[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
My current Xara software: Designer Pro 365 12.6
Good Morning Sunshine.ca | Good Morning Sunshine Online(a weekly humorous publication created with XDP and exported as a web document) | Angelize Online resource shop | My Video Tutorials | My DropBox |
Autocorrect: It can be your worst enema.
"Fun" is the name of the game, Frances. My take is that if you're a graphics person for a living, quite often you have nothing to show for a day's work because you're mentally creating whatever you might draw in a day or two. For me, things have gotten tense with clients who don't often understand that creating something isn't a linear process, it's just not measured in hours you can punch in and out with a clock.
Therefore: what you did was experiment, you might commit to a finished version unlike this one in the future, perhaps yes, perhaps no, but you engaged in a creative process, and had fun, which is your personal perk when you didn't get paid for this job, right?
I'd leave the pattern out of the floor, or put the pattern in perspective
My Best,
—Gary
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
My current Xara software: Designer Pro 365 12.6
Good Morning Sunshine.ca | Good Morning Sunshine Online(a weekly humorous publication created with XDP and exported as a web document) | Angelize Online resource shop | My Video Tutorials | My DropBox |
Autocorrect: It can be your worst enema.
Looking good Frances
Tutorials: The Basics of Web Design - Tips and Tricks - Creating a Nav Bar - Video Tutorials - Stretchy Buttons - Manual Nav Bars
Very good Frances!
If someone tried to make me dig my own grave I would say No.
They're going to kill me anyway and I'd love to die the way I lived:
Avoiding Manual Labour.
I misjudged you, Frances, won't be the first time, sorry!
You're taking this to its logical conclusion when all I wanted to share with this post was a continued study in texture and lighting.
Ahem...
Okay, to serious this up, I'm providing more media to play with, to bring the box composition to a more complete visual solution. I've also provided a really obvious hint on the floor for perspective.
Attached is a photometrically accurate cardboard box, just about but not exactly the same lighting I created originally. Because I am analog, and cannot be depended upon to provide the same results twice. The camera's lens is about a 26mm with an angle of view of about 70 degrees in case anyone cares, with a little forced depth of field in the render. Note that there are very few if any hard shadows in this image. Sometimes, you want to be subtle and accomplish dimensionality with shading, not shadows.
I'm providing two photos of cardboard, one of which I messed up with packing tape that I used Auto f/x plug-ins to create. The cardboard doesn't seamlessly tile, I don't think.
Oh, and find something to put in the box, too. A gift from Tiffany's or Neimann-Marcus would be nice. I'll print up a UPS mailing sticker for our house...
Let me make a very strong case for tracing, Stygg, and everyone. This is why I provided the artwork; I wasn't asking anyone to replicate a photographically accurate box, but instead to just study and understand and work on the shading.
Let it be known that I lock an image on a layer and trace over it in Xara all the time. And it is far from "cheating". To accomplish a look—as long as you use your own, original source material—I don't believe a critic or fellow artist can truthfully claim that you've "cheated". That implies stealing.
There is a philosophical route, I feel, that an artist has every right to take, especially when an assignment was due yesterday. It's called the shortest distance between two points. Simply put: why kill yourself trying to figure out a light source in a scene, or perspective if you have a camera, and can build the scene, and then draw over it, while stylizing and adding your artistic flair? And rendering models is the same as a photograph, if you have the knack.
I see absolutely nothing noble about not tracing, to take longer than necessary to complete the visualization of something. I admire someone who can hit a bull's eye with a bow and arrow while blindfolded, but I wouldn't hire them as a marksman, because of their nature—which is to take the long and hard way about accomplishing a task.
Some people are born with good design skills, some have to learn them. But it would be an ill-designed world, overall, if no one traced, no one used a ruler, everyone built sand castles one grain at a time, and so on...
This stuff I'm posting is just resource material. The "end game" is not to duplicate it—heck, if I wanted copies, I'd use a photocopier, right? No, the point is to learn a visual truth from these mini-lessons, make it your own, and then apply it in your work.
If you learn from copying, then fine. I had to do this too, in life study classes in college. But at some point you'll want to break free of the literal "dependencies" that come from mimicking, and move on with your bag of tricks you've learned from examples, and do your own thing.
Make sense?
I hope so, because I don't get paid by the word!
My Best,
—Gary
P.S. the texture I included in the original box XAR file isn't necessary to experiment with. I just threw it in because it makes a nice emboss pattern, but it has nothing to do with a photorealistic cardboard box. Oh, I guess this box doesn't have to be made of card either, does it?
Just an observation, but the lines indicating the corrugated fiberboard (cardboard) are at cross purposes it seems. Physically impossible change of direction for a single layer corrugate container. Of course artistic license allows for physically impossible things within any drawing.
Soquili
a.k.a. Bill Taylor
Bill is no longer with us. He died on 10 Dec 2012. We remember him always.
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I've nothing against tracing Gary, anything that makes life simpler and at the same time learn from. Thanks for all the diagrams, I've enough work there to keep me occupied at tracing, shading and shadows and that tip with the straight line is great, I just tried it on a box I'd finished and found some of the edges out and it made it easy to correct but the most surprising thing was, I was'nt to far out in the first place.
Stygg
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