58:17 +0000

The Insane Clown Posse is Detroit's own hometown harlequins. Photographer Paul Mobley teamed up with digital artist Mike Campau to put up an amazing series of photo manipulations and here you will see one of them broke down step by step.

After some early brainstorming and pre-production meetings with Paul, we chose our strongest concepts to execute on set. We were on a tight schedule and wanted to capture as many shots as possible, so we decided to shoot ICP on green screen at their own studio. Then we went on to Greene's Hamburgers in Farmington Hills to shoot the diner image. Next, Paul spent a couple days shooting downtown, precariously positioning himself on the edges of rooftops and coming back down to ground level for shots of dramatic Detroit architecture. And finally, the fun part — putting the pieces together. I created the balloons, Bomb Pops, and color block background entirely CGi, then composited the rest using everything Paul shot in the city. He dropped by the studio to work with me on some finishing touches and overall style decisions, and after a ton of strips, a few sliders, and a little bit of face paint remover we were done clowning around. It was a great experience. Now if we could only figure out why people kept calling me a Juggalo...

Case Study

About the author

Sponsored Links:

Case Study "Call of Juarez" by Ars Thanea

aloa — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:24:18 +0000

At this years OFFF Festival in Barcelona Ars Thanea first presented their Case Study for the game cover "Call of Juarez" for Ubisoft. In a rather detailed way we show you how the cover was done.

http://www.arsthanea.com/

Call of Juarez by Ars Thanea

Sketch

3D

Final Image

Details

About the author

Aloa is the moniker of the german/greek graphic designer/filmmaker & musician Alexis Papageorgiou. Im glad to share great artistic work with the readers on Abduzeedo. Contact me on aloa@abduzeedo.com or follow my Twitter and Facebook page

Sponsored Links:

Case Study "Out Of Space" by Mosk

aloa — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:23:19 +0000

We love personal projects, we love case studies & we love Mosk. Just right to the start of the weekend, we spread enough love for everyone. Enjoy this incredible case study

For more information about Mosk please visit his website www.mosk.pl and make sure to add him on Facebook