Saturday, November 8, 2008

Desert Hawks --"Sandstorm"

Adobe Illustrator CS2
Starting an illustration for myself I don't usually have any plan, just an idea of something I want to draw. This piece turned out to be an exercise in curvilinear perspective.

I drew the robot first. I then added the car, man, and road, then realized I'd better do this in correct perspective if I want it to look right. I eyeballed where I thought the horizon should be drawing lines from the car to see where the vanishing points would hit. One hit well inside the picture, and the other way off to the right outside the frame. Without really thinking about how I'd do the rest of the picture, I fixed the perspective on the car according to these vanishing points. I realized quickly that my poor choice of the left-hand vanishing point location would distort everything to the left of that vanishing point, a big Mechanical Perspective 101 no-no.

Unless I wanted to move the vanishing point off to the left (what I should have done in the first place had I been thinking) and redo the car with the correct perspective (NOT a happy thought), the only other solution was curvilinear perspective, keeping the left vanishing point as the center point, sort of like 1-point perspective, and manipulating the perspective in a circular fish-eye lens fashion, much closer to how the humans see things as they turn their heads from the pivot point of the neck and look around. Not a problem really, but more work than I'd considered putting into this drawing. Turned out to be a decent solution, though, as the rest of the illustration fell into place after that. Nothing amazing, but it worked in a fix.

The colors are mostly brown and bluish-green, basically color compliments, with some yellow and violet added for drama and contrast. :)

16 comments:

Digital Scott's Illustrationblog said...

Wow, really terrific! Great colors and an awesome overall effect!

Andrew W. Moir said...

Thank you for the awesome comment Digital Scott! I see your style has continued to evolve since the last time I checked your blog. Great work! :)

Unknown said...

yea so i always forget about this site man. I have flickr, facebook, and all of that junk. I always forget to check out blogs.

Vanessa Brantley Newton said...

This is really for T.V. I really like what you've done here. Great style you have. Excellent illustration.

Andrew W. Moir said...

Well Stu, I'm glad you remembered to stop over and check things out. :)

Wow Vanessa, thanks for the comments! You have some pretty amazing work on your blog as well. :)

ELLA ELVIANA said...

awesome work!

Willie Baronet said...

well done, and clever way to work the topic in. :-)

Andrew W. Moir said...

Hey Enigma, thank you for dropping such a nice comment, I appreciate it. :)

Thanks for the great comment RRRamone! Yeah, my IF entries are either spot-on topic or kind of a stretch. :P

You both do some great artwork! Keep up the great work. :)

Tomás Serrano said...

Andrew, fantastic explanations, very very interesting for me. I´m using often the fish-eye perspective in the children´s book I´m doing. I waste many time choising the points of view cause I think it´s fundamental.

Andrew W. Moir said...

Tomas: I see how effectively you use curvilinear perspective; and you're correct-- just like photography, your point-of-view is essential to getting the feeling across. :)

Unknown said...

absolutely fantastic

Andrew W. Moir said...

Hey Ellis, thanks for stopping by and telling me what you think. :)

Eric Barclay said...

Super cool. Has a great retro-Hollywood movie feel.

Andrew W. Moir said...

A retro-Hollywood feel-- you mean like the Ten Commandments or something? Or maybe one of the old Flash Gordon movies? Hey, that's cool! Thanks Eric. :)

Dominic Philibert said...

Very nice man!!!!!!

Andrew W. Moir said...

Thank you very much Dominic! Your caricatures are out of this world! :)