How do you achieve the "look" this foliage has?

theGrandPoobah

I know, I know, it's angry birds ref, but I am very curious to learn how the artists crafted that foilage (the various bushes protruding as sprites throughout the level).

link to Ref

Did they use two layers in illustrator, and then apply masked brush strokes in photoshop?

I have been scouring the interwebs to no avail, and would be very curious to hear if you guys had any input.

For context, this is what I was able to "figure out" so far, but not close to the kind of brushed (but still looks like it was achieved with vectors) look that the ref achieves.

Link to my Result

passerby

they either did it with vectors than painted in some of the shading your talking about, or that bit of shading is just a gradient on a ellipsis.

i persnally would make the shape in AI, than boot it over to PS, and work a little with a soft brush, and my wacom on it.

theGrandPoobah

passerby wrote: »

they either did it with vectors than painted in some of the shading your talking about, or that bit of shading is just a gradient on a ellipsis.

i persnally would make the shape in AI, than boot it over to PS, and work a little with a soft brush, and my wacom on it.

I am intrigued by what you propose. I don't think they used a soft brush, although that was my initial thinking, because it is far too clean--unless they used a selection and/or mask.

I guess that would rule in an ellipsis with a gradient, but how they would make that work? Surely the Ellipsis would be masked out where the vector shape has no opacity, right?

tristamus

You can do this simply in Photoshop. Photoshop has great capabilities now that come close to illustrator for all practical purposes concerning the pen tool and vectors.

I can see 3 layers here, achieved by creating vectors with the pen tool. Then, it looks like a simple "Stroke" layer effect is applied to the underlying, darkest green color grass layer, then a lighter green shade on top, and yet another very finely tuned, lighter green shade above that.

theGrandPoobah

Yep, I made the original image in Photoshop using the pen tool. AI is obviously vector focused, but it was a lot more straightforward to keep it all in PS.

When you say a simple Stroke layer, do you mean an additional layer or just a Layer Effect?


So let's break this down:

Back-most Layer: Dark Green, effectively the Sillohuete of the sprite
Mdeium-back Layer: lighter Green swatch, this was created as the inner Sillohuete
Innermost/Front Most Layer: lightest Green Swatch


And you're saying that all three layers have stroke effects?