All about vector design, vector pack and more

Adding Security to PDF Files in Illustrator

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:48:00 +0000

Illustrator is great for creating logos, illustrations, identity packages and much more. After you have created your project in Illustrator it is super simple to save it in PDF format, making it easy for proofing with clients. When proofing projects with clients, you usually don’t want the client to have access to editing or copying the files until you have received payment for the project.

Why Use Security?

I like to add security to my file for proofing purposes. When I send a PDF proof to a client I don’t want them to open up the PDF in their own copy of Illustrator and make changes or start using the project without payment. Adding security will also allow you to add a password to open the file and limit printing and copying capabilities.

Adding Security to Your PDF Files

After you have created you project, go File > Save As and choose Adobe PDF from the Format drop-down menu in the Save As dialog. When the Save Adobe PDF dialog opens, click on the Security link from the vertical menu in the left side of the dialog.

Require a Password to Open Document

When this option is selected, you will be prompted to enter a password to open the PDF document.

Use a Password to Restrict Editing Security and Permissions Password

When this option is selected, you will be prompted to enter a password to edit the document. Any program that can edit a PDF (Illustrator, Acrobat Reader, etc…) will require a password to edit the document.

Printing Allowed

From this pop-up menu, you can specify permissions to allow no printing, low resolution printing, or high resolution printing.

Changes Allowed

Use the Changes Allowed drop-down menu to limit the changes a user can preform on your PDF file.

Copying of Content

Uncheck this option to limit the copying of content from PDF file.

Enable Text Access

If you are limiting the copying of text and other content, you can select this option to allow visually impaired programs access to the text in the PDF.

Enable Plaintext Metadata

Selecting this option will enable the user to copy the metadata from your PDF file

Save as a Preset

Once you have adjusted all your PDF security options, you can easily save a preset by clicking the Save Preset button.

Do You Secure You PDF files?

Securing my PDF files for proofing is a crucial step in my project flow. Do you secure your files or do you use a different approach?

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Product Development and Design Process, Powww! Zing! Bamm!

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:53:00 +0000

Hello, my name is Adam Clark and I am a product designer for the gift and home décor market. For the past six years, I have designed and developed products that have been sold nationwide in many well-known retail stores. Many of my friends and fellow designers always ask me what exactly do I design and how do I do it? So follow me as I explain what is involved in the product development and design process.

The Product

In this article, the products I will be designing and developing will make a complete bath line. My target market will be youth boys. The products that make up a complete bath set are:

Wall Border

Shower Curtain

Lotion Pump

Tooth Brush Holder

Soap Dish

Shower Hooks

Remember that most retail buyers will only accept presentations with complete lines and not select odd ball items. They do this because it is much easier to market and sell a complete set rather than mix and match products. It also makes your presentation look more professional, and shows your product line is well thought out.

The Research

Before I begin any product design I always do my research. Since I will be designing products for the youth boy market I need to narrow down the age group so I can develop the most age appropriate product. The best selling age group for youth boys is the ages from six to twelve years old. I want to target this age group because it will give me the best chance for my products to fly off the shelf. Next, I need to decide if I want to pick a theme for my product line or do I want to design a pattern?

In this article I will be developing a themed bath line because, well, it’s a lot more intriguing and I usually will only develop a patterned line if I know that’s what the buyer is looking for. Now, I will do some cruising on the net looking for different ideas for my target theme. I will look at different retailer’s websites that sell similar products and try to get inspired by the products they currently sell.

Sometimes I will also check out the clothing department to see what my target audience is wearing. Don’t worry if this doesn’t come to you right away, take your time and pick a theme that you feel is best. It has taken me anywhere from one day to two weeks to decide on a theme. Remember that you want to have a fresh idea, but you also want to develop a product that mom and dad have no problem buying!

Sketching it Out

After doing some research I have decided my theme will be “Comic Books.” After choosing my theme, then it’s time to make some quick rough sketches to get some ideas of how to portray my theme into the product. I sketch out each product in many different views, angles, and layouts. Remember that the product has to be functional as well. I always sketch the image to be portrayed in 3D because you want your image to pop off the page and get your buyer excited. Plus, 3D images look more professional and give your buyer a better feel for the design than a flat 2D image.

