Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

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.

Continue reading 'Adobe Illustrator Video Tip: Quickly Add Smooth Transition Anchor Points'

by George Coghill -
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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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I recently finished up the first round of a series of custom avatar illustrations for the Cleveland, Ohio convention and visitor’s bureau Positively Cleveland. The initial set of avatar illustrations were for the “web women” of Positively Cleveland — the main online team for their website.

Continue reading 'Custom Avatar Illustrations: Positively Cleveland'

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
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.

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
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.

Artwork created by & © Enoch Bolles

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
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“Suburban Swami” illustration. Artwork created by & © Steve Scott.

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

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.

I recently ran across a link to the London-based Association Of Illustrators AOI Report: Illustration Fees and Standards of Pricing (2007). To sum up what this AOI Report is all about, I’ll quote from them directly:

The information presented in the various tables in this document indicate examples of fees charged in relation to particular jobs or services, based on the AOI’s research and recent survey of the industry. The tables provide information about the variables in costs and gives examples of what factors should be considered as illustrators and clients negotiate fees. It should also be borne in mind that illustrators and clients have agreed fees outside the ranges surveyed here.

There’s a lot of great info here (and be sure to adjust the numbers in your head to your local currency — the pricing on the AOI Report is in UK pounds). It’s always helpful to get an idea of what others in your field are charging for their services to determine of you are charginot too little or too much.

Continue reading 'AOI Report: Illustration Fees and Standards of Pricing'

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.