Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

Layers Magazine has a hefty selection of videos showcasing the new tools and features of all the Adobe Creative Suite CS4. Each video is a short demo/tutorial,walkthough/how-to of all the new stuff you can expect in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and the rest of the software in CS4.

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

If you aren’t aware, Adobe is announcing the CS4 update the their Creative Suite design software package today. Photoshop always gets the spotlight, but us vector artists want the scoop on our baby: Illustrator CS4. I guess the gag order was lifted as of midnight, because details are pouring in, and even Adobe has updated their site to feature CS4.

Illustrator guru Mordy Golding over on his Real World Illustrator blog has a nice detailed overview of the major new features and refinements in Illustrator CS4.

Continue reading 'Adobe Illustrator CS4 Details Released!'

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

Although technically these tips apply to any graphics software, this particular tutorial over at Spoon Graphics focuses on the exact steps to set up bleeds for print design in your document within Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. The method to do so in other graphics application might be slightly different, but these walkthroughs should give you enough info to apply it to non-Adobe software.

Continue reading 'Setting Up Bleeds For Print Design In Creative Suite'

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

Symmetries from Earthlinksoft Software is an interesting symmetrical vector object generator tool.

The control system is very intuitive, requring no knowledge of how to manipulate vector paths. While simplistic, it gives one a high level of control over exploring interesting symmetrical objects. I did find that there seemed to be a bit of a genre of shapes that were the calling card for this tool, but maybe I just didn’t play with it enough.

Symmetries does not generate tiled patterns, but rather single vector objects, which then can be pasted into the vector software of your choosing for futher editing. The demo mode doesn’t allow this, so I couldn’t test it.

Continue reading 'Symmetries – Vector Path Software Tool'

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

Found this neat little gallery of surfboard logos via Paul Howalt on Twitter. A huge library of surfboard logos, including multiples of some.

These logos aren’t vector art or anything ready for print (unlike the Brands Of The World vector logo library), just a reference library or perhaps a design inspiration resource.

Seems a high percentage of these are photos of the logos on actual surfboards.

Continue reading 'Surfboard Logo Library'

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

Just stumbled across these handy – and free – Photoshop plugins which should be a huge time-saver for comic artists who ink & color their pages in Photoshop. A process also known as ‘flatting’.

These have to be a huge productivity booster to any artist working with coloring line art in Photoshop, not just comic book artists and the like.

I can already envision many applications for these in my workflow, even though I am primarily a vector artist.

Continue reading 'Free ‘Flatting’ Photoshop Plugin For Comic Artists'

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

I thought global colors in Illustrator were something everybody knew about, but perhaps not. Doesn’t anyone read the manuals for their software?

James Dempsey over at The Graphic Mac just posted a brief overview of the global process color swatches in Adobe Illustrator.

Continue reading 'That Little White Triangle In The Corner: Global Process Color Swatches In Adobe Illustrator'

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

Update to my previous post about the bug in Photoshop CS3 and other Adobe CS3 apps under Mac OS X 10.5.3 where saving a file to a networked drive will result in a corrupt file. Supposedly this has been fixed under the just-released OS X 10.5.4 update.

Even more confirmation comes from the fact that it was directly referenced by Apple as one of the fixes in this update.

Continue reading 'Mac OS X 10.5.4 fixes Adobe CS3 ‘Save To Networked Volume’ Bug'

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

Cartoonist Mike Foran has a couple of cool number 2 pencil Photoshop brushes – free to download – that I stumbled across the other day. For some time now I have been on the casual lookout for a Photoshop brush that mimicked a regular-ol’ number 2 pencil. Seems Foran was on that line of thought as well.

Foran’s brush has a nice line quality, varied from thick to thin based on your Wacom tablet pressure, and has a slight angle similar to a flat-worn pencil tip.

The brush also has a nice light feel at light pressure, and darkens quickly with pressure added. The texture and look of the brush marks/pencil lines is perfect.

Continue reading 'Free Photoshop Brush: Stumpy Pencil'

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

A hit-or-miss resource I always forget to check, the Adobe Exchange has a decent amount of downloadable resources for use with just about every piece of software they offer. In particular here I am focusing on Illustrator section of the Exchange.

The Illustrator Exchange has actions, brushes, styles, swatches, plug-ins, scripts, templates, tutorials and symbols to browse or search, and there’s a 5-star rating system as well to hopefully help you sort the good from the not-so-good.

Continue reading 'The Adobe Illustrator Exchange: Great Resource For Illustrator Actions, Brushes, Scripts and More'

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