Illustrator help please

[davisjw]

I'm working on a project and we're tasked with having a tortilla chip and needing to apply cheese to it as though the chip was dipped into it but we need to make the cheese into a shape.

Our problem is we just can't get the cheese to look realistic enough. Does anyone have any tutorials or can offer advice on how to make the cheese look realistic with drips, light reflections, etc.

Thanks for your time!

 

[arkitect]

Perhaps if you posted a pic of the cheese as you have it right now we could make a suggestion… otherwise it is all pretty useless.

 

[davisjw]

Quite frankly all we have is the shape of the cheese done in illustrator painted yellow.... We're students and not entirely sure where to go from there. Wasn't sure if anyone knew of a tutorial that highlights how to make something of this nature...

 

[larapumkin]

it's quite hard to explain (for me)..but creating a realistic images with illustrator and such programs needs artistic base imo...so you can assume colors of the shade, highlight, how the lighting move on the object and stuff
Mesh Tool could be used to creat a realistic look image..

 

[Kwill]

We're students and not entirely sure where to go from there.

< rant >
Honestly I can't tell who lazier, the students or the instructor. For crying out loud, students should at least have enough initiative to Google "cheese photo" and (excuse me for thinking) the instructor should be imparting application techniques. If I were paying money for an education and had to go to MacRumors to learn how to use the tools I hope to rely on for future employment I can't say I'd be happy.
< / rant >

As a starting point, how about looking at high resolution photographs of cheese -- perhaps some stock photos? Build a color palette from what you see. Observe how some edges almost glow. Study how heat alters real cheese texture, differing from artificial Cheese Whiz. When you get a bit beyond a triangle filled with yellow, I am certain people will be happy to help you out.

 

[Shoesy]

Just a quick book ad.

<help>

My initial thoughts are with plastic wrap...

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/photoshop/articles/phscs2at_plastwrap.html

The linked tutorial is from 'how to cheat in photoshop' - its an amazing amount of help- buy it.

</help>

 

[davisjw]

Big help there, thanks guys (and maybe gals!)! Please keep up the comments if anyone has any other ideas! It's safe to say we're essentially starting from scratch...