Yoshiya High Wheel Robot Art

[nasa]

NIce art!

[Action Robot]

Thanks for all the great feedback guys! I achieved this level of realism by using a photo that I took as reference. David K., I especially value your feedback, what with you being a celebrity illustrator and all :).

I actually did this piece on my iPad 2, using a program called "Graphic". It was an indy product called "iDraw" when I bought it, but has apparently been absorbed by the folks at Autodesk. You can get a desktop version (mac only at this time) for only 29.99 - an absolute steal compared to  Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw! I was pushing what the iPad could handle with this piece - it was getting pretty laggy towards the end.

As far as the blur goes, that's something that is a feature in Graphic, but I don't think that Illustrator or Inkscape can do it at this time; not sure about Corel, maybe Ken can give us an answer on that one? The others need to catch up, it's clearly an awesome feature to have!

Gernot, theoretically I could put any background I wanted to behind the robot. I don't know how the color is looking on your monitor, but the background is supposed to be a grey with a bit of a greenish cast, based on the colors of the original photo. I actually first tried putting a more neutral grey in the background, but it didn't look right. If you think about it, the robot is reflecting the background in his body, so the background color has to be harmonious with the colors of the reflections. It looks very obviously "off" when you do otherwise. One solution would be to remove the background entirely; for a majority of the time I was making the piece, I had the robot on a plain white background, and it looked sweet like that. Putting the background in just gave it a little more depth.

As for what is reflected in the eyes, the white part would be the softbox I had the robot inside to shoot the reference pic. It's a box made of translucent white fabric with one side open  to shoot into. You shine the lighting from the outside of the cube, and the fabric diffuses the light to give you nice, even lighting. The darker bits would be the darkened room I was standing in; I don't really know what caused those antenna-looking shapes...maybe someone was watching over my shoulder? (oooooooEEEEEooooooowoooooooo!)

As this piece is vector art, it is resolution independent. That means it can be printed at any size whatsoever and still be this crisp and detailed...even billboard size! Gernot, canvas would definitely be an option, but it looks soooooooooooo goooooooooood printed on glossy paper, that is what I would recommend. It really makes the reflections look their best. I usually do my prints on matte paper, but this one didn't "pop" until I went glossy. 8x10 inches and 16x20 inches would be two standard frame sizes that this print would fit in its current aspect ratio, but it would be very easy to adapt it to almost any size or ratio; that's where vector art really pays off, in flexibility.

 If anyone is interested in a print of any size, just let me know. I'll have to figure out the pricing based on the size, but be sure that anyone here will get a special Alphadrome price!

For more info on the software, look here: https://graphic.com/mac/

Cheers,

Dave

[Lunik]

Very nice and very impressive!

Thanks, also for introducing the technical background.