These last few ones I've been doing have all been pure vector, though. Still in PS, 'cause Illustrator's Pen Tool makes me mad, but each layer is a vector mask rather than rasterized shapes.
So I'm not really cheating but at the same time I'm totally cheating
First Reaction: ...Reminds me of Nisemonogatari...
Then I read link: Oh.
Looks like a fun way to practice. You could just use the Livetrace tool in Illustrator, though. Which is where you should be doing this..I mean nothing wrong with Photoshop its just not the best for Illustration once you reach a certain point.
? I'm confused. Its helped me get out of a lot of jams here in the office when some client sends us over a flattened JPEG and then asks us to modify it as though it were a vector. I'll admit its tricky to get all the settings right and you need a really good processor or your going to lose so much detail that its not worth it. But once you get the basics down (or get the right plug-ins) it can turn a 30 minute job into a 10 minute job. Which means a lot when your dealing with ads
And I said before that your procedure is better for mastery of the pen tool. Especially if your using a tablet; tracing is a very valid means of steadying your hands on an otherwise (usually) shitty surface/medium (ungh give me a brush any day...)
...Except sacrifices have to be made in the professional field when your doing dozens of these a day--converting rasters to vectors in order to get them laser etched/printed on wood/plastics.
if your trying to get the best copy...well you'd use copy and paste. But of course tracing would give you a better result than the livetrace given your a human with eyes trained to see key aesthetic differences.
But I'm not doing dozens of these a day. Nobody does a dozen of these a day. That would be like saying a forger makes a dozen copies of Haystacks in Provence a day. The whole point is to painstakingly craft an image that exceeds the quality of the original, and you can't automate a process like that.
This is why real artists don't take the advertising business seriously; it ceases to be anything meaningful because it's all assembly-line stuff that's printed on keychains to appeal to the masses. I'm not making keychains.
"That would be like saying a forger makes a dozen copies of Haystacks in Provence a day."
Maybe a little closer to a forger making a hundred $100 bills a day. Since...it's a very streamlined process these days, the act of creating copies.
I don't think anyone REALLY takes the advertising business seriously. All they're doing is make such tiny changes to a photo that you can barely tell the difference, or make someone look like an entirely different person, or give someone impossible proportions. Art made for advertisements is so imaginary and fabricated it baffles me.
Either way, kudos on the work. I certainly couldn't make anything like that.
"That would be like saying a forger makes a dozen copies of Haystacks in Provence a day."
Maybe a little closer to a forger making a hundred $100 bills a day. Since...it's a very streamlined process these days, the act of creating copies.
I don't think anyone REALLY takes the advertising business seriously. All they're doing is make such tiny changes to a photo that you can barely tell the difference, or make someone look like an entirely different person, or give someone impossible proportions. Art made for advertisements is so imaginary and fabricated it baffles me.
Either way, kudos on the work. I certainly couldn't make anything like that.