Lightning illo was done in Illustrator and Photoshop, working from a reference photo.
If I'm in a hurry, I often will simply (gasp) import a photo into Illustrator and trace the outlines. I then normally spend entirely too long futzing with the line work because the photo wasn't exactly what I wanted, or it otherwise doesn't look quite right, making me wonder why I didn't just freehand the thing in the first place. But I like to nail the proportions quickly, and it saves me drawing and scanning in a sketch. (I got into the habit of doing it that way while animating, when I had to fart out lots of aircraft drawings quickly. It's a bad habit, but it's a huge timesaver.) I then add some basic color, markings, etc and import the lot into Photoshop, where a I spend a lot of time selecting various regions of the plane and saving the selections off into channels (in much the same way you would cut masks from frisket in preparation for an airbrush illustration). I then break out the airbrush tool and start painting. Many objects will be created on separate layers (like the markings, or the canopy glass) to make them easier to edit and so I can composite them in a variety of ways until I find something that I like.
Recently I've begun trying some pure vector art using illustrator and Flash, which is more limiting and therefore more challenging. I've been interested in moving away from realism towards more stylized work. I also like the utility of vector art, since my work is done more for commercial uses than anything.
Last edited by
fritzthefox on Thu Jun 14, 2007 10:08 am, edited 1 time in total.