After I have quickly sketched out some rough ideas to my liking, then I will make a clean and final sketch of each product. These sketches will be the exact images I will bring in to Illustrator to start bringing the product to life. Here are some of my final sketches!

From Sketch to Vector

After I complete all of my final sketches, it’s time to bring each individual image into Illustrator and begin to create outlines. First, I make a quick outline of each design to see if it proportioned correctly. Remember that these are actual functional products, so you need to be precise with your ideas. Here are some of my outlines:

Here you can see in my sketches that I have called out the dimensions and different functionalities of the product. The dimensions and functionalities are not only for my satisfaction, but it reinforces the goal of the project, which is to turn these designs into actual working products and not just concept designs.

Also when presenting to the buyer he or she may ask you what the dimensions and the functionalities are. Many times, the buyer already knows how much retail space they have available. So, it is helpful to know the dimensions of the product you are presenting. However, be flexible. Let the buyer know that you will be happy to modify your design and dimensions to fit into the space they have available.

Fill’er Up!

The next stage of the development process is to pick out the colors or pantones I want to use. Here in our studio we have a variety of pantone books, but when developing bath products we tend to use the textile pantone book, but it’s not necessary. After I have chosen the colors I want to use, I then begin to fill in the outlines like so:

These will be the base colors of the designs so they need to complement each other, and be an actual color that your manufacturer can match to or re-produce. As you can see, I have chosen some basic primary colors to give it that overall comic book feel.

Illustrator to Photoshop

Now this is one of my favorite parts in the product development process. We are now going to bring our products to life with Photoshop! Bring each individual color filled product into Photoshop. Since we sketched our designs in a 3D view, now we need to add the shadows, highlights, glares, and what I like to call Bling to help portray our 3D image. Like so:

I picked one to two light sources for each design. The material I want my products to be made out of is polyresin. Polyresin is a high gloss material that is commonly used for bath products. It is low in cost which will help in the overall price to produce the products.

Since polyresin can have a glossy look, I need to apply that glossy shine to my designs as well. Another benefit to polyresin is it can be easily molded, which gives you more flexibility in your design. So, if you have designed very detailed concepts, when it comes time make your products the manufacturer will be able to capture all that detail during production. Here is another example of products that were designed to be made out of polyresin and the concepts I created before production.

Presentation

At last, my designs are fully completed and brought to life. So, now I need to bring them all together in an awesome presentation so that they can be presented to the buyer.

First I will need to make a slick. A slick is a presentation background designed especially for product design presentations. The slick should have your logo or name on it as well as the product’s name. Whenever possible, I will make a logo for my product line. It makes for a more complete product line presentation and the buyer can get some advertisement ideas while viewing the design. Plus it’s just the cherry on top for a good design.

As you can see, I used a black to light gray gradient for my background, if you have used any 3D programs you have probably seen this background in the program’s standard working screen. I also kept my personal logo small and out of the way in the bottom left hand corner so that it doesn’t distract any attention away from the product design. When laying out your products on the slick you want to be careful not to have any weird empty spaces or products in areas that don’t make sense.

As you can see the border is along the top while all the accessories are at the bottom. I put some drop shadows and some reflective shine on the accessories giving them some depth and overall visual appeal. This also makes the accessories pop giving you a more 3D look to it. Finally, I added a tooth brush to the tooth brush holder to show the functionality and some soap bubbles to the soap dish for a little extra flare.

And there you go, a full bath line design ready for presentation!

At the End

There is so much more that goes into developing and designing a full product line, but hopefully you were able to get the logistics of it. A lot of designers don’t take advantage of product designing as a lucrative income or don’t know that they could develop products as easily as this.

If you are interested in developing products of your own contact a licensing agent who can give you more information in getting your presentations in front of actual buyers. Product development is very rewarding because you get a sense of satisfaction seeing the product you designed show up on the shelves of big name retailers and it’s also good for your wallet!

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How To Design a Sweet Linework & Typography Combo

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:53:00 +0000

In this tut, we’ll create a quick sketch similar to the style made famous by the ridiculously gifted guys at Mulheres Barbadas. We’ll scan our sketch in, ink it up in Flash, move it over to Illustrator for coloring, add some nice typography and finish in Photoshop for some subtle grunge. A graphics tablet of some description will make this tut (and probably your life in general) 90% more satisfying, but isn’t essential – if you’re nifty with a mouse you’ll have no troubles inking up your sketch tablet-less-ly. Let’s get started!

