posted
Mornin' Heads. A few weeks ago I posted the following layout over on the portfolio page for a critique.
Yeah, I know the text is too big (thanks Cam), Mike Stevens I ain't. At any rate, a few folks expressed an intrest in seeing how I achieved the effects in that drawing. Well, it just so happens that the same client wanted to see another drawing with a different name, so I figured I'd try my hand at a how to.
Disclaimer: this is my first how to, I'm sure there are better / faster / easier ways to do this, this is just the method that I use and am comfortable with. So with that in mind, here we go.
The first thing I did was lay the sign out in CorelDraw. Pretty typical drawing. Now what we are going to do here is copy the shapes out of this layout and paste them into a new layout in Corel PhotoPaint(Yeah, you can copy vector shapes out of Draw and paste them straight into Photopaint as bitmap objects, neat huh?). So at this point you'll want to have Corel Draw open with your layout, and Corel PhotoPaint open with a blank document that matches the overall size of your Corel drawing with a resulotion of 72 dpi. This is the resolution that Corel assigns copied Vector objects when it pastes them into photopaint, so when you paste your shapes they'll all stay the same size. I generally do work like this at about 10" in length, at this size and resolution(72 dpi) you should have an image that prints nicely on 8½" x 11" paper.
Ok, time to start our stone wall. There is a rectangle behind everything that represents mortar, copy that that bugger out of Draw and paste it into your PhotoPaint document. You'll notice that I have the Objects docker open in PhotoPaint, I leave this open all of the time. When you paste a new shape into PhotoPaint It will apear as an object in the docker. You can easily select objects by clicking on their representation in the docker as well as arrange their order (top to bottom) by dragging the objects representation to the desired location in the dockers list. Pretty handy, no?
Back to business. Stones and mortar are generally not smooth (duh) so we want some texture on our mortar. Select the mortar, go on up to the effects menu and from there go to Corel's Texture filters, select Stone. You'll get a cute little interface that lets you mess with the filter parameters, like so:
Now copy the stones out of Draw and paste 'em in. We're using the same filter for texture here, but with slightly different parameters.
At this point I thought the mortar looked a bit dark, so I selected it and gave the brightness and contrast sliders(located under Image / Adjust / Brightness,Contrast,Intensity) a gentle nudge. Here's where we're at.
Sorta' flat lookin', aint it? Enter the Eye Candy 4000 filter set. Select the stones and swing on over to the Eye Candy filters (under Effects), were going to use the shadow Lab to create some depth. Thusly:
When using this filter or the Cutout filter I almost never use black as the shadow color, rather I use a darker shade of whatever color the shadow is being cast upon. If there are a whole bunch of colors under the shadow, then I'll use black but I'll turn the opacity way down. Let's look at the finished wall:
Tune in next post for stage 2, where we build our signface!
[ April 11, 2002, 12:06 PM: Message edited by: Jonathan Androsky ]
-------------------- Jon Androsky Posts: 438 | From: Williamsport, PA | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Jon, Nice work. Two questions, Why work in Photo-Paint rather than Draw? I've got Corel9 and hardly ever use Photo-Paint other than editing photos.
And where do you get Eye Candy?
Cheers
-------------------- Rob Thomas 3410 Ketcham Ct Beautiful Springs FL 34134 Posts: 965 | From: Bonita Springs, Florida USA | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Robert, All of my actual layout work is done in Draw. What I'm doing here is applying bitmap effects to spruce up the drawing. Now some of the can be acomplished in Draw, but a majority of them (especially the ones in the next two posts) require an environment that was designed to work with bitmaps, which is what PhotoPaint is.
These drawings are intended to help the clent visualize the dimensionality of a sign. I've upsold many a sign that might have been just vinyl on MDO to full blown dimensional signs simply by providing one of these drawings to a client.
-------------------- Jon Androsky Posts: 438 | From: Williamsport, PA | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic