The Struggles of Photo-realism in Vector Art
As a big fan of doing art, I have worked with a lot of different mediums over the years. The one struggle that I have always run into, however, is the quality of the lines. Most digital art and design programs are resolution dependent, which means that they run on a pixel based system that can make it hard when you want to enlarge your image and it turns out blurry. The solution to this is, of course, Vector Art! Vector Art is resolution independent and can be resized without reducing the quality of the lines. It is time consuming and hard on your computer, however.
For this project I wanted to make a photo realistic watch from a photo using vectors in Adobe Illustrator. This watch had to have moving parts and a detailed display to complete the specifications required. Even though its vector, it needed to be realistic enough to pass as a photograph. The watch only needed one light source, and I used several different references for the project. Regardless of the quality, however, creating a photo realistic picture out of vector art is not an easy task.
Sketches
There were several steps throughout the process of creating this watch. First, I started out on paper and sketched out all of the different pieces of the watch to get an idea of what I wanted it to look like as a final piece. There were several sketches where I just couldn’t get the buttons on the side of the watch the correct size. I finally came out with one where the button top and bottom were the same size. You can also see where I shaded in some of the sketches to get an idea of where I wanted to put my gradients to get them to look as realistic as possible. This is the easy part. Next comes actually making it vector.
Draft 1
Draft with Reference Image
Measuring the Proportions
Feedback
For my first few drafts I just wanted to go in and add some base shapes and gradients to match the picture. I came up with the above picture (on the right) within a few hours that looked decent enough. As I continued to work on it, however, I could tell that there was something wrong. The shapes were good, but the highlights were all off. Where was the light source coming from? I asked around for advice, and was told that my reference that I was using was also a vector, and one that didn't have a definite light source, either. After receiving feedback, I went and looked for other references of different watches that I was then able to use to create the final watch.
I spent several hours making my watch look like it had beveled and raised edges around the tick marks as well as good shadows in the right places. I also completely redid the band because it was a little too soft. While it matched the original image, it wasn't the same in the other references that I was using. I really had to think about my highlights and shadows as I worked on the watch, making sure that the light came from all one source and how to arrange the objects to reflect that. It was difficult to get the band to look correct, since I was trying to recreate it without a photo reference to work from. It didn't really turn out the way I wanted it too.
Over the course of the project, my computer became extremely slow as the file grew larger and larger. By the time that I finished, I had used multiple different watches as references and it took several minutes to save every time I tried to make a backup. It turned out looking a lot like my original reference, but I threw in a lot of different pieces from other watches as well. My final turned out good, but I think that if I had even more time to work on it I could make it look even better. That's the thing with vector art, it can always be improved even if your computer does not want to.
Watch Gif
Above I have included a GIF of the different objects I used to create the entire watch as well as its final appearance. I ended up editing it several times even after I thought that it was finished. As I zoomed out, I found that my shadows on the band seemed almost a little too sharp for the image, and so I had to soften them before I could consider it done. In the end it looks like a similar watch to the one in my reference, but there are definite differences. The watch that I recreated appears to have more depth than the one that I was using as a reference originally.
Conclusion
My objective for this project was to create a photo realistic image using vector objects. I did this through carefully selecting my gradients and working with the highlights and shadows. It was a little difficult because I was working from several different references at odd angles, but I think that it turned out well. The watch face clearly shows where the different elements dip down or pop up through the use of shadows and highlights on the surfaces of different objects. Since my light source was coming from above, anything dipping into the face of the watch had a highlight on the bottom and a shadow on the top. It was exactly opposite for the objects coming out of the watch such as the hands. I also had to consider the shadow on the watch band. The band had a dull, muted coloring in all of the images that I looked at, and I attempted to mimic that while also adding in brighter colors where the light would hit. All in all, using the gradients and making sure that I had my highlights and shadows correct is what really makes this watch look photo realistic.
Making something look real with vector is hard. It take a lot of time and effort, as well as a careful attention to detail, but it is possible! Just make sure that you have a good computer and a lot of time to do it. And back up your files, you never know when the file will crash because it's too large. Trust me, it happened to me at least once during this project. Vector art is nice for its quality, and it is possible to create photo like images, but its also a lengthy and difficult process. I am happy with my result, although I know that there is always a way to improve it.
