New Challenges

This year, the Aquarium of the Pacific opened a new exhibit about steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). Because I don't know a lot about steelhead, I had a lot of research to do, which mostly involved a lot of google searching. However, in this case, I had the privilege of working with the actual fisheries scientists from USFW and regional fisheries scientists, which meant I also was able to supplement my photo reference with images and input from the scientists.

One of the things I was tasked with was creating an image for the steelhead life cycle, which is exceedingly complex because all steelhead start as eggs in a freshwater stream and as they grow older they can choose to stay in the freshwater and become what we call rainbow trout or they can can transition—in a process called smoltification—into the ocean-going form known as steelhead trout. To make things even more complicated, steelhead trout transition in freshwater to rainbow trout colors, but don't become rainbow trout. And they can return to the stream year after year to spawn unlike salmon. So yes, the big takeaway is that rainbow trout and steelhead trout are the same species.

This process started out with a sketch from Rosi Dagit from RCDSMM (Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains).

The initial Illustrator/Photoshop image based off Rosi Dagit's design:

The initial design looked too complicated on reflection, so we simplified it.
Another part of the process was to send out an image of all the trout life stages to the scientists for their review. Here you can see the various notes that were given on an initial version of the illustrations and a later version of the illustrations after I'd made the changes.

Here's an image that shows a rough progress.
The first image is a rough sketch, in this case of the steelhead (ocean-going form of the rainbow trout). For the ease of changing the outlines and scale of the various stages of the trout, I did all the "inking" digitally. These are vector images drawn in Adobe Illustrator and colored in Photoshop. It's hard to see the difference between the first outline and the second, but there were minor changes in the mouth shape and a general slimming down of the overall shape, since steelhead tend to be more streamlined than rainbow trout.

Here, you can see the final image, where includes a change in the title and a more pared down look. The background of the image reflects the exhibit so I made minor modifications there as well.

Next post is a little glimpse of what it takes to create a composite photo, without it looking too Photoshopped. Visit the Aquarium of the Pacific to see the new Steelhead Trout exhibit and the new signage in person!

Putting together the whole

I suspect that people working as illustration editors for magazines do this kind of thing all the time, but I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what I get handed before I start an illustration. This is a post touching on the process behind creating an illustration from existing materials.

While it's essentially a tracing job, it's not quite as straight forward.

What you get is this:

What they want is this:

I created this image for a forum on planning the use of marine space off the California Coast. It's officially called coastal marine spatial planning (CMSP). You can read more about the forum here. It's a vector image created in Adobe Illustrator with a map base created in GIS software and additional data added. I put reference links to the original image where possible.

This is the original map:

You can see the general shape of the land mass in the image. The shape of the coastline is directly pulled from this image. However, since the final image was reproduced at 8' wide, I added more detail to the map using other maps of the Southern California area.

 This is a reference image that I used to create the oil platform icon:

 

And this is the reference for placement of the oil platforms:

I used this map for the Marine Protected Areas (represented in green) and the state boundaries (represented in blue):

http://noyonews.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/SoCal-MLPA-Map.jpg

Federal boundaries (represented in purple) and shipping lanes (teal) were traced from a nautical map:

found here: http://www.fairwind.org/charts.shtml

And the final layer was of Areas of Special Biological Significance (ASBS) represented by an outline of the Garibaldi (yellow):

http://cordc.ucsd.edu/projects/asbs/

Just a little look behind the scenes of everyday illustrations, making science and data more beautiful through art.

Compressing a City

The image above was for the TED conference when they came over for an event at the aquarium. I had some time to work on it so I was able to put in a lot of details in the cityscape. My only directive was to draw something that represented Long Beach. I knew that the ports would be an important element and that the Long Beach skyline would need to be included and of course the Aquarium of the Pacific had to be part of the image! Pulling together elements of what represents the city of Long Beach, I made a couple of quick sketches of the idea I had and then went to the internet to find images that would fit what I had in mind. Only on an illustration can you get this many disparate views and elements into one image! The original sketch is done in Adobe Photoshop, which was later vectorized in Adobe Illustrator. The gradient was added to reflect the idea of new ideas, green practices, and positive outlooks to represent City 2.0.

Garden Signage: Non-Plant Illustrations

Here are a few close-ups of the non-plant ID images used in the Garden signage.

Food waste that can be used for composting. This image was a simple pencil sketch composed from various photos and colored in Photoshop.


Compost and worms. Again, a simple sketch composed from various worm and compost photos, colored in Photoshop.


Organic pesticides. Usually when I do a vector image of an existing object, I start out with a trace of a photo of the object, usually low res, and adjust accordingly.


A close up of the home with the programmable drip irrigation box. Composed from various Illustrator and Photoshop elements.