Richard Chasemore

Jango Fett

Traditionally painted cross-section of a space ship from Star Wars Episode II

There are many unique forms of technical illustration out there.  Some illustrators from time to time get to expand the realm of technical illustration by depicting not only what exists in our real world and what makes it work, but get the opportunity to reveal the inner workings of fictional vehicles and worlds.

Richard Chasemore has worked for various clients throughout the years producing detailed work and is well known for his works featured in DK publishing and Lucas Books’ Star Wars: Complete Cross Sections and Star Wars: Complete Locations.  I recently had the opportunity to ask him a few questions:

What is your background? What inspired/got you into the field of technical illustration?

I did a four year course in technical illustration at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design.  I came across the course quite by accident when I jumped on a school bus that took me to the Art College and when I saw the technical illustration department I just said to myself that’s what I want to do.

How did you start working for DK publishing? What were some of the projects that you did for them?

I was working on the See Inside series of books for DK when Hans started work on the Star Wars Project and I was brought in to help out.

What led you to produce the Star Wars Complete Locations and Complete Cross Sections books as well as  later works for Indiana Jones?  What was it like working for Lucas?

The locations books were incredibly hard work, but great fun as was the Indiana Jones arts.  Everyone at Lucas Films were amazingly kind to us, letting Hans and I work in the art department alongside their amazing artists.  We did meet Mr. Lucas and he was a really nice guy.

What is your process like?

Starting with very simple pencil works, building up to a complicated finished pencil which is then inked and painted in gouache.

What was your favorite thing you’ve worked on or best experience you’ve had so far as a technical illustrator?

I am working on Incredible Cross Sections Clone Wars at the moment which is all done in 3D and is looking amazing.

Any advice to technical illustrators just starting out?

Just keep working, day and night!

Richard’s work can be found at RichardChasemore.co.uk

Step-by-Step Isometric Aircraft

Ninian Carter - Isometric Aircraft

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 at the bottom of the 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.

How to Create an Isometric Grid in Adobe Illustrator

How to Create an Isometric Grid in Adobe Illustrator

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:

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Tutorial – How to Draw Hands

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.

Presentation Techniques by Dick Powell

Presentation Techniques by Dick Powell

Presentation Techniques by Dick Powell

The second of Marc Gellen‘s book recommendations is Presentation Techniques by Dick Powell, first published in 1985. Whereas Technical Illustration – Techniques and Applications was more of a textbook of tools and techniques, this book is a practical guide to accurately drawing and rendering for the purpose of communicating design ideas. While both books are reminders of how much illustration has changed in 20 years in terms of media and style, I think this book’s techniques are well presented and still relevant today.

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Technical Illustration: Techniques and Applications

Technical Illustration: Techniques and Applications by John A. Dennison and Charles D. Johnson

Technical Illustration: Techniques and Applications

Marc Gellen was looking for recommendations for books on technical illustration on Twitter, but ended up providing me with the recommendations. Fortunately, all three books he suggested were available from my local library. I thought I’d give them a brief review here for the benefit of anyone whose public (or private) library might be lacking on the subject.

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Harry Campbell’s Technical Inspirations

© Harry Campbell

© Harry Campbell

The work of award winning editorial illustrator Harry Campbell is infused with a technical illustration aesthetic. A nod to the highly complex and industrialized world we live in, he makes use of bold structural lineart, axonometric drawing systems, parts explosions, and cutaways to communicate ideas.

For his latest work for The Wall Street Journal, he shares a bit about his process and inspiration:

[…] Just in case anybody is wondering about whether my mechanical objects are traced or taken from other drawings. Generally not, I just start drawing. I do look at reference like vaccum tubes, things like that. During this project I was thinking I need to start gathering a bin of junk to pull from. I do love exploded views of ordinary objects. Here’s one of my favorites.

Harry Campbell's Inspiration

Harry Campbell's Inspiration

See more of Mr. Campbell’s work on Drawger or his rep, Gerald & Cullen Rapp.

Adobe Illustrator Gripes & Feature Wishlist

I’m going to have the ear of 3-4 developers from Adobe’s Illustrator team sometime in the next few days. They want to know what makes our life difficult, and what would make it easier. What are your gripes, pain points, repetitive stress injuries? What is your dream feature? What are you accomplishing with plug-ins that should really be built in?

Let me know in the comments, or by editing the fancy Google Doc after the jump.

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