Behind the Scenes: Design Factory Illustration (Patreon)

We'll get a little bit more practical this week, so you'll get a bit of sneak peek into what's cooking behind the scenes. Thing is, apart from my courses, I also freelance. But I have to be really picky about the inquiries, because there's so little time left.

But the inquiries keep coming in and I always found it waste of potential to deny them all the time. Even if smaller low profile jobs, some of them would deserve a high quality illustration treatment. I thought about this, and it's not about the volume of work per say. 

What turns me off when a new inquiry arrives, is the amount of communication, meeting calls and feedback turnarounds needed to finish any job. It simply over-weights any excitement, the work would offer.

So me and few close fellow Blenderers, we set up a call (contraindicatory I know) and talked about options. And came up with an idea for a low friction, partly automated illustration studio. Our goal is to minimize the fluff and communication, and provide the best possible affordable illustration as fast as possible.

We call ourselves Frame Fries.

Visit the full Pinboard here

Naturally, we need some kind of presentation and I volunteered to do a 3D hero illustration for our website. As the Frame Fries name suggests, we're all about fast serving. But not in terms of quality, but the process. We're more a quality family diner, than a fast food.

So naturally, things like food, cooking and diners came up, so I fired up Pinterest and started saving references and ideas. It's a wild mix of images. Some of them are stylistic 3d and color references, others are food and restaurant related images.

After filling up a Pinterest board, I brought some of the images to PureRef (great image reference tool) and started organizing and cropping them to isolate the ideas I wanted to go for.

With all the necessary visual material, it was time for some sketching. At this point, I can't imagine going forward with the 3D modeling, unless I explored my ideas on paper. It's a fast iterative way to organize your thoughts and come with a layout that works. At least on paper, that is.

I wanted to go for semi-abstract environment. A compilation of furniture, objects and assets, that are connected with our themes. The whole thing is a design factory, but with the looks of a diner and kitchen if it makes sense. The forefront is the place for the client, to sit, have a coffee and order. Here you can see, how I mix the abstract with the real assets. The order form is a visual 3d representation of a website checkbox wireframe placed in a 3D space alongside the stylized coffee machine.

You can see this kind of dichotomy throughout the whole thing. Material and color swatches represented by spheres on a shelf. Food plate served with fries and another 3d wireframe representing the finished artwork the client receives while in the background, cooking happens.

The rest of the styling happens in Blender, with the color and materials resembling the vintage diner. 

You can watch the process video on Youtube.