S2. EP2. Leggings Fashion Illustrations – Transforming hand-drawn sketches into digital fashion illustrations
In this episode we take a closer look at the hand-drawn fashion sketches that we created in episode 1. We’ve selected eight final leggings designs that we’ll now transform into dynamic, digital, fashion illustrations using Adobe Illustrator. Transferring them to Adobe Illustrator allows us to quickly duplicate them with ease. We can then add colour, texture and print to efficiently create hundreds of variations based on the original designs. This is important, because when we come to finalise our prints we have a range of leggings that we can add them to to create our final designs. Once we have the final designs, we can then make our selections and start sampling.
This blog post looks at hand-drawn sketched versus digital design and how they can be used side by side to speed up your design process. This is also the next step in our process when it comes to designing a range of leggings sewing patterns.
Digital Fashion Illustrations – Outline & design details
The first step in the process of digitalising our leggings fashion illustrations is creating the outline and design details or panelling. We use various line thicknesses to represent various parts of the design. A thick line is added to the outline or finished edges of the leggings. A medium-thick line represents the seams or panels that make up the design. A thin line represents creases or position of the knee. When all these lines are combined, they create depth and a greater understanding of how the leggings blocks might be sampled.
Digital Fashion Illustrations – Colour, texture & print
The final step in the process of digitalisation is to add colours, textures and print. We do this by creating fillable areas from the panels. Each panel can be filled individually with a colour, print or texture. Grouping these panels allows us to add colour in bulk and to areas that have already been established as visually appealing.
Creating a line up allows us to build a range of designs that work in harmony with one another. They are held together using a common colour palette. You can see the colour palette in the bottom left of the image below.
Gallery
Follow this collection’s inspiration and progress on Pinterest. We have loads more imagery around the project and we post daily! Click the button to take a look. Subscribe to our Pinterest channel to ensure you never miss a post!
What’s next: digital fashion illustration?
In the next episode, we’ll start developing our print inspiration into a range of full-scale, digital, repeat prints, using Adobe Illustrator. We’ll then combine these prints with our fashion illustrations to create gorgeous designs, displayed in a line up, ready for selection and sampling.
Made-to-measure leggings patterns
Create a profile, add your measurements and design your basic leggings block. We’ll then draft it for you in seconds for you to download either as a multi-page PDF or a fully-editable SVG file – compatible in Adobe Illustrator.
Graded Leggings Block UK 4 – 24
Want a ready-to-wear set of editable leggings patterns that you can edit in Adobe Illustrator or any other SVG editing suite? Check out our sister site DesignLab and get the entire set of standard sizes in our Pattern Pack.