How to draw a realistic iPhone in Adobe Illustrator

-

Yesterday, I completed a graphic based on rumours surrounding what the new iPhone 14 may look like when it’s unveiled next week. As has become the way of things for Apple, there have been a lot of leaks. I mostly used MacRumors website as a source. Below are a series of screenshots from the process I went through to mock-up a pseudo-realistic iPhone in Adobe Illustrator.

Note: If you want, tap an image to see it in high-resolution.

The completed graphic (it can be licensed here)

Step 1: Gather good schematics of what it will look like – this is the Pro Max model, apparently.

Step 2: Accurately trace the schematics – possibly the most important stage.
Everything alse depends on this being done right.

Stage 3: Turn the flat illustrations into 3D drawings. To do this, I rotate the flat art 45°, then vertically squeeze it by 70%. This produces an angle I like – not true isometric, but instead a view that shows more of the top surface. I then extrude downwards to create the depth.

Here I'm preparing the side view to be skewed into place.

Once it’s been skewed, I can accurately position the side buttons.

Side buttons are extruded outwards. All these distances and depths of extrusion are done in accordance with the original flat traces. Minimal guesswork is used.

Front and back illustrations are starting to take shape.

Time to add some colour – a new purple chassis is apparently in the offing this year.

This thing is going to be shiny, so it needs a good metalic blend making.

Dummy screen image placed on, just to see how it looks. Work begins on extruding the camera bump and lenses upwards.

Again, shiny blending is in order for the sides of the lenses.

Camera system almost complete, with added lens reflections.

Time to blend the side buttons too, even though they are small, the effect will add to the believablity.

Finishing up the side buttons on the other drawing now.

Here, I've taken an iOS 16 screen image off the Apple website and rotated and scaled it into the correct angle. I've also added a reflection of the upper handset on the lower one’s case and added a shadow.

Here’s the same image as a wire frame showing the Adobe Illustrator vector paths.

Stage 4: Rotate the graphic by -22.5° and write and arrange the text and some additional simple illustrations. Finished. Thanks for reading.


Visit graphicgibbon.com to enjoy more tasty morsels of infographic goodness!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chapel isometric cutaway step-by-step...

-
Image
   As part of a  Graphic News  package ahead of the UK royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, I was tasked with creating an isometric cutaway diagram of St George's Chapel within the grounds of Windsor Castle.    It turned out to be one of the most challenging illustrations of my career and took eight days to complete. There was not a great deal of good reference out there, so I had to mostly make do with satellite imagery, copies of old plans, a couple of interior 360° panoramas and tourist photos. The following 100 screen grabs show how I created it using Adobe Illustrator  (images can be enlarged by clicking on them) . Step 1: Gather the most reliable research material Step 2:  Draw as accurate a floorpan as possible — everything else depends on this being right Stage 3:  Fold it into an isometric plane (strictly speaking this is not true isometric but an angle of my own liking) Stage 4: Start building the exterior — extruding
Read more

How I cutaway the Xbox Series X...

-
Image
I should point out from the get-go that this is an Adobe Illustrator illustration and not an exact CAD model or precise render of the inner workings of the upcoming XBox Series X games console. Think of it more as an indication of how it works, based on the best publicly available images from Microsoft. It was a relatively tricky graphic to do and had some quite fiddly elements to create in 3D. Here is the abridged process in 10 screen grabs. The images can be enlarged by clicking them, if you wish. I begin by taking some screenshots from the XBox website that show the console's innards. I skew one image into an approximation of a flat, face-on viewpoint and proceed to draw components. These are the elements laid on top of each other – making sure they all fit together. Time to extrude elements into 3D shapes, using reference photos from the XBox website. All the, now 3D, elements laid on top of each other – making sure they still fit together. Now to work out how to pull them ap
Read more

Got 'im...

-
Image
It was a hectic 24-hours or so for newspaper graphic desks around the world as they frantically tried to illustrate just how U.S. Special Forces killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan early Monday morning (local time). I thought it would be interesting to pull together a bunch of infographics from newspapers around the world and see how they each treated the subject. It's been an enlightening exercise. Some titles ran the barest of locator maps or relied entirely on wire graphics, others reissued or redrew the official U.S. Defense Department SketchUp model (like I did), others just plainly made it all up, and one European newspaper appeared to be taking the mickey with a highly unusual page one Photoshop do-up. Have a look for yourselves and see what you think - starting in North America and working eastwards around the globe (clicking on a graphic will open a higher resolution image): The Washington Post, U.S.A. Los Angeles Times, U.S.A. Chicago Tribune, U.S.A. Houston Chronicle, U.S
Read more