Design Basic Question

[hibhardwaj]

Hello There,
I would like to understand how are you all creating such beautiful and realistic looking watch faces. My question is limited to the design elements like- watch hands design, dial design, etc. What tools are commonly used like- Photoshop/ Illustrator etc., I currently use Canva and it is very limited in its capabilities. And my designs look horrible currently and I am thinking I am not using the rights tools (also need to grow my creativity for sure!).

Any help/ link to existing topic would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
~H

[mrantisocialguy]

Personally I use Paint. net and I know others use Gimp, Photoshop and some even use Microsoft PowerPoint.

[ThaMattie]

I use photoshop and illustrator.

[gordon-packstein]

I use (like mrantisocialguy does) paint.net which is free for personal use and has everything (especially layers) to create realistic watches.
And if you are searching for resources like backgrounds, complications, date windows, background wheels or even hands, there a millions of it in the web, feel free to google for it…

[bradtc]

I struggle with realism as well. As a matter of fact, I know that I suck at making the watch faces look reallistic, so I simply go for the cartoonish look most of the time. I much prefer to tinker with unique expressions in the watch faces to make them do interesting things than focus on the graphics. However, graphics can’t be avoided so I do use paint.net & gimp. I also use notepad++ for expression edditing.

[hibhardwaj]

You said it perfectly. How to achieve that realism is the question. And not being able to achieve is frustrating and I really want to learn how to go about it.

[hibhardwaj]

Hi ThaMattie, Thanks for your reply. How do you go about using Photoshop & Illustrator. Would you suggest some YouTube tutorials? And also where do you get your “material” from? Thanks again for your time and comment.

[bradtc]

@hibhardwaj, I will add, there are lots of tutorials within these forums that have helped me with realism, such as:

Shadows:

[TOMAJA Tutorial] Super Simple Basic 3D Effects & Shadows - ONE EFFECT

Hi there, today I will show you a really super simple effect how you could create a 3D effect and shadow (incl. dynamic hand shadows). All of this without any graphic software - using only the basic FACER CREATOR objects (and text as well): [image] As you see I was using only the standard set colors, everybody gets for the first time creating a new own watch face. Just to show the pure 3D & shadow effect. Here is the (simplified) starting position you have at the beginning (one 2D object): …

Snow:

[TOMAJA Tutorial] Snow, Snowflake & Winter Dream for Every Watch Face [How to]

Hello there! I saw in the discussion, that some designers would like to have snow in their watch faces. So here is an easy to do tutorial, how to add snow and winter atmosphere to every watch face. I opened a “sommer” watch face and put some snow to the right places in order to get this: [image] STEP 1 - Adding Static Snow (and Shadows) [image] This is the easiest part of this job. Just preparing some white places, adding texture and putting this on the watch (behind the hands :slight_smi…

Accelerometer:

How the Fly-In-Watchface works with interpAccel

A few people have asked how I made this watchface from the feature announcement: I’m using the new interpAccel function, along with #DWE# here’s how I did it in Facer Studios - Spring into Action! - watch face for Apple Watch, Samsung Gear S3, Huawei Watch, and more - Facer (you can use the dim toggle to see the animation restart) For the second hand (idea could be applied to any element, I reuse this logic on the minute & hour hands): X Position: (interpAccel(#DWE#,0,2,5)*160) Y Position…

[TOMAJA Mini Tutorial] Gyro 3D Interactive Wrist Movement Effects & Animations

Hello to everybody, welcome to my new tutorial, where I show you how easy and simple a super cool wrist movements interactive (2D and 3D) effect could be. We will speak about the accelerometer (gyro) functions. Actually, it is so easy that one picture explains everything [image] As you see one number is everything we need to deal with. In the picture above (most natural movements of a wrist between the angle 0 and 90 degree) this value is increasing smoothly from 0 to 10. Here is the …

Simple realistic display:

[TOMAJA Mini Tutorial] Simple Realistic Digital Display in Only Two Steps

Hi There, here is a next mini tutorial, how to make a nice small or big realistic digital display on your new watch face. Before starting you will need to download an appropriate mono space digital text font in *.ttf format (example). FIRST STEP In the first step I do write the “background”. It’s a small trick to let the old fashion display appears even more realistic. I do use numbers 8888888 and I do set the transparency usually on 10-15%. SECOND STEPS Afterwards I just copy the same “digit…

Just search tutorial and you will see tons of great information…

[ThaMattie]

How do you go about using Photoshop & Illustrator

My strength is expressions and math. For the graphics stuff:
I have something in mind, break it down, google for tutorials on how to do these parts, get annoyed that the tutorials I find are sort of what I want, but not exactly, keep fiddling with it, get frustrated that the thing on screen doesn’t look like the thing in my head, sometimes accept it’s the best I can do and publish it, most times leave it and add it to my big collection of “ideas” instead of “finished products” .

And also where do you get your “material” from?

I tend to make it from scratch. I have the same “policy” as @kvansant, except I’m not that good

In addition, I hang out in the Facer Slack chat, where there are other designers that give valuable feedback and can point you in the right direction on how to do things.

[papaberean]

In addition to what the others have said, its a learning process! I am STILL figuring things out with the design end and sometimes its a hit and then I have misses. I have left all of my designs up even the really bad ones from my start so I can see the progress.

[GAUSS]

I am working with AutoCAD for 2-d layouts and 3-d construction with rendering (good for realistic light settings, metallic effects, indices and font arrangement). After that i import the single saved objects in Photoshop for optimization and graphical enhancement. Some watch faces are entirely made with Photoshop.

[richiebee]

I use Affinity Designer. I started in graphics using an old program called Xara in the 90’s. Then went to Macromedia/Adobe Fireworks. Affinity Designer is the most like these that I’ve ever come across. I find it easier to use than Illustrator, but with a similar feature set and being vector based makes it incredibly flexible. When I create a style I like, I save that style and can reuse it on different elements. Affinity Designer is very full featured, regularly updated, and darn cheap. If cheap isn’t cheap enough, I would give Inkscape a try. It’s free. Templates and styles are your friend. Intricate designs do take time and effort though.

[ThaMattie]

I use Affinity Designer

Thanks for that one, I signed up for a beta in 2016 and totally forgot about Affinity. I’m going to have a look at it again, compare it to illustrator.