Step 1

The most involved part of this otherwise simple tutorial is the sketch. Everyone has a different style, so we won’t be telling you what to draw or how to draw it, that’s up to you! That said, there are some things to bear in mind that will help make your project great! To begin this tutorial, have a think about what purpose you want this artwork to serve. If it is for a client, what will your design promote/advertise/represent? What kind of people will be seeing it? Does it compliment the product or service it is associated with? In our case, this work was done for Sticks Clothing, a music/skating clothing label in Australia. So our drawing needed to appeal to young skaters.

Once you’re clear on the answers to these questions, it’s time to start brainstorming what’s going to fill your page. What elements are you going to include? We chose to use some pop culture elements (chucks, tv, spray can etc), unusual looking characters, recognizable objects (playing cards, toothbrush, trees, tentacles etc), and some patterns, which make for great white-space fillers! (bubbles, noodles, swirls etc).

Step 2

Equipped with a solid idea of what elements to use, all that’s left is layout! This just involves arranging your elements in an interesting/clever manner. This is where you can get really inventive with your use of patterns; use them carefully around your larger characters and objects to eliminate awkward white space (note: not all white space is awkward, but that’s for another tut!), and fill in shapes. This is our finished sketch below. As is apparent, it really doesn’t have to be perfect – as long as you are happy with the form and layout, linework and finer details can be added in the following steps.

Step 3

Now we need to get your sketch from paper to screen. As you would expect, the most efficient way to do this is simply to scan your art onto your computer. Scan your artwork at A4 (Letter) size and about 150dpi. Bring your scanned document into Photoshop. This is where we’ll prepare your linework for inking. At the moment, you’ll find that after the scan your white paper has become an ugly grey and your lines could be clearer and more distinct. This is easy fixed. First of all, save your image as a PSD file. Next, desaturate your image by pressing Command+Alt+U. We are eliminating the color from the image so we can just work with tones. Create a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Brightness/Contrast) with the Use Legacy option ticked, and increase both the brightness and the contrast until your image looks like the one below- the paper should disappear into white and your lines should be nice and clear. Play with the levels until you are satisfied.

Step 4

Once your linework is crisp and clear, we are ready to start inking! We chose to do this part of the process in Flash, as the brush engine is relaxed and fun to work with. That said, Illustrator or Photoshop can be used to achieve much the same results. It’s up to you! The principles remain the same regardless of which program you choose. Let’s keep moving- open up Flash, create a new Flash File (note it doesn’t matter which version of Actionscript you choose) and import your image (Command+R). In the dialogue that appears, ensure that the layer containing your artwork is ticked, and also tick the option at the bottom that says "Set stage size to same size as Photoshop canvas". Hit OK. Your sketch should appear on the stage. Name your layer "sketch", and ensure you save your Flash file before continuing.

Step 5

At the moment, our sketch is too bold to easily ink over, so we will convert our image to a Symbol and adjust it’s Alpha level. Do this by selecting your sketch with the Move Tool (V) and hitting F8 to convert it to a Symbol. Name it "sketch" and choose Graphic as the Type. Press OK.

Step 6

Again, ensure that your new symbol is selected (V) and bring up the Properties panel (Command+F3). Open up the Color Effect section and from the Style dropdown, select Alpha. Set this slider to about 20 – 30%. Now your sketch is completely ready for inking!

Step 7

Zoom in one or two levels using the Magnify Tool (Z), select the Brush Tool (B) and choose a nice thick brush size. We’ve used a zoom level of 200% and the brush size fourth from the top. Click on the button labeled "Use Pressure" (marked below) if you have your tablet handy. Now it’s a matter of drawing over your sketch to create lovely strong black linework. Use the tablet to create tapering lines as shown below; this gives your linework more body, and makes it far more visually interesting. Begin by outlining your main areas of detail.

Step 8

Use the Eraser Tool (E) to refine your lines. Give nice sharp points to the ends of your tapering lines, and clean any haggard areas, as shown below. The light blue represents erased areas.

Step 9

Once you’ve laid your basic, thicker lines, start filling in smaller areas. It’s a good idea in Flash to zoom in (400 – 600%) and use a slightly smaller brush size for finer details, but always remember to refer back to 100% to ensure your lines are not too thin.

