This vector illustration was my first experiment with the Illustrator method, our freshman running back Weston Bridges is the player used. Because this was done before the season and I had no photos of Weston in a game uniform, I had to Photoshop a photo of him onto a picture of one of our other current running backs, L.J. Scott. (Big shout out and thanks to my friend Keenan Porter for consulting me with feedback along the way on this project).

Simply done, I just replaced L.J.'s head with Weston's and then removed the tattoos from the arms since Weston doesn't have any. I also changed the number to Weston's 27 and gave it appropriate shading. 

The vector itself was done during the week, as I took my time to learn Illustrator's tools and cross check everything to make sure it all lined up correctly and looked natural. I started with the uniform first and then moved to his face and then arms, doing the shading last. The bottom part of the illustration purposefully didn't receive as much detail since I knew it would be cut off/shaded over anyway.

Lastly, when everything was done, I exported the .png of Weston and I placed him on the background in Photoshop, adding his name and signature. The signature itself is just a made up one of his name, but looks good to add another element to the graphic. 

All-in-all I'm glad I took the time to learn how to do this, but it is definitely more time consuming than I thought it would be -- especially for my first go around with it.