Vector Illustrated Portrait

Organic Vector

Pre-Production

Image with Posterization

To begin with, we had to choose a subject (family or pet) to do the project on. I chose a photo of my sister, since it had the best lighting, then moved it into Photoshop. In this program, we cropped (8x10in.) and posterized the image so that there were simpler color values to trace. Once adjusting this to make it look natural, we moved the image into Adobe Illustrator to begin the tracing, which would only use the pen tool.

Production

In Illustrator, we had to decide whether to do Organic or Low Poly Geometric. I choose Organic, so after I set up 2 artboards (the first one had a lowered opacity, the other was locked) and set up layers for different sections (eyes, mouth, shirt, etc.). Then came the tracing. This would become the longest part to the project, and often it was difficult to decide what details to include and which weren't worth it. I focused on having a wide range of values, from the brightest lights to the darkest shadows. After a while, I realized that I hadn't closed off all of my shapes, so I went back to correct this and made sure that every future outline was complete. Sometimes, it was difficult to have the pen tool follow what you wanted, but I learned how to edit the anchor points at the end by changing both handles independently.

Post-Production and Final Project

This is the original image along with the finished product. Looking at it now, the face highlight without posterization is softer, though I feel like the exaggerated lighting fits well with vector pieces. In my design, I wished I could have made the hair less "tame" but it would have taken too long to capture every stray piece and I think that would have interrupted the organic-ness of the whole piece. It was difficult to capture the coloring, and I feel as though next time I would've made more shadows. However, without them, the final product has a simplistic aesthetic that I worked hard for, so I believe my balance of details was suitable for this. All and all, I'm proud to see that so many different parts came to make this piece and I will definitely be doing this again some other time.