NEED ADVICE - College Coursework: Custom Typography

[Achroite]

Heya, not been active at all recently and that's mainly because of my graphics coursework. The coursework involves investigating and understanding typography, I've been getting along fine, but I'm having problems with my final piece.

The final piece involves creating and presenting on A2 my own A to Z alphabet of my own typography. I chose to do car exhaust(weird I know, my research kind of forced me in that direction).

The plan was to draw out the rough designs, scan them in, and edit them in photoshop/illustrator. However In photoshop I rarely delve away from making signatures, doing this has made me realize I probably don't know as much as I like to think I do.

Please take a look at this, what I've managed to create so far.
The process I used is as follows:

• Scan in drawing
• Trace over using the pencil tool in adobe illustrator, export as png
• Import into photoshop, fill in the inside with a solid grey colour

This gave me the following result, which I'm not entirely happy with:


I want the letters to appear more '3D', I tried adding a bevel in photoshop but it only bevels the outline and not the individual objects. Does anyone have suggestions on how to do this?
I'd love if anyone has any other suggestions at all to improve the piece, as I'm not happy with the final result.
What I'm considering doing is drawing out and importing each exhaust pipe separately then importing them and doing this, is there a quicker option?

Here's a couple of drawings I've scanned in to help you see what I'm working with:




Sorry about this, I have no idea where to go for help as college is out for a week, and the final piece + an evaluation is due the first day back.

Thanks again for any feedback.

[+s9.Oath]

hmm i dunno man i like the drawings alot better maybe add some shadows to it and making each piece its own layer other than that i dunno what to do never tried to make my own font lol

[Achroite]

hmm i dunno man i like the drawings alot better maybe add some shadows to it and making each piece its own layer other than that i dunno what to do never tried to make my own font lol

I know what you mean I felt like processing them took away from the appearance, I've got shading on a couple of the sketches and they look really great, I just can't seem to recreate that.

[Distello]

Edit: Well I'm an idiot, totally didn't notice the shading on first glance. You're going from a drawing where it's based as an outline to a solid colour on screen, that could be the problem, it certainly needs some form of realistic gritty texture but without the ability to add some lighting since it's a font it's never really going to 'pop' off the screen even with that.

Honestly though it may even be a better idea to get a roll of soldering wire and just make the letters in the real world, photograph and cut. If I was doing this project I'd probably do it half arsed, take the pictures of each letter and just have that as the font. Might look nice and artistic.... so to speak. Although with that each photo would need to be dimension-perfect.

Generally speaking though fonts are flat, 2d and done in a vector based program so they can be expanded to whatever size is needed, I like the concept it's just tricky to figure out how it would work. Try the outline thing though, black outline on a plain white page might look pretty badass.

[ColdCut]

If your using illy then you've got a a path.
If you then want it 3D, you could use c4d and make it 3D in that program.
Also as your using car exhaust for your typo, you could apply some wonderful chrome textures, it would pop nicely plus also as there 3D, you could rotate them your liking.
If you want the letters to look perfect, use the pen tool in either ps or illy.

[BonesMa]

What photoshop are you using does it have 3D option?

A very and I mean very crude cut here 6 clicks and I was done you could take way more time.


If you don't have 3d option its more work but again can be done.

Get rid of the blue background that can be added later as a separate layer at the bottom.

Once done you are left with your TEXT go to "Edit" "Transform" "Perspective" move the corners to give you your eyeline. Next copy your redone text layer, place it behind your top layer and resize to give you your back layer, paint it black. Next using pentool create your edges and shadows and your done and it should look like above but takes more time.

[cc.RadillacVIII]

Illy has 3D, you can render all paths, CS6 and up.
I'd also suggest Illy and trace, then 3D render it.

[Achroite]

Edit: Well I'm an idiot, totally didn't notice the shading on first glance. You're going from a drawing where it's based as an outline to a solid colour on screen, that could be the problem, it certainly needs some form of realistic gritty texture but without the ability to add some lighting since it's a font it's never really going to 'pop' off the screen even with that.

Honestly though it may even be a better idea to get a roll of soldering wire and just make the letters in the real world, photograph and cut. If I was doing this project I'd probably do it half arsed, take the pictures of each letter and just have that as the font. Might look nice and artistic.... so to speak. Although with that each photo would need to be dimension-perfect.

Generally speaking though fonts are flat, 2d and done in a vector based program so they can be expanded to whatever size is needed, I like the concept it's just tricky to figure out how it would work. Try the outline thing though, black outline on a plain white page might look pretty badass.

That's a pretty good idea, unfortunately I just don't have the time to do that, pretty much have to get this done today to meet my deadline .

I think I'll go with a white background rather than blue, think it gives draws more attention to the lettering.

If your using illy then you've got a a path.
If you then want it 3D, you could use c4d and make it 3D in that program.
Also as your using car exhaust for your typo, you could apply some wonderful chrome textures, it would pop nicely plus also as there 3D, you could rotate them your liking.
If you want the letters to look perfect, use the pen tool in either ps or illy.

Not too great with illustator, think I'm going to make an effort to improve when this hell of an assignment is over.
That's a brilliant suggestion with the chrome textures, I went ahead and downloaded a few and I've been playing around, managed to fiddle with the bevel and get them to 'pop' out more, things are looking much better . I'm going to try using the pen tool to sketch a couple of letters and see which look I prefer, good idea.

What photoshop are you using does it have 3D option?

A very and I mean very crude cut here 6 clicks and I was done you could take way more time.
(Picture)

If you don't have 3d option its more work but again can be done.

Get rid of the blue background that can be added later as a separate layer at the bottom.

Once done you are left with your TEXT go to "Edit" "Transform" "Perspective" move the corners to give you your eyeline. Next copy your redone text layer, place it behind your top layer and resize to give you your back layer, paint it black. Next using pentool create your edges and shadows and your done and it should look like above but takes more time.

Whoah, that's actually pretty cool, I'm in CS5.1 which I think has it but I've never learnt how to use it I played around with the perspective stuff and It actually looked pretty cool, got a bit lost though half way and I think doing that 26 times would take me a lifetime haha. It's really cool though, I'll definately play around with it later when I have free time.

I came up with a little sample of different variations with different bevels/textures, I'd love to hear which one you lot prefer(or if you think there's something else I could do). In the meantime I'll start to trace over the other 25 letters of the alphabet(fun fun fun!)


You guys are seriously brilliant, I would've done so much worse without you!

[edwinpabito]

^what you did worked! although i guess using more HQ texture/stock would be better!

[Achroite]

Illy has 3D, you can render all paths, CS6 and up.
I'd also suggest Illy and trace, then 3D render it.

Thanks for the suggestion, shame I didn't do it when I was doing my super reply haha. No time to do that now but I'll make sure to fiddle with the 3d in illustrator when this project is done, thanks .

^what you did worked! although i guess using more HQ texture/stock would be better!

Yep! Just gotta finish sketching out the letters(which I'll finish either today or tomorrow) then I'll start to tweak the effects. I'll look into some new stocks when that time comes!