Vector Portrait

Pre-production

     The vector portrait has definitely been one of my favorite projects. The beginning was a little hard choosing what picture to use. It had to be a high resolution portrait of a person or animal. I ended up picking one of my favorite pictures of one of my cats: Buster. Unlike a lot of human portraits, the color-simplification in Photoshop was tough. Buster has a lot of detail in his fur so the program was unable to do a lot. It greatly simplified the background though, which helped me tune it out while working.

Production

     It is best to start on the eyes and nose in most portraits since they are often very detailed. The process of creating vectors and shapes around his eye was actually hypnotic and therapeutic. I ran into a little trouble with one of his eyes as he has some fog that harshly reflected the light. (Buster's not very old and we doubt it's a cataract but he has lost vision in that eye.) I improvised with some of the pattern and referenced the other eye. The bridge of his nose was not nearly as exciting, but his mouth I had to go back and fix a couple of times.
     I separated parts of his face into layers: Nose + Mouth, Cheeks, Forehead, Whiskers, etc.. I worked space by space, starting on his forehead before working my way down the cheeks and back up for his ears. One of the problems I ran into was color consistency. When I began picking colors, some were brown, some were blue, some were green. They conflicted with each other and it did not really look good. I decided to settle on the green palette for its calm and consistent color. Only a few pieces broke this pattern: the brown of his nose, the brown speckle in his eye, and the pink nose.
     The whiskers were tough because they came in multiple colors (and sometimes even changed colors) and came in varying lengths and widths. I ended up creating a custom line design that allowed the whiskers to taper off into points like a real whisker. I also used different hues of white and light grays to add variety.
     Ultimately I like how it came out and I'm proud of it. This was a really fun project and I would like to do it again in my free time. If I had to go back and fix anything, I would try to balance Buster better against the background. He seems to lean to one side of the portrait with a lot of negative space on the left. I might also color tweak the background gradient.

Final Product

Final Product
Original Photo Unedited


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