VectorVonDoom

There's always something you can improve and I might see things when I go back to it later but I'm happy with it at the moment. I'm thinking of starting on a much more fiddly one, never done an engine, but not decided yet.

Not done many cars, only a few recently, but I'm slowly improving.

Thanks, quite pleased how it turned out. In case anyone's interested, the split view but with the vector textures hidden as they make it look a mess.

“This is my Eiffel Tower. This is my Rachmaninoff's Third. My Pietà. It's completely elegant, it's bafflingly beautiful…” I think the last one I’ll do and post but it’s a goodie (well the subject is). The Ferrari Dino Berlinetta Speciale prototype was unveiled at the Paris motor show in 1965. In my opinion the side view is its best angle, I can’t say that I think the front is particularly pretty. It recently sold for a ridiculous amount of money, over £3.2m/$4m. As I wanted it to be photorealistic what looks like a fairly simple drawing was plenty of work. There’s a lot of fine detail, like the vector textures I made up for the tyres and wheels, that isn’t necessarily obvious, especially at this reduced size, but if it wasn’t there then it loses some of its realism. I'll probably go back to it in a week or two and see what bits I don't like. It’s also quite a large drawing, the full size output’s 88.5MP (11520x7680).

That's good.

When you click on anything other than an object, so the artboard itself or the grey outside the artboard, the layer you were working on is deselected, no layer is the active one. So when you go to add a new object or layer it doesn’t know where to put it and it ends up the top or down the bottom where you then have to move to where it’s meant to be. In AI the current layer isn’t deselected when you do that so the new item goes where it’s supposed to. This can either be because you clicked by accident or are used to the AI way and is quicker way of deselecting an object than using Cmd-Shift-A, anyway it's a pain. So it isn't actually the layers palette at all, the "problem" just shows itself there. So unless there's a preference that I missed to stop that happening, perhaps add one?

Thanks!

It was just the lighting angle. Batman inside and Catwoman on the bonnet. Will perhaps try later, working on a classic Ferrari at the moment.

Thanks. Perhaps I should have ignored how they lit the scene and done a more standard looking shadow. Not exactly a big thing to change.

OK. In a few places there's probably too much blur, for example in the wheels. The chrome on bumpers and mirror are good but the under-riders (or whatever they're called) which I presume are chrome too you've done differently, mainly a gradient (could be how they look in the photo with reflections). Tone down the gradient on the bottom side strip? (again could be how the photo looks). As the body has detail the tyres would be better having some tread detail too, probably doesn't have to be much, just so they're not perfectly smooth. A full shadow underneath would probably look better than just adding some under the wheels. So just expand the one you have and add extra at contact points, so from the wheel backwards. Unrelated to the actual drawing but you should export and post the exported image so it shows more detail. They lose a lot scaling down so no need to show AD's interface. Can always post another showing that or the wireframe.

Looks good. Was going to suggest some things but would make me look picky.

It looks a bit strange but it's correct. I based it on a photo and it's just the way they lit it. The photo was of a replica made by the same people who made the original, Barris Kustom. But for some reason they used different side badges so I changed it to use the original one.

I originally did this in Illustrator but it was missing something and needed more work so spent the last few days redoing it in AD although I did use the main underlying shapes, seemed pointless doing those again. It's a good improvement on the original. Being so long and thin it loses a lot of detail at low res even on the close up though.

Yes if you move the horizontal bar between the points you can make the graduation sharper.

Just a quick note about creating a radial gradient from a reference image. It will probably be obvious to most but just in case it isn't then it might be handy. Drawing a circle then trying to add the radial gradient points in the right place and picking up the colours isn't the easiest thing to do. You either do it on top of the reference or to the side, neither way is easy. It's much easier to draw a rectangular strip from the top to the centre (or from the left, right or bottom if you prefer) and create a linear gradient from the reference image. This way you can easily see where the stops should be and pick up the colours. You can then save it as a style and apply it as a radial/oval gradient and do any minor adjustments as required. Here's a quick example with 37 stops which was easy to do this way even though it needs a tweak or two.