{"id":855,"date":"2015-01-13T16:05:59","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T08:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/?p=855"},"modified":"2015-01-14T16:06:46","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T08:06:46","slug":"digital-graphics-and-color-schemes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/digital-graphics-and-color-schemes\/","title":{"rendered":"How I make digital graphics and choose color schemes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first published this tutorial of sorts in my blog for Poptastic Tees<\/a> ((\u00a0the old t-shirt store a.k.a.\u00a0our first foray into online selling\u00a0)) but I accidentally deleted that entire\u00a0site a couple of years ago. Too depressed to\u00a0attempt reconstructing 5 years worth of blog posts, I dismissed it as fate and let it be. \u00a0Last night\u00a0I found a set of\u00a0graphics illustrating my work\u00a0process step-by-step and thought of rewriting just that one post since it\u00a0might be\u00a0helpful and worth sharing.<\/p>\n

So this is one of my\u00a0patterns — “Retro Robots<\/a><\/strong>” — as seen on a Macbook sleeve c\/o Zazzle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Retro <\/a>
\nRetro Robots (Cream) Flap Sleeve Sleeve For MacBooks<\/a> by funkypatterns<\/a>
\nView more laptop accessories<\/a> at zazzle.com.<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I will now describe how I make almost all of my digital graphics.\u00a0Sorry about the ugly watermarks.<\/p>\n

1. This step you already know: make doodles! Here are my robots.
\n\"retro<\/p>\n

2. Next step: scanning and making vector versions using Adobe Illustrator.
\n\"vectorize\"<\/p>\n

The bottom row shows my robots in their “cleaned up” vector state but\u00a0still raw\u00a0and\u00a0outlined. You’ll see that they’re\u00a0simply\u00a0made up of basic shapes\u00a0like circles and squares with rounded corners that I just tweaked, duplicated, and assembled together to make\u00a0robot-like\u00a0forms based on my doodles.\u00a0On hindsight, I should have just vectorized the drawings instead of constructing\u00a0clean versions\u00a0since the actual doodles look sillier and funnier!<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0Here’s where the fun starts — adding color to the\u00a0finished graphics. I like to use a palette of 4 or 5 colors only to\u00a0give the design a cohesive and somewhat\u00a0retro\u00a0look. For color scheme formulating\u00a0help, you can turn to a tool\u00a0like Adobe Color CC<\/a>‘s color wheel\u00a0where you can\u00a0make\u00a0combos to your hearts’ content. (This blog post <\/a>has a list of free tools for choosing a color scheme.)<\/p>\n

\"choosing<\/p>\n

This nautical inspired colorway\u00a0was my initial try. #meh<\/p>\n

\"robots<\/p>\n

My second attempt was more successful, imho. I liked how the subdued colors made the robots look vintagey.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0Time to play!<\/p>\n

\"retro<\/p>\n

Now my vector robots can be imported into Photoshop and arranged in several\u00a0ways to make images for kiddie t-shirts or patterns for surface designing. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

* See these robots in action in my shop\u00a0Funky Patterns<\/a> and on fabric \/\u00a0wallpaper in Spoonflower<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first published this tutorial of sorts in my blog for Poptastic Tees ((\u00a0the old t-shirt store a.k.a.\u00a0our first foray into online selling\u00a0)) but I accidentally deleted that entire\u00a0site a couple of years ago. Too depressed to\u00a0attempt reconstructing 5 years worth of blog posts, I dismissed it as fate and let it be. \u00a0Last night\u00a0I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[54,32,45,53],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-and-design","tag-digital-art","tag-illustration","tag-tutorial","tag-vector-drawings"],"views":2581,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":863,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions\/863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bauzon.ph\/cynthia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}