Final Image Preview
But first let’s have a brief lyrical digression. It is well known that in any stock business one of the most popular topics is business, and this applies not only to photos and videos, but also to vector illustration. A business issue is not only negotiating people in business suites, but also different objects as office phones, calculators, charts and so on. On this basis, an idea of creating a realistic illustration of a calculator appeared; this illustration can be not only used as a possible replacement to raster image but also as an icon, i.e. with a strong reduction a calculator should remain a clear shape.
To make the illustration look realistic you should get the reference image of an object. You have two options - either find a ready image or do it yourself. In the first case you can find a suitable image in the internet or on stock websites; this approach has big disadvantages - you either need to deal with author’s rights or with the limited license. That’s why I recommend using the other way. I used an ordinary financial calculator, a White Box and a camera for making references. The description of the process of taking a photo goes beyond this tutorial, so I will just show the results. Download the reference.jpg file; we will use it in our further work.
The work doesn’t contain difficult gradient transitions, for which it would be required to create the Gradient Mesh; so I suggest we divide our work into several stages: in the stroke mode without fill outline all the contours with the Pen Tool (P); using the Shape Builder Tool (Shift + M) create some closed areas; color them with solid colors and gradients; and finally add some highlights and shadows where it is necessary. Our plan is easy, so let’s do it!
Step 1
Open Adobe Illustrator and go to the Edit > Preferences > Selection & Anchor Display and set the parameters which are indicated on the figure. It is more convenient to work with these settings of the Pen Tool (P).
Step 2
Now select Layer 1, take the Pen Tool (P) and start outlining contours of the image. As it was mentioned before, the fill should be turned off and the width of the outline should be 1 or 2 px, whatever you think is more convenient. Note, the outline color should contrast the photo. In our case, red contrasts the photo good, so we will use this color.
Step 3
So, moving on, outline every detail. There are a few tips which I wanted to mention. First, practically all the corners in the illustration should be rounded, and if a rounded corner must be symmetrical you can use either some special plug-ins, but they will cost money, or a free plug-in from Hiroyuki Sato - Round Any Corner. When you need unsymmetrical rounding of a corner, you can use the following technique which I’ll demonstrate you on an example of a button. Instead of a single reference point at the location of a corner, put two points at some distance from one another.
Step 4
One more nuance, since at this stage we’re working with open and closed forms, you should pay attention to the places of their intersection. Let’s look at it in more details on the example of the same button.
Step 5
After we’ve outlined all the contours, paying enough attention to the intersections, you should get approximately the following result.
Step 6
On the figure below you can see the results of our work from our previous step. You won’t see much of a difference if you compare it to what we’ve got in the previous step, but you’re able to see differences more clearly in the Layers panel.
Step 7
Turn on the visibility of a layer with a photo in the Layers panel and make sure that all the paths that we’ve created are ungrouped. Now adjust the Eyedropper Tool - by double clicking on the proper tool in the Tools panel we got a dialog box with the settings; select the value 3x3 Average.
Step 8
On the stage of outlining the contours we started working with big units and then proceeded to small ones, in this case we do vice versa- we start coloring the smallest forms and slowly proceed to the bigger units which lay usually lower.Now let’s talk about the light. The reference image was made in condition of uniform illumination - it is good for the photo- there are no highlights and reflections of the environmental objects. But for the illustration you don’t need to follow the same principles, everything might turn out not expressive enough. Therefore, we introduce two conventional light sources - one in the upper left corner of the workspace (this light source is obligatory since it imitates the sunlight), second- in the bottom of the workspace in order to add some contrast.
Let’s start with black buttons, the lower part of which have a solid almost black fill on the photo; we will color it with the linear gradient in dark-grey tones to highlight the edge.
Step 9
To all the rest of the buttons we take color from corresponding parts of buttons from the previous step.
Step 10
Let’s proceed to a small but very important group of buttons on the case of our calculator. Whether they look realistic or not, it depends on the correctness of creation of gradients, check it out
Step 11
I won’t describe the acquisition of light and gradient for every object in the illustration, I will only show you a screenshot after the coloring of the calculator’s display and the area around it. Here mostly the solid fills are used.
Step 12
Let’s work with highlights which come from the upper light source. Create a form as on the figure below; fill it with the linear gradient form light-grey to black, set the Screen blending mode for this object.
Step 13
In the free workspace create 2000pt wide and 24pt high ellipse without contour with the black fill.
Step 14
With the Pen Tool (P) create a path on the case of the calculator; it is highlighted with red on the figure.
Step 15
Now we need to create the same highlights on every button of the calculator as they are on the case of it. Similarly, we create a bush from the blend which consists of two 200pt x 8pt and 100pt x 1pt ellipses.
Step 16
Any object has a shadow, that’s why our calculator will look more realistic when we draw some shadow. Create a blend consisting of two simple figures with rounded corners.
Step 17
On this stage we can say that we’re done with our work with some abstract calculator which is off. It looks already great, but if we want to get more realistic illustration of our calculator let’s add some inscriptions on the buttons and figures on the display.If up to this moment you are not tired of the Pen Tool, the best solution will be to outline the button labels, which will look more authentic. I’ve done so as well.
Now let’s "turn on” our calculator and type some figures on the screen. To do so, download the DIGIT fond and install it in the OS. With the Type Tool (T) type twelve eights.
Conclusion
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