Complete Guide to Digital Illustration
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and no one knows this better than digital illustrators. It is one of the most sought-after professions by artists for one simple reason.
Illustrators can inspire imagination through the images they create and act as storytellers influencing favorite games, movies, books, and series.
What makes this job so appealing to artists and how to become an illustrator?
What is Digital Illustration?
First of all, what is digital illustration? In the most general terms, digital illustration is any image created using software rather than, say, paint and canvas. Although some artists prefer to create artwork by hand and then refine it using software.
Using tablets and mice instead of stencils has its advantages: digital illustrations can be created much faster and in a wide variety of styles. But this is only the most basic use of the term "digital illustration".
In practice, it means using software to create images that tell a story, focusing on a character or environment.
These images are then used to sell a product - for example, to create artwork on playing cards or book covers; or to set the tone and look of a dramatic scene in a game or film.
It should be noted that although concept art and digital illustration overlap a bit, they are somewhat different from each other. Concept art is used to give the viewer a general idea of what something looks like, while digital illustration uses images to tell a story.
It conveys feelings and mood and is generally a more finished image. But both find their place in creating games, films, book covers, advertising, and software development.
Digital illustration is not exactly the same as graphics, which is more often used in advertising to convey a simple idea through shapes and lines, as opposed to storytelling through hand-drawn images. If you want to use software to tell a story with an image, that is digital illustration.
Two Types of Digital Illustration
There are actually two specific types of digital illustration: raster and vector. Both require different software and are used to create different illustration styles. Most professional illustrators can use both, although some prefer to specialize in one or the other. Here is a brief explanation of the differences between these two types.
Raster Image/Raster
Raster illustrations, sometimes called bitmap, consist of pixels - tiny dots that together form an image. This allows for many color gradations and gives you a wide variety of tools to create your work.
But unfortunately, it also means that resizing an image always results in some loss of quality.
Illustrators prefer this software when they don't need the clean lines that vector software offers, and instead want to give their drawings a more watercolor or hand-drawn, painted, or even charcoal look.
This program also allows adding and editing photos, enabling very realistic illustrations.
Vector
Vector images, on the other hand, consist of lines and shapes. Mathematical formulas in the software tell the computer where these lines are and their size, making them incredibly clean. Much cleaner than can be done by hand.
One of the biggest advantages of this method is the ability to resize images easily without loss of quality, but it tends to be better suited for 2D images and simpler art styles. This is because vector art lines tend to be very angular and straight, since everything is calculated by the program, unlike hand-drawn or watercolor effects possible with raster images.
For these reasons, graphic artists prefer vector design, although illustrators often use it as well, even in large works. It is commonly seen in advertising, book covers, and pop art.