American History X DVD Illustration - Miscellaneous Artwork

While attending school, one of our projects was to pick a celebrity, find a photo of them, and then re-illustrate that person using Illustrator. We could only use 1 gradient mesh to define the basic shape and texture of the face then we had to use basic shapes to illustrate the rest of the photo. At first I had a hard time working with illustrator because I was so used to Photoshop and its tools. But once I found a good photo and started to work on the mesh, I got some confidence and I spent the next 14 hours working away and listening to some music. Before I knew it, it was 3am and I had a pretty good start to my illustration.

When I stepped back to get a wider view of the job so far, I felt like the photo was coming out looking to much like myself. Not trying to say I look like Edward Norton, but at the time it looked like me. Even a fellow classmate came over the next day to work on his project and he mentioned the same thing. So while he was setting up his computer, I started to work on my illustration some more. I didn't like how the face, nose and eyes were coming out so I decided to do them again. After the second round, I still felt the same area needed more work. In the end, I ended up re-illustrating the nose, eyes, and mouth six different times. But I felt confident that it looked genuine. I spent another few hours finishing up his photo and when I was finished, I felt really confident in my ability to illustrate. So I decided to move on and work on the other celebrity in the photo, Edward Furlong, and why not just redo the entire DVD cover while I'm at it. The project was to only illustrate a celebrity, but I always like to go the extra mile and do more to wow my instructors. In total, I spent about 20 hours working on this piece over the course of a weekend. The project wasn't due for a few more works, but once I get working on something, sometimes I find it hard to stop.

When it was time to show the instructors our work, I took a large print of it in and showed him. At first he said I had done the wrong project. We weren't supposed to take an existing DVD cover and change it, but to illustrate a celebrity. I told him that's what I had done, and he took a closer look at and then went wide eyed. He was impressed with the final version and I got full credit for the project.