Technical illustrator Kevin Hulsey has posted a fascinating explanation of how he used Adobe Illustrator to create an incredibly-detailed cutaway illustration of a cruise ship. All Hulsey had for reference was a paper blueprint. The illustration took him 720 hours to complete. From the HOWTO in the "Lessons & Tutorials" section of Hulsey's site:
All of the initial line art was done in vector based Adobe Illustrator. Most of the final color work.. was done in Adobe Photoshop. The techniques used in this demonstration tutorial are applicable to any 3 dimensional perspective drawing, regardless of scale or complexity.
This project presented many unique challenges. The actual ship was still in Germany being completed when I started the project. There was no photography or CAD reference to work from, only the paper blueprint… In order to have the brochures completed by the time the ship went into service, the final illustration had to be finished in under two months.
