“Transitioning from Traditional to Digital Illustration”

One of the first things I can tell you if you are planning on going digital with your illustration abilities is to make sure your computer can handle the amount of space needed for large graphic files. They become huge very quickly, especially if you are painting raster images, (explained later in this article).
I also recommend getting a tablet and pen such as the Wacom tablet.  (http://www.wacom.com) Though that is not necessary to create your art digitally, it does make the transition a bit easier especially if you are a painter.  It also helps to have a good scanner.  One that can get you scans of at least 300 dpi resolution.  There is a good link for setting up a Wacom tablet here… http://www.gomediazine.com/design-tip/set-wacom-awesome-results/

 Wacom Tablet & Pen

 There are several ways to produce digital illustration. 3d modeling programs are usually the first to come to mind however if you have been painting and drawing traditionally and have no time to learn a 3d program, you may want to try painting directly in Adobe Photoshop, (http://www.adobe.com) or creating vector illustrations directly in a drawing program such as Adobe Illustrator. I mention these programs because these are the ones I use. There are many different programs to choose from and the preference is up to you, although the Adobe CS programs are the most popular in the industry.  The two prominent styles to work digitally in are…

Vector illustration: (Adobe Illustrator or similar drawing program)

Raster illustration:(Adobe Photoshop or similar photo/painting program)

What is the difference between vector and raster digital Illustration?

Below you will see examples of the two different styles… I begin with a pencil sketch that is scanned into the computer as a B&W jpg file, then I place it on the page in the program file that I am working on and begin to work over the top of the sketch adding color and layers as I go.

Scalable Vector graphics, (SVG) are created in drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator and have a clean smooth line or curve. They are made up of solid or gradient color fills and can be scaled to any size and retain the quality of the image for reproduction purposes. It is a much smaller file size than a raster image and can easily be sent via email. These bitmap graphics are usually files with extensions such as .EPS, .AI, BMP, .PDF

Rasterized, pixelated images are usually created in a photo-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop and can also include manipulated photographs. The digital illustration done in a raster style is made up of very tiny squares called pixels. My raster images are usually more painterly with a broader range of effects and brushes available in the Photoshop pallet, (a favorite brush of mine is #63).  This file tends to be larger than the vector art file. These are usually files with extensions such as .PSD, .TIFF, .JPG

As you can see, I have started out with a scanned image of my original pencil sketch in the images shown above.  In the next sample I will show you a raster illustration that was done completely in Adobe Photoshop from start to finish without the sketch as a starting point.  I start out with basic solid shapes and then add color with the use of Photoshop brushes.  The final image shows a detailed area of the bacon strip illustration.

Digital Raster Bacon Illustration

Once the illustration is complete you can save the file with a CMYK color mode for reproduction purposes.

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AN ADDED NOTE, (from my software engineer brother Rob):

“A BMP file is not a vector image (it’s an abbreviation for bitmap). To help clarify, a vector file is simply a text file that states where and how to draw each line (from x,y to x,y coordinates). These are easily scaled to a new size, by using a multiplier on ALL the coordinates. A raster file contains a binary value to define the color for each pixel (or bit) in the image (or map). These files don’t scale at all properly, but one technique is to use the same pixel 4 times to double the image size (for upscaling, pixels are copied, so the perceived resolution doesn’t really change, it appears to us as larger pixels, even though there are more pixels). Downscaling just removes pixels, which usually makes the image look worse. I don’t think a PDF file is vector or raster. The PDF format is proprietary, and is intended to print the same on any printer, which is not normally possible with raster and vector files”.

FREE Vector of the month from Deystudio, LLC:

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This month’s featured website or blog…”illustration for kids” 🙂

Featured image for this month…(from my RF stock portfolio)