Blog Post 44 - Stage 2 - Completed Design: Trio of Cars

My finished design for Stage Two: On Disc Label

As mentioned in Blog Post 39, the following posts will be in regards to the explanation of not only how, but more importantly why I went about designing the On Disc Label in the way that I did. For reference, my finished design is posted here. In a similar vein to that of the DVD Amaray Cover, these posts will be split into the following elements: Background; Border; Titles; Gene Hunt; Trio of Cars; Background Pattern; Logos; Information. The next element that will be discussed is that of the Trio of Cars.

Trio of Cars

Following on from that rather lengthy process of the Gene Hunt element of the On Disc Label, a similar task of adding the Trio of Cars to the On Disc Label was to follow. In a similar fashion to that of of the Gene Hunt element, I once again decided to use the same base image that I used in Stage One of the assignment for the DVD Amaray Cover. The trio of cars has been previously documented in much detail in Blog Post 13 - Trio of Cars whereby I created this trio using three different images which needed much work to come to the end result. One of the other reasons that I decided to use this image again is to stay in keeping with the House Style of the design whereby the On Disc Label will link in nicely with the DVD Amaray Cover too. Another reason that I opted to stay with this trio of cars set up is that the symmetrical element was also able to be continued on the On Disc Label too due to there being the one car in the middle, and two either side - all of these reasons made my mind up to stay with this image to use.

Image Trace Options

Appearance-wise for that of the trio of cars I decided that I would like to opt for something different to the DVD Amaray Cover that I had previously used it on. The first stage though was to open a new document in Illustrator so that I could start the work on the Trio of Cars image tha I had previously made. Once the new art board was open, I could got to File -> Place.... and find and place the photograph of the Trio of cars into the artboard so that it was ready to be edited to how I wanted it to be. Once again I decided to use that of a clipping mask to remove the background around the Trio of Cars, however before that I wanted to return to that of the effects and options that I could use to subtly change the appearance of the Trio of Cars. I used the original image perfectly fine for the font cover of the DVD Amaray Cover however I felt that, just like the Gene Portrait in Blog Post 43 I wanted to make some small changes. Once again I decided that I would like to keep to the House Style which would ensure that the design would link in a work well as a whole. With this in mind, I decided to have a look back to Blog Post 43 and that of the Gene Portrait and then looked back to Illustrator to see what I had used. After looking at this I decided that I wanted to use the Image Trace option that is situated on the Toolbar. Further details are in Blog Post 43, however basically it will trace the image selected and convert from a bitmap image to that of a vectorised image, whilst there are numerous options to tweak and control the end appearance of the image. For the portrait of Gene I opted for the 6 Colours element, which I felt worked well, however in this case I wanted to go for more of a custom route to show some creativity and going beyond the standard options that were available. With this in mind in the Trace Options I selected Custom and I was able to then tweak the settings to what I wanted. The Mode was set to Colour, as I wanted to keep the colours of the cars present as opposed to, for example, Black and White, and the Pallete was selected to Full Tone. By selecting this to Full Tone this meant that a whole hole of colours would be available to the program when vectorising, especially needed once the Colours number was set to 85. Heading into the Advanced settings I decided that I really wanted a created a subtle cartoon-effect to the image, and by tweaking the Paths to 36%, Corners to 72% and Noise to 56 Pixels this ended up at the effect that I was looking for. In regards to the Paths, this is in relation to the fit of the of the vectorisation, with a higher path setting meaning a tighter fit. Personally I felt that at 34% this was a fairly loose fit, and I felt this benefited the end result well. In regards to the Corners, this is in relation to the emphasis of the corners. Choosing 72% for the corners emphasis meant that there was a strong emphasis of the corners in the vectorised image which I felt was beneficial to the image as it made for a clear definition to the image to help create a real feeling of appearance. Finally, the Noise element is in regards to reducing noise by ignoring areas of specific pixel size. In my case, I opted for the size of 56 pixels as I felt that at this level there was just enough detail being captured in the image, however the element of noise was not being an issue. However, if this level was decreased the level of noise was very much apparent and I felt that this was not beneficial to the appearance of the image. 

Pen Tool and Clipping Mask used

Having now explored the function of the Image Trace to vectorise the image and also create an aesthetically pleasing effect to the image too, I was able to go about removing the background from the image. Once again this was something that I wanted to do as the current white background was something that was not wanted in my design due to the background being grey in colour so would of definitely looked out of place and unprofessional. With this in mind I once again decided to use a combination of the Pen Tool and a Clipping Mask. To start with the pen tool was used so that I could careful draw around the Trio of Cars to select just them and not the background which I was wishing to discard. Having previously used the pen tool in the Blog Post 43 for the portrait of Gene I felt that as this resulted in a good result for the accurate selection it was the best tool to use. Further details in regards to the Pen Tool can be found in Blog Post 33 - Pen Tool however another reason for using this tool is that is allows the precise selection of the area that I was wanting to keep. After the pen tool was used to select the outline that I wanted, I was then able to right click and Clipping Mask -> Make. This then allowed the selection to be effectively clipped away from that of the rest of the image, with the end result being of the selection of the Trio of Cars. Personally I feel that the clipping mask was the best solution to removing the background which is why I opted to use it - it was very swift to use and the end result was exactly what I wanted.

Trio of Cars Added to On Disc Label

Having then utilised the clipping mask this meant that I could save the Illustrator file with the name of TrioOfCars so that it would be quick and easy to find it in the future. Quickly reverting back to the DVDDiscCover Illustrator file meant that I could go to File -> Place and fine the TrioOfCars file. Once this had been placed this meant that unfortunately it had been placed in a layer with another element of the On Disc Layer. I really wanted to keep each element separate, so a New Layer called TrioOfCars was created. Then, with Gene selected this meant that I could navigate to Object -> Arrange -> Send to current layer where by the Trio was then able to be moved to it's own separate layer. I felt this best as if in the future I needed to edit this further, for example moving or creating some more effects, then I would be able to find and select the layer ready for editing. Also, it just makes everything much more accessible and easy to use when all is nicely in order and in separate Layers. Once the Trio was in it's own Layer, then meant that I was now happy to move and resize the new layer to the area that I wanted. By utilising the selection tool I was able to move and also resize the Trio of cars image (as per usual, holding down the Shift key which meant that the aspect ratio was kept the same as to not skew the orientation which would not be professional and result in a poor appearance. Regarding the end position I was careful to ensure that the centre of the Ford badge on the grill of the Capri lined up with the centre guide line of the disc which mean that the image was symmetrical, as that was something that I was careful to bear in mind. 

One last slight alteration that I carried out was in relation to the Brush Tool. Where I had decided that I like the Trio Of Cars being located, this meant that there was a bit of Gene Hunt protruding at the bottom of the cars just where they interacted. Just to remove this, I decided to select the Brush Tool, use the colour of the background and with the Gene layer selected I could then simply brush in the areas I did not need. Personally I felt the use of the Brush tool in this instance was the best route and resulted in the quick remedial action to create the effect that Gene was standing behind the Trio of Cars. It was also important to ensure that the Trio of Cars Layer was above that of the Gene portrait as to give the impression of depth.

Once this was completed, this meant that I was now ready to move onto the next element of the On Disc Label which was in relation to the Background Pattern.