Jim Hatch recently completed this great project for Volkswagen, featuring finely detailed and rendered cutaway illustrations of their entire vehicle lineup. After the break, he shares some insight on working on a project of this scale, some process work, and lots of beautiful final illustrations.
National Infographic is a blog written by Juan Velasco, art director of the venerable National Geographic magazine.
Velasco writes in depth about the rigorous journalistic integrity, the painstaking attention to detail, and the high-level design thought that goes into producing visuals for such an esteemed publication. The graphics department spends months producing original research, consulting with experts and consultants, and digging through data to bring a story to the surface. The amount of resources at their disposal is amazing.
Far beyond geographic maps, the graphics department produces illustrations, infographics, animations, interactive modules, videos, 3d models, dioramas and photo essays on topics such as science, technology, history, culture and economics.
National Infographic. Definitely one to keep an eye on.
I’ve mentioned TinEye in passing before, for protecting your images and your reputation online. TinEye is a reverse image search, meaning you upload or link to an image, and it finds all the places the same image appears online.
Using TinEye periodically on images in your online portfolio can help you find unauthorized usage of your images on other sites. The best course of action from there is up to your discretion—you could ask for a credit line and a link to your site, request they remove the image, demand payment, or file a DMCA Takedown.
But uploading or linking each image from your site to TinEye is tedious and time consuming. And TinEye’s database hasn’t indexed every image on the web (“only” 2.18 billion) which means it might not find all cases of infringement. For a more exhaustive search you’d have to repeat the process on Google Images, the Russian search engine Yandex and the Chinese search engine Baidu.
Instead, you can use browser plugins/extensions such as Who Stole My Pictures for Firefox and RevEye for Chrome to search all of these engines at once. Simply right click on the image and select Search All In Tabs (or something similar). A tab will open to each site showing the results.
Thanks to my pal Chad for the tip!
How do you protect your images online, and how do you deal with infringers? Let me know your opinions in the comments!
I found this tutorial on the Computer Arts website. Pretty nice tutorial on covering some basic isometric tricks. I have to admit, I’ve never messed around with the extrude tool much but this made me want to try it out a little more.
Corvette Cutaway Illustration by David Kimble © Copyright General Motors
Davvi wrote in to tell me about this somewhat hidden collection of technical illustrations and photography of the Chevy Volt. Very cool stuff, hopefully that link doesn’t disappear!
From there I found my way to GM’s excellent media portal which provides official content and high resolution images for news and editorial outlets. Digging around in the photo section yielded some awesome finds like the huge David Kimble airbrushed cutaway illustration above. Try searching for illustration, cutaway, and rendering, you’ll love what you find!
Know of any other manufacturers with public media portals? Let us know in the comments!
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5lk-XKShhM
Astute Graphics has done it again. In what seems like a quest to put all of Adobe Illustrator’s native tools to shame, they’ve released a new plugin suite called SubScribe. Included are tools for drawing circles based on 2 or 3 points, connecting and straightening lines, drawing arcs, rotating and orienting artwork and drawing tangents and perpendicular paths (as shown in the video above).
Time to reassign some hotkeys.
SubScribe is free to all Astute Graphics customers.
Dave Correia wanted a print of the Assembly Illustration from Hell to hang by his desk, but couldn’t find a source or a decent image. So he took it upon himself to redraw it and share with anyone that might one as well. Click above for a 17″ x 11″ print-ready copy.
Thanks, Dave. Happy Friday!
Illustrator Ray Frenden was disappointed with his Wacom Cintiq 20WSX and had reservations about giving the company another stack of cash for a “sluggish, incremental, trivial” new generation model:
The last generation of Cintiqs based on Intuos 3 tech had some significant issues with display quality. They used cheap TN panels. They looked muddy and washed out. An anti-glare coating on the back of the plastic screens worsened an already low contrast ratio and robbed the colors of what little vibrancy they had. The newer Cintiqs, like the 24HD, have IPS panels similar to the Apple Cinema Displays. Others have said the display quality is a vast improvement over the last-gen models. That said, the new 24HD has a lower PPI than even my older 20WSX, so I’m healthily skeptical. […]
I’d be less harsh on the Cintiqs if Wacom weren’t demanding such a hefty price for what amounts to little more than an Intuos digitizer with a cheap LCD slapped atop. […] I felt I should at least look into other options when buying a new tablet monitor for a second machine.
Not finding many reliable reviews, he took matters into his own hands. He ordered two models made by Yiynova, the $299 10.1″ DP10 and the $499 19″ MSP19, and extensively documented his experience.
From my read, the hardware was better than he expected, though he did get one dud which the distributor replaced. Both had flaky driver support, and neither worked well in Mac OS. But they worked passably in Windows, with the DP10 performing better than the MSP19.
Given the price point, less than half Wacom’s comparable models, these devices might be attractive to students or illustrators who want to try out a tablet display. Either way, it looks like Wacom has some competition and might have to up the ante.
Click through for Frenden’s full review, unboxing and demo videos
Wacom, the undisputed champion of professional-grade input tablets, has outdone themselves with their new Intuos5 line.
They’ve simplified and refined all aspects of the Intuos4 to focus on productivity and a tidy workspace. Gone are the distracting OLED screens, the glossy finish, and all wires. Replacing them are an intuitive, customizable on-screen menu system that keeps your eyes on your work instead of your hands, a smooth, uncluttered and durable matte finish that Batman himself may have designed, and an optional wireless kit that consists of a transmitter, a USB receiver and a Li-ion battery with a 6 to 16 hour charge depending on the size of the tablet.
They’ve also added multi-touch sensitivity and gesture recognition, so you can use the ten pens you were born (up to 16, if you’re some kind of freak) or their now-standard stylus that offers 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity. A button toggles between pen and touch modes to avoid accidental input.
US prices range from $230 to $470 depending on size, and they should be shipping very soon.
For more info, check out Engadget’s hands on, and Wacom’s product page.
Thanks to Larry for the tip!
Yesterday, Apple announced a joint initiative with publishers to bring textbooks to the iPad. This move would make them cheaper, lighter, always up to date, and—of interest to us—more richly illustrated and interactive.
When we set out to bring textbooks to iPad, there were really three areas we focused on: we wanted to have really fast, fluid navigation, we wanted to have beautiful graphics, we wanted to create an easier way to take notes.
—Roger Rosner, VP Productivity Applications, Apple
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJxZG2Nv4KA
Apple also released a free iBooks authoring suite, iBooks Author. This application enables anyone to write, design, create interactive modules, and publish a book to the iBooks store for sale.
While I’m not sure that the iPad is a more durable medium than paper for kindergardeners through high school students (could you see yourself in your garage with a iHaynes manual?), this is certainly an encouraging development for our trade. It demonstrates that people learn best, are enthusiastic about learning, when information is presented in a highly visual, immersive way.
The choice of graphics shown might also be a signal that if you’re not dabbling in 3D, motion and interactivity yet, it might be a good time to start. Remember, every threat is also an opportunity.