Re: Inspired By Catch-22

Follow the red tape back to the absurd conclusion! Your vote!

Re: Inspired By Catch-22

This is awesome!

Great Design. Great book!

Re: Inspired By Catch-22

How did you make this? Did you use some type of 3D program? I just can't understand how the lines are so perfect. Also, how do you add your halftones, because the only way I've found to do them is very tedious?

Re: Inspired By Catch-22

Re: Inspired By Catch-22

This better get an HM.

DavidShenoda wrote:How did you make this? Did you use some type of 3D program? I just can't understand how the lines are so perfect. Also, how do you add your halftones, because the only way I've found to do them is very tedious?

The basic plane was built in 3d with monochromatic shading, then the plane model was cut and pasted a few times, they were arranged so that their tails and wings are hopelessly and impossibly tangled, the whole model was posed and then exported as a 2d image that I took into photoshop/illustrator. The gradients that were converted into halftones come from the the 3D model image after I extracted the edge blacks into their own layer. It still takes a lot of cleanup to make it work for a shirt design, but drawing perspective is not my strongest suit (my wings always go crooked) and this is all about perspective.

It is worth noting that the red line was drawn 2d in Illustrator, though. Once I finished the plane-ball, I felt it needed something else... specifically color. Since Catch-22 is about the frustration of the main character with a rigid bureaucracy in a chaotic war, I thought that red tape tying it all together would be cool. All the turning and weaving I'd have to do in 3D space to thread a 3D ribbon, seemed like too much effort, so I just drew out the basic shape in Illustrator and then took it into Photoshop to add the stroke and shading.

The shadow at the bottom is just the final image flattened into a solid color layer and "pushed over" using Photoshop's perspective & scale tools. It made the whole thing look like it was about to crash. :^)

thatrobert wrote:

Yay! Thanks Thatrobert!

gargrazz wrote:details about his mad methods

WOW. You have some mad skills, sir. May I ask what you used for 3D modelling? I read that Photoshop CS4 has some new 3D modelling functions, though since you said you exported to PS/Illustrator I'm guessing that's not what you used. 3DSM?

eHalcyon wrote:WOW. You have some mad skills, sir. May I ask what you used for 3D modelling? I read that Photoshop CS4 has some new 3D modelling functions, though since you said you exported to PS/Illustrator I'm guessing that's not what you used. 3DSM?

Photoshop's "3D" functions are mostly designed to better integrate your PSD layers into After Effects - which is really "2.5D". After Effects can make things look 3D, but they're still 2D layers - just like Photoshop (except you can move those layers on the Z axis and control a camera through space in After Effects). So don't run out to get CS4 because it can establish vanishing points or anything. Adobe is still a while away from true, genuine 3D.

Try Google's Sketch Up. It's free, it fairly robust and the interface doesn't take that long to learn. It will take a lot of practice before you start building airplanes - but if you can find CAD files of basic airplane shapes and then start stretching and tweaking them, it goes MUCH faster.