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Technique

Illustrator and Photoshop CS3 or later

Vector work and an authentic look neednt be mutually exclusive, as Ollie Munden proves by bringing hand-drawn details to bold vector art
This tutorial will show you how to make your vector work interesting and full of depth. Ill take you from an initial hand-drawn design to a highly polished Illustrator linework version and back to Photoshop, where youll complete the artwork by adding colour and a series of halftone overlays to give the piece a more authentic aesthetic.

Roughen up your vector work

Ollie Munden A designer at McFaul Studio, Ollies personal work is influenced by tattoo design, street art, 1980s skate graphics and Far Eastern woodblock prints. See more at www.mcfaulstudio. com and www. megamunden.com

On the disc The composition and finished sketch that accompany this tutorial can be located in DiscContents\ Resources\Vector Time needed 18 hours

Skills Use of line weights Making complicated vector illustrations Adding texture and colour in Photoshop Turning hand-drawn work into considered vector art

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To begin this piece, I collect various photographic references and compose them in Photoshop. This helps to work out the design structure in a quick, loose fashion.

I print the rough composition and use it to make a clean linework trace using fineliners. Focus on the main lines that you need, and dont get bogged down with the shading or too much detail.

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As I want this piece to have a really nice graphic approach to it, I only draw up half of the linework, then clean that up and flip the drawing in Photoshop. This will give you perfect symmetry in your piece and add a level of precision thats very difficult to achieve by hand.

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Make sure you clean up the linework, removing any errors or smudges made while drawing. Save a JPEG of the final reflected design and place it into Illustrator. Ensure the trace is on its own layer and change it to a template layer dimmed to 50%. (Doubleclick the layer and use the settings in the dialog box to do this).

Add a new layer above the trace (name it foreground). Its now time to trace the entire illustration. To achieve the style of linework that I want for this piece, its important to trace either side of the hand-drawn lines. If you trace the linework using key lines, youre always going to end up with a perfectly even line width throughout, which gives a digital feel thats not always the desired result.

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Always think about linework in the foreground being bolder look at the thickness of the lines on this section of the helmet, thinning as they move toward the back of the helmet. You can adjust this once you have drawn the basis of each section; just use the Direct Selection tool to select each point, and adjust the line widths accordingly.

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Try to imagine the image in layers foreground, background, midground. In this case, the eyes and inner mouth are in the background, the horns in the midground and the helmet in the foreground. When tracing, try to make the widths of the linework in the background finer than the bolder lines of the foreground to help create depth in your image. Begin tracing the foreground linework, remembering to trace either side of the line.

When creating repeated sections, take advantage of Illustrators tools. For the repeating circular beading on the helmet I create one circular shape by drawing the shape as a solid, then copying (Ctrl/Cmd+C) and pasting the circle on top of itself (Ctrl/Cmd+F), scaling it down and cutting the centre circle out of the one below to give a hollow circular shape. This is then copied and pasted multiple times and arranged as in the screenshot. As they get more distant they are scaled down.

Distressed effects

Another thing you can do when creating a piece like this is distress the linework to help it sit better behind the halftone dot overlays. This takes what can be a nasty slick vector look out of the image to make it feel more authentic. This is something that McFaul Studio is really keen to bring back into its work. You can achieve this look by applying an effect from the Effects menu in Photoshop I experimented with Ripple. Using the Threshold feature can also produce a distressed effect.

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From time to time, make sure you zoom out from the artwork and keep adjusting the linework accordingly, checking that all the line weights are still working together.

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There are some exceptions to the trace either side of the line rule. In the grab shown Ive used a 0.75pt key line to draw the small oval shape, and then duplicated it to create the detailed pattern around one of the trims of the helmet.

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For this pattern, I create one simple shape by tracing around the edge of the black area. Fill that with black and alter the Transparency so you can see where all the small circles are. Then use the Circle tool to draw out the small white circles, adding them all to the same shape using the Pathfinder tool. Select the previously created black shape and subtract the selection of white circles from it to get the final pattern shape. Do this for each of these shapes to give them a less repetitive feel.

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As you complete sections of the piece, group them, copy and paste the group, then reflect it horizontally and begin to build both sides of your piece.

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Technique Roughen up your vector work

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Create a new layer called background. Begin tracing the black area where the eyes sit, and the background section of the helmet. Remember to keep your linework more delicate on this section so it appears slightly more distant. Its all very subtle, but it really does help give your piece a nice variation and helps pull parts into the foreground. Again, Copy>Paste then reflect the shapes you create to keep the piece symmetrical.

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Create a new layer and call it midground this is used for the mask part of the piece. The teeth can also go on this layer, plus perhaps the horns. When tracing the moustache, use single key lines set to around 0.25pt to add a nice level of detail. You may find it easier to use the Pencil tool, then join the end points with the Pen tool.

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I dont like the motif that Ive drawn on the centre of the helmet, so while in Illustrator I draw up this triangular shape motif its much bolder and simpler. Maybe you could place your own logo on there, or another symbol that works with the rest of the piece.

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After tracing, its time to add colour. Select all of your linework and Copy>Paste it into a new Photoshop document. Apply a solid black colour overlay effect on the linework layer to make sure its filled evenly. Fill your background layer black but turn its visibility off so you can see the linework. Then, using the Magic Wand to colour-pick the empty areas between the linework, Select and Fill on separate layers with the colours you want to use.

Copy the illustration and paste it into a new document. Change the Colour mode of this new document to Greyscale, then add a radial gradient to give denser halftone shading toward the outer edges. Select bitmap in the Colour Mode options, set the method to Halftone Screen, click OK then select a Frequency of around 70 and an Angle of 45. Click OK. Change the Colour mode back to Greyscale and copy the image back into the main artwork file, with the new halftone layer above all other layers. Change the Overlay mode to Multiply.

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Adjust as you go to achieve the best possible design. At this stage I alter the colour scheme. Regarding the halftone layers, I duplicate the layer and turn one off, then draw an oval around the face area, feather the selection by 100px and delete that part of the halftone to add more depth. Turn the hidden halftone layer on and set the Opacity to 20% to ensure the entire image has the halftone effect applied. Finally, I scan an old piece of art paper, convert it to Greyscale, overlay it onto the image and set it to Multiply.

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