How to create realistic digital avatars of yourself for Holiday greeting cards.
In early December I saw an image online of a guy's face that looked just like these. It looked like a photo of a real person that got put into a video game or something. I showed Matt. We thought it was cool and decided that we should recreate the effect for our company Christmas card. We didn't really know exactly how to achieve the look or what in the hell we were getting ourselves into - but that type of thing happens a lot so it didn't deter us.
First off we took a few portraits of each other, dropped them into Illustrator and started drawing triangle shapes all over our faces.
We started to fill the triangles with gradients of color that were sort of similar to our skin tones. This was one of the hardest parts - the process of just getting an initial rendering of each of us took forever - like probably over 40 hours. We scrapped early versions and started over because we were learning new/better techniques as we were going.
Finally we got to this point where we at least had versions of ourselves that we could adjust and fine tune.
We began to print proofs and then slowly revise the colors and shapes and sizes of everything, one round of changes at a time. It was almost the end of December at this point.
The finishing touches, like these highlights on our eyes, took forever to get right but definitely helped bring it all together.
And then finally we decided to pull the trigger and print these up.
Now all I have to do is write these last 100 cards and we'll be all set. Keep an eye on your mailbox, our digital faces will be there soon.
