May 07, 2010

Vector painting hotness in Illustrator CS5

I’ve posted some demos showing off Photoshop CS5′s new physics-simulating brush engine–but did you know that the same engine is part of Illustrator CS5 as well?
Check out this painting and behind-the-scenes info from Greg Geisler, one of the artists behind A Scanner Darkly (see previous). Greg makes amazing use of the new Bristle Brush engine. I’m also digging this illustration by Joel Cocks, done using the same tools.

Side note: When I met Greg in Austin a couple of years ago, he talked about how useful he’d find the ability to tell Illustrator to put subsequent strokes/shapes behind the current one, rather than on top of it. Apparently the Rotoshop artists use this technique extensively when tracing over imagery. I’m pleased to say that Illustrator CS5 implements the new Draw Behind mode. Here’s a brief (2-minute) demo of that feature, along with the related Draw Inside mode.

(rt) Photography: Historic NYC, war, & more

• Flickr hosts a set of gorgeous photos of New York from the 1940′s. [Via]
• Same city, different era: check out Allan Tannenbaum’s “Dirty, Dangerous, and Destitute: New York in the 70s.”
• “Iwo Jima without Marines… but filled with content awareness,” says Thorsten Wulff
• Neat project: Lining up past & present photos. [Via]
• A cry for Photoshop, if ever there was one: Eastern European album covers of the ’70s. [Via]