Illustrating face logos from images
I was looking for a way to introduce a few of my friends' blogs on this blog. I wanted to make it a little more personal but I didn't want to include a normal photo of them, so I decided to illustrate a logo/icon of their face and link to their blogs. You can see the examples in the sidebar and below is the final version of myself on the left and Nicholas Patten on the right.
Update: Also see Mike's and Sara's version here.
The process is rather simple, but in its simplicity, it was difficult to make look polished. A few versions looked like I half-assed it with the lasso tool and some looked like I applied the basic cutout filter in Photoshop.
The process was to first find a good picture. I was looking for images at an iso or 3/4 view. Lighting at this angle can be easy to guess and can offer a lot of depth to an image. Transferring that depth to a flat illustration is pretty hard if the photo was taken straight on.
- Desaturate the image
- Modify the levels or brightness/contrast until I was happy with the balance of black and white
- I inverted the colors so black is white and white is black (I did this because I thought black for the majority of the illustration was more desirable)
- I then took that image into Illustrator and created the paths.
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