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.