For the personal honors project, I will be creating a scene consisting of my friends cars. I will be using Illustrator for this project. I've chosen to do this because I think it will be a challenge, recreating all their cars in detail and creating a good background. On top of that, I love my friends, and I know they love their cars, and I thought this would be a good way to show my appreciation towards them and all that they've done for me.
I took pictures of everyone's car and I outlined them in Illustrator.
Then I gave them all color and shading.
Reflection
For my honors project, I wanted to do something ambitious that I would really enjoy. So I decided on drawing all of my friends cars. I chose to do this for a number of reasons. First of all, my friends are very important to me and they have helped me through a lot so I wanted to draw their cars sort of as a way to show my appreciation towards them. I knew they would like it because all of them really love their cars, they’re a huge part of them. On top of that, I personally really like cars, so it would be a cool for me to do that. And it would also be a big challenge because cars have complex designs that can’t be easily captured in a 2D drawing, so I would have to make good use of color and shading.
The first step would obviously be to get reference images. I didn’t just want to get one from the internet because each of their cars is unique, so I needed to take pictures of them. The first challenge was making sure to get the same angle for all the cars, that way the proportions wouldn’t look weird when I put them all together. This challenge became evident when I asked everybody to send me a picture of their cars and they were all from different angles, and low-quality images. So I had to take the images of the cars myself with a DSLR camera to ensure that they were all from the same view, and were high quality, making my job easier. Then I got started on making the cars. The first car I made was Aiden’s maroon Volvo. This was a good first car because it was pretty simple, and there I learned a lot of do’s and dont’s. First of all, cars are symmetrical. So to make my job easier, and to make the cars as symmetrical as possible, I only outlined one half of the car every time. After I finished doing that, I would copy and paste it, flip it, and put it all together (in most of the cars x-rays you can see a line down the middle, that’s from this.). I would then start coloring and shading in the cars, which I later decided to do before copying and flipping the other half, just because it was much easier. The Volvo is the most simple car I made, and honestly, my least favorite. I barely had any shading, and most of the car was just one flat color which made it look very 2D. Next up was Ryan’s Jeep. That’s the more simple Jeep. The Jeep, for the most part, was very simple. It didn’t have a lot of curves and dips. The hardest parts there were making the tires (which I reused for the 2 other SUVs) and the latches on the hood. The latches it has right now were not the original, the original were honestly very bad. Then came Nathan’s Jeep. At first, I tried using Ryan’s Jeep and modifying it (since they’re the same models), but I realized that it was gonna be harder than just starting from scratch. Nathan has a lot of attachments on his Jeep, a metal bumper, a wench, hooks, extra lights. The Jeep itself wasn’t that hard, but the attachments really were a pain, especially the wench. On this Jeep, I reused the wheels, made new hood latches (which I also put on Ryan’s Jeep) and I also made sure to make it taller than Ryan’s since Nathan has a lift on his Jeep. Next came Russell’s BMW. I really enjoyed this one because it was really challenging for me. It was the first time I really captured the lines and curves of the car. The car itself is always the easiest part, but then comes coloring and shading it. This was when I started using gradients in order for the darker parts to blend in nicely. I also started paying attention to little details here. Details that most people won’t ever notice when looking at the cars. The side-view mirrors are carbon fiber, so I made a carbon fiber pattern and put it on there. And on the bottom grill, Russell has a little rip, which I originally put in there, but he later told me he rather his car not have that defect. Russell’s car was my favorite until I decided to make myself a car. I’m the only one that does not yet have a car, but I wanted to be included in this, so I just made myself my dream car, a Lamborghini Urus. I chose this not just because it’s one of my favorite cars, but also because it was gonna be the hardest car I’ve done. Since it’s such a sporty car, it has a lot of hard to recreate curves and edges, and overall a really aggressive design which would be fun to do. Here, I really went all out with the details. I gave the headlights a little bit of a glow, made a couple of patterns for under the grill until I finally made the perfect one, and spent hours on detailing everything I could in the car. This was my last one, and in my opinion, also my best one. Finally, I decided to put them all on a platform, surrounded by glass, on a sunset beach, just because I can.
