affinity designer Jaguar E-Type Lightweight (AD)

[NoLongerHere]

Quote

The Jaguar E type lightweight was built purely as a race car and they originally planned to make 18 of them during 1963 and 1964 but ended up only making 12.  A couple of year ago Jaguar announced that they were hand building the remaining 6 using the same techniques and parts as the originals. The engine is a 3.8l straight 6 producing around 340BHP.

 

I've been working on this for a few months and is the most complicated drawing I've done so far. I had thought about doing it before but knew it would be a ton of work, in reality it was about 10 tons, seemed never ending.

 

I decided to just do the front half to better show off the engine but I could re-use much of it if I ever wanted to do the whole car. As before it's just the pen tool, gradients, blurs and blend modes, so anyone could do it.

 

Hope you like.

 

As usual click to open, then click to display full size (although the actual output's a lot, lot larger).

 

 

 

 

[Alfred]

That is absolutely astounding! Ten tons of work, you say? It looks more like a hundred tons!!

[retrograde]

Wow, this is crazy @VectorVonDoom !

 

Would love to know how you organize a file like this.

[NoLongerHere]

I was expecting to have trouble layering the engine components but it didn't turn out to be a problem. So I just grouped stuff up so I didn't have a list of literally thousands of layers. I've not counted but guessing 70 or so main groups then most have a decent number of sub-groups.

I started with the steering wheel and the leather strap on the bonnet, I wasn't sure if I could them looking realistic and if I couldn't there was no point in continuing. Then spent a long weekend full time on the engine and hardly dented it and wondered if it was such a great idea after all. Not sure I'll be doing another engine any time soon but glad I didn't give up.

[retrograde]

Well give yourself a pat on the back, successful realism aside it's a feat in itself just completing something of this scope. Kudos from me.

[Novak]

Any plans on tutorial series on udemy or something? Amazing work as always btw. 

[NoLongerHere]

Thank you. I'm not sure what people would want in a tutorial. Like I said it's just pen shapes, normally gradient filled plus some blend modes, and practically everything has a blur even if it's only a tiny amount. So although it looks complicated, if you just start with a thing rather than a hundred things you'll see it's not too bad. Also work as large as you can, this one is about 11k x 9k. Then do a bit of post processing, which I've not done in these yet they're straight exports, like adding some film grain with say Nik Color Efex Pro.

[Mithferion]

You have a passion for detail, for sure! Amazing work.

Best regards!

[VectorWhiz]

Absolutely brilliant art.

[Ros]

Stunning skills, @VectorVonDoom.

 

Do you experience any performance issues, like crashes or slow screen refresh/render?

[mdharrington]

Incredible wow....looks like a labour of love

 

Just starting out with AD...and I would pretty much assume you've mastered the pen tool after this

[NoLongerHere]

Ros, I only had it hang a few times (2-4? I forget), never ending beach ball.  I don't remember it slowing down much on my hackintiosh desktop but I was mainly using the macbook and it did sometimes grind, not to a standstill but it wasn't too happy either. In the end I worked on the wheel and tyre in a different doc and copied it back over just to keep things running more smoothly. But most apps would have slowed down with that many objects, Illustrator certainly does.

md, if I'd realised quite how long it was going to take I probably wouldn't have started and yes I think I'm probably OK with the pen tool, not that there's a whole lot to it. You won't have any trouble picking it up either.

[MikeW]

Great work, VVD.

 

Always love well-executed, detailed work. It's so unlike the staid things I create for publications.

 

Mike

[MattP]

YE GODS!!!! That's unreasonably good!!!!!! 

[EZeemering]

Simply astonishing. Great car as well. 

[Alfred]

On 12/02/2018 at 8:26 AM, MattP said:

YE GODS!!!! That's unreasonably good!!!!!! 

 

It's unreasonably clean, actually, since the vehicle clearly isn't sitting in a showroom.

 

[Jonopen]

Nothing lightweight about that drawing! I can almost smell the rubber and oil. Thanks for sharing your drawing methods and setup insights.

[Lon in MacArkansas]

Simply amazing!

[NoLongerHere]

I was starting to post process it today and thought I'd show what a difference it makes to details. I did adjust the curves a bit but the main difference is when you add some film grain. It shows how it softens the edges but in a different way to a blur. The left is the straight export (obviously).

[Merde]

11 minutes ago, VectorVonDoom said:

I was starting to post process it today and thought I'd show what a difference it makes to details. I did adjust the curves a bit but the main difference is when you add some film grain. It shows how it softens the edges but in a different way to a blur. The left is the straight export (obviously).

Right crop looks like a photo, you have even simulated chromatic aberrations. Respect!

[NoLongerHere]

You noticed. I only added a tiny bit and wasn't sure it was enough to make any difference. I just used PS's lens correction filter because I'm basically lazy but it's not difficult to do anyway. I had a read of how people post process their renders and tried some of it out, film grain was obvious but adding ca wasn't.

[Kevin Martin]

Oh my God

[Geedee]

Wonderful art work... of a Wonderful car... Wonder what Vic Berris would think of the processes you involved.. (-:

[peter]

On 2/21/2018 at 7:56 PM, Geedee said:

Wonderful art work... of a Wonderful car... Wonder what Vic Berris would think of the processes you involved.. (-:

This is spectacular!

 

Lightweight? The car is, no doubt about that: but the work load certainly wasn't. Your poor Mac and Hackintosh must be thinking "Not sure I'll be doing another engine any time soon" have mercy on us! 

 

I am glad you stuck with it beach ball an' all.

 

I reckon Vic would say, "It's a stunner, PM me now!" 

 

I've just plugged my HDMI cable into my 13" Mac and sent the image to my 42" telly and it still doesn't do it justice. I need a bigger screen! Maybe 86" or more.

 

 

 

[NoLongerHere]

Thanks. It looks better after a bit of post processing as you can see from that comparison. All in all my macbook handled it ok considering how many objects there are. My hack was totally fine with it but I did nearly all of it on my macbook with the trackpad. So it's more that I'm not sure I'll be doing another engine any time soon. I did have a quick try and export to a format where AI would be able to count the objects but didn't manage to, not that it matters, just out of interest. I might have another try.

I save work very often, which you can do in AD as it does it so fast, so hardly lost anything after the few hangs. That's one of the things I really like about AD and really hate about AI, it would have taken more like 30s to save in that.

Oh, one thing is it had a habit of using lots of CPU and the fans spinning up, not just in this drawing. So installed Turbo Boost Switcher, they have a free version, and disabled turbo boost. That sorted it as, although it would get a bit toasty, it couldn't go flat out.