Step 10

When you’ve finished all your linework, hide the sketch layer, sit back, and take a good look at the masterpiece you’ve created! The hard stuff is over, now we are going to prepare for coloring…

Step 11

Head up to File>Export>Export Image… choose your save location and select Adobe Illustrator (*.ai) as your file type. Save and close your Flash file. Start Illustrator and open up your newly saved *.ai file. You’ll see a mess of linework, as the original sketch has been brought over along with the linework. Simply delete your sketch and you should be left with nice, clean, vector linework. Save the file. Now we are going to add color. We have a choice between using Live Paint (K), or the Pen Tool (P). We opted for the Pen Tool to save fiddling around, because of the large areas of color we’ll be creating. We picked two bold colors and selected specific areas of our artwork that best suited those colors (we used Magenta: R=255, G=0, B=120 & Green: R=220, G=255, B=0). See the result below.

Step 12

Lets ease the stark contrast between the black lines and white background. Create a shape using the Pen Tool (P) around the entirety of the artwork. Give this a nice beige color (we used R=247, G=243, B=220). Next give your lines a fill color of (R=50, G=50, B=50). The result is much easier on the eyes.

Step 13

That’s the color all done! Now we will add some nice typography, using a great font called ChunkFive. This font can be found at a brilliant website called The League of Moveable Type. Think of something witty you want to say in 3 – 6 words. We used the phrase "Why We Do What We Do" for Sticks’ Why? page on their site. Type out your words and position them roughly how you want them to appear.

Step 14

Press Command+Shift+O to turn your text into outlines. This will make the words easier to resize and position. Adjust your phrase until it is uniform and balanced, as below.

Step 15

Next use the colors from your artwork to color your text. Be inventive with which colors you choose for which words. Experiment until you’re happy with how it looks! You can also position the letters closer to each other to eliminate the annoying gap between letters (See W+H & W+E).

Step 16

Your text is done! It’s time to move over to Photoshop for the finishing touches. First create a new document in Photoshop. You can create any size you like, but we made ours 1500×1070px and 150dpi. Head back to Illustrator, select and group (Command+G) your text, copy (Command+C) it and move back to Photoshop to paste (Command+V) it. Select Paste as Smart Object. Do the same for your linework. Position your two smart objects on the canvas. Feel free to use the below image as a guide.

Step 17

We are very near completion, be strong! Now we need to prepare a nice, subtle grungy background. We used a concrete texture from vertx.ca - another fantastic resource for such images is CG Textures. Take your chosen texture, bring it in to Photoshop, desaturate it, tweak the Brightness and Contrast until you have something akin to the image below…

Step 18

Save your background texture and import it into your artwork file (File>Place). Decrease its opacity to about 30%, or to taste. Set the Blending Mode of your text and artwork layers to Multiply. Add, using the Shape Tool (U), a period at the end of your phrase. Finally, create a new layer above your background and below the artwork and text. Set its Blending Mode to Overlay and, using a large soft brush (about 10% opacity), lightly paint some black around the edges to bring out the texture more. Here’s the final result!

Conclusion

This is a very versatile way of presenting your sketched creations. Below are some more examples from the Sticks Clothing site… visit the site for wallpapers of the artwork displayed here. Thanks so much for reading this tut, hope you enjoyed the process!

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Inspiration: Fashion-Centric Vector Illustrators

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:48:00 +0000

Most people turn to Photoshop if the project they’re working on needs high-level editing on details such as facial features, lighting and shadows. However, if you’re looking to create detailed, scalable illustrations, Adobe Illustrator offers a superb selection of vector-based tools, such as the Pen and Pathfinder. For this reason, many fashion artists and illustrators are turning to vector to create their work. This compilation showcases a selection of thirty incredible, intricate and high-quality vector images with a strong focus on fashion. They have been produced by various artists and illustrators from all around the world, most of which work in the fashion industry. Take a look, this set is sure to inspire.

Arthur Mount

Arthur Mount is an award-winning illustrator based in beautiful Portland, Oregon. He received a BFA in Drawing from CCA in 1995 and has been working as an illustrator ever since. His work has appeared in various publications from all around the world, including US, Canada, Japan, South Korea and a large portion of Europe. He received the D&AD Silver Pencil in 2005.

