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Illustrator
TUTORIALS
25 JULY 2016
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Creating cartoon characters in Adobe Illustrator is always lots of fun! You dont even need great drawing
skills. Making illustrations out of basic shapes not only simplifies the process, it also produces a stylised
appearance that adds to the cute factor. In todays tutorial Ill take you through the step by step process of
creating a vector dinosaur. Its only made from rectangles and circles, but the clever tools within Illustrator
colours give it a friendly appearance, which makes it perfect for all kinds of childrens themed design
projects. Vector illustrations like this have become a widely popular style, where the details are simplified
While dragging out a shape, press the right cursor key to max out the corner radius.
Select the normal rectangle tool and draw a shape to represent a leg. Switch back to the normal Selection
tool and hold the Shift and ALT keys while dragging the shape to the side to duplicate it. Repeat the
process to create four legs, but line up the last leg with the edge of the body shape. Pro Tip: Turn on
Smart Guides under the View menu to easily snap the shape into place.
Switch to the Direct Selection tool, then click and drag the top edge of the last leg rectangle upwards so
the paths form a smooth outline. Hold the Shift key to restrict the movement.
Select the main body shape, along with the second and last leg shapes, then click the Unite button from
edges are lined up. Unite these shapes with the Pathfinder panel.
Use the Ellipse tool to draw two small eyes with a black fill, then draw a circle and switch the fill to a black
stroke. Use the Direct Selection tool to delete the lowermost point, leaving a semi-circle. Give this shape
a Round Cap from within the Stroke panel, then duplicate it to form a couple of nostrils.
Draw a slightly larger circle within the head area and give it a white fill along with its black stroke.
Switch to the Selection tool and drag the shape to the side while holding ALT and Shift. Use the Smart
Guides to snap it perfectly to the end of the original. Use the shortcut CMD+D to Transform Again three
the Round Cap option in the Stroke panel to round off the ends.
Select all the shapes that make up the mouth and go to Object > Transform > Envelope Distort. Select the
body shape underneath the facial features, but not too far that the body is placed under the legs.
Select the Ellipse tool and draw a circle at the base of the dinosaurs neck. Hold the ALT and Shift keys to
drag a copy, then press CMD+D to continue duplicating it all the way up the neck. Drag and duplicate a
itself. An alternative to the Pathfinder panel is the Shape Builder tool. Hold the ALT key and click on the
red highlighted outline where the circles intersect on the inside of the body.
Draw a few more circles of varying sizes within the body, allowing some to extend beyond the outline. Use
the Shape Builder tool to trim them to size, this time clicking the main shape area while holding the ALT
key.
Draw another circle near the foot area. Delete the lowermost point to form a semi-circle, then click and
drag three duplicates. Scale these shapes to fit within the bottom of the leg rectangle. Copy these shapes
shape and give it a pastel green fill. Clear out the default black stroke.
Add a slightly darker green for the legs, pink for the spikes and yellow for the spots to create colourful
vector artwork.
Grab any texture image from the web and paste it into Illustrator. Use the Live Trace panel to vectorise it.
Check the Ignore White option, uncheck Snap Curves to Lines, then move the sliders back and forth to
temporary duplicate and the texture selected, click the Crop button in the Pathfinder panel to trim the
texture to size.
Reduce the opacity of the texture to 10% to reduce its impact to leave some subtle texturing over the
artwork.
The final result is a vector dinosaur character complete with simple shapes, pastel colours and subtle
texturing. The use of rounded rectangles and circles gives the character a cute and friendly appearance,
which makes it perfect for kids themed design projects. These same techniques can be used to create all
kinds of character designs, it just takes some imagination to figure out how to depict your subject with
basic shapes.