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Incredible Photo-Realistic Illustrator Works

khulsey.com — Yukio has been working with Adobe Illustrator since its creation, and it shows in his work. Using a combination of Blends, Gradients and the Gradient Mesh tool, Yukio achieves a stunning level of detail and finesse in his execution of reflective surfaces. Adobe® Illustrator® to the max!

Who dugg this? Made popular May 21, 2007

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  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -6/+104.ai files or it didn't happen...
  • themoose, on 10/11/2007, -18/+86digg this comment down :(
  • cthulhu0, on 10/11/2007, -0/+54if you know what you are doing, gradient meshes are really quick.
    and while i agree that it might have taken less time to model in maya, the lighting set up and materials would have taken a bit of time, plus rendering.
    but because these files are all vector, they are completely resolution independant. you can print this out the size of a building without loss of quality or having to rerender. plus, there are no texture stretching issues, or or having to rerender for different media sizes.
    plus, it shows that he can use illustrator. if he can do this, he can certainly draw out any other illustration or logo or whatever else. its a tech demo of his skills.
  • rcomegys, on 10/11/2007, -3/+34@andy101 -- your outlook on the world is remarkably... corporate. That's admirable if the only thing in life you admire is expediency. There are many artisans who choose to use certain, more "time consuming" techniques because they love the medium, and often because they want to show what is possible through their beloved medium. This isn't limited to graphic art, but art in general, and in a broader sense, to many aspects of life. A good example is construction. You can build a prefab house in a few days, but it lacks the uniqueness of a house built over time using more traditional techniques. Also look at any hand crafts -- the Amish do brilliant woodwork using no electric tools, which takes time but creates a product with a unique life all its own. I think this Yukio fellow isn't far from these other examples.
  • andy101, on 10/11/2007, -16/+45The same image that took him weeks to create in Illustrator would have taken a day in Maya.

    Don't get me wrong, what he does is amazing, but why waste so much time?
  • wild, on 10/11/2007, -3/+29Its the power of the gradient mesh. Very impressive tool with the right eye.

    Unfortunately, you need a very powerful computer to handle those files. They suck up memory in a hurry.
  • VinceNoir, on 10/11/2007, -0/+23To all the people who are asking why he'd bother, let me ask you this:

    Would you ask a sculptor why he'd bother to create a new work when it could be done faster and cheaper with CAD/CAM, a few molds and some plaster with special texture paint? The problem with you lot is that you don't understand the difference between art, and mass production. This guy does what he does because it's a form of art. He's simply using modern tools. It's the same difference between someone really creating an original piece of music using digital samplers with original samples, and a MIDI sequencer vs. some idiot with a loop program and a bunch of pre-recorded music loops. The first case is someone creating an original piece of art. The second case is basically equivalent to someone putting together clip art in a word processor and calling themselves a professional graphic designer. Sadly, the majority of people are consumers and don't understand the value of producing something with hard work that actually calls for real skill and is imbued with something that mass produced crap never has: originality.
  • gajillion, on 10/11/2007, -3/+24@rcomegys - You're right on the mark. To carry that absurdist logic even further - why waste your 3 hours in Maya and Photoshop at all? Why not just go out and take a photograph? Or, why bother with a photograph? Just go out and buy the real thing and have it sit on your desk.
    Why not? Because that's not the point - that's why not.
  • madnar, on 10/11/2007, -3/+23He is an ILLUSTRATOR God
  • NanoStuff, on 10/11/2007, -3/+21"Very impressive tool with the right eye"

    I'm not so sure, I tired both eyes. Equally craptastic results.
  • betterth, on 10/11/2007, -4/+21@adjsavedmylife

    The point he's trying to make is that with the proper tools he can do what he did incredibly faster.

    This can't be anymore than a hobby, because this kind of work would literally go ten times faster in something like 3D Studio Max and Photoshop.

    But just like the guy who drew those amazing pictures in MSPaint, this is truly amazing and the man is very, very talented.
  • coreytn81, on 10/11/2007, -3/+18I have to agree with andy101 on this one. I'm a graphic designer and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't use Illustrator. I wish I could create the work that Yukio has done. I can understand the schematic illustrations (like the outboard motor illustration) The problem is if this work was for a client, why not use a 3D Modeling tool such as Maya or Max? If the end result is nearly (maybe even better) the same yet takes more time, he's just wasting money. Especially if he is using photos for reference, why not model the same reference photos in 3D? That way he has lighting and angles to work with once the modeling/texturing is done. The only benefit I can see to this is that it is in fact vector art, and would scale easily for print, but I'm sure that a 3D app has output settings that would negate that anyways. In any case, not to take away from his work and just from an artistic perspective, all of his pieces look great.
  • griz, on 10/11/2007, -1/+16"The same image that took him weeks to create in Illustrator would have taken a day in Maya.
    Don't get me wrong, what he does is amazing, but why waste so much time?"

