Infographic designer Ninan Carter [previously] has once again documented and shared his process for creating a detailed and technical cutaway illustration. This time, his subject is Microsoft’s upcomng XBox Series X video game console, highlighting the hardware design and capabilities of the new machine.
Check out the whole process on Ninian’s blog, Graphic Gibbon.
Thanks Ninian!
Jacob O’Neal is a graphic designer, 3D artist, and creator of Animagraffs, animated infographics that explain how everyday things work.
Largely self-taught, O’Neal combined his interests in design, science, and engineering with social media savvy to create viral internet content that propelled him into a career working with some of the best known brands in the world.
Infographic artist Ninian Carter, who previously shared with us his process for illustrating a smartphone, an ancient tomb, and a water bomber, has posted 100+ screenshots showing his process for illustrating St George’s Chapel on the grounds of Windsor Castle in Adobe Illustrator.
To create it, he relied on satellite imagery, copies of old plans, 360° panoramic photos and various tourist photos.
Great work, Ninian!
Infographic artist Ninian Carter (previously) has shared another step-by-step isometric illustration process, this time of a modular smartphone and its interchangeable internal components.
Check it out at his blog, Graphic Gibbon.
Iaroslav Lazunov has a great isometric illustration tutorial for Adobe Illustrator on the Astute Graphics blog.
It’s similar to the scale-shear-rotate method we’ve talked about before. You start by drawing straight-on orthographic views of the top, front and side of the object, then distort each onto their respective isometric planes.
What’s cool about this technique is that it uses Graphic Styles to apply the distortion. This way the artwork stays dynamic, meaning you can edit the straight-on flat projections to update the isometric version. They also use Astute Graphics’ Phantasm plugin to apply shading to each plane at the same time.
This technique would be really handy if you had to create a large detailed locator map, especially if you might have to change the design of elements down the road.
Full disclosure: As a beta tester for Astute Graphics I receive complimentary products.
Drawing made with Adobe Illustrator Line on iPad
At its Adobe MAX conference today, the company has announced new features for its iPhone and iPad app offering. Potentially of interest to tech illustrators are:
All apps are free, but require a registration for a free Creative Cloud membership.
Do you use mobile apps in your creative process? Does professional work require a desktop? Sound off in the comments!
Three years ago, members of the Adobe Illustrator team got in touch with me to gather feedback from the Technical Illustration community. While they couldn’t promise any new features, or that any issues we had would be addressed, they were at least reaching out and willing to listen.
Since then, Illustrator has seen two releases: Illustrator CS6 in April 2012, and Illustrator CC in June 2013. Having just recently upgraded to Creative Cloud, I thought it might be time to revisit our list and see what’s been addressed, what problems persist, and what more could be done to improve Illustrator in the future.
Tired of losing work to Adobe Illustrator’s random and spontaneous crashes? You’re not alone.
This tutorial on Vector Tuts+ will show you how to roll your own Auto-Save function using the Actions palette. It’s really easy and lets you set a custom interval and name & location for the auto-save file. So easy, you’ll wonder why Adobe hasn’t added it as a feature.
One caveat is that this workaround means an action is running constantly, and that you can only set one interval for all your actions. This effectively disables your other actions.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvwfEM6p394
Astute Graphics has released a new version of their VectorScribe plugin for Adobe Illustrator. The new version adds some really useful features to their existing tools, as well as a few new tools that technical illustrators might find handy.
The Dynamic Corners tool now detects previously expanded or non-dynamic corners and makes them dynamic again. Similarly, the Dynamic Shapes tool can restore dynamic status to expanded artwork or even convert shapes created with Illustrator’s default shape tools into Dynamic Shapes.
New to the suite are the Smart Remove Brush and the Path Extender/Trimmer. The Smart Remove Brush makes it easy to clean up artwork that is overly complicated, LiveTraced or expanded. The Path Extender/Trimmer works as expected on straight paths, but its real power is intelligently extending curved segments.
Astute Graphics’ YouTube Channel is a great way to see VectorScribe 2 and all their tools in action.
Full disclosure: As a beta tester I received a complimentary copy of this plugin.
Also of note to Mac users, Astute Graphics has updated their whole product lineup for compatibility with Mavericks (OS X 10.9).
In Illustrator CS 4, Adobe added a bunch of features to Smart Guides that made them, well, dumb. Moving an object in even a simple drawing became a tug-of-war against seemingly random alignment guides and snapping points. Sure, these features could be adjusted or turned off, but the only way to get something approaching the legacy behaviour is to hold the Command/Ctrl key while dragging. And even if Smart Guides happen to snap to the desired object, switching to Outline mode (Cmd/Ctrl+Y) often reveals that the snapping wasn’t accurate.
Sigh.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZRGIDBEnWs
Once again, Astute Graphics to the rescue. Their new ColliderScribe plugin for Adobe Illustrator makes snapping a snap. It enables precise snapping, consistent spacing and tangential alignment easy and painless. It’s a small, easy to learn, affordable but powerful addition to your toolset.
Astute Graphics is holding two webinars tomorrow, Wednesday, March 13 at 3:00PM and 5:00PM GMT (10:00am and 12:00PM EST) to demonstrate ColliderScribe and SubScribe. Only 25 spaces are available in each session, so reserve now:
10am EST GoToTraining session
12pm EST GoToTraining session
ColliderScribe by Astute Graphics (£10 / $15 US) or try it free for 14 days.
Full disclosure: As a beta tester, I received a complimentary copy of this plugin.
