Brett wrote in looking for a way to accomplish a diamond grip pattern wrapping around a cylinder, like the one shown above. It’s easy enough to trace a photo, but what if you didn’t have one, or it wasn’t at the right angle?

The technique I’d use is similar to mapping a label to a can.

1. Create the artwork you’ll need. The diamond pattern matches the angle and density of the original. The black circle is the same diameter as the reference part, and is filled with no stroke.

2. Make the pattern a symbol. Drag the pattern into the Symbols palette.

3. Extrude the circle. Go to Effects > 3D > Extrude & Bevel. Click the Surface dropdown at the bottom and select Wireframe. This will help you orient the cylinder to the desired angle. I usually start by entering 0° for all the rotation angles, then rotating one axis at a time by grabbing the edges of the preview cube.

You may need to reposition your cylinder to line up better with a reference image. To do this, Click OK, move the cylinder as needed, then open your Appearance pallete and double click on the 3D Extrude & Bevel item. You may need to turn Preview back on.

When you’re happy with your geometry, click Map Art…

4. Map Art. Click through the Surfaces to find the rectangular side surface. Then select your pattern from the Symbol drop down. Next, select Scale To Fit at the bottom and check off Invisible Geometry. Click OK.

5. Change Surface to Flat Shading. Click OK. You can now edit the artwork as needed by going to Object > Expand Appearance. In my example, I changed the yellow fill to white, then drew the rest of the lineart on another layer.

Have a common problem in Illustrator? Let us know in the comments, or email it to suggest@technicalillustrators.org!

Often the most difficult and time consuming part of technical illustration is finding good reference material. While the internet serves up a limitless selection of images, finding one at an appropriate size, fidelity, viewing angle, and unambiguous copyright status, can be next to impossible.

Sometimes it’s much quicker to simply step away from your desk and go snap a photo of whatever you need. Of course, this isn’t practical if you’re drawing a submarine or a satellite, but it can help if you’re trying to fill a scene with commonplace objects.

Where it gets tricky is matching your photo reference up to the rest of the drawing. We’ve all seen drawings badly traced and assembled together from photos taken at different angles. We can recognize this because we understand perspective. So let’s apply that understanding when shooting our own photos.

Shooting Isometric Photos with an iPhone

They say that the best camera is the one you have with you (You can’t take a photo with a camera that’s not with you). For me, that’s my iPhone. But the other reason I’m using an iPhone is that it’s a smart phone and, of course, smart phones have apps.

One app in particular, BlendCamPLite (Free!), makes this process easier. It’s intended to composite multiple photos together like layers in Photoshop. But it also lets you load a photo from your library and use it as an overlay while shooting a new photo. There may be similar apps for Android, or better iPhone apps than this one, let me know!

1. To begin, get the app, then load this isometric grid into your iPhone photo library (put it in a folder and then tell iTunes to sync that folder).

2. Next, launch BlendCamPLite and press Add New.

3. Select Load from photo albums.

4. Select the isometric grid in your iPhone photo library. Then press Add New again.

5. This time select Take a photo.

6. Set up your object. Because of its irregular shape, I placed a card under mine to help align it to the grid. Select Overlap.

7. Select either Overlap a photo or Overlap a thin photo. The difference is the opacity of the overlay.

8. Voila, you can now move your camera (or object) around until it matches the grid. Press the camera icon to take the photo.

9. The app will return to the main screen and the results may not be what you expected. Select the top layer.

10. Select Darkness priority. This acts like Multiply in Photoshop.

11. That looks better. If you’re happy, select Preview & Save.

12. Select Save.

13. The photo AND the composite will be saved to your Camera Roll. Press OK.

And there you have it:

Of course the photo isn’t truly isometric, things still converge into the distance out here in meatspace. The iPhone’s wide-angle lens will emphasize that perspective, so for the best results move back as far as possible from the object and then zoom in. You should be able to get a close enough angle and then correct for any distortions when you start tracing in Illustrator.

Shooting On-Angle Photos with a Point-and-Shoot or DSLR

The same thing could be accomplished on a point-and-shoot camera or DSLR by printing out our handy isometric grid or your perspective lineart onto tracing paper, then taping that to the LCD screen. You may have to tape the tracing paper to another sheet of paper to get it through the printer in one piece. (Frankly, I’d rather stand outside shooting 100 photos and hope one of them matches than do all that.)

UPDATE: GazVezir wrote in to tell me that this can be accomplished on Android devices with Camera Zoom FX ($4.99). I don’t have an Android to test this, so your mileage may vary.

Do you shoot your own reference material? Any tips or tricks to share? Let us know in the comments! 