    It's not only about the final product. Why waste time painting when you can just take a photo?
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+17Illustrator is used over 3D rendering here for Illustrator's vector capabilities.
  • xerus, on 10/11/2007, -2/+15Holy *****' *****. And I don't say that often.
  • venicerocco, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11OMG - that last picture of some guy sitting in an office is just totally unbeleivable...
  • rebopper, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9One of your left eyebrows? Just one?
  • whiteyMcBrown, on 10/11/2007, -3/+11The reason why you wouldn't just do it in 3D is precisely the reason you stated: Because of the scaling. While you could scale the 3D model, you couldn't scale the textures (unless you did all the textures in Illustrator). Also, I'd rather be known as the best Illustrator guy in the world (he just might be), than another decent Maya guy. More bragging rights.
  • Xadrian79, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Fastest site with his work (right now) seems to be here:

    http://yukio.illustratorworld.com/

  • ElectricGrandpa, on 10/11/2007, -0/+63D sortware is much better than 2D sortware... at sorting.
  • pygmalion, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7dugg for using Mac OS 9 in 2007
  • andy101, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4You wouldn't need to scale textures. The material on the car, for example, would be a layered shader with a highlight pass, a colour pass, etc. There would be no baked textures, the renderer would do it all.
  • Bjarke, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5OS9?
  • BonhamsGhost, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4A pretty good vector artist with a horrible choice of subject matter?
  • chriskelley, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5@cthulhu0

    Resolution independence is hardly an argument to spend this much time accomplishing this task. Whereas the rest of the flexibility you get from doing these in 3D is overwhelming... for example if this guy does his in Illustrator in 3 days, and I do mine in Maya in a day, and tomorrow the agency calls and says "we don't really like the angle, lets get a little lower and give it a hero shot", have fun explaining it's going to be another 3 days to get that out.

    But obviously, the guy is talented with using Illustrator and would be good to have around for many projects. However this specific application is a bit too arduous for production.
  • Chumbuh1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4yea, i mean why would you want to paint something if you can just take a photograph of it.....

    ITS ART! He chooses vector graphics as his medium. He could be like everyone else and use 3D software to do it, but it wouldn't be as cool. It's like why someone chooses watercolor or pastels over oil painting. Yea it may be harder and less practical, but its more original.
  • Sheff, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Speaking as an illustrator and a teacher, I don't have a single student that likes using Illustrator.

    Also a couple things to keep in mind:
    1. To produce work like that requires that you have good source material. When students don't understand why their work looks like crap when they are going for photorealism the answer is usually found in them starting with a crappy photo to begin with. The fact is that most people cannot render and don't take the time to learn and understand form.
    2. To accomplish this work is not so much difficult as it is incredibly time consuming. God forbid his client wants a change or to view the object from a different angle. Because you know, sometimes clients want changes...
    3. It isn't the tool, it's the guy. It's not Illustrator that produced the images, it's the fact that this guy has patience. I would venture to guess that his personality(attention to detail) isn't much different from someone who likes to pour over code and look for ways to optimise it.
    4. I personally hate Illustrator because you have constantly switch tools for various related tasks. Plus you can only work on a single page in Illustrator. You can achieve the same results in pretty much any good vector application. The skill lies in the artist not the tool. I use Xara Xtreme because it's much easier to use than Illustrator. Most people use Illustrator because they aren't aware of alternatives. Just wearing Air Jordans doesn't mean you can dunk.
    5. The point is not to copy the photograph, the point is to be better than the photograph. If the goal of art is to be as good as a photograph, then why not just use the photograph?
    6. If time is money, and he's not being paid by the hour, he had better be fast because the longer he spends on his work the less he gets paid.
  • redrighthand, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3The talent of artists like these blows me away http://www.lifeinvector.com/illustration.html
  • regeya, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6andy101:

    Wrong *****. Graphic designers get paid to do their job WELL as quickly as possible. "Quickly as possible" is bound to look like *****. We have ***** attitudes about people coming in and telling us about how fast something should go. You ask for ***** in a hurry, you get ***** in a hurry.
  • redrighthand, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3goes to a link farm
  • carbonetc, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3In a graphic design class I took in school one of the final assignments was exactly this: create a photo-realistic image in Illustrator.

