Jep: Photoshop Lines vs. Illustrator Lines

HEY GUYS! LOOK, A PUPPY! This is Jep, our Shepherd/Chow mix. I have been searching for new line art techniques, so I decided to try converting Photoshop lines to vector in Illustrator. Adobe Photoshop and I have been in a pretty committed relationship ever since I switched over from Jasc Paint Shop Pro back in the early 2000's, but Illustrator has a lot of great qualities that I am really growing to love for traditional art, like the Blob Brush tool. These are great options when you want to resize your graphics at a later date.

Below is a side-by-side comparison of my Photoshop line art vs. Illustrator line art. In this particular case I used Live Trace to convert my lines, and after some tweaking I was pretty happy with the results. I've created smooth, scalable lines with minimal quality loss. That is a success in my book! You have no idea how many hours I wasted scaling my recently vectorized lines up and down, completely in awe of their beauty. (Roughly .003 seconds, but in my mind it was a lot longer.)

A Study of Canine Anatomy

It's no secret that I love animals. If you've spent any time on this blog, that is quite obvious. Dogs hold a special place in my heart. I've always had a dog present in my life in one way or another. I spent much of my childhood exploring the woods behind my house with my childhood dog and best four-legged friend, Bo. He, along with a vast array of other furry creatures instilled within me a deep love for animals that I will never shake.

I've started a personal project to illustrate an assortment of dog breeds. This project is primarily so that I can study anatomy. It's amazing that although they are all canines, the anatomy of a Great Dane is extraordinarily different from that of a Chihuahua. Don't even get me started on facial variations! On one hand, we can have the proud, wolf-life face of the German Shepherd, and then we have the Pug, a comical little dog that looks like he didn't put the breaks on soon enough before plowing into a wall.

Below is the first draft in a series I will be continuing. By the end of this project I hope to have a greater understanding of canine at anatomy and overall physical appearance. Enjoy!