Iaroslav Lazunov has a great tutorial over on Astute Graphics’ blog on how to create proper gears in Adobe Illustrator. This tutorial makes use of the plugin VectorScribe, but the same results could be achieved with Illustrator’s default tools with some extra steps.

An important distinction is made here: Proper Gear. Most gears that show up in illustrations and icons would not work with any efficiency and some would just shred to bits. While you wouldn’t necessarily 3D print these and use them, you’ll end up with something that at least looks like it would work (unlike the failboat below).

Also included in the tutorial is a way to accomplish conical gradients in Illustrator (unfortunately the technique is extremely convoluted).

Check out the tutorial!

There is little you can do to stop someone who is determined to steal your images. Watermarks are easily removed and website scripts are defeated with a simple screen grab. These attempts only mar your work and make your site difficult to navigate.

In this tutorial I’m not talking about protection from image thiefs, I’m talking about protection from lost opportunities. Times when your images are inevitably downloaded, blogged, cropped, reblogged, faved and saved, and end up orphaned on someone’s hard drive, ffffound, imgfave, tumblr, or email—especially when that person likes your work and would really love to hire you, if they could just figure out where the image came from.

This happens more often than you think; art directors are constantly grabbing images whenever and wherever they see them, but seldom have the time to organize them and make note of where they came from (they should really be using Evernote). Months or even years down the road they might find your image floating in a random folder, uselessly renamed li4tceEqMb1qe.jpg by Tumblr, your name & website address croppped by an ignorant blogger leaving TinEye with no results.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could tuck your name, website and keywords and copyright information into every image to avoid this situation? You can—using Metadata.

Metadata is data about data—like the Created and Modified dates you see attached to every file on your computer. It’s like a little text file appended to files only adding a few bytes to the total file size. You might already be familiar with EXIF metadata added to JPGs by digital cameras, scanners and phones. The metadata I’m talking about in this tutorial is IPTC, but all you need to know is that by the end you’ll be able to embed your name, website, email, phone number, address and copyright into every image—automagically.

Batch Add Metadata to your Images
with Adobe Bridge

The first thing you’ll want to do is add metadata to all the images you have online, so that when your image goes walkabout, your name and contact information go with it.

1. Make a local backup of your website. Download all your images, or your whole site if it makes it easier, using FTP. Having an exact copy of your website on your hard drive is good practice anyway. Make another local copy, or a ZIP of your entire site in case something goes wrong.

2. Open Adobe Bridge. I am not a fan of Bridge, but this is one thing it’s actually good at. You can also use free tools, but your mileage may vary.

3. Navigate to your images. If your images are organized into folders select View > Show Items from Subfolders and uncheck View > Show Folders. You should now be looking at thumbnails of all your images. Select all by going to Edit > Select All or Ctrl+A.

4. Open the Metadata Panel (Window > Metadata Panel) and click one of the pencils on the right. Fill out the desired fields, especially Creator, Creator Website(s), Copyright Notice, Copyright Status, and Rights Usage Terms (this is where you put ©Your Name, All Rights Reserved). Click the checkmark when you’re done.

5. All done! Click one of the images to confirm, then upload everything back to your FTP, overwriting your old files.

Create a Metadata Template in Photoshop

You don’t want to have to open Bridge and type out all that information every time you make a new image (I never want to open Bridge). In Photoshop you can create a template to fill in some fields for you.

1. Start Photoshop and create a new image.

2. Go to File > File Info.

3. This is Photoshop’s Metadata Panel. The tabs we’re concerned with are Description and IPTC, you should recognize some of the fields from our work in Bridge. Fill out the appropriate fields. Note the scroll bar.

4. Create a Photoshop Metadata Template. Click the dropdown button at the bottom, between Preferences and Cancel and select Export. Save your metadata template to the default location with an appropriate file name. When you click the dropdown back in the Metadata Panel, you’ll see your template listed. Click it and it will ask if you want to clear existing properties, keep original metadata and replace matching properties, or keep original metadata and append matching properties. In the future, use whatever is appropriate.

Make Photoshop Automatically Apply
your Metadata Template

If you’re anything like me, you don’t even want to open the Metadata Panel. It’s an extra step and easily automated.

1. Create a new document.

2. Open the Actions Panel. Window > Actions. Actions are a way to perform repetitive multistepped tasks, and even bind them to hotkeys. They record every action until you click the Stop button on the right, then play them back whenever you trigger them with the Play button or hit the assigned Function Key.

