Illustration:
First Place, Most Professional

Meg McWhinney
Academy of Art College

Series: Cigar Box, Jellyfish, Mac Mouse

Artist's Statement: Adobe programs were used to both lay the foundation and to finish these pieces. The time spent in these Adobe applications constitutes half or more of these illustrations look and is the bases of their overall believability.

How these illustrations were created: First, I scanned my photographic references into Photoshop® and using Streamline®, I converted the areas needed into vector graphics and brought them into Adobe® Illustrator®. These graphics served as visual suggestions as to how to form my Bezier curves. This process was necessary to form detailed, organic shapes such as the tendrils and body of the jellyfish. Once all the profile curves were completed and arranged into a scene, I imported them into my 3D package and began the lathing and extrusion. As the wire-frame mesh surfaces were constructed, I applied and layered Targa format textures created in Photoshop to all the surfaces. The quality of these textures is the primary key to the object's believability. During the final output for these three images, I chose to disable several rendering options such as refraction caustics. I also reduced my number of lights, transparent objects and cast reflections. Bringing the final base rendered images into Photoshop, I heavily utilized the filters options, layer transparency and the new customizable styles to reproduce the three dimensional "look" that otherwise would have taken hours to render (and a fair amount of guess work) within a 3D application.

Adobe products are essential to my 3D illustrations in order to communicate detail and visual accuracy. As a 3D modeling student, I quickly realized that Adobe products allow creative freedom not found within higher-end 3D software. The Adobe Illustrator pen tools coupled with the capabilities of the transforms palette allow me to create and edit the entire skeletal structure of the scene prior to opening it within my 3D interface. The time saved not correcting or resizing complex curves is simply enormous. Additional Adobe power comes with the new features in Photoshop 6.0 that I use to reproduce effects on the illustration that would have taken hours to render through traditional 3D engines. When time and accuracy are of essence, Adobe products are truly core partners to current 3D applications.