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) ...
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

An unfortunately timely reminder...

-
Image
It's sad when a portfolio graphic is on a topic as ghastly as 9/11, but sometimes they are and sometimes they become timely again and should be dusted off and aired once more. Published August 21, 2002 I did this one for Reuters almost a year after the attack, when investigators had had a chance to decipher what had failed so terribly with the construction of the World Trade Center twin towers. I remember it being a very time-consuming graphic as I wanted to get every detail (as was known then) correct to the best of my ability. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Eleven months earlier, on September 11, 2001, I had been doing a rare light feature graphic for Reuters – most of their topics were of a more serious nature, but occasionally we were permitted to do something less hard-newsy. Mine that day had been a graphic intended to show the benefits of a new video game console that was about to launch. It was about 2pm in London and I was just sta...
Read more