Illustrating for Spotify with Jarom Vogel

Who is that this man? 

Hi, I’m Jarom Vogel—good to satisfy you! I’ve been a contract illustrator for about 5 years. I’ve created illustrations for a bunch of firms and some youngsters’s books. I’ve additionally made some Skillshare lessons about illustrating on the iPad, and I take pleasure in seashores and superb ice lotions, which I’d love to speak about extra, however that is most likely not what you are right here for. Instead, I’m going to indicate you the way I made the illustrations for the Spotify for Podcasters web page utilizing Procreate and Affinity Designer on an iPad Pro. Feel free to ask me about ice cream later, although.

What are we drawing once more?

What nice questions you ask! Fortunately, Spotify had some equally nice solutions prepared for me after I requested them the identical factor. They wished this web site to talk to podcast creators and assist them perceive the values of being on the platform. I used to be commissioned to create 3 illustrations and was supplied with a short that outlined titles for every, some idea steerage, tough mockups of the location, and a shade palette. The transient was tremendous useful in ensuring we have been on the identical web page, and in positioning the drawings to resonate with podcasters.

You discuss loads. Are you ever going to attract something?

How proper you might be—let’s get began on some sketches! As you’ll have guessed, I do just about all of my work on an iPad. For the sketches half, I’m going to be working in Procreate. (“WAIT!” you may ask, “What brushes do you employ??” You could also be shocked to be taught, expensive reader, that I’ve been requested this query earlier than! For this half, I largely use Procreate’s built-in “Technical Pencil” brush. It’s an excellent one! If I need to preserve issues extra free, I’ll typically begin with “HB pencil” for sketches as properly.)

Because the great folks at Spotify are very organized, I used to be given a design mockup to work with. This doesn’t at all times occur, however it helps loads to have some context for the way the illustrations will match within the web page. When working with a mockup, I prefer to preserve it on display with my sketches to visualise their placement higher. Usually I’ll create a “scratchpad” off to the facet or beneath to work out actually tough sketches, then transfer them over into the mockup after they begin to come collectively extra. This helps to maintain sketches free, with much less feeling of claustrophobia and strain that may come from drawing immediately on the mockups. (This sounds dumb, however it occurs.)

While organizing issues this manner is useful for me, it will possibly find yourself being a bit unintelligible for anybody else, so I must tidy up a bit earlier than delivering sketches to the shopper. Organizing the sketches that I need to present and assigning each a singular letter or quantity helps facilitate dialogue with no need to say issues like “That one with the guy with the hair, you know?”

Before we transfer on although, let’s discuss for a minute about these preliminary sketches. How did I resolve what to attract? Honestly that is often the hardest a part of a mission for me. Coming up with concepts might be exhausting. I discover that it’s very useful to truly discuss to the artwork director on the cellphone earlier than beginning a mission if I can. The higher my communication up entrance, the much less time I waste drawing snakes holding swords when the artwork director hoped for a cow. (Definitely saving these snake-sword sketches for later, although!) Fortunately on this case I used to be given a reasonably strong place to begin. If you take a look at the labeled sketches above, you’ll be able to most likely inform that the ideas for the primary and second illustrations have been fairly properly outlined from the start. The choices I despatched over are all variations of the identical primary concepts. The third one was slightly extra open, however as a result of we mentioned some choices earlier than I drew something, we have been capable of decide on B3 fairly rapidly. Overall this was just about the perfect sketch expertise.

To present the remainder of the method, I’m going to concentrate on the “Be where millions of listeners are” illustration (C1 from the sketches web page, for these of you following alongside at dwelling). Because this one is a little more detailed, I must spend a while right here re-drawing my sketch at full dimension, incorporating any suggestions, and understanding a number of the finer particulars. If I did my job properly on thumbnails hopefully it isn’t too painful. 

Sketches are cool and all, however are you ever going to paint this factor?

