Thursday 8 November 2012

(Photoshop)Drawing the Volkswagen Logo







Our Tutorial divided into two brief stages:
 > Creating the circular orb surface
 > Drawing the VW emblem



Creating the Orb Surface
First off, start by going through File>New and creating a new 250x250 document in Photoshop with the following attributes:

Before we start drawing, access the Tool Panel on the left side of your workspace and go down all the way to the bottom to change the Foreground Color to #82B2E0 and the Background Color to #012B62. Those are the primary colors of our logo.

We will draw the basic circular shape of the logo now, so grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the Tool Panel, and then while holding down the Shift key, draw a selection of a circle on your canvas as shown below.
Now press Ctrl+Backspace to fill the selection with your pre-set Background Color.

Access the Tool Panel again and select the Gradient Tool this time. Make sure you select the Foreground to Transparent gradient type.

Create a gradient fill across your selection as shown in the screenshot below to complete creating the logo's surface.
The circular orb surface of our logo is now done, we will draw the actual emblem in the next stage of the tutorial.


Drawing the Emblem

Before we start off, press D to reset your Foreground and Background colors to their default white and black values and then press X to invert the colors' position. In this section we are going to basically draw the shape of the VW emblem and then give the layer we drew it on a Drop Shadow, an Inner Shadow and a Gradient Overlay style. Start off by creating a new layer by going through Layer>New Layer. Using the Elliptical Marquee Tool, draw a round selection inside the orb as shown below
Go through Edit>Stroke and apply a 10 px wide inside stroke.


Once you press OK, you should get a result similar to this.
We have to do some tracing skill practice now, use the Polygonal Marquee Tool to draw straight lines that represent the base structure of the VW logo, which obviously is a V with a W under it. Grab the Polygonal Marquee Tool and start drawing straight lines as shown in the screenshot below. You can use the sample image that you have seen in the beginning of the tutorial as a reference. Note that you can go over the white stroke we created because we are going to fill this selection with white as well later on.
Once your happy with your selection, go to Edit>Fill and use White.
We are done with the drawing part, it's now time to give the emblem some style and a 3D-like effect. Access your Layers Panel, then right click on the layer that contains the emblem and choose Blending Options. Apply the following options for the Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Gradient Overlay.

As for the Gradient Overlay, make sure you edit the Gradient Fill Type by clicking its thumbnail next to the word Gradient in the screenshot below, and apply the options seen in the Gradient Editor screenshot.


Once you apply all these effects you should get something similar to the image below.
Your Volkswagen logo is finally complete, you can optionally add some gloss with Overlay or Soft Light layer styles to make it blend in with the logo more the same way it looks below.