A lot of the success for this project came from the fact that I had a clear vision in mind from the beginning.  With so much freedom to work with, I decided I was going to do a flat geometric illustration in Adobe Illustrator, and use Adobe Photoshop to add some splatter texture. I had some clear style inspiration, which you can see in the below image. I also started out with a small test object - the boot. Once I knew the style would work on one element, I knew I could apply it to every element I created.

You can also see the evolution from my sketch, to the flat vector version, to the textured final version.  I know that calling that initial scribble a “sketch” is being generous, but I wasn’t gifted with drawing skills. I need a computer to bring my vision to life, and I own that. But I’m glad I had the vision in my head, and knew how to use my computer to bring it to life.

The process of creating the illustration involved creating the basic shapes in Adobe Illustrator, and then layer separating them so that each shape I might need to add texture to was on its own layer. This was important because to texture the shapes in Photoshop, you need to easily be able to select the shape so the texture stays within the bounds of that shape. That means keeping each shape on its own layer so that you can easily command+click a layer in photoshop and a selection will automatically be drawn around that individual shape, ensuring any splatter brush applied stays within the bounds of that shape.

Once in Photoshop, I used the Memento shader brushes from Pixel Buddha to apply highlight and shadow texture throughout, which really brings the illustration to life and adds some needed depth to the elements.

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