Making a 2D Sketch into 3D

Trevor Innes is a designer and sculptor who makes figures from sheets of stainless steel nearly an inch thick, like 'Soul-mates' on the right.

His designs start just as drawn outlines and he wanted a more realistic representation of the result.

• With this design, titled 'Stepping out of one's shadow', I started by drawing the main figure with the Pen Tool.

• A new layer was created and filled with 50% grey. Gaussian Noise was added to this, then given some Motion Blur to produce the brushed stainless steel effect.

• The Path outline was converted to a selection. With the selection on the stainless steel layer, a figure was created on to a new layer.

• There are lines, or cuts, separating the arms from the body, so these were selected individually and stainless steel versions of these shapes put on to their own layers.

• The two new pieces for the arms were duplicated.

• Some Inner Bevel was added to the full figure to give the shape more depth.

• So there are two copies of the left arm. The lower sample was given the same Inner Bevel as the body.

• A mask was added to the upper sample and the useful part of the bevel was revealed.

• The same process was repeated with the other arm sections.

• Among the gradients, there is a silver metal effect. A new layer was created at the top of the layers stack. The outline shape of the whole figure was filled with this metal gradient.

• This top layer was changed to Overlay mode with an opacity of 65%.

  The same process could then be repeated with the smaller figure.

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