Looking back at the cars, it’s amazing seeing how much I improved when comparing the Volvo to the Lamborghini. I learned to work smarter and not harder, I learned how to make use of patterns, gradients, and opacity. And I learned how important it is to keep your layers named and very organized because it can get very messy very fast. I also learned how much easier it is working with paths when you use the lock function. Overall, I am very happy with how the project turned out. If I could change anything, I would go back to the Volvo and two Jeeps and work on them a lot more, bringing them up to par with the BMW and Lamborghini. I was also very happy with how the background turned out, and I enjoyed the little things, even though I know people won’t notice them, I know they’re there. I think this project really helped me grow and become much better at Illustrator.
The first step would obviously be to get reference images. I didn’t just want to get one from the internet because each of their cars is unique, so I needed to take pictures of them. The first challenge was making sure to get the same angle for all the cars, that way the proportions wouldn’t look weird when I put them all together. This challenge became evident when I asked everybody to send me a picture of their cars and they were all from different angles, and low-quality images. So I had to take the images of the cars myself with a DSLR camera to ensure that they were all from the same view, and were high quality, making my job easier. Then I got started on making the cars. The first car I made was Aiden’s maroon Volvo. This was a good first car because it was pretty simple, and there I learned a lot of do’s and dont’s. First of all, cars are symmetrical. So to make my job easier, and to make the cars as symmetrical as possible, I only outlined one half of the car every time. After I finished doing that, I would copy and paste it, flip it, and put it all together (in most of the cars x-rays you can see a line down the middle, that’s from this.). I would then start coloring and shading in the cars, which I later decided to do before copying and flipping the other half, just because it was much easier. The Volvo is the most simple car I made, and honestly, my least favorite. I barely had any shading, and most of the car was just one flat color which made it look very 2D. Next up was Ryan’s Jeep. That’s the more simple Jeep. The Jeep, for the most part, was very simple. It didn’t have a lot of curves and dips. The hardest parts there were making the tires (which I reused for the 2 other SUVs) and the latches on the hood. The latches it has right now were not the original, the original were honestly very bad. Then came Nathan’s Jeep. At first, I tried using Ryan’s Jeep and modifying it (since they’re the same models), but I realized that it was gonna be harder than just starting from scratch. Nathan has a lot of attachments on his Jeep, a metal bumper, a wench, hooks, extra lights. The Jeep itself wasn’t that hard, but the attachments really were a pain, especially the wench. On this Jeep, I reused the wheels, made new hood latches (which I also put on Ryan’s Jeep) and I also made sure to make it taller than Ryan’s since Nathan has a lift on his Jeep. Next came Russell’s BMW. I really enjoyed this one because it was really challenging for me. It was the first time I really captured the lines and curves of the car. The car itself is always the easiest part, but then comes coloring and shading it. This was when I started using gradients in order for the darker parts to blend in nicely. I also started paying attention to little details here. Details that most people won’t ever notice when looking at the cars. The side-view mirrors are carbon fiber, so I made a carbon fiber pattern and put it on there. And on the bottom grill, Russell has a little rip, which I originally put in there, but he later told me he rather his car not have that defect. Russell’s car was my favorite until I decided to make myself a car. I’m the only one that does not yet have a car, but I wanted to be included in this, so I just made myself my dream car, a Lamborghini Urus. I chose this not just because it’s one of my favorite cars, but also because it was gonna be the hardest car I’ve done. Since it’s such a sporty car, it has a lot of hard to recreate curves and edges, and overall a really aggressive design which would be fun to do. Here, I really went all out with the details. I gave the headlights a little bit of a glow, made a couple of patterns for under the grill until I finally made the perfect one, and spent hours on detailing everything I could in the car. This was my last one, and in my opinion, also my best one. Finally, I decided to put them all on a platform, surrounded by glass, on a sunset beach, just because I can.
Looking back at the cars, it’s amazing seeing how much I improved when comparing the Volvo to the Lamborghini. I learned to work smarter and not harder, I learned how to make use of patterns, gradients, and opacity. And I learned how important it is to keep your layers named and very organized because it can get very messy very fast. I also learned how much easier it is working with paths when you use the lock function. Overall, I am very happy with how the project turned out. If I could change anything, I would go back to the Volvo and two Jeeps and work on them a lot more, bringing them up to par with the BMW and Lamborghini. I was also very happy with how the background turned out, and I enjoyed the little things, even though I know people won’t notice them, I know they’re there. I think this project really helped me grow and become much better at Illustrator.