Realism in Illustrator, Part 1: Gradients

For my Full Sail classes, I've had a couple assignments to create realistic mechanical objects in Adobe Illustrator. The above camera, for example, was my recent assignment. Before that, I also made a cork screw (below).

For the curious, here's a wireframe view of the camera illustration:

That's a lot of lines, right?? Don't worry, I will teach you how to do everything. This tutorial will be the first of an ongoing series on the tools I used to create these realistic illustrations. So grab a photo reference, open up Adobe Illustrator on your computer, and get ready to make amazing digital art!

Starting out

The first step for making any illustration in Adobe Illustrator is to block out the main shapes of your object, using the pen tool. (If you've forgotten how to use the pen tool, or have never used it before, refer to my previous tutorial.)

The photo you see behind this was my photo reference. It's helpful to have a photograph underneath your layers as you work so you can make your shapes proportional.

An image with a lot of detail may seem daunting, so start off big. Do what you know you can do. Make the largest shapes first, alternating colors so you can tell them apart. (You can see I was getting ahead in this picture and already applied a couple gradients and finer details, but you can ignore that.)

After you've made all your big shapes, start pen tooling the smaller details. Use the eye dropper tool to fill in your shapes with colors from the original photo.

However, with nothing but shapes and colors, your picture will not look very realistic. It may be a nice illustration, but it'll be a far cry from photorealism. That's when you start using the tools in Illustrator to make your object come to life. In this blog post, I'll introduce you to the most useful tool for illustrating mechanical objects: gradients.

Using gradients

If you look at the completed camera at the beginning of this blog post, you'll see that most of it consists of gradients. While gradients are probably the simplest of the tools I'll show you, they're also one of the most powerful, especially with mechanical objects (as opposed to organic objects).

Because of their perceived simplicity, gradients are probably overlooked in light of the more complex tools (such as gradient meshes, which I'll teach you in the next tutorial). But, I encourage you to really use gradients to their full potential. As my instructors used to say, a simple gradient goes a long way.

Here, I started to add some gradients. I still had some smaller details to add, though.

More gradients and details...

Now, I'll show you how to use gradients. First, open up a new Illustrator document and create two rectangles. Remove the strokes on both of them and fill them with whatever color you like.

Then, save this color by going to your swatches panel (if it's not open, bring it up by selecting Window --> Swatches) and clicking "New Swatch."

This window will open. Click "OK".

Your color will now be saved in your swatches panel. (We'll come back to this later.)

Now that your color is saved, select one of your rectangles and click the "gradient" button on the toolbar. 

Now your rectangle should look like this.

On the righthand side of your screen, you should see the gradient panel open up. (If not, go to Window --> Gradient to pull it up.)

Also, you may see a bar appear across your rectangle (for some reason, this bar was not visible in my screenshots). If the bar doesn't show up automatically, it can be accessed with the G key on your keyboard. Moving this gradient bar around will allow you to change the angle of your gradient. You can also change the angle with the drop-down menu on the gradient panel.

A few other things you can change. The gradient panel has a drop-down menu that allows you to change the gradient from "linear" to "radial". Radial is great for round shapes (although it looks a little awkward with our boxy shape).

For this example, I'm going to keep my gradient linear at its original angle measurement. But you can do whatever you like.

There's a problem with this gradient. It's black and white, and that's not what we want. We want it to be blue.

Go back to your gradient panel and double-click on one of the pointy box sliders underneath the gradient preview. This will bring up a new window where you can change the color.

Right now you're in the "color" window. Switch over to your swatches.

From there, select the color you saved earlier. Or, if you've changed your mind, pick any color you like.

Now, click on the other slider and make it the same color. It'll make the gradient look like one solid color again, but that's okay.

Click underneath the gradient preview, toward the middle, to create a new slider.

Double-click on it again. This time, switch over to "color".

Use the drop-down menu in the top right corner to make sure you are in HSB mode. HSB mode is the best mode for adjusting colors to look like natural highlights and shadows, which is what we are about to do.

Move the middle slider to the left to make a lighter color. Now your gradient has a highlight.

