Cartoonist and illustrator extraordinaire Tom Richmond has an excellent in-depth guide to drawing hands over on his blog. As per usual with Tom’s instructional articles/blog posts, he goes into far more detail and insight than one could possibly imagine he would have time for, even down to supplying illustrated diagrams explaining everything.
Here’s a quote demonstrating the level of insight you’ll find:
Many people think the knuckle of the finger rests directly behind the crease that represents the base of the finger right under the bottom finger pad. Now turn your hand around. That main knuckle is SIGNIFICANTLY lower on the hand. In fact it’s below the upper pad of the palm that curve below all the fingers. A lot more of your finger resides inside the palm/body than you might think. Understanding that is a big part of figuring out hands.
At some point I can see Tom collating all these posts into a book of some sort. His blog tutorials are better than any book on cartooning I’ve ever seen, and this one is no different.
Probably one of the more difficult parts of the human body to draw, and Tom is a master at the cartoon hand. Head over there and learn from the best.
by George Coghill -
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Cap’n Clobber is my robot gorilla pirate creation for this week’s Monster Monday illustration.
Continue reading 'Cap’n Clobber'
by George Coghill -
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http://www.vimeo.com/2304626
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 -
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Sharon Steuer’s free ”Zen Of The Pen” PDF is an excellent introduction to the inner mysteries of the vector pen tool in Adobe Illustrator.
The pen tool is one of those obscure graphics programs tools that everyone tries once, and then gets so confused by that they never get any further with it. And understandably. It looks like a fountain pen, but it doesn’t act like one. Click and “draw”, you get weird “handles” sprouting out from a dot. Ignore that, and some annoying rubber band line gets stuck to your pen tip, all distorted out of — not even a straight line! Right there most Illustrator users think to themselves “this program sucks”.
But they couldn’t be further from the truth…
Continue reading 'Zen Of The Pen'
by George Coghill -
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A collection of links to twenty great comics and cartooning tutorials over at PSDtuts. Lots of tips for inking in both Photoshop and Illustrator, coloring, using Photoshop layers to your advantage, achieving halftone effects and other comic-book style looks to your art.
A great resource. You can never have too much information about how other artists use graphics software to create their work. I often take tips from multiple tutorials and create my own workflow from just a tip here and a technique there.
Continue reading '20 Comic & Cartooning Photoshop Tutorials'
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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I recently finished up this ‘Theology On Tap’ cartoon character mascot/logo project for a youth ministries client.
The client is a youth ministries minister, and his new program is focused on bringing discussions of theological matters into more casual settings to try and reach additional young people.
The artwork is intended to be used on various advertising and promotional materials, as well as a t-shirt design.
I thought it odd at first, but I suppose there’s nothing really wrong about talking about religious matters in a bar, right? And I suppose a minister knows the deal. My only concern was to create a great illustration for him and his project.
Anyways, read on for an in-depth overview of the process to create this cartoon character mascot/logo from start to finish, including unused sketches created along the way.
Continue reading 'Monk/Friar With Beer Keg – Cartoon Mascot Illustration'
by George Coghill -
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This Animator’s Survival Kit DVD set from Oscar-winning animator Richard Willams looks like a great resource for those animators out there. Personally, I do not have the patience for animation, but it’s fascinating to me.
This DVD set is a companion to Williams’ highly-rated Animator’s Survival Kit book. The site doesn’t seem to indicate if the book is included with the DVD set, but it seems not to be.
Richard Williams was awarded two Oscars for the animation on “Who Framed Roger Rabbit“. He directed and designed Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit, Baby Herman and all the new characters for the Walt Disney/Steven Spielberg production.
The set isn’t cheap at £634.04 (or about $1,252.42 for us U.S. folks as of the date of this post).
Continue reading 'The Animator’s Survival Kit'
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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A cartoon illustration & design project for a friend’s party required the resulting art to be suitable for reproduction on a photocopy machine. After some trial, error, Google search, trial, error, Google search, trial, error I discovered the magic combo that allows you to create a halftone in Photoshop for an image and print it out on your inkjet printer so the art will be perfect for photocopying.
This technique is perfect for flyers, newsletters or any other short-run printing needs you have where the cheapness of a photocopy is desired, but so are grayscale images.
Continue reading 'Cartoon Art & Halftones Tutorial: From Inkjet Printer to Photocopier'
by George Coghill -
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