RIGHT!! this is my first tutorial so any feedback would be considered. so. lets begin...
Heres a tutorial about how I go about making my tonal vectors, a variation on the standard vector I leave in the smooth gradients of the original picture rather than section off points of the scale. I fill then shade. This is an advanced piece only do it if you have at least a basic knowledge of Photoshop and its tools. Also you need a lot of patience, these things can take days to finish. Get yourself a picture, preferably over 800 pixels wide or larger just to help with the production of the vector.



The order in which I make it is as follows: lines > body shading > lights/detail > interior > wheels, split up on a layer of their own. Now first thing you must do is make up the lines of the car, I start with making an outline first then onto the inner lines. Select the pen tool and create a new layer, slowly click around the shape of the car making sure to keep the shape smooth by dragging out the point to create a curve. If you want to, skip some parts that clutter up the lines of the car, aerials, badges, wipers etc. just to clean up the picture a bit more. Once you have traced the outline select the brush tool and put it at a size that is appropriate for the size of the picture I use around 3 to 5 pixels and make sure the colour is black. Then go back to the pen tool and right click and select stroke path and click ok. Go to the paths window and click new path. It should look like something like this:



Now you can start on the inner lines, draw around parts with the pen in the same way as before and gradually build up the car, use as many path layers as you want usually you'll need to anyway so you don't cross lines but make sure when you stroke the line it is a smaller size than the outline was. I tend to leave out doing lines for stuff behind glass in the picture just to improve the impression of it. Any spherical parts can be done quicker with the elliptical selection and stroked, to keep the lines even you may have to make the stroke size a pixel smaller for some reason the selection tool's stroke option is larger.
It now should look like this:



Now make a new layer, use the lasso tool and select just the body, not the windows or stuff that isn't body colour. If the car has multiple colours on the body select one to start with then move onto the other after. Now fill it with the base colour of the paint. If the colour of the car is an orange or red fill the colour grey and colorize it after it has been dodged otherwise the colour is distorted.



Get the dodge tool and keep looking back at the original picture and darken or lighten parts as seen. This is a judgement on your part but hopefully it will come out all right. Any sharp tonal lines and edges you should lasso off and sort out inside that just to stand out from the soft gradients. Heres my result:



Then onto the detail. Any holes, anything that's black just lasso off and fill on a layer below, just so you can get away with rough edges covered by the body, makes it quicker. Create a new layer below the body again for the lights, lasso off the shape and fill in a grey. Then select parts and bring them up to the right shade as the original you may need to zoom in to see some of the detail. I tend not to line around the inside parts of the light. Heres where im at:



Now the windows, again lasso around parts that are the same colour and dodge if necessary, I leave out the lines for parts behind glass just to give a better impression of it being under glass. If the window has some reflection/shadow on the surface make another layer and add that bit over the top and reduce the opacity level. an optional thing is to blur the stuff behind the window a bit. Like so:



Next the wheels, create a layer below the body and get the elliptical selection tool and select around the front of the tyre, don't worry if you don't get it right first time right click and use the transform selection option to resize and skew the selection to just the front of the tyre. Then get the lasso and select the remaining tyre. Stroke it then use the elliptical tool again for the edge of the rim. Keep the selection for any other circular parts of the rim but make sure any lines inside the rim are now smaller stroke thickness. Use the pen tool for the detail lines.



Once the lines are done use the same way as the body to colour the wheels. Start with the tyre just select around it minus the rim inside and fill grey then dodge:



The rims are probably going to be the most detailed part you have to do so take your time on them. Colour them same as before, to get a better chrome effect, once you've finished the dodge on them go to image – adjustments – colour balance and raise the blue a tiny bit.



and finally, the shadow, easy one this. Create a new layer again under all that you've done and get a reasonably sized and blurry brush and go around the bottom part of the car.



to finish off you could leave it with a white background, or also vector the background from the photo or even leave the background. And there you have it!



This message was edited by horizon on May 26 2005.

I think you got those hyperlinks wrong. None of the links work-try fixing up the [img] tags. BUT DAMN THAT LAST CAR IS SOOOOO FREAKING COOOOOOOOL!!!!!

sorted, seems it doesnt like the code to be copied. strange thing i retyped it the same and it works

Wow-just read it all over. I'm gonna have to try something like that at some point. Really well explained tutorial for advanced users. I doubt any n00bs will know wtf you're talking about. Nicely done man, that car is quite choice . you should post it on goodtutorials.com

i dont think i'll bother next time, here some quick lil abstract filter experiments, all based around >clouds>mosaic>reticulation, not that anyone is gonna look

the car one is cool.. i like it.. it cool made and its good that you showed in every single window that you made.. great.. just awesome..

ta v much nice to see 2 replies wow, heres some more quick pics im just messing about for now cos my pc is a little corrupt at the moment and i dont wanna start anything big

This one is awesome,

http://img11.echo.cx/img11/7522/spheres1jq.jpg

Nice and Clean

Good Job

awesome tutorial eh i tried it but i screwed up

great tutorial, doubt i will ever have time for it but i might try.

Great tut, especially for someone who hasn't been using PS for long. I had a go and got this far:

Im aiming for this but i just cant do the dodging! Its so hard. Do you think i was to ambitious? any help would be appreciated. thanks

this thread is for my work only, any feedback you want on your own stuff either pm people or start your own thread. as for the pic, use thinner lines and more detail

just a quick one

and this space thing was a test of some spacey brushes i got, heres where i got em from if you interested

the latest

the latest one is tight.. the car looks like a floating space car.. good job brother! keep up the good work!