Author Topic: Okay, I'm vectorising the Mortal Kombat dedicated sideart (Read 6812 times)

gsoul · « **on:** February 01, 2006, 07:07:43 pm »

Okay, I'm starting to vectorise the background of the Mortal Kombat 1 dedicated sideart. WOOHOO says the whole arcade community.

Anyways, the original artwork is really complicated. Specifically its use of blurred shading. I can replicate this in Illustrator using a Gaussian Blur effect, as you can see above. (Please ignore the actual vectoring, I'm just trying to get the colouring right! It'll be better in the end!)

What I'm wondering is

1) How many printers would use Illustrator CS. I'm not sure if this blurring is supported in ealier versions. If it is, then we've got a winner. If not, the artwork may need to be resized to full sized and rasterised.

2) Is there any other way to make this effect, ie with gradient meshes?

I want this artwork to look as close to the original as possible. Obviously the halftoning that often comes out in the printing is hard to replicate, so I'm not going to bother!

Can any of you illustrator gurus offer any ideas to help me along the way?

Basically the final artwork is going to be a hybrid vector/raster image. I have some good quality photos of the kicking guy which I'm going to mask off and apply to my vector artwork.

gsoul · « **Reply #1 on:** February 01, 2006, 07:11:05 pm »

Just realised the shading looks alot better when I do a screen cap from illustrator. (Doesnt looks as good when you paste it into photoshop!)

gsoul · « **Reply #2 on:** February 01, 2006, 08:32:12 pm »

While I'm waiting for advice, the vectoring is coming along quite nicely.

walls83 · « **Reply #3 on:** February 01, 2006, 10:45:48 pm »

I dont have any advice but its looking great

gsoul · « **Reply #4 on:** February 01, 2006, 10:47:10 pm »

Heres some more to add

gsoul · « **Reply #5 on:** February 01, 2006, 10:59:04 pm »

I'm going to take this as far as my skill will allow, then I'm going to upload it to LocalArcade and one of the more talented designers around here can clean up all my vectoring.

GreenKnight37 · « **Reply #6 on:** February 02, 2006, 12:59:31 am »

I can't comment on the blurring either, but what you've done so far looks great!

gsoul · « **Reply #7 on:** February 02, 2006, 06:13:25 pm »

This is just starting to look great.. I have NO IDEA how I'm going to pull off the dragons belly or the subtle scales on its back.. but I'll work it out!

Heres another full side shot of how its going.

gsoul · « **Reply #8 on:** February 02, 2006, 08:55:51 pm »

Okay, here's a little snapshot just to prove that this is all still vector..

The top is looking awesome too now.

Anyways, I'm now at the point I've dreaded the most. The scales.

Does *ANYBODY* have any ideas? Short of using a raster scan?

gsoul · « **Reply #9 on:** February 02, 2006, 11:36:04 pm »

Okay, more updates.

The dragon looks FULLY SICK..

assalychris · « **Reply #10 on:** February 03, 2006, 01:22:14 am »

That is a great job dude! Thanks!

Veinman · « **Reply #11 on:** February 03, 2006, 09:12:39 am »

It's looking great, and I'm pretty sure that the fighter is supposed to be Johnny Cage.

Mickey Juice · « **Reply #12 on:** February 05, 2006, 09:05:43 pm »

Quote from: gsoul on February 01, 2006, 07:07:43 pm

1) How many printers would use Illustrator CS. I'm not sure if this blurring is supported in ealier versions. If it is, then we've got a winner. If not, the artwork may need to be resized to full sized and rasterised.

Most printers would accept IllusCS. If not you might be able to save it as a PDF, which shouldn't rasterise it.

dennis808 · « **Reply #13 on:** February 08, 2006, 08:51:58 am »

Wow! i'm really impressed!
As Mickey Juice said, you can always check if exporting from IllustratorCS to another format affects the image.

elvis · « **Reply #14 on:** February 11, 2006, 02:14:55 am »

Quote from: gsoul on February 01, 2006, 07:07:43 pm

What I'm wondering is

1) How many printers would use Illustrator CS. I'm not sure if this blurring is supported in ealier versions. If it is, then we've got a winner. If not, the artwork may need to be resized to full sized and rasterised.

EPS and PDF are the two universally accepted vector formats by printers. Exporting to either will not rasterise any part of your image.

luv2xlr8 · « **Reply #15 on:** March 02, 2006, 04:31:08 pm »

Well, this looks amazing... It's been some time however with no updates gsoul... How's the good work doing?

luv2xlr8 · « **Reply #16 on:** April 13, 2006, 03:03:40 pm »

Well Well,
It has been A WHILE we haven't heard from you gsoul!
you work looks really professional... now in case you just don't feel like completing it can you share your partial work so we can continue?
if not well I suggest we start all over again with someone uploading new high resolution scans/pictures of the MK sideart so we can start vectorizing again?
Cheers!!

gsoul · « **Reply #17 on:** April 23, 2007, 10:43:23 pm »

Okay, much to my dismay I have lost all of the art for this project

But in the spirit of helping the community, I am going to redo it.

Anyway, I'll open a new post tonight and upload the AI files to localarcade as I go along. Presently I am at version 1.0. I've finished the trace around the artwork for the outline.

ARGH that took a good two hours!

Crowquill · « **Reply #18 on:** April 25, 2007, 01:10:15 pm »

Stylized as it is, vectorizing the photo of Johnny Cage will be tough.

As mentioned, the easiest way to make sure all your effects transfer OK is to just save it as a PDF. The blurring effect as it is now goes back to version 8 or 9 if I remember correctly.

Zeno · « **Reply #19 on:** June 28, 2007, 01:55:21 am »

Has this project been completed? It was going so well and then just seemed to stop. I would love to get a hold of a MK sideart file.

Any updates?

If not, where else can I go to get a file that I can print for my cab?

assalychris · « **Reply #20 on:** November 11, 2007, 07:49:24 am »

any /update on the sideart?

again I would love to continue the tracing process and I am sure many of us would be able to contribute

spacies · « **Reply #21 on:** November 11, 2007, 06:27:11 pm »

You are a legend my friend.

I have a bare MK cab sitting in the corner of my workshop just waiting for this artwork.

Please keep going.


Main	Restorations	Software	Audio/Jukebox/MP3	Everything Else	Buy/Sell/Trade
Project Announcements	Monitor/Video	GroovyMAME	Merit/JVL Touchscreen	Meet Up	Retail Vendors
Driving & Racing	Woodworking	Software Support Forums	Consoles	Project Arcade	Reviews
Automated Projects	Artwork	Frontend Support Forums	Pinball	Forum Discussion	Old Boards
Raspberry Pi & Dev Board	controls.dat	Linux	Miscellaneous Arcade	Wiki Discussion	Old Archives
Lightguns	Arcade1Up	Try the site in https mode		Site News


Unread posts \| New Replies \| Recent posts \| Rules \| Chatroom \| Wiki \| File Repository \| RSS \| Submit news