We’ve created a number of illustrations for different law enforcement agencies over the years. This one was requested by the Delaware State Police for their Bell 407, N75SP “Sugar Pop”; great call-sign. After hammering out the details about how they might want to use the illustration, we turned to the virtual helicopter factory – Adobe Illustrator – for all of the development. Whenever there is a need to easily scale an image to the extreme without loss of quality, using a vector application is a must. Photoshop just wouldn’t cut it in this case.
The first stage was to collect all of the reference photographs. The photos they emailed us initially to quote a price for the project was a good start, but we sent them an additional list of closeups of the special hardware and decals on the outside of the helicopter so our illustration was a absolutely accurate. That done, every part of the aircraft, except lettering, was painstakingly recreated using the pen tool. Logical sections, such as the fuselage, skids, rotors, and FLIR were created separately and then moved into place when needed. This way, the characteristics of the individual parts can be manipulated without affecting the entire illustration.
The total time from blank page to finish was one week, and they were pleased enough to tack on an additional order for a new patch designs as well. The following images show screenshots of our layout as we go through the process as well as the finished products. One interesting image to note is the helicopter repeated against the graduated backgrounds. Although parts of the helicopter look black against a white screen, it’s not until you put the image in front of a graduated scale to realize that the entire helicopter is actually a very dark blue.
[Illustration: Eric Lian]
