Preserved Topic: vector portrait: seeking advice

I'm toying with possible designs for Fazio Automotive, which up till now has been one of those hideous Market America Webcenters pieces of shite that seem to keep luring dollars away from the unwary and web-illiterate. I've successfully won Mr. Fazio away from his web "designer," in the sort of non-merit-based firm-handshake negotiations that are so common in the business world. Now I want to provide him with a site that'll blow his competition out of the water.

That's my own job, of course, although I might drop around Site Reviews at some later point. Right now, I'm toying with various high-concept goodies, such as doing trendy vector-based portraits of everyone on the shop crew. Vector and/or cell-shaded graphics are exactly hip right now. People immersed in art and design are almost but not quite tired of them; TV and commercials are just hitting their stride of full coverage; which means that the average Joe who's looking for an auto shop is going to have just enough familiarity with the style that he's not turned away, while still being fresh enough to say "wow, that's a neat art style!"

Rambling aside, here's what I've got. I used a washed-out and blurry photo as a reference for the basic outlines, but when it came to the actual shapes of hair, eyes, and clothing, I had to improvise. That's secondary, though -- what I'm really looking for is feedback/advice on the shading. The two-tone style (and the lack of contrast in the photo reference) made me really have to guess at where the lighting would "break" across the face.

The hair and clothing haven't been shaded yet; they'll be easier, I believe. (Or rather, anything "wrong" in them will be much less obvious. The human face, on the other hand, draws an instant gut reaction if it looks misshapen.)

James Fazio, Jr., at the age of 18.



edit: Here's the Illustrator file, if anyone is curious.

[This message has been edited by Perfect Thunder (edited 01-19-2003).]

I think if you're going for that trendy look seen everywhere then you'd be going after a monochrome thing right? Flash has a Trace Bitmap feature that can turn photographs into this stuff, you can also do it from a photo in Photoshop using desaturation, blur and levels, then colorize with hue/saturation.

I'm having a hard time understanding why a small auto shop needs a big trendy website though. How's that going to impact their bottom line, besides taking away from it for web development? Are you going to do somethin useful with it that will bring in customers or add value for exisiting customers? Maybe something for online billing and record keeping? or is it going to be a cheap and simple brochure with contact info? I'm very interested in the answer to that one, how are you selling this to them (if you don't mind me asking, if you do, forget I asked).

Good luck

Jason

Well, what they originally had was a slapdash site involving a pre-packaged Flash intro complete with thudding techno soundtrack, blurry stock photos, and flying spinning text; multiple fonts all over the place; random graphics in random places; and poorly-integrated third-party scripts whose look-and-feel was nothing like the main site. It was just a disaster all around. The client specifically said "I want something that's professional-looking, something that'll make my competitors' sites look like crap, something that'll show up on Google, and (magic words) I want to spend some real money on it." (Not even "I'm prepared to" -- "I want to." A freelancer's dream come true!) At my suggestion, we expanded our list of target features to "something that'll be usable in all browsers, now and in the forseeable future; and something that'll have content not usually found on sites of its type."

edit: And yes, I told him getting on Google is never a guarantee. But given what currently shows up on a search for "milwaukee auto repair," I'd say that a site designed with SEO in mind would have a damned good chance.

That last one -- content -- is a particular interest of mine. I believe that if a site is going to sell a company, particularly in a field like auto repair, where it's very difficult to choose one shop over another, it should have a good deal of content going for it. My plan is for the site to include a pretty complete history of the shop, showing its 25-year involvement with the area; profiles of everyone on the shop crew, detailing their specialties and experience; and concrete detail on why the shop is better than its competitors (not just the usual advertising gimmickry.)

As for interactivity, I'd personally like some way of integrating the site with their shop-management program, to allow users to schedule appointments and things online, but a) the management program is an ancient DOS relic, and b) that would probably be more work than the client's willing to pay for. "Trash the competition on a surface level," yes. "Integrate the website into the daily workings of the shop," probably too much to ask.

As for the "trendy" design, I'm certainly not trying to make the k10k of auto-repair websites. The site won't have a soundtrack, or an extremely layout-intensive look, or Flash. I just want to have something a little more distinctive than the usual "here's our shop, here's the proprietor, here's our address, we're good." Instead of photos of each team member, I was hoping to have this kind of artwork.

And since the photos I have to work with are, as I said, blurry and washed-out, I can't simply Photoshop my way to line-art. I know how to do it; these images just aren't conducive. Furthermore, doing it in Illustrator gives me more potential control over stylization and details, so this is the route I would have picked to begin with. Illustrator is meant for this kind of artwork, whereas Photoshop is not.

Monochrome: yep, I was considering it, but I figured I would start this way and see how I like it. Then I can always change the colors to match the final site design, or whatever.

So... anyone with criticism either of my overall plan, or the shading of this particular image? I'm open to either.

[This message has been edited by Perfect Thunder (edited 01-19-2003).]

After looking at the competition, you should be able to guarantee placement in Google fairly easily for the keyphrase you linked, probably even knock #1 out.

For the image's shading it's not bad at all, the different shade of shade on the neck throws me a little, and I think the shadow along the length of the nose is probably a bit wide, an where it connects with the shadow to the corner of the mouth as well. Hard to say what you can do and still keeping it looking like the guy without a reference but the style is ok, the black bits are a little weak and probably shouldn't be black. You can take liberties with this style, you don't have to go entirely off the way the photo has it, so do that and make the most of it.

Jason