Low Poly Art With Illustrator
My second foray into learning Illustrator led me to make a low poly version of one of my favorite breeds of dog, the Serbian Samoyed. This article takes things I learned along the way after watching this youtube video.
Prep Work
- Finding a good reference image with a range of shadows and colors is ideal for sampling and producing an image which distinctly visible polygons. If you want to save time and only create polygons for one side, be sure to choose an image that works well symmetrically (facing front & level) so you can simply duplicate your paths and reflect them across.
This is the reference image I found for a beautiful Samoyed:
2. Depending on how detailed you want your polygons to capture, pick a reasonable grid line spacing. What worked for me with a 600 x 600 px sized artboard was the following:
3. Under the View section, be sure to enable Snap to Grid and Snap to Point, which will be super helpful to align polygons exactly.
4. Set a high contrast stroke color for your polygon paths that will make it easier to tell if points are misaligned. I choose a mid-cyan color to contrast against the grey white fur.
Helpful Shortcut key commands
- p + minus sign : selects the pen tool and uses the delete anchor point mode. Likewise plus sign for adding new anchor points to a path.
- a : direct selection tool which allows for adjusting anchor points and paths. You need to double click an anchor point to modify anchor points.
- i : selects the eyedropper color picker which will update fill color of a selected path object.
- Shift + x : switches the fill color with stroke color.
- Hold Shift (in pen mode): will prevent anchor points from being deleted if applied to the same position.
- Return (in pen mode): guarantees a new path will be made for next point of path you create.
The Actual Work
- Outline the area of the reference image you will be working with as well as important features whose shapes should be preserved. In my case, I outlined the Samoyed’s eyes, nose, mouth, tongue and ears.
- Begin forming triangles from the outside edge to fill the inside completely. Use the keyboard shortcuts when needed to fix path alignments. A general rule of thumb is to allow larger polygons for areas of lower detail.
3. Once you have finished creating all the paths (regardless if they are open or closed), select all paths and in the Pathfinder tool click on the circled ‘divide’ icon. This will combine and separate paths that share the same intersections.
It is key to check that your paths meet at the grid lines.
Sometimes you may accidentally shift your path by direct selection when trying to adjust one point. This will save a lot of headache that I faced with slightly misaligned paths. This ‘divide’ action will produce small extraneous paths that you will need to remove for a clean final product. When paths are misaligned, triangles will not be formed properly.
4. When a path is well formed and closed selecting it with ‘A’ will highlight the triangle outline it occupies. Using the eyedropper tool with ‘ I ’ you can set the fill of that path. Just ctrl+z to undo if you want to set a different representative fill color.
5. When you are finished filling all the triangles and adjusting their colors, select all paths, duplicate, and reflect it to see how it looks (Right click > Transform > Reflect > Vertical).
6. At this point you are nearly finished! Decide how satisfied you are with your current low poly rendering if you want to change colors, shape and position of certain triangles, etc. What I ended up adjusting was the eye, tongue, shoulders, and area above the nose (which formed a ball when reflected symmetrically). There was also a slight gap along the center line at the forehead area which bothered me a lot.
Here is the final low poly Samoyed! I think it looks a little friendly don’t you? Thanks for reading and hope it was informative!
