From Icons + Identity
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For my client, Nevada State High School, I was tasked with creating an iconic image for their new alter ego, the “Renegades”. The school offers a great service to teenagers in allowing them to take college credits while they are still finishing their H.S. diplomas. It’s a big change and responsibility for students who choose to take this route and the school prides itself on their students being adventurous, innovators, and ahead of the pack. It’s natural and appropriate that they would think of themselves as renegades breaking away from the norms. Through several rounds of creative concepting we found that the character who would best sum them up would be the Adventurer/Indiana Jones/Steve Irwin’esque type.
The process is fairly simple not requiring layer effects, filters, or anything like that. It’s just a bit time consuming and you need to prepare yourself to put some focus into this.
The purpose of this post is to help you see the steps taken to work through this project on the creative side. I hope that in the end you’ll at least be able to pick up a few useful tips from this.
Tools used…Tracing paper, pencil, eraser, sharpie, scanner and Adobe Illustrator. I used Adobe Illustrator CS3 but the technique used in the computer is grown from traditional methods. You can probably mimic most of these steps in any graphics program that allows for Bézier curves (typically the “pen tool”), color swatch saving, and layer transparency.
Step One – Pen and Paper
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All projects should start here no matter what you’re working on. You should never touch the computer, paints, camera, whatever, until you’ve gotten a semi-clear solution worked out on paper.
If my underlying drive is to always stay original and creative then the main goal for every project would be efficiency and productivity. It’s easy to simply be an artist when you are working on a project for yourself. The real challenges you’ll face with commercial work are budgets and deadlines. These are real hours being spent against very real deadlines and launch dates. Hence the need for the tracing paper. I do all of my original work on a tracing pad and usually I do it in sections. The tracing paper will allow for quick changes to sketches so I can get an approval before working on a final in the computer. If the client wants a new hat on the character, a different arm position, or a new jacket…I can simply trace over the existing character/parts instead of needing to re draw it all.
Most steps in my work I think you can learn from and craft for yourself. This step, however, would be the one I’d say to mimic precisely. If you’re looking to do this professionally then learning to work with tracing pads will immensely increase your productivity.
Below is the approved sketch that we used as the base for this character.
Step Two – File set up
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So we’ve gotten an approval or are happy with our sketch. Next step is to set up our work space. I usually do all logo projects on an 8 1/2″ x 11″ document size. This allows for a large enough space to get as detailed as I need, easy printing for proofing, and helps me keep my file sizes down.
It’s up to you to decide which color space to work with in regards to where you think your project will be deployed. For this project I’m working in CMYK. I typically like to work with this because of my background in print, I have an easier time selecting color values this way. If you are doing a strictly web based deployment then make sure your color settings are set to RGB.
Next I added my swatches. I had a pretty clear idea (due to the amount of work done with the tracing paper) as to what tones I needed to use. Some colors I entered manually, others I picked from the supplied colors in Illustrator. When entering your swatches make sure they’re set to “global” so that if you change the value it’ll effect whatever artwork it’s applied to.
Step Three – Type Treatment
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For this particular tutorial I’m not going to go into detail on how I crafted the type. If you find that you’d like more info on how to accomplish the effects shown, please leave a comment at the bottom and I’ll see about writing something.
You can see the treatment is fairly simple…a soft arc in the characters, some dimension, and a light gradient that matches up with the client’s brand colors. I did the type at this stage because I wanted the character to be able to interact with the letters. Once I was happy with the type treatment I printed it out, laid my approved sketch over top of the type, and then a fresh sheet of tracing paper on top of it all. I laid all of this on top of a light table and re sketched his arms and hand in a way that he appeared to be holding some of the letters.
Step Four – Color
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Once the sketch was finished I scanned it in and placed it on it’s own layer in Illustrator (File > Place). Make sure you now build all new layers on top of it. From here forward we’re just going to be adding new layers with more details in each and we’ll be using the sketch as the base obviously. First what I like to do is block off each main section with flat color using the pen tool. The pen tool will give you the most precise paths and curves.
Once you have each section drawn you’re going to select all (Command + A) and copy. Next, make a new layer and do Paste in Front (Command + F). This is going to give you a single layer that the color blocks live on together (in the examples shown I have them sitting to the right, don’t do this). Make sure you still have all the items selected on the new layer and change them to black. Then in the Pathfinder window you’re going to select “Add to shape area” under Shape modes, when you select it make sure you’re holding down Option. This is going to combine all the shapes into one and will allow me to place a hard stroke around the whole piece. This can also come in handy when needing a shape to use to trim paths against the character.
Step Five – Details
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The rest of this is mostly up to you. You’ll now begin the process of adding new layers of detail. The particular style I like to work towards involves many transparent layers of blotchy shadows and highlights making sure to always select the layer colors from my swatches palette. I turned off the layers that held the type so I could keep my focus on the character.
The next few screens will show you the series of detail layers I applied to get my finished piece. I tend to start on the face for every character as this is always going to be the main place the eye is drawn to. Notice his eyes as well, this is a key area to focus on. The eyes give the work life. Whether it’s a painting, a photograph, or an illustration like this it’s important to add a bit of a depth, contrast, and that little twinkle to the eyes. Without it the work will feel flat and soulless.
As I stated earlier, this is a very simple, yet time consuming process. There are no layer effects (ie multiply, overlay, etc) applied to any of these, just transparencies and a lot of work with the pen tool.
And as you’ll see below we get the final piece. It’s entirely up to you how to use the layering and the pen tool in regards to the styling your piece takes on. This is simply a method I use because I like the effect it gives me in the end. If you’re going for high detail and precise colors, you’ll probably want to play with the gradient mesh tool some and also with adding more realistic shapes to the shadows and highlights.
After we reached this point we had decided that we’d place a soft background for the character to live in for some applications. I made some very generic shapes to represent a desert landscape and used the Feather Effect to soften the edges.
You’ll see below in the wireframe snap shot just how complex the layer work looks. If there are any steps in this process you’d like more clarification on just leave a comment below and I’ll try to respond as best I can.
