SixCrayons

Ghostbusters is awesome your Mum knows it, your cat knows it hell anyone vaguely aware of what went on in the eighties knows it. With this in mind I wanted to create an Isometric Ghostbusters scene and show you how to create vector isometric illustrations.

Step 1 – Creating basic isometric shapes

First off lets make a simple isometric cube.

Create a 100 x 100 pixel diamond then using Transform reduce the height by half. You now have a simple isometric square.

Once you’ve done this copy the square and put it underneath the first one using the align tool to keep them both centered.

Using the Direct Selection tool (A) delete the top point on the bottom square.

Using the Pen tool fill in the space between the two squares and draw a line down the middle of the two shapes.Use the align tool to make sure everything is centered.

Now open the Pathfinder menu, select the bottom shape and the line and click the Divide button.

Creating cylindrical objects is also pretty easy.

Create an isometric square, select it and then go to Effect > Stylize > Round corners. round the corners to around 200 pixels and you should get a perfect circle.

Copy the circle and align it underneath like with the square.

Now create a square the same width as the circles.

Line up the square so the bottom is lined up with the middle of the bottom of the square.

Select both of them and press the Merge button on the Pathfinder.

You now have a perfect cylindrical shape to suit all your trash cans and oil drum needs.

Step 2  Fire station

To create the Ghostbuster building I started with a pretty basic cube shape and then used Divide to create the bricks and fill in the detail. The hardest bit to get right was the door which was either too small for the building or too small for ‘Ecto One’ to fit through.

Step 3 -  Ecto One

Ecto One was definitely the most fun to make but also the most challenging.

To start with I tried to get as many angles of the real thing as possible then created a basic blocky version to get the get the vehicles proportions right.

I was really tempted to have see through windows so you could see the inside and all the equipment, but decided after how long it took to get the wings right it wasn’t worth it (next time).

Step 4 – Stay Puft man

The least evil thing in Rays mind was pretty easy to draw, I stacked up a few basic blocks to get the posture and then morphed a few circles to make his body.

Step 5 -The Team

On the actual picture you cant really see any detail on these guys but I did start big with them (although looking at them now Winston does seem to be having back issues I blame the proton pack).

finished ghostbusters scene

And now heres everything together, I added a few lighting effects for the proton pack using blur and outer glow and created a Taxi using Ecto-one as a base.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions about anything leave me a comment here and I’ll be more than happy to get back to you.

Happy Halloween!

You can also download the full Ai for Ecto One below as a Halloween treat. :)