Midterm Portfolio - Illustrator

For the Illustrator aspect of my portfolio, I chose the sunglasses and the car. I feel that these two projects used all of the aspects we had learned in the program and incorporated the elements seamlessly into some really cool graphics. This program was the only one I'd never used before, so I feel that I made the most improvement in Illustrator, since I started from scratch, and I think I've learned a lot.




















Sunglasses:

This project taught me to use the power of suggestion rather than replicate every detail. By imitating the general shapes and creating the suggestion of shadows despite my simple use of gradients and solid colors, I created a relatively realistic pair of sunglasses. I learned the value of layers, since I could hide all the layers except the template and the part I was working on, so I could get as accurate as possible. I thought this was more interesting than simply recreating a logo, as we have done in the past.
















Favorite Ride:

This was more or less the culmination of the Illustrator projects: make a realistic representation of a car (or other mode of transportation). In order to reproduce the effects, I built the car in sections, and used gradients and gradient meshes to give the illusion of three-dimensionality. I had to layer and alter transparencies, and all of this blended together to create a recreation of this Audi Aero Twin Turbo, though close up, the piece becomes obviously made of basic shapes and lines.