Appliance Project Process

My idea was to play with the idea of a "Whirlpool" washing machine, by placing an actual whirlpool in the center of it. I started by looking for a photo of a washing machine that was photographed at an angle which would allow plenty of the drum to be seen. I started with this photo:

But decided that a washer with an agitator would make the idea more obvious, so I found another image that was closer to what I was looking for:

I then used the livetrace tool to trace the image, and drew in some details with the pen tools.

Next I found an image of a whirlpool that seemed to fit fairly well with the washer image.

And used the image trace tool to trace it.

I erased in a circle path around the traced whirlpool image, using a pen line from the washer image as a guide. 

I then dropped the whirlpool into the washer image, and erased around the outline of the agitator.

Next, I wanted to make the image more interesting by adding in a ship, so I found an image that looked like it would fit into the whirlpool.

And I cut out around it, rotated it, mirrored it, and placed it into my whirlpool document.

Then I used the livetrace tool to trace the image of the ship. I wasn't happy with how it turned out using only livetrace, but I decided to fix it later.

Next I moved the washer barrel lower in the image and drew ripples up to the whirlpool, and overlayed the full whirlpool trace over the cut one, and erased around the full whirlpool to give the effect of the water spilling out towards the viewer.

I then found an image of an octopus that I wanted to add into the image, and several tentacle images, and livetraced them individually. 

Then I used a black to transparent gradient to blend the tentacles into the water. I also drew an eye on the octopus using the pen and brush tools.

I then drew spots on the octopus using the pen tool.

I then used bits and pieces of the whirlpool to create splashes around the ship and tentacles, and filled in a few missing tentacle details with the paintbrush tool.

Finally I drew in some details on the ship using the pen tool, and got rid of a few layers of the image trace, until I achieved a look I was happy with.

Then I found an image of a whirlpool logo, livetraced it, and altered it slightly with the perspective tool.

Next I found an image of some bubbles, livetraced them, and placed them over the image, then added a gradient to the background, to create an underwater effect.

Finally, I filled in a few details around the washer knobs, and came to my final image.