I chose my car for my final portfolio for Illustrator because I believe that it demonstrates my ablity to use the different tools in Illustrator the best. I also spent so much time on it that I want to show it off as much as I possibly can! This work is from back in the first half of the semester and the assignment was to recreate our favorite ride in Illustrator using the different vecor tools. I chose to do a picutre of a 280z because my boyfriend has one and I love to ride in it. The picture I used was not of his car, and the car in the picture was originally silver, but as you can see I have changed the color to blue. I did this so it would be the same color as his car. I will explain how I did this below. I first started with the picture of the car and turned it into a template. When I started tracing the car I think I started on the windows and worked on the smaller details before doing the body and color change. I tried using many different tools and techniques. I mainly used the pen tool and created shapes and lines, but I also used the shape tool. I didnt have much luck with the mesh gradiant tool when I tried using it, so I did use it in my final print out. Instead I did most of it myself. One I got ready to do the body and color change I put a picture of my boyfriends car into Illustrator and chose mid-tone color from that picture. I made that color into a swatch so that I could always have the same base color. I was able to make the color darker, but when I wanted to do a highlight I had to come up with another way to get the color I wanted. I decided the best way to do that was by putting a white transparancy over the normal blue. I ended up liking the way that worked and used it throughout the rest of the car's parts. In the end this project probably took me between 20 and 40 hours, but Im exactly sure, I just remember being in the viscom room for hours and looking at the clock and thinking have I really spent that much time in here, or is it really that late, or just 5 more minutes and then an hour later just 5 more minutes. The cycle of just 5 more minutes never ended!