Studio 2 – Digital Portrait: Low Poly Portrait

Design, Graphic Design, Studio

This week I’ve started one of my digital images for my art styles project. I decided to do a Low Poly portrait. So you might be wondering what Low Poly Art is (or you may not) but I’m going to explain it here anyway. Low Poly is a technique that was originally used for making 3D models and scenes for videogames, due to its render speed, which was achieved thanks to low polygonal resolution. The term poly comes from ‘polygon’ which is a 2D shape made from straight lines and angles. So basically, it’s an image that is made up of hundreds of tiny geometric shapes which combine to form an abstract image. It is no longer just used for video games and animations but for illustrations and portraits and much more. I’ve seen a few different techniques with this style. Some people use only triangles throughout the image, while others just use straight edged shapes and not limited to just three sided ones. I ended up doing the second option, just because I found it easier to pick out the different shades of colours throughout my chosen image.

Some examples of low poly portraits (all found on Pinterest):

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Some of the tutorials I watched:

This site has step by step instructions and a video too:

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/adobe-illustrator/create-low-poly-portrait-photoshop-illustrator/#2

And finally this site too (this is the tutorial I followed):

http://connecting4.com/how-to-adobe-illustrator-geometric-art/

If you’re interested in some other ways to do it this website has links to a number of Low Poly Art tutorials, some in different styles too:

Learn How to Create Amazing Low Poly Art in Photoshop & Illustrator (12 Tuts)

After watching some of these it was time to begin my own one. As I was doing it I recorded the whole thing so you guys could all see it (it’s ok, I sped it up a little bit). I think over all it took me

So here is my original image:

1920

The final image:

Low Poly Snapback - 260216

And here, for your viewing, is the creation of my low poly portrait. Enjoy!

 

Hope you like it. Feel free to let me know what you think.

– Kim

 

References

http://www.awwwards.com/low-poly-illustration-what-s-the-secret.html

How To Create Geometric Low Poly Art The Easy Way

What’s the Deal with Low Poly Art?