hey, wasnt aware of the discussion forum on the ‘core’ sweet, wish this was around whilst i was at uni.
Im the designer of the link Yo , posted, yup im british but designing kicks in France, will be out of here soon though…
Regarding rendering techniques, I usually sketch about, trying to find 'that ’ idea, scan it in hook up with illustrator and trace th elines, creating somethig crisper and more flowing. Once im happy a fill all the large same composant areas in and get rid of the lines seperating the peces this allows for a cleaner photoshopping. Try to use REAL bright colours - pinks, yellows fluo green, cos in photoshop its easier to selection these parts and have clean edges at the intersections.
Once im happy i export the file as a 300 Dpi jPEG? opent e badboy up in Photoshop at about an A3 image size, again cleaner, but the ol computer dies pretty often, from there i use composant scans i ve collected over the years, putting them into the ‘shop’ i can deform them with a spherisation tool to give a rounded 3D effect, i use a seperate layer for each piece, then create a mask and play with the shadows. another gfood tool to get more realistic shadows is the contrast +/- tool (looks like a black lollipop) this increses the darka nd light tones whilst at the same time keeping the texture.
From there finish all the shadows highlights and drop in the stitch lines and little branding details - usually done seperatly and imported, Hope this helps guys, good luck.
TOmfoolery 