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Understanding the Work That Goes Into a Technical Cutaway Illustration

It's not for the faint of heart

By Rain Noe - April 24, 2020

I've been poring over the website of technical illustrators Beau and Alan Daniels, the guys who did those daytime/nighttime cutaways of the cruise ship. One of the illustrations on their site is a cutaway of an RV, and because they show you the steps required to get to the finished product, you can get a sense of their process--and understand the labor required.

They start off with a clean, client-supplied photo of the vehicle, in something close to an isometric view:

They then retouch it into the desired configuration, with the door open, the steps deployed, and the slide-out portions pulled out:

Image by Beau Daniels

Next they've got to produce the line art. (As someone who used to do this step quite often in my ID career--on far less complicated objects--I can tell you this tracing step is nowhere near as fun nor straightforward as you might think it is.)

Image by Beau Daniels

After the exterior line art, they painstakingly do the line drawings for all of the interior parts. This would be the part of the project where I'd wonder why I didn't try to become a doctor or lawyer instead. I can guarantee you their Layers window looked like the waiting list to get into Harvard.

Image by Beau Daniels

Adding the color. This step has got to be satisfying because it's the beginning of the end.

Image by Beau Daniels

Finally, the finished product. There's still plenty of judgment required at this step, as they have to decide how much to reveal and how much to obscure; if they got this part wrong, it would be too confusing and incomprehensible for a layperson to make sense of.

Image by Beau Daniels

And with the hard work out of the way, changing the colors is a snap.

Image by Beau Daniels

Check out more of the Daniels' work here. (I especially dig their Product Technical Illustrations section.)

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Michael DiTullo

4 years ago

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Imagine how hard this was pre digital when they were doing this in pen and airbrush! You had to be thinking like 8- steps ahead. Even so, this is damn impressive.

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peter eller

4 years ago

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this would be much easier in blender
https://youtu.be/v_ikG-u_6r0

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peter eller

4 years ago

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I think it would be much easier to do this in Blender. plus you could easily do multiple views and details.
https://youtu.be/v_ikG-u_6r0

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