How I re-created the Armani Emporio Watch as a Vector using Adobe Illustrator
A few semesters ago I took a Vector Graphics class and our second project of the semester was to recreate a photo-realistic watch vector. A vector is a graphic made up of points rather than pixels like photographs. With it being made of points, you can scale it up or down as much as you’d like without distortion. Vectors are ideal for design for this reason and many more.
This project stretched my skills to place I didn’t know they could get at the skill level I was at. Below I will go through my process from start to finish of how I re-created the Armani Emporio Watch as a Vector.
Step 1:
I googled various different watch brands and styles online. I knew that I wanted to do a more classy watch from the beginning so I mainly searched an Armani (being known for high-class, and luxury). I also knew I did not want it to be too easy but not too complicated either. Here is a screen shot of the one I went with below:
Step 2:
I then pulled the image into Adobe Illustrator and made some squares with some basic colors that I had “eye- dropped” from the photo reference. I created my basic shapes with these colors and reference. I didn’t worry about gradients, or adding any major value or details in this step. I just wanted a basic shape.
Step 3:
This is when I started paying more attending to the detail. I fixed up the watch face background more by tweaking it with more overlaying shapes. Then I began to add gradients to what I felt was easiest, which for me happened to be the watch hour dials and the little clock inside. I also fixed up the knob more to give it more texture and started working on the detail in the hands.
Step 4:
Lastly I started adding in all the shading and adding value to the outer circles of the clock. I did this through various shapes and use of gradients. The hardest part for me was trying to get all those values around the face as well as the highlights on the brackets that hold the wrist bands! I decided to not go with the snake-skin like texture on the wristband and went for a more smooth feel instead. You’ll notice there are details in the original watch that I left out such as the emblems, and smaller face numbers, this was by choice.
Here is my finished watch side by side with the reference:
