Orbital Flow
“Orbital Flow” is a rasterized version of one of my favorite designs from 2009. I used several layers with various opacity levels to create the effects in this piece. This is probably the most elegant of the graphics you can find on this site.
Sizes: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1400×900, 1600×1200
Around the time this piece was created I came up with a technique to create an embossed effect in adobe illustrator. Photoshop had a great emboss / extrude filter at the time – but illustrator did not. To get around this (in illustrator cs4) I used opposite 3d-rotate transformations along with inverted opacity and complimentary layer-modes.
Basically you 3d revolve-extrude one copy of the design to the left and give it a multiply layer-mode and a black stroke. Then on top of that you use reversed revolve & extrude settings with a white stroke and a screen layer-mode.
I’m sure more recent versions of illustrator have more advanced filters – but hey if this helps someone, here’s to ya! *note: the image above is not a direct example of that technique, however it does apply several of the same methods.
