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.
Continue reading 'Adobe Illustrator Video Tip: Quickly Add Smooth Transition Anchor Points'
by George Coghill -
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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 -
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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 -
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Vandelay Design has a great article discussing pricing issues for freelance creatives. The article talks about design services, but it can apply to illustrators, cartoonists – probably any freelancer out there.
More than just a nuts & bolts calculator, the post gets into the nebulous about preceived value, psychology of clients and more. Nothing needing a PhD, but some nice brief insight into the process.
A good read and some good links at the end as well.
12 Realities of Pricing Design Services | Vandelay Website Design.
via The Graphic Mac
by George Coghill -
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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 -
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Just a quick tip for the freelancing and self-employed — that pain you feel paying all your taxes at once because you’re too lazy or forgetful to dole out your quarterly tax payments to Uncle Sam? It’s over. If you’re like me, and 99% of your banking and bill-paying is done online, there’s a tax payment solution for you.
Continue reading 'Automated Online Estimated Tax Payments For Freelancers & Self-Employed'
by George Coghill -
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James Dempsey’s illustration & design software tips and tricks blog The Creative Guy has been retired, and rising from the digital ashes is The Graphic Mac. Looks like all the previous GC content has been migrated the TGM. James mentions that the big reason for the big change was to switch from WordPress to Drupal so he could implement more community features like message boards and the like.
Continue reading 'The Creative Guy Is Now The Graphic Mac'
by George Coghill -
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Another quick Adobe Illustrator tip over at design blog BittBox, this time a quick overview on using the Reshape tool. In short, the Reshape tool helps keep the overall ‘feel’ of a vector path without having to manually tweak individual anchor points.
Continue reading 'Quick Overview on Adobe Illustrator’s Reshape Tool'
by George Coghill -
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Just saw this over at design blog BittBox: when drawing with the Shape tools in Illustrator (rectangle, circle etc.), holding the tilde key (the squiggle key to the left of the 1 key on U.S. keyboards) and then dragging the mouse will result in lots of duplicates of the shape following the trail of your mouse pointer.
Continue reading 'Adobe Illustrator’s Tilde Key Trick'
by George Coghill -
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A great quick tip, from the excellent design blog BittBox, to create a color group of all the colors in an Illustrator document: Select all the art in your document, go to the Swatches fly-out menu and choose “New color group” – you now have a color group folder of all the colors in the artwork. Very cool!
Since color groups are a CS3 feature, this tip is Illustrator CS3 only.
via BittBox
by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
Contact me to get started on your own custom cartoon illustration projects.
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