Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

Working color vector art for a mascot character project. The ogre will be used as a mascot for a video game portal website. We needed a prop and I suggested a video game controller, the client wanted to go with an old-school Atari 2600 controller, which I think looks great. it’s such an iconic design it really reads well, which is important for smaller sizes.

Continue reading 'Cartoon Ogre Mascot Character'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
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For longer than I can remember, I have been flustered with the Flatten Transparency feature in Adobe Illustrator CS3 and CS4. Very often I use the excellent Layer Targeting feature introduced into recent versions of Adobe Illustrator, however I found that when using the Flatten Transparency feature, it seemed to ignore the attributes of the Targeting, which forced me to find lengthy workarounds to solve this. Turns out there was an approach to solving this that I had overlooked…

Continue reading 'Flattening Transparency Properly When Using Layer Appearances in Adobe Illustrator'

by George Coghill -
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Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Here are a few handy keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop for those of you out there like me who spend an inordinate amount of time in the Creative Suite primarily using Illustrator. These are not keyboard shortcuts that you can use in Illustrator, but rather are keyboard shortcuts providing methods of doing things in Photoshop that you are used to doing in Illustrator that at first it might seem isn’t possible, like click directly on an object to select it, drag to a new layer, etc.

Continue reading '6 Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts For Illustrator Users'

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

It’s happened to all of us digital creatives. The dreaded day when you just cannot get one of your Adobe applications to launch. Usually there’s a deadline looming (of course). You’ve restarted your computer (three times) and still you cannot get Photoshop to launch. You’ve tried a few tips from some Google searches, but still nothing. Your geek cred is showing it’s limitations. And your deadline isn’t getting any further away.

What if I told you this could be avoided, virtually forever? And also, that you can get back to work with all your settings just the way you like them?

Continue reading 'Adobe Apps: Backup Your Prefs'

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

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.

Continue reading 'Video: Photoshop CS4 Drag-Resize Brush Keyboard Shortcut'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
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Hold down the Option key when erasing using the Eraser Brush, and you’ll get a marquee that you can drag to erase a perfectly rectangular area.

Bonus Eraser Tool tip: edit the keyboard shortcuts so the Eraser uses the “E” key, and remap the Free Transform tool to Shift-E (essentially swapping the keyboard shortcuts for the two tools). Seems much more intuitive this way.

Both tips via FreeTransform

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

Illustrator & cartoonist Bob Ostrom mentioned me — George Coghill — on his new freelancing podcast Creative Independence in regards to getting help from other creatives on the addictive social networking service Twitter.

Bob was stuck trying to figure out how to accomplish a technique with Adobe Illustrator, and sent out a plea for help. I dropped a line and we hooked up via iChat to work through his issue.

Bob mentions in the podcast how he was instantly sold on Twitter after the experience. Twitter is a great resource if you follow other illustrators and socialize with them – tapping the collective creative community can be a great resource if you are stuck on how to do something with your software.

Continue reading 'Twitter: The Creative Collective'

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

Another brief video in my instructional 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 Spring-Loaded Keys feature that allows you to access a tool temporarily by holding down the key for that tool, similar to using the Spacebar for the Hand tool – only for every tool in Photoshop now.

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

A quick note that as of the posting date, there are a handful of plugins not yet available for the Creative Suite CS4 applications.

The list for me so far includes: all font activation plugins for Linotype’s Font Explorer X, “Select Menu” for Illustrator CS4, Canon’s Scangear CS plugin to access your scanner from within Photoshop’s Import menu, and plugins from developer Worker72a such as the ‘Zoom To Selection’ plugin for Illustrator.

Continue reading 'Creative Suite CS4 Plugin Availability'

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

Just a quick tip for those out there getting ready to upgrade to the new Adobe Creative Suite CS4: I discovered after the upgrade that CS3 customized keyboard shortcut files do not transition into CS4.

This is a huge bummer, as there is no easy way that I know of to display what you have changed compared to the default set. I can only speak for Photoshop CS4, Illustrator CS4 and InDesign CS4 as I do not use the rest of the programs in the Design Premium suite enough to customize keyboard shortcuts.

I can’t recall if this is the case with previous Creative Suite upgrades as well or if this is a CS4-only situation.

Continue reading 'Creative Suite CS4: Custom Keyboard Shortcut Woes'

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