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The Pennock family first started manufacturing graders in 1875. Since then, the company name has evolved throughout the years: The American Road Machinery Company, Dominion Road Machinery Company, and Champion Road Machinery Ltd. In 1997, Champion was purchased by VOLVO Construction Equipment. Since its inception, Dominion Road, Champion and VOLVO have been building and maintaining roads around the world and enhancing its reputation as the grader expert in the process. VOLVO is committed to the values of Quality, Safety and the Environment. The goal is to be number one in image and customer satisfaction.
Rick Ernst, Technical Illustrator for VOLVO Motor Graders Customer Support in Goderich, Canada, reports: "We strive to be the model of excellence and care in the construction industry. This applies to all aspects of our business including Customer Support, Publications and images used therein. Our goal as illustrators is to convey the information in a clear and concise manner."
Rick has been working as technical illustrator for many years and has witnessed the evolution of the industry since the first computers were used in technical publications. Before he joined VOLVO Motor Graders, he had worked as a consultant. In the following, he will be sharing his experience and present a little overview of the changes in techniques and fashion.
"Illustration techniques have changed radically in the past 10-15 years. Line art illustration evolved from practices and techniques that were developed on a drawing board. Pen and ink line used to be the standard until the desktop publishing revolution changed the way we published. Pen and ink line art has since been replaced with computer generated (vector) line art. There are many differences between traditional line art and vector line art..
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"Quality is an attitude. Quality is the result of paying attention to the details.
The small things that lend integrity, credibility and believability to a product."
Rick Ernst, Illustrator
VOLVO Motor Graders |
Traditional line art was drawn by hand on an illustration board at least 1.5 times larger and photographically reduced to finish reproduction size. Traditional line art used varied line weights and all thicker line weight for contours were applied to the outside of the negative space of the object. Thus the negative space was protected from filling in with black ink.
Thicker Line weights were at least 3x thicker than the basic pen width of 0.25 mm. Near edges would typically use a feathered line break to simulate light touching the near edges of the object.
These techniques added to the visual quality and enhanced realism of the art. It also made the items depicted to be more real and recognizable. Traditional line art's main drawback was that it had to be scanned digitally and manipulated on a pixel-by-pixel basis. This was an arduous and time consuming task.
Vector line art initially looked computer generated and visually plain when compared with traditional artwork. Vector line art was in its infancy and lacked the finesse and toolset of traditional line art. Vector line art is typically produced to finished reproduced size and can be scaled to fit any size without deterioration in quality. Vector line art is easy to maintain and make changes to.
IsoDraw
IsoDraw's toolset allowed me to evolve vector line art to the point where it was difficult to discern what was computer generated and what was drawn by hand. Many of the techniques I developed as a consultant have been embraced by VOLVO motor graders and have evolved to the point where the quality of our line art is characteristic of traditional line art. We have merged the best qualities from traditional line art and vector line art. Here are a few examples.
Vector lines and offsets
Vector line weights thicken equally on both sides of the line. Care has to be exercised or the artwork will "fill in" with black lines. This destroys the negative space and causes the item to be difficult to make out visually. This is especially true when you are dealing with small components and hardware used adjacent to larger items. The workaround for this is to use the thinnest of lines on the object and to apply an offset contour to the outside of the object exactly ½ the actual line thickness of the line. For example: a 1 pt line thickness would be offset 0.5 pt to the outside of the item.
Offset Lines
Offset lines can greatly enhance the visual quality of the line art. When working with sheet metal and hairline metal thicknesses, any thickness applied to the lines can cause "filling in". By utilizing the offset line technique to the outside edge or contour, we can protect the negative space of the near edge thereby preventing the object from filling in with black.
Artistic Line styles and highlights
In traditional line art, illustrators would skip the pen to simulate light falling on an edge and producing a highlight on one of the "near edges". This technique not only livened up the illustration but was another technique used by the illustrators to prevent the lines from filling in with black.
Artistic Shadow Rendering
IsoDraw allows for the smooth transitioning of ellipses from thick to thin pens. This is more than adequate in most cases. However, on occasion, there is a need for a more artistic treatment of the shadows that enhances the reality and the quality of the illustration. IsoDraw has the tools to render these effects easily and efficiently as well.
Using offset lines and artistic linestyles and some artistic shadow, rendering can dramatically improve the quality of your line art. IsoDraw has tools that can help generate outer contours, offsets, and allow you to create line styles and pens that are used frequently as templates to aid in the production of quality line art.
For myself, and VOLVO Motor Graders, where IsoDraw has been in use since 1997 we are very pleased with this product and the quality of work we have been able to produce."
© Text and Illustration: Rick Ernst, VOLVO Motor Graders, Goderich (ON), Canada
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