3. Click Create a New Action. Give it a descriptive name and click Record.

4. Go to File > File Info. Click the dropdown and select the template we just created. Clear/Replace/Append existing data as you see fit, I selected Clear. Click OK.

5. Click Stop Playing/Recording on the Actions Panel. Add the new action to an appropriate folder.

6. Go to File > Scripts > Script Event Manager. Check off Enable Events to Run Scripts/Actions. This allows application events like starting the program, opening a document or printing to trigger scripts or actions. We want to apply our default metadata whenever we save or export an image. Start by selecting Save Document beside Photoshop Event, and your Default Metadata action. Click Add.

7. Repeat step 6 for Export Document. Click OK.

Update: Make Illustrator Automatically Apply
your Metadata Template

1. Create a new document. Choose settings that you use most frequently.

2. Go to File > File Info. This should look familiar. Drop down the menu in the lower right and select your previously created metadata profile.

3. Go to File > Save As Template.
Mac users, save this template to Username/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator/CS5/en-US/new Document Profiles/
Windows users save it to C:/Documents and Settings/Username/Application Data/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CS5 Settings/en-US/New Document Profiles/

4. Now Create a New Document. Under New Document Profile, select the template you just created.

5. Change settings on the New Document Panel as needed. The new document will retain your File Info metadata. Illustrator defaults to the last used Document Profile, so every new .AI and .PDF you make from now on should include your name and contact info.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to make Illustrator apply this metadata to exported images. That will have to be done with Photoshop.

And that’s all there is to it.

Now every image on your website and every image you save or export out of Photoshop will have your name, contact information and a copyright notice invisibly embedded. This metadata should persist in the file even if the image is cropped or edited, unless someone deliberately strips it out (but the people we’re dealing with here are lazy and probably won’t).

When your orphaned image ends up on an art director’s hard drive, battered and bruised, your metadata should still be intact and available to them in Bridge, Photoshop, or any other professional imaging application. It may not survive 100% of the time, but  the cost/benefit of this automated process should be a no-brainer.

Have a comment or suggestion about protecting your images online? Let me know in the comments!

Award-winning editorial and news graphics artist Ninian Carter shares his processes for producing a complex isometric illustration of a water-bomber aircraft in Adobe Illustrator. Ninian also generously makes his Illustrator file available for download on his Goodies page, so you can open it up and explore.

By no means is this a do-as-I-do tutorial, but it looks like he uses a scale-shear-rotate method similar to Cody Walker’s Advanced Isometric Tutorial.

This is a very quick and easy tutorial for creating an isometric grid in Adobe Illustrator, which you can then either work directly over in Illustrator or print out for freehand sketching.

If you want to skip the tutorial and get working in isometric right away, download these completed grids in PDF format, ready for printing or import into Illustrator or Corel:

• Download 1/4″ (0.25 inch) Isometric Grid – Cyan
• Download 1/4″ (0.25 inch) Isometric Grid – Black
• Download 1/8″ (0.125 inch) Isometric Grid – Cyan
• Download 1/8″ (0.125 inch) Isometric Grid – Black

1. Create a new document (File > New…). In this case we’re creating a grid we can print out, so we’ll make it letter sized. Set the units to Inches.

2. Draw a vertical line longer than the page. Select the Line tool [press the \ key] and click once (don’t drag) or press Enter. Enter a length of 15 and angle 90 for a 15 inch vertical line.

3. Move the line to the lower left corner. Using the Selection tool or “black arrow” [V] grab the line by the lower point and drag it to the lower left corner of the page. Your cursor should turn white when you’re over it.

4. Set the Keyboard Increment to 0.125 in. Open the Preferences panel (File > Preferences > General or Illustrator > Preferences > General, or simply Ctrl/Command K). Type 0.125 for 1/8″ increments. Press OK.

5. Duplicate the line horizontally. Hold the Alt/Option key and press the Right arrow key. The line will be duplicated 0.125″, our increment setting, to the right of the original. Keep doing this until the duplicates run well off the page.

6. Rotate 60 degrees. Select all the lines (drag a marquee selection using the Selection tool [V] or press Ctrl/Command A). Select the Rotate tool [R] and press Enter. Type 60 for Angle. Hit Copy. Align the end of one of the lines to the top left corner.

8. Reflect. Select the Reflect tool and press Enter. Ensure the Vertical radio button is selected, then press Copy.

9. Check the alignment. The grid should look like this, all identical equilateral triangles.

10. Select everything. Drag a marquee selection with the Selection tool [V] or press Ctrl/Command A. Group all the lines (Object > Group or Ctrl/Command G).

11. Draw a rectangle. Select the rectangle tool [M] and click (don’t drag) on the top left corner. Make the rectangle 8 x 10.5 inches and press OK.

