I saw this on digg, I thought it was interesting, not only becuase the artwork it so good, but that it illustrates (excuse the pun) that whatever limitations a program might have it is still possible to do the improbable if the artist is good enough…
What do you mean by “whatever limitations a program might have it is still possible to do the improbable if the artist is good enough”?
Illustrator’s meshs are pretty powerfull, while not perfect - its not like any of those images used “work arounds”. A good artist or bad artist has almost always been the deciding factor of a good piece of art or not. No software has a magic “make perfect artwork” button. An application’s ability for producing “photorealistic” images isnt necessarily the deciding factor on whether it is limited or not since there are alot of people who use MS paint and do rather realistic “pixel art” by applying pixel by pixel in an image.
While I do use illu’s meshes - I find the blotchy effect rather annoying and ugly - which most of those image show. To get them to look good you generally have to scale them down in a raster format to get the sharper edges. Lifeinvector.com i think it is, is pretty good with vector meshes. Im surprised none of her artwork was on there as she seems more popular than some of the artists there, which i have come across. khulsey.com kicks ass too.
I personally prefer the more flat colours layered ontop of each other than meshes giving a more creamy patchy layered look, rather than blurly blotches. but then again I just like stylistic work.
Wow, what gives, this is just glorified tracing. I fail to see the point. Photorealism is good for giving ideas a believable life. When there’s already a real photo that’s more detailed than this sketch, what’s the point?
You have to give some of them credit, as you can’t really say all of them are traces from real photographs.
Similar to the fact that, 3D modeling /rendering is just glorified tracing, since alot of people use photographs as a means of tracing the 3D shape and as a source of colour /texture, bump maps and so on.
Hell traditional painting is often glorified tracing since thier painting something they are looking at, some who even take photographs so they can do it when they get back home…
but then again, not everyone “traces” and even those who trace, dont necessairly copy them bit for bit. How can one do a realistic painting of the Big ben, if by doing so is technically tracing?
Who says their necessairly vectoring over the top of a photograpth rather than referencing one?? photographs dont have mesh lines - so its hard to “trace” that part from a photograph, which is the bulk of the vector work. The outlline, is often trimed and edited and only the basic shape is used, such as making clothing neater - trimming of nasty looking bits and so on…
Also vectors provide many benifits ove raster formats, such as being able to to scale up. In theory, one could vectorise a photograph to provide a large scale version while keeping higher quality than interpolation methods used to scale up a raster image.
So valarking, why do almost every artist in existance which has done a piece of artwork based on a reallife object (cars being one for the 3D community, using blueprints and what not) do such “pointless, glorified tracing”
Wow, what gives, this is just glorified tracing. I fail to see the point. Photorealism is good for giving ideas a believable life. When there’s already a real photo that’s more detailed than this sketch, what’s the point?
Hm… I wonder: If you have to build a mesh of your object, why not model it in 3D instead of 2D? Gives you much more possibilities afterwards and makes the construcion easier (at least for me). Or has Illustrator powerful features to construct in 3D and produce 2D meshes with perspective and positionable camera?
Well, I feel the same way about photorealistic modeling of 3D objects, except that they can be used in an artistic way. Vector art like this is just a reproduction of the photo. It doesn’t add anything. 3D art has the ability (not that people always use it) to create things. That’s why it’s art, and not just tracing.
Illustrator’s mesh’s are not anything like 3D meshes.
They are simply a 2D grid-like stricture within a shape that allows differernt colours to be placed in each mesh patch / line / point. Illustrator then blends the colour to the next nearest patch /line /point, creating a nice smooth flow of colour.
Also, creating photorealistic renders of people, not to mention real life people is very very hard. Plus, the rendering time and other issues 3D is not a very ideal solution to all problems.