Harrier Cartoon Development

I'm often asked how work develops so thought it was high time to put something together, first up is a Flash animation (sorry no preloader so please be patient) showing the evolution and it's followed by a few key stages as images for a clearer view.

As usual with all vector work it starts life with extensive research to get the technical details and markings right, just because it's a cartoon doesn't mean it can't be accurate, this all forms the basis of several sketches that lead up to the final that is used as the starting point for the vector illustration.

Once it's scanned in and cleaned up in photoshop the sketch is then imported into Illustrator (from here it's pure vector all the way) and used as a template, the basic shapes are then created, next the main colours are added, using a clipping mask to make life easier.

From here a number of effects, filteres and meshes are used to build up the shading and highlights, then finally the markings and squadron badge are made as flat images, then a distortion mesh is applied to fit them to the contours of the fuslage.

Lastly a background is added to give it all some depth, again a few blurs to help create the illusion of speed.