Office life is very boring, what keeps us alive in our offices? You're right, those hot and strict secretaries. This simple tutorial shows you how to create a beautiful female character using Illustrator.                   Final Image Preview               With Pen Tool(P) draw the outline of the face.             Fill it with a gradient from #fdc173 to #faaa59 and give it 1pt black stroke.             Now try to achieve the form of the eye as you...

Make a unique character design of a European Goldfinch with paint splatters and textures. The techniques used will be Live Trace, Pathfinder, Transparency, Distort, Warp and Clipping Masks. We'll give this character a unique look and fun personality.                           Step 1 First I searched for different photos of the Goldfinch and made some realistic sketches. This way I get to know the subject and can experiment with different poses. Use simple shapes to form your character. We will add details later, first make sure...

Adobe Illustrator is my favourite tool for creating fun and cute character designs. With just a few simple shapes, a mix of gradient colours and a few shadows here and there you can build some great looking illustrations. Here’s a step by step walkthrough of the process used to create a cool Panda character, from the basic outlines through to the detailed final design.                   The character we’ll be building today started out as a mockup of a series of random shapes quickly put together in Illustrator. This provides the foundation...

                    Final Product What You'll Be Creating         In this tutorial you will learn how to create a realistic looking electric guitar. We will start with basic shapes and build our way up using a couple of simple yet effective techniques. You will learn how to use 3D Effect, Scale and Blend Options, to make a guitar worthy of even the most rockin’ of vector fans!           Step 1 Start by opening Adobe Illustrator and creating a new 2000 px by 800 px RGB document, and set...

                      Final Product What You'll Be Creating             This is an exercise in digital drawing using Adobe Illustrator. In this tutorial, we’ll predominantly be using the Pen, Pencil and Gradient tools to create a fun retro remote-control airplane illustration. It takes quite a bit of work with the Pen, so make sure you’re familiar with the Pen Tool before beginning. Don’t worry if you’re a beginner, this tut is not too difficult, so let’s get on with it!               Step...

When it comes to simulating three dimensional depth in your illustrations, the Blend Tool is your new best friend. Watch and be amazed at the power of Illustrator CS3 as it reaches through your monitor and, with defiance, and slaps you in the face with it's subtle charm and versatility.                 Final Image Preview You can find the source files in the below link labeled "Simulated_3d" . You may wish to look through them briefly before we begin. A preview of the final image is below. You can view the large version here as well.             Download...

We're going to illustrate a map. A fairly simple directive, but before we go any further we need to establish why we're illustrating it. By illustrating we're going to give the final product personality, flair, a bit of life – we're going to hope that the user is drawn into it, attracted to it and once we have their attention – that they can use it. In producing this map we're not only illustrating, but also designing information graphics; finding that age-old balance between form and function.               Final Image Preview You...

this tutorial, we'll be using illustrator to create psychedelic reptile art. I'll show you my process for using overlapping vector shapes to create a painterly style illustration. Let's get started on this tutorial!                   Final Image Preview You can find the Source files in the download link labeled "Ball Python" . You may wish to look through them briefly before we begin. A preview of the final image is below.         Download File : http://1malaysia-innovation.com/download/Ball Python.rar   Step...

In this tutorial I show how I create a character I've named the "Cactus King." My normal approach to designing is to create a sketch on paper first, scan and then build in digital form. However for this character project I wanted to explore creating in vector right from the get go.                 Final Image Preview You can find the source files in the download link labeled "cactusking" . You may wish to look through them briefly before we begin. A preview of the final image is below.           Download...

For this tutorial, we'll use simple shapes to create a cute robot. We'll apply various shading techniques to give our vector illustration a 3D style. We'll work from sketch the final illustration, and cover all the techniques used to make this character. Let's get started!               Final Image Preview You can find the source files in the download link labeled "Cute 3D vector robot" . You may wish to look through them briefly before we begin. A preview of the final image is below. Tutorial Details Program: Adobe Illustrator CS3 Difficulty:...

Creating a cartoon or human-like caricature is a fun and rewarding project to do in Illustrator. Not only that, but if you’re pretty good with the pen tool, it doesn’t take very long. In this tutorial I will be creating an elf. Be sure to look at refrences of other cartoons or caricatures to make sure your shapes are correct. To start, I drew a basic head shape.                     Then, I added the hat and hair. To remove extra lines, I expanded all the lines and deleted the extras I didn’t need. Sometimes you might have to go...

Cartoon character drawing covers a lot of techniques and styles from one color characters to multilayered colorful ones. In this tutorial, I will cover the necessary steps for creating a colored multicolor cartoon character that includes shadings. I used Adobe CS3, a Wacom tablet, an inked drawing, and scanner. With your tools ready, let’s get to it!             Final Image Preview           Step 1 This time I inked the pencil drawing the old fashion way before scanning it because I wanted to have a preview before the scan. You scan...

In this simple but very time saving and useful tip, we will see how we can transform pattern fill in Illustrator without transforming the object on which the pattern fill is applied. For example, if you have a pattern fill applied on a square or rectangle shape like this:                     And, if you want to transform the pattern without transforming the square shape itself. Select your shape and go to Object>Transform>Rotate. in the resulting dialog box, uncheck the Object option. keep the Pattern option checked and specify the angle...