More March MODOK Madness, more using Illustrator for line work.
You'd think characters so ingrained onto one's psyche could be drawn without a lot of reference. You'd be wrong.
How do you edit an Illustrator file once you apply a clipping mask to it?
3 comments:
Illustrator is still black magic to me. I just do PS pen tool as far as vector understanding. And paths in the channels.
You're right. You always need ref. The simplest characters have incredible weird amateur variations when you google. Charlie Brown has to be right. Proportions and joining.
My base layer was a sketch I did on typing paper, with a few rough Bugses on the page that I pulled together in the inking. My Elmer sketch looks more Elmery than the finished. Slight line placement issues like you mentioned.
Illustrator has pressure sensitivity for lines, but that works onle as well as the equipment you have and lots of practice. Also the freehand brush tool likes to correct the line curve, so I have to go back to move the vectors. The previous MODOK was drawn on the Bamboo with pressure sensitivity.
Illustrator also has an after the fact line width adjustor and line profile table. So you can make a line that widens and tapers where and how often you want and save that line to a table. Then use the pen tool tool to draw a line and select one of your line presets. The trick here (by trick I mean something I need to do better, not something I've mastered) is to come up with tapers that meet from preset to preset and to know when to scissors a long line to get a series of presets onto one curve. That all is mouse work and vector adjustments, no pen or pressure. The Jack Kirby T-shirt had 5 line presets and Bugs here I did with 3 line presets and one of the standard presets already built in. Since I am comfortable drawing lines by mouse, this way is faster for me than using pressure sensitivity.
In the Illustrator preferences you can set whether to adjust line width when you scale. For Bugs I thought the lines were too thin. I scaled up with the line set to increase. Then scaled back down with the line set to stay the same.
This morning I got on Facebook and was sent to 3 different art references by you, Ellis. Could you do a monthly email of art sources and links, so I don't pile up favorites that I can never find later?
Ha. Yeah. I've really gone off on the Reilly method lately. Library book on Robert Maguire by James Silkey prompted it.
Here's my latest explorations trying to look traditional with digital
http://weirdellis.tumblr.com/post/159008626597/digital-reilly-palette-method-bottom-jpg-is
I read all the things you wrote about illustrator and they come up in my memory banks just a bit. You really have to decide to go all in on a tool and really learn it. For a lot of freelance, the scale-ability of vector makes it the best talent.
But photoshop is probably always going to be my favorite program.
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