    I ended up picking something with so much detail (an iSub) that I had to turn it in late. With your reference image in the background it's actually pretty easy. It just takes forever.

    If this guy did this without "tracing" then he really has accomplished something incredible. That would require a hell of an eye.

    You guys talking about 3D software are missing the point. Art is defined a great deal by the limitations placed upon the artist (often self-imposed). The beauty is in untrivializing the trivial. If you ever dugg a video of a stop-motion experiment or a Rube Goldberg device, you should get this.
  • freshprinceofbk, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3He loves his OS9.
  • BonhamsGhost, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5I came across Yukio's work a few years ago. It's absolutely staggering the skill it takes to do that.

    Everyone who is saying it could be done quicker in Maya, thats not the point. Sure he can do it in Maya, or in Photoshop, or with oils......he's probably a good enough artist that he could do his art in a multitude of ways, but thats not the medium he's chosen. Its something he either feels extremely comfortable in, or is a challenge that he enjoys.

    For example, why does Bert Monroy (www.bertmonroy.com) go to the lengths he does, when he could just take a photograph? Because for some artists, its the process that interests them and keeps them motivated.

    Here is another fantastic vector artist, with more of a painterly, fine art spin.

    http://limkis.deviantart.com/
  • rages4calm, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Damn, talk about the vector god of reflections, that details is insane.
  • xParker, on 09/12/2008, -2/+5working link..

    http://www.khulsey.com.nyud.net:8080/masters_yukio_miyamoto.html
  • hobano, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Actually there are many instances where it would be necessary. Its vector, so its scalable to any size, it can easisly be manipulated if you wanted to make a diagram, if you need to add a detail when presenting to a client, etc.....

    Before you open your mouth again, at least know what you are saying.

    Besides, if I had talent like that, I'd do the same thing, just for fun.
  • arcangelgabriel, on 10/11/2007, -9/+11Right it's all about speed. An artist should NEVER take the time to use his tools and the amazing ability of the human eye and mind to capture something. It's all about cranking it out for the 3 second OHH AH as it flicks by on a screen or, if it loads FAST enough, for someone to OHH AH as it sits on their monitor. I'm sure Michelangelo's David would have thrown today's attention deficit gotta have it NOW thinking right into V-Fib.

    For GOD'S sake don't get me started on Painting...

    /smartass
  • cloneenolc, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~yukio-m/intro/index.html#
  • carbonetc, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2The article was down. I had to look at the images in another link someone provided in the comments.
  • wfbnadador, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Auto Trace + Gradient Mesh + Spit & Elbow Grease..... impressive, but not incredible.... (unless he claims no auto trace, in which case he just has boat loads of time on his hands)
  • redrighthand, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Also Maya is $3,000 bucks Adobe Illustrator can be had for as little as $400
  • spin-docta, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1HE USES MAC OS 9!

    Look at the photos at the end of the article. You'll see.
  • dclowd9901, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I should probably also link back to his own portfolio site:

    http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~yukio-m/intro/index.html
  • alecsputnik, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1wow, really good stuff!
  • dreamflows, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Check out also:

    THE WORLD'S MOST PHOTOREALISTIC VECTOR ART:
    http://basangpanaginip.blogspot.com/2006/07/worlds-most-photorealistic-vector-art.html
  • PERKASETMUNCHER, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1If anyone has never tried this in Illustrator then you have no idea how hard this sort of thing is. It's really amazing that he did this so well.
  • molecool, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Actually, his art has a 'clean' look that I haven't seen with 3d renderers so far (could probably be easily done by writing a custom render, I concede). Maxwell would make it look like a photo - the attraction in Yukio's art is that it's borderline, you somehow wonder... that's where the art kicks in :-)
  • handler, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1http://www.lifeinvector.com/images/12.gif
    AWESOME
  • crazybrit, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@CDdesigns: this is going to sound pretty ignorant, but aren't 3d models vectors?
  • webuybrokengold, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1it took me about 30 seconds to convince myself that the camera wasn't a photo

    and yet, it STILL looks so real....
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