Change the color of the other two sliders to a darker blue. The best way to do this is with the bottom slider in HSB mode.

See, the rectangle on the right is already looking so much more rounded and three-dimensional than the rectangle on the left. There are still things we could do to tweak it, though. For example, the highlight in the middle is far too harsh; it could be smoothed out a bit.

We can do this by moving the little diamonds above the gradient preview.

 


Much better!

There's a lot you can do to adjust a gradient and add more detail. You can add more sliders, move them around, and experiment with changing their colors. (If you need to delete a slider, simply click the trashcan next to the gradient preview.)

Kind of looks like a metallic shine...

For a different effect, try alternating between lighter and darker colors to create a rippling texture. If a gradient just isn't working for you, you can always try adjusting the angle or switching between linear and radial.

That's the gist of gradients; play around with it and see what you can come up with!

Coming up!

Taking gradients to the next level with Illustrator's most infamous tool: gradient meshes.

How to use the pen tool in Illustrator

Today I have a video tutorial for you on how to use the pen tool, one of the most essential tools for digital illustration within Adobe Illustrator. Enjoy!

EDIT:

After making this video and learning more about the pen tool, I realized that I was doing something wrong in this video. You see me clicking on points as I make them to delete one of their anchor points. I never explained why I was doing this, but it was so that Illustrator would allow me to make larger, more flexible curves.

DON'T DO THIS!

While deleting anchor points does give you more flexibility, it also limits the smoothness of your curves, and creates "kinks".

This is an example of an illustration I made - can you see the kink? One side of the flame is very smooth; the other side has a jagged angle.

You don't want your illustrations to look like this!! :-)

Only delete anchor points if you want a jagged angle like that, if you're making a sharp corner or point. (For example, the tips of the flames in the above illustration.) If you're trying to make smooth arcs, practice making more points and smaller curves. This will eliminate the problems that come with making curves that are too large.

A word of caution: Don't use too many points. You want enough that you can make your shapes look natural, but you don't want any more than you need. The more points, the larger the file size. Just something to keep in mind.

Well, now you know how to do it correctly... so, happy pen-tooling!

A Tale of Two Chocolates

 

Once upon a time, there were two packages: Package Modern, and Package Exotic. These packages contained the exact same ingredient: Organic cacao powder. However, not all organic cacao powder packages are created equally. These two rivals each told a different story.

Package Modern, as indicated across the top of his groovy bag, tried to appeal to the "modern lifestyle"; to busy moms and families seeking a powerful health boost as they rushed between sports practices, classes, and workouts at the gym. His appearance shouted a message loud and clear, even if his beholders only perceived the message in their subconscious: I am modern; I am pure. The plain block shapes, the basic sans-serif fonts, the limited color scheme, and the simple silhouette illustrations all contributed to this message.

Package Exotic whispered another tale. Her design spoke of other lands, sparking connotations of places rustic and wild. The loose "Dagoba" title, the strong serif fonts, the seemingly stained and ripped banners, the calm and earthy color scheme, and the faintly seen, elegant, detailed illustrations all suggested a message of exotic value, as if the contents were obtained through careful trading with natives in a country far away. Package Exotic invited her beholders to travel to an adventurous place of their imaginations, and to partake in something old and clean of unhealthy modern pollutants.

Two packages told a different tale, yet each had the same audience and the same mission: To convince a consumer to purchase one of them, and not the other. Which package design do you think was successful?

If you were walking through a store, which would you buy?

Moving to Full Sail

It's been a while since I've written, but much has happened. My passion for digital art has advanced from a mere hobby to a serious degree major. This November, I am moving to Winter Park, Florida, to study Digital Arts & Design at Full Sail University. I have already started online course work in advance, and I am stoked the skills I will learn in graphic design, web design, motion graphics, animation, 3D arts, and more.

What does this mean for you? Well, firstly, lots more information I can share on this blog! Secondly, however, I will be very busy with Full Sail's incredibly fast-paced, accelerated program, and I'm not sure how much time I will have for blogging. But I will try to post on here as much as I can, and share some of what I learn so you can walk this journey with me. I hope to see you along the way!

Me visiting the Full Sail campus in June, 2012