affinity designer Jaguar E-Type Lightweight (AD)

[v_kyr]

Yip the E-Type is pretty cool and fine made, though the choosen background is IMHO awful and does not justice the fine drawing work and car at all here.

[VectorVonDoom]

I tried to keep it similar style to the one in the photo but I'll be enlarging the background so will have another think. I might just go back to a simple one, not sure exactly what yet. The photo was obviously photoshopped as they missed chunks when they masked it, I think it was originally a normal studio shot.

 

[v_kyr]

Maybe getting some background ideas from here and seeing what style fits well together ...

• Garage backgrounds

[VectorVonDoom]

Thanks. I'll have a play. I don't normally like any raster stuff, just thought I'd try it this time. I'll also look at studio photos too as they'll be easier to create the look in vector. Always handy to have some backgrounds.

[v_kyr]

Some things which I've seen there on the net ist 3D rendered (location, lighting etc.) though. However sometimes a high res background pic (convertes to greyscales etc.) will do too. - Just a quick'n'dirty play here to give some idea ...

 

... or some other sort of more show room location instead of a garage etc. - You have to see what fits best in your opinion.

 

[VectorVonDoom]

I was thinking that sort of thing would look better if was the whole car and not just half of it but will try a few things out. This is where I am so far for a simple background a couple of gradients and blend modes plus some vignette. Need to fiddle with it a bit. Just fits nicely in an A0 document.

[v_kyr]

Yes this looks and fits better than the initial one in similar colorings as the E-Type, since the car is the main motive and subject of attention here, it does not distract attention to this.

[Rob C 28]

Simply stunning - fabulous work, VectorVonDoom!

[VectorVonDoom]

I thought I'd share the AD file for this with people here. It's just for you own use and not to be shared around on other sites.

Some have asked about organisation and the tin toy gives you an idea but this is on a completely different scale plus it's nice to look at source files. Some of the groups have numbers in brackets as I was trying to keep track of the number of objects. No real reason other than interesting but soon got bored of doing that! You might want to turn off the texture layers if you're looking at in outline mode.

Jaguar_A0.afdesign

[JohnSnr]

Thank you for sharing. I need to have a proper look through it to see how it is organized but where do you start on it or doesn't it matter?

[VectorVonDoom]

I'm not sure it matters too much. I usually block in the main shape even if it's just in a single colour, well you can usually pick some sort of gradient too.

I think I said that for this one I started with the steering wheel as I didn't know if I could do a realistic looking wood, if I couldn't it wouldn't work so needed to find out first.  Then I did the leather straps for the same reason. So any difficult things that make or break it are probably best done first. Then if you just can't get those right you haven't wasted as much time as finding out at the end. I really should have done the main part of the wheel towards the beginning as that was a bit of a pain. 

You always want a little bit of blur over the whole thing, sometimes a tiny bit, otherwise it ends up looking like a cutout pasted on to a background. One good tip is to try and work in one size, so say A1. That way you quickly learn how much blur to add to various things and don't have to think about it or fiddle too much. If you use multiple sizes then the blur amounts are going to be different for each.

[Cealcrest]

Honestly, I don't enjoy cars much, but your skill of execution just blows me away every time. I love looking at your work even if the subject matter is not something I typically enjoy.

[VectorVonDoom]

Thank you.  I'm no expert, the photorealistic stuff I've posted on here is all I've done so I'm a relative newbie. But that shows that if you wanted to anyone can do it, there aren't really tutorials so I just got stuck in. Sometimes the thought of doing something puts you off but if you start you find it's not as bad as your feared.

However they're not projects you can do in a spare evening or rainy Sunday so aren't for everyone. Basically multiply how complicated you think something is by a few to a lot and you might be closer. Because of that it can be a bit discouraging, sometimes you work on it for a day, zoom out and you've hardly dented it. I also seem to have a stage where I think it looks a mess, you just power though and it does come together (well has done so far, not sure if the Venus one will do).

 

[MmmMaarten]

Wow, this is just incredible! You all did this with Affinity? Not even a 3D modelling program? Crazy

[Daniel Astudillo]

Wow that's amazing! So many details 

[PierreLR]

You should think about prints of some of your work.

[VectorVonDoom]

I'm not sure anyone would want them but perhaps.

[JohnSnr]

I've just seen the new AD 1.7 samples, well done 

[VectorVonDoom]

Thank you. Who'd have thought anyone would want any of my scribbles  It's quite a nice thing to have happened. 

[DannyBCreative]

Holy moly! This is by far the most photo-realistic illustration I think I've ever seen! I had to look really hard and still can't figure out how you did it! WOW.

[VectorVonDoom]

Thanks. It was also by far the most work I'd spent on one. But it's not really any more difficult than a little photo realistic project, there's just a lot more of it and it seems never ending. So you do risk getting bored of it and not finishing.

[PierreLR]

I just saw that it's on the v1.7 pages, looks good. Are there things in 1.7 that would have made it easier?

[VectorVonDoom]

Well I didn't use a whole lot of tools or features but any performance improvements are nice. On my macbook, which is starting to get a bit old, I did end up splitting it and doing the wheel and tyre separately. I've only had a very quick play with 1.7 beta and not yet checked how much faster it seems.

Probably the handiest for something like this is that you can now highlight layers or groups (although I'd perhaps have liked it to be the whole row not just the end bit, even easier to spot and a perhaps a way to cycle through each with the keyboard).  As it was I'd add temporary marker layers, something like ****** xxxx goes here ******  and even then I'd sometimes have to scan through more than once to find them. 

The only other obvious one is rubber banding on the pen tool, which is fairly standard on vector apps and I might have had that turned on.

[Jowday]

@VectorVonDoom you are very talented and I salute you. Your work is also a living proof of something one should never forget: succes requires 10% talent and 90% hard work. No matter how big the talent. Or 20/80 or whatever ratio. You have to pay for the result with time. Life. But it makes sense.

I stopped watching tv 30 years ago when I realized how time spent creating instead made me a lot happier. Even during weeks of repetitious hard work. 

[VectorVonDoom]

Thank you. My stuff is more work than talent  but it's still fun to do, usually anyway. Sometimes when it seems like you're never going to finish it seems less fun but you soon get over that.