I recently created an in-depth Adobe Illustrator tutorial for the Go Media graphic design and illustration blog GoMediaZine. The tutorial covers the creation of a cartoon character mascot from sketch to final vector art. The character art is a fun Twitter blue bird cartoon character, and the vector art files as well as icons for use on your own website or blog are available as a free download as part of the tutorial.

This tutorial is a good overview of my working process, at least on the creative and software side of things. As I was working on this tutorial, I ran into a situation where I wanted to change the artwork at the vector stage, something I rarely do. In this situation — since I was creating the artwork for myself — I moved on to the vector art fairly quickly so I could get working on the tutorial. As I neared the end of the process, I realized I needed to make a significant change to the character art.

Rather than rework the tutorial, I thought it was a good opportunity to demonstrate why the techniques I use in creating my vector art are beneficial in situations like this. Because of the nature of my vector art creation methods, the artwork can be edited even at a late stage in the creation process with minimal work/time spent. I included this in the tutorial as most tutorials cover what to do, not many cover what to do when something goes wrong. Additionally, I hope it’s clear why the techniques I use help one to be prepared in case something like this comes up.

In particular, working on layers, creating your vector objects as distinct objects and keeping your anchor points to a minimum helps to make things much easier as far as fine-tuning — as well as going back and making major changes.

Head on over to GoMediaZone and check the tutorial out for yourself, and drop me a comment with any thoughts, suggestions or tips to help streamline the process.

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Tutorial: Create A Vector Art Twitter Bird Character Icon In Adobe Illustrator is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Another brief video in my series introducing some great new features in Photoshop CS4 for artists, cartoonists, illustrators and anyone else who sketches or draws using Photoshop.

This video features the excellent new keyoard shortcuts that allow you to drag-resize the size of the brushes using the mouse pointer.

The drag-resize brush cursor feature was one of the top three features that enticed me to upgrade to the Adobe Creative Suite CS4 (Design Premium). While I primarily work with vector art in Adobe Illustrator (at least for my final artwork), I do a lot of sketching within Photoshop using my Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet.

As any Photoshop user will know, resizing the brushes can interrupt your workflow, especially when you are drawing or sketching. Not having to think about your tools is a big deal to me — I like to have the computer and the software get out of my way as much as possible.

With the new drag-resize brush cursor keyboard shortcuts, my productivity is very much increased now that I can — on the fly and exactly where I am working — change my brush size (as well as the hardness) of the brush. As a keyboard shortcut junkie, I am already used to having my left hand by the modifier keys on the Mac keyboard, so learning these required very little muscle memory.

I love being able resize the brushes with a gesture as opposed to having to stop what I am doing and size the brush up or down, then move the cursor back to where I was working (and repeat if necessary). As I mentioned, the hardness of the brush can also be controlled with keyboard shortcuts (the brush hardness is how soft the edges of the brush are).

Between the Spacebar for the Hand tool and these new shortcuts, for the most part I can almost work without needing to think about what I am doing at all. I also have the eraser tool mapped to one of the Wacom stylus buttons so I can quickly erase without switching tools.

If you work like I do, you’ll want to seriously consider an upgrade for this feature. It’s that great, honestly.

Oh — the other features in Photoshop CS4 that I upgraded for? The Rotate View tool and the Spring-Loaded Keys.

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Video: Photoshop CS4 Drag-Resize Brush Keyboard Shortcut is a post from: Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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