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I’m a professional illustrator who’s worked in many fields. I’ve been always interested in 3D and stereoscopy, since I was a child I have been fascinated by the 3D visual effect.
For the past several years, I have been painting realistic caricatures as a freelancer. I was happy with my progress, but I wanted to offer something more; something unprecedented that would leave an impression on the retina of my clients.
So imagine this scenario: Imagine you’re preparing your very own wedding. Imagine you want your invitations done by an artist, and you have thought about caricatures . . . but you want something different. Then you come to me. You send me your pics and your fiancé’s, I paint both caricatures, I prepare the design and in the end I offer you to print 3D invitations with your caricatures for your guests.
Alternatively, you can work out a photo composition in GIMP or Photoshop, prepare your image by yourself, upload the file to SnapilyPro with their control panel, preview the whole thing, adjust the deepness and that’s all! It’s so easy.
Here’s how I went about making an invitation, step by step.
STEP 1:
Like all illustrators, I prepare a very generic sketch to setup the composition. Then I prepare more finished sketches for the caricatures and start painting.
STEP 2: Preparing the illustration or photo composition for 3D:
What you first have to do when prepping an illustration or photo composition for 3D is calculate the size at which you want the print to be done. In this case, I’ve painted the original illustration having in mind that it would need to be separated into layers, so that made it easier in the end. But once you’ve decided on the size, you’ll have to set extra space for the background horizontally. You must keep in mind that in order to make the depth effect, you’ll need extra background at the sides because we need to “see” something behind when we flip the 3D print:
On Image B you can see that I’ve expanded the original background horizontally, but the size of the print will be the original one:
STEP 3: Be sure to have the elements separated by layers:
As mentioned, it is important to have the elements separated by layers. The higher the layer is in your file, the closer it will appear to the viewer and in the other way around: The lower layer will be far from the viewer. In SnapilyPro’s control panel you can setup the distance between all the layers and the real-time simulation will show you how it will look when you flip the real printed image.
Here you have all the elements separated by layers:
I’ve cut (in this case, painted separately) all the shapes. If you have a photo instead of a painted illustration, you’ll have to be sure to cut the main subjects of the picture and paste them in separate layers, BUT fill in the background. If you don’t, when you flip the final printing viewers will be able to see the empty cut backgrounds behind the subjects. You can use photo-retouching tools to fill the gaps in the backdrop, but basically it works the same way.
STEP 4: PROOF YOUR WORK!
But I made a mistake, that our friends at SnapilyPro quickly spotted. They pointed out that the text is too small. I thought about having the text in the layer 0 (in the online simulation, layer 0 is the one that is not separated and is not neither upfront nor backwards. We could say it stays “on the paper”) in order to make it easier to read, but as their pros told me, the text was still too small, so in the end I had to make a final change and let just a “headline” text, so keep that in mind when you prepare your compositions:
Thanks very much for your attention! I hope you found this article interesting.
Alex Gallego is a freelance illustrator who has worked for individual clients and companies in Spain, the UK, US, Portugal and Germany. He stared at 17 with a small humor magazine in Barcelona. He has worked with Disney, ESPN, IBM, SONY, the International Comicon of Barcelona, the International Book Fair of Barcelona, CITROËN and even Monty Python’s SPAMALOT as an illustrator for backgrounds and props. Currently, he draws weekly caricatures for a newspaper in Spain, every Saturday.