For our New Media Tools course, we were instructed to take a sport's logo, in my case, the Seattle Sea Hawks, and trace over it in Illustrator, to create a crisp, clean, reproducible image, that looks as similar to the original images as possible. I traced my steps as I went through this process, that approximated me around 15 hours.
I first started off creating a silhouette of the image, tracing around it to get the most basic shape, and fill in layers as I went along. For the time being, I chose to disclude the talons, as I knew it would take attentive care to fill them in, and chose to do them last.
I started off with the greatest amount of colour and complexity, aside from the base silhouette, being the light blue. Starting on the wings, I carefully traced each part, paying mindful attention to any errors, and making sure to correct them as I went along.
I added more blue, focusing on the precise details on the wings, using opacity to help in overlaying as well. I also built up a palette of the Seahawk's colours, for ease of use in replicating the logo.
Occasionally I would highlight the entire image, to check the paths, and make sure everything looked in order, and continue on if everything looked well. Upon noticing a mistake, in which is common in such large work spaces, I would immediate go about fixing the error.
I began soon on the highlights, the light blue, and the white areas. As the light blues were small portions, though consisted of relatively vital parts in relation to the rest of the image, I filled them in quickly, before starting on the white areas.
I soon had the white created, and had begun to etch in the small details of things, focusing on the feather detail of the underside of the bird. Here I had accidentally turned the beak gray, in filling in paths around the face, in which I quickly fixed as soon as I noticed.
Areas of the wing, as presented above, were done through the use of the Pathfinder tool, by creating a shape, and cutting out smaller pieces from the shape, to create a precise line. Such technique is used on the light blue of the wing, as well as the eye, and tail feathers.
After harsh deliberation, I began work on the talons, which would soon be the absolute most difficult part of the entire logo.
As I had difficulty in figuring out how to do the talons, I layered white above the dark blue silhouette, using the Pathfinder to create fine, precise lines.
After a good time spent on the talons, I did a review of my work, highlighting the very luminous amount of paths present, in search for any errors. I found some clipping issues, in which I quickly went and fixed through path alterations and deletions, before finally finishing my logo.
All together, I spent approximately 15-20 hours on the logo, and ended up with these results, the left being the before, and the right being the after.
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