You’re proper, sketches are cool. But sure, it’s time to maneuver to paint! Because I wanted to ship these illustrations as vector recordsdata, we’re going to be transferring into Affinity Designer at this level. Why Affinity Designer? I’m glad you requested. First of all, Affinity Designer (or AD as I’m going to name it) permits me to work immediately on the iPad, which implies most significantly that I don’t should get off the sofa. But critically, I’ve tried plenty of completely different vector packages (together with a number of desktop ones), and I believe AD for iPad has the perfect illustration workflow for the way I draw.

Just a few issues I actually like about it:

• It has a gradient device that’s very easy to make use of

• The means clipping masks work really is sensible

• You can freely scale and rotate the canvas (very like Procreate)

• It has the identical undo and redo gestures as Procreate

So let’s get arrange for coloring! First I’m going to import my sketches, change them to 50% opacity, and lock the sketch layer. I go away this on the high of the layer stack and switch it on and off for reference as I work. If this isn’t the primary illustration I’ve coloured, I’ll additionally import small flat variations of the earlier spots that I can preserve off to the facet to ensure my colours are constant. Now I simply want to change my mind over to vector mode, which generally is a little jarring.

With my sketch in place, I’m going to start out blocking in all my main shapes with the pen device. (“WAIIIIT what brush do you use in AD?” Trick query! I’m utilizing the pen device right here, which isn’t actually a brush. Instead, it’s a means of making management factors to actually rapidly create and edit shapes and contours. If you aren’t conversant in vector drawing, this may take some getting used to.)

I strive to not fear an excessive amount of at first about colours and particulars, as a substitute focusing totally on the bigger shapes. After my shapes are largely sorted out although, I spend a while tweaking colours a bit and utilizing the gradient device so as to add some curiosity to my shapes.

(By the way in which, I’d extremely advocate studying and utilizing the keyboard shortcuts in AD if you happen to can, it speeds issues up loads.)  

Ok, time to start out shading! I do that by creating my shadow shapes with the pen device, setting them to a really mild blue or purple, then clipping them to the form I’m shading. In AD you create a clipping masks by making the clipped form a toddler of the form you need it clipped to. After that I modify the mix mode of the shadow form to multiply, and use the transparency device (seems to be like a wine glass within the toolbar) to fade the shadow out a bit on one facet. This works similar to the gradient device, besides it creates an opacity gradient as a substitute of a shade gradient.  

Now all that’s left is to go in and add the remainder of the small print. Things like sound waves, little background particles, warmth waves coming off the pizza—principally a number of small issues that give the illustration a bit extra life. And with that I’m all performed! At this level I export a flat picture, ship it to the artwork director, and hope they prefer it. 

Wait! What if I want an Illustrator file?

It’s actually frequent for shoppers to want a layered file, and the business customary remains to be Adobe Illustrator. You may discover that there isn’t any simple option to export on to AI proper now, however with just a bit legwork it’s not too unhealthy.

The greatest means I’ve discovered is to export your work to SVG, then open that in Illustrator. Make positive that in your export settings you modify the Rasterize setting from “Unsupported properties” to “Nothing,” and switch off the “Set view field” change.

The legwork half is that whereas SVG will preserve your colours, shapes, and gradients, it would not appear to know something about mix modes. After opening your file in Illustrator, you may want to pick out all of your shadows (the direct choice device is your buddy right here) and redo the mix modes. After that each one you might want to do is reserve it as an AI file and also you’re good to go!

And there you go!

That’s just about my course of! I had a good time working with Spotify on this, and I like how the mission (particularly the colours) turned out. While I’m fairly snug with vector illustration, most of my current work has been in Procreate, so it was a very enjoyable problem to adapt my present course of and workflow to vector illustration. I discovered loads engaged on this, and I hope you have been capable of choose up some helpful suggestions as properly! If you’d prefer to see extra of my work yow will discover me @jaromvogel on Twitter and Instagram, or take a look at my web site at jaromvogel.com. You can even be taught extra about my illustration course of by taking one in all my Skillshare lessons at jaromvogel.com/be taught. Thanks for studying, and don’t overlook to ship your completed art work to your mother to placed on the fridge! Oh, and if you happen to’re headed to the fridge anyway, may you seize me some ice cream when you’re there?