Cartooning & Illustration Blog: Coghillustration

A cool resource for Star Wars geeks (like me) out there looking for vector art of the logos/insignias for the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire, seen throughout the original Star Wars trilogy.

Continue reading 'Star Wars Insignias — Free Vector Art Downloads'

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

Vector artists and Adobe Illustrator users – rejoice! You no longer have to toil away in obscurity. Let the world know where your heart lies.

This t-shirt will get a knowing wink from those in-the-know. If you look closely, you’ll notice the heart is in fact created as a vector object, complete with points and handles. Or perhaps these are “love” handles?

People may go on and on about the (former) Macromedia Freehand, or their own open-source or alternative vector application, but you know what vector software you love the most.

I know, I know. Not everyone is ga-ga over Illustrator. Well, no need to fret — the “I Heart Vectors” t-shirt design is available as well. Regardless of your allegiances, I think we can all agree it’s “Points, Not Pixels”.

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

Are you a vector artist? Have a poster of Pierre Bezier on your studio wall? Do the terms path, handles and direct select get you excited?

Well, here’s the t-shirt for you. If you look closely, you’ll notice the heart is in fact created as a vector object, complete with points and handles. Or perhaps these are “love” handles?

Whether it’s Adobe Illustrator, the former Macromedia Freehand, or your own open-source or alternative vector application, let ‘em know where they can put their pixels.

And for you Illustrator-philes out there, check out the “I Heart Illustrator” t-shirt design as well.

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

Vectips has a post with 10 Free and Extremely Useful Illustrator Scripts.

Illustrator supports scripting from AppleScript, Visual Basic, JavaScript, and ExtendScript. What’s a script you ask? We’ll they’re kind of like plug-ins, kind of like Actions. Basically they are small chunks of software that you can invoke to perform functions.

You don’t need to know anything about programming, coding or anything like that. It’s as simple as downloading the files and placing them in the  Adobe Illustrator CS3/Presets/Scripts folder. After doing so you’ll find them in the Scripts menu (under the File menu).

Lots of great scripts. Here’s what you’ll find:

Continue reading '10 Free Adobe Illustrator Scripts'

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.

Illustration created by & © Krista Huot (via VecTips)

by George Coghill -
View my cartoon character and mascot illustration portfolio
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A recent Obama & McCain humorous cartoon illustration I created for Time Out NY for the “Commander In Beef” article regarding what New York City chefs would prepare for the 2008 presidential candidates. The illustration was created for the dining section, and is currently being featured on the front page of the Time Out NY website’s dining section. The featured artwork is a spot illustration companion piece to the full page illustration I created for the print article:

Continue reading 'Commander In Beef'

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.