Illustrator Work 1 - Power Adapter (Jan - Feb 2013)

這幾天用 Illustrator 畫了個變壓器，這算是我嘔心瀝血的第一件 Illustrator 作品，趁新鮮趕緊來介紹一下。

雖然我在聯成電腦也有上過幾堂 Illustrator 的課，不過比起 Photoshop 或 Painter，Illustrator 的課我總是上的有些勉強。可能是因為幾位老師都太過強調如何又"快速"又"簡單"地繪製出路邊傳單或牆上海報中常見的一些特殊效果；再加上作出來的範例又都是一些沒什麼質感的插圖，頓時讓我對向量圖喪失興趣。

這次要不是因為部門內職務有些調整，老闆叫我接下手冊插圖的工作，我也不會去碰 Illustrator 。話說我當初選擇進這個部門是為了想進一步朝我的目標邁進的 "CAREER MOVE"  (文字 -> 排版 -> 插圖 -> 設計 -> ??)，對於非相關科系的我來說，這份工作相當於一個入場卷，至少我一開始心裡是這麼打算的...

言歸正傳，這次產品手冊中缺了一張變壓器的插圖，於是我就依照前輩教過的方法，拍張照片來描。雖然說我沒有特別喜歡 Illustrator，何況描圖的動作反覆又無趣，不過我倒是很能自得其樂就是了:

Adapter and Cables (Line - Jan 2013)

圖中這些線條大多都是用鋼筆工具在照片上拉出來的，對我來說拉曲線不難，比較難的反而在於線條的省略 - 怎樣以最簡單的線條畫出該有的立體感，以及 layer 的運用。實際上描的線條與最終呈現出來的圖其實是不太一樣的，用 outline view 可以看出一些端倪:

Adapter and Cables (Line Outline - Jan 2013)

"Is that it?" you may ask. No that's not it, or I wouldn't be posting a blog about it.

So what's the twist? Well, the twist is that our customer used "shaded" drawings, and obviously line drawings won't fit.

A "shaded" drawing is one with gradient colour, mimicking the effect of light in the real world. Frankly I didn't know how to do this in Illustrator (or in any other program). I expected it to be done by first drawing a shape and then pulling a gradient within the shape as how it's done in Photoshop, but that didn't work, so I went online and searched for tutorials.

I found a bunch of tutorials on the "Gradient Mesh" tool, and some of the examples looked life-like. I was amazed at the effect this tool creates. Following these tutorials, with trials and errors, I first created this box:

Adapter (Shaded - Jan 2013)

Honestly, I was proud of what I achieved here, being a beginner and all, but that box alone took me 2 days, I couldn't imagine how long it would take to draw the other more complicated stuffs... but boss told me to take my time, so I did, and finished this in the next few days:

Plug (Shaded - Feb 2013)

The adapter was a simple cubic shape, so I managed to do it with a single mesh, but this plug was much more complicated and I had to join 13 meshes in order to cover "most" of the surfaces (mid-way through this drawing I was told that I had until the end of that day to finish the whole thing, so I omitted some details which I didn't know how to draw).

So after a whole day of mouse-dragging, I completed the whole set in time (barely):

Adapter and Cables (Shaded - Feb 2013)

The outline view shows the structure of the meshes. Each intersection is a mesh point, and can be filled with one colour, and Illustrator fills the gaps between these mesh points with gradient colours:

Adapter and Cables (Shaded Outline - Feb 2013)

So, I turned and announced cheerfully to my colleague, who's been waiting, "Hey, it's done!". After examining my drawings, he told me "um... Alvis, next time you don't have to draw in such great detail, it's really unnecessary, and takes too much effort and time." orz...

Haha... I knew this drawing is not even significant among all the other drawings in the manual, and nobody's going to take a second look at this little picture when reading the manual, but hey, at least I enjoyed it! But if asked to do this everyday I'd go crazy!

On a side note, the most difficult part was surprisingly the cable on the left, probably because of its twisted shape, and the fact that I had no photos to refer to.

But all in all this was a good exercise, and changed my view on how Illustrator is "only good for creating fake looking posters".