http://www.vimeo.com/4642671
In this video, I am sharing with you a vector path creation technique to speed up the process of creating curved paths by adding intermediate anchor points after your corners have been created. I used to create my anchor points as I was following the curve of the shape I was tracing. Instead, with this technique the anchor points are added to your vector path after your corners have been created, allowing Illustrator to approximate the length of the curve handles for you with much greater accuracy the first time around.
It’s tough to explain with words, which is why I created this video 
Enjoy, and boost your productivity in Adobe Illustrator!
* the song in the background is a little ditty I created myself in GarageBand with my trusty guitar.
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
Tags: Adobe Illustrator, art, artist, Bezier, cartoonist, Illustration, illustrator, productivity, screencast, technique, tip, tutorial, vector, video
I’m not trying to be rude but this looks like free clip-art!
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Wow, what a blog post. That is a fantastic tutorial. Not that I want to create a twitter graphic but I am very much into creating that nice cartoon style. I have not used photoshop actions before so a lot to learn and play with. Keep these great blogs up guys!!!
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Thanks Michael! The focus of the tutorial was on creating a cartoon-style character in vector using Adobe Illustrator, and we decided to go with a Twitter bird as it was timely and people might have use for the art in addition to the tutorial. Glad you enjoyed and hope it helps you with your digital art creation.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Great tutorial George, and just in time to inspire a bunch of tweety bird tees for Twitter’s official Threadless store: http://twitter.threadless.com/
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Thanks Adam! It was enlightening writing out these vector art steps in detail, I learned a few things myself during the process.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
I really like this, but the video link in Step 17 is 404.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Here! Here! I must agree with the previous posted comments that give props to this wonderful tutorial. People like @Jakey must realize that a tutorial like this is much more than the image being created. The process behind the creation is what’s of real value here, and George you did a fantastic job walking us through the steps needed. I am pleased to see another person that creates their illustrations by hand with the pen tool, I thought I might be old fashioned.
Thanks and keep em’ coming.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Got to agree with @kyle steed, it’s all about the process, and when someone takes the time out to share their knowledge like this it’s much appreciated, irrespective of what the subject is there’s this tutorial has some handy tips worth taking on board. Well done George!
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Nice tutorial. Interesting this curve technique you use. Going to give it a whirl. (The link to the video here gives 404, but it can be found on http://georgecoghill.com/blog/)
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
I think that re-sketching the sketch in photoshop is kind of waste of time and an unnecessary step, but everything else is cool. Very nice way of achieving the curves in illustrator.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Amazing tutorial! Makes me wish I could draw!
Seriously, kudos to George for putting this together and taking us by the process step by step, checkbox by checkbox.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Great tutorial and so very cute bird!
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
NIce and complete tut. I never thought about the idea of putting the dots down first and then get the curves to be right. I’ll try it !
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Hahaha!! Twitter twitter twitter. nice nice nice..
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Thanks a bunch Kyle, indeed I was using a straightforward image to allow me to go in-depth with the process. The real tutorial is in creating the clean, hand-drawn look with vector art.
Very pleased to hear you got some value from this, and thank you for the kudos.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Thanks for reiterating pixel8. Very glad to hear, and thanks!
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Thanks a bunch Kyle, indeed I was using a straightforward image to allow me to go in-depth with the process. the real tutorial in in creating the clean, hand-drawn look with vector art.
Very pleased to hear you got some value from this, and thank you for the kudos.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
I’m not sure why that link isn’t working, the post itself is fine. Looking into it. Thanks for the heads up.
In the meantime, that video can be accessed here: http://georgecoghill.com/blog/.....be-…
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
I’m not sure why that link isn’t working, the post itself is fine. Looking into it. Thanks for the heads up.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
The alternate curve technique was something I stumbled on (honestly, accidentally with a stray ‘add anchor point’ using the Pen tool) but I found it to be very useful.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Thanks!
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
I agree, that step could probably be avoided. However, when possible I like to re-work my sketches. I find that re-sketching also gets me to rethink and reevaluate the image. I always prefer to be as objective as possible with my artwork, and I find that the seemingly redundant process of refining the sketch helps me to look at my line art with fresh eyes.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Thank you, and glad you found this tutorial useful/helpful. I went a bit overboard in the "checkbox-to-checkbox" detail only because I know sometimes tutorials gloss over aspects of the process that at first glance seem obvious, but might not be so obvious for someone coming fresh to this type of approach.
It was interesting for me to chronicle the process to this level of detail, I didn’t realize all the steps involved until they were laid out step-by-step.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Thanks Simon. And as I mentioned in a reply above, I stumbled across the technique of ‘adding the anchor points after-the-fact’, and wanted to share as I found it to be very useful for those situations in which it could be used.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Try this link for the video overview of the ‘quickly add anchor points’ video: http://georgecoghill.com/blog/.....be-…
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Until I can figure out why the link in the post isn’t working, the video can be accessed via this link: http://georgecoghill.com/blog/.....be-…
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
So cute
nice tutorial 
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
For sake of not having a Wacom Tablet, I’d do this much the same, and the difference would be going straight from the sketch to vectors.
Some great tips on the vector drawing though…. nice one.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Thanks Ross. And yes the Wacom/Photoshop steps can easily be skipped by refining your sketch on paper before scanning into your computer.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Great tut! Am giving it a go right now. I’m curious as to your brush settings in the different PS phases though. Thanks;
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Wow So cool. I just was going to draw similar bird for my blog, you same my time thanks!
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
What happened to the download? It says the zip file not found.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
I dropped a line to Jeff (the admin) about this.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Be sure to give the little guy a good home
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Thanks!
Actually, I will be putting together a tutorial on this exact topic (brush settings, Wacom, etc. in Photoshop) for a near-future blog post here. Stay tuned!
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Fixed it! Not sure what happened, but it’s up there now.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
We also fixed the link for the video. As Sallah from ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ would say, "Bad date."
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
George, this is unreal! Thank you for this. Question: you wouldn’t happen to have this page in pdf format to download would yah? My adobe distiller isn’t quite working for this page… I’d like to keep it in my "reference/tools" folder for future use (if you don’t mind). Thank you. I’m a total graphic design neubie.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.
Glad you enjoyed!
The post was created in the WordPress backend, but if you are on Safari for Mac, you can do a "Print" command and save as a PDF. That technique works for all web pages. If you are on another browser/OS, I’m not sure how one would go about doing this.
This comment was originally posted on The GoMediaZine! Exclusive insights for art, design, marketing and more.