12. Position the rectangle. Press [Down] twice and [Right] twice. This will give us a 1/4″ border on all sides of the rectangle.

13. Select everything. Ctrl/Command A.

14. Create a clipping path. Object > Clipping Path > Make or Ctrl/Command 7. This will hide everything outside of the rectangle.

16. Add a title block (optional). Include your logo, a place for a title, your name and the date.

If your new year’s resolution was to learn how to bring your illustrations to life with motion and interactivity, you are in luck. Below I’ve gathered some resources, tutorials and inspiration to get you started on your journey.

Adobe Flash

For better or for worse, Flash has been around for 15 years. While rival technologies may be digging its grave, Flash remains the most intuitive animation tool for users of Adobe Illustrator — and 15 years worth of online tutorials and forum discussions make for an easy learning curve.

Both made by Adobe, Flash and Illustrator work pretty well together (although, not as well as you might expect). Like Illustrator, Flash is vector based and can import .AI vector artwork along with bitmaps and video files. Illustrator can export .SWFs for Flash, and later versions (AI CS3+) can even include symbols, animation clips and dynamic objects.

In addition to animation tools, Flash also has a programming language called ActionScript (AS) with which you can make your animations interactive. There are three versions of ActionScript (AS1, AS2, AS3) which are not cross-compatible, each more esoteric than the last. I find AS2 to be the right mix of natural-language programming and breadth of possibilities, and seems to have the most tutorials too.

Resources:

Create Flash Animations Entirely in Illustrator
Illustrate and Animate a Bouncing Ball
Kirupa – Flash & ActionScript Tutorials
AdobeTV – Learn Flash CS5 Professional

Adobe After Effects

AE is a beast of a program; it’s like the Photoshop of video. It’s used for 2D & 3D motion graphics, editing, compositing, post-production and special effects for video, TV and film. And like Photoshop it can be used to create entire projects from start to finish, but its real strength is in manipulating and compositing assets made by other means, such as Illustrator and 3D applications.

AE takes just about anything you can throw at it — AI, EPS, PSD, PNG, PDF, MP3, WAV, AVI, MOV, even camera movements from popular 3D software — and spits out a wide variety of video formats.

Although AE does allow you to control animations and effects with scripting, it only exports video meaning no interactivity with AE alone.

Resources:

Intro to After Effects
Build a Car Racing Scene from Photographs
Greyscale Gorilla – After Effects Tutorials
AE Tuts
AdobeTV – Learn After Effects CS5

Ai to Canvas

Ai to Canvas is a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator produced by developers at Microsoft. It enables Illustrator to export vector and bitmap artwork directly to a new HTML5 web element called a Canvas. Canvas-enabled browsers (latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera) can then interpret and render that content for viewers.

The advantage over simply exporting images for the web is that artwork in a Canvas element remains vectored and can be animated and manipulated with JavaScript code. In fact, Ai to Canvas allows rudimentary animation simply by renaming your layers.

The fact that Canvas doesn’t rely on a browser plug-in (like Flash does) means that your animation & interactivity will run regardless of the viewer’s installed components. This means content presented in a Canvas element are viewable on Apple’s iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, since they disallow browser plug-ins. I made this HTML5 demo to try it out.

Resources:

Ai to Canvas Plug-In for Illustrator
Ai to Canvas Samples & Documentation
Canvas Element Tutorials & Documentation

Use What You’ve Got

You don’t necessarily need a fancy program to create rich animated and interactive media. Photoshop is equipped with an animation palette suitable for creating flipbook type animations; Here’s a primer.

Failing that, try to be creative with the tools you have. Here are two web pages that feel animated, using only static assets:

Ben the Bodyguard
Lost Worlds Fairs: Atlantis

Have a tool or resource to recommend? Let me know in the comments and I’ll add it to our Resources page!

Following up on the previously shared How to Draw Hands, it seems illustrator Joumana Medlej has a slew of tutorials including Human Anatomy, Feet, Movement & Flexibility and more! Joumana has even compiled them into a book for off-line reference. Really great summary of anatomy and life drawing executed in clean, confident lines that make it very applicable for technical illustrators.

I can’t remember how or when I came across this tutorial on drawing hands by illustrator Joumana Medlej, but it’s been an invaluable resource. It neatly summarizes everything I’ve ever learned from anatomy books and life drawing lessons on the construction and depiction of a palm & five digits. The style is clean, concise and technical, and the examples explore the hand’s full range of motion and various viewing angles.

Bookmark it. You’ll find that it’s handy.

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