Putting facial features on photographic object

[Blue Egypt]

Hi all,

Looks like this is going to be my first post here. I'm a newbie of sorts. While I have been familiar with the Xara products for a while now, I don't have a vector graphics/design background and am pretty much only starting to use them for tasks that take advantage of their potential. So, here's my little creative project that I need help with:

I'm trying to craft facial features onto photographic pictures of inanimate objects and need some ideas how to start. Check out the attached audio cassette image to get an idea what kind of photo I'm working with here. Needless to say the holes in the two spools are going to be the eyes in our imaginary face.

I've already started experimenting with this, but am just not getting the results I'm looking for. I simply don't know enough about the tools yet and don't have the artistic vision to get where I want to get. I managed to put some eye glasses on top which I had traced from a photo in another simple design project and gave them a little depth with the 3D extrusion and added a little shadow. I'm reasonably happy with the looks of that. However, I just don't really know how to go about a nose, mouth and maybe some eyebrows and make them somehow blend in and become a plastic part of the image. Just drawing some purely 2D strokes on top of the image in black colour for the nose and brows and red colour for the mouth in a very simplified cartoony fashion is a start, but is far from what it could and should be. I've experimented with bevels and 3D extrusions as well as shadows on these parts as well, but it just doesn't give the right results.

In addition to having these elements be more plastic and somehow connect to and blend into the existing photo, it would be nice if the existing photo could be warped at the relevant position to conform to e.g. the shape of the mouth. However, I don't think this is something that can be done within Designer Pro. It strikes me as a too raster-oriented operation.

Well, that's it for now. Thanks in advance for any ideas and inspirations!

Cheers

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics

I do not see any attachment.

[Blue Egypt]

Hi Gary,

Yeah, looks like I messed up and forgot to include the image with the first post. So, here it goes, just so you get a better idea what I'm on about here. As you will see, it's really just a regular audio tape...

[gwpriester]

Something like this?

[ShapeShifter]

Or this?

[Blue Egypt]

Hi again,

Thanks for your input. ShapeShifter's design is more along the lines of what I'm looking to do. I'm really going for simple, vector-based shapes with a cartoonish quality going on top of the object, not so much a photographic composition based on a real face. However, I will still need some element of plasticity here. I started out just drawing brows, nose and mouth on top of the photo as flat and one-coloured shapes and it didn't quite cut it. My attempts with bevels, extrudes and shadows weren't really very satisfactory either (probably not because these tools are not suitable for the job, but because I don't know how to use and combine them well enough with other tools to get the results I want). This is also not just supposed to be a manipulation of strictly this one image. I'm looking for techniques here to apply to different images and objects.

The nose in ShapeShifter's image looks like what I should emulate and knowing how to do it might point me in the right direction. So, how did you do it? :-)

[ShapeShifter]

Here's my file for you to pull apart.
Rudimentary instructions inside.

For the nose (sphere), more detail at the XaraXone:
http://www.xaraxone.com/webxealot/wo...workbook_3.htm