Nina Edwards

Nina Edwards is an illustrator and specializes in advertising, fashion artwork, editorial design and publishing. As well as using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for her digital artwork, she can be found working with watercolor paint.

Christophe Lardot

Christophe Lardot is a fashion illustrator who tends to make use of thin stroked lines and simple, bright color schemes. The quality in some of the linework is wonderful, especially in the flowy dress in the above example of work.

Kun-Sung Chung

Kun-Sung Chung studied illustration at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and graduated in 2001. He was inspired by many subjects during this period. Since then, the fashion industry caught his attention, and after studying Graphic Design in Korea for 4 years, has been able to combine his skills in digital media, photography and painting to create colorful fashion illustrations with a clean yet sexy look.

Irene Maria Jacobs

Irene Maria Jacobs is a very successful graphic designer and illustrator, and has a huge list of well-known companies in her client list, such as Vancouver 2010, Vodafone, Vibe Magazine, ESPN NY, Toyota, MTV, Hedkandi and Mens Health NY. The list is growing, and you can quite clearly see why from the elegant and detailed illustratation above.

Jens Rotzsche

Jens Rotzsche is an experienced illustrator and specializes in contemporary vector graphics and lifestyle/pop illustrations. Born in 1965, Jens skipped studying art at college or university and jumped right in at the deep end to take on an apprenticeship as a theatre painter in the Staatstheater of Kassel, Germany, in 1983. He was working independently by 1992, and began to explore graphic design, computer animation and commercial illustration in the following years.

Herman Yap

Herman Yap (aka Heage) started his career as a Graphic Designer in 1998. His keen interest in illustration did not stop at work, and many of his pieces have been featured in newspapers, magazines, and various other publications. A lot of his work elaborates on memories of people and places he has seen.

Lucy Truman

Lucy Truman is an illustrator who epitomizes chic stylish glamour and idealistic living, drawing inspiration from several sources such as modern architecture, retro interiors and 1950’s-60’s popular culture. Some of her clients include Marie Claire, You Magazine, Independent on Sunday and The Daily Mail. She is typically known to produce illustrations for pretty and feminine products with a fashionable twist.

Jacquie O’Neill

Jacquie O’Neill has a large and varied client base from both the UK and US and it’s easy to see why with her extensive experience in packaging illustration as well as editorial, publishing and advertising design. She is a freelance illustration and works from her own studio on the beautiful Cornish Coast.

Zed

Zed was that guy in school who was always drawing. At the age of 21, he used his illustration skills to create artwork for a local newspaper whilst he was living in London. Back in Brazil, his work appeared in award-winning comics; he also worked on movie animations, clothing, book illustrations and album artwork. His main focus, however, is editorial and advertising illustration. He has worked for various clients such as Playboy, Red Bull and MTV.

Amy De Wolfe

Amy De Wolfe has been a freelance illustration and graphic designer for over four years. She is inspired by the people and sights of the city, and uses that inspiration to capture the look and feel of all that is vibrant about life in the modern world. She has worked for a range of clients, including Woman, We Go Eco and Storieboards.

Mats Bergen

Mats Bergen seems like a very secretive individual and doesn’t share much about his life on his web portfolio. We do know, however, that he lives in Vienna, Berlin, and uses bold, vivid colors in his illustrations to bring them to life.

Morgan Jones

Morgon Jones (aka Phunky Venom) is a 22 year old Graphic Designer from Wolverhampton. He recently graduated from University with a First Class with Honours and is now venturing into the big bad world of design and illustration.

Svetlana Makarova

Svetlana Makarova has a very clean but elegant feel to her work, making use of subtle gradients and fine, detailed lines to make her illustrations incredibly detailed.

Becky Coyle

Becky Coyle is a designer who is currently working in the cut-throat world of web design. She also works as a freelancer on a whole range of projects from illustration (as seen above) to brochure design.

Juan Camilo

Juan Camilo is a very talented individual, and can be found taking part in various projects making use of a handful of great skills such as Graphic Design, Illustration and Three-Dimensional Artworking. He is a student at Universidad de Bellas Artes.

Helen Huang

Helen Huang started showing her passion for art before she could remember her life. She was born and raised in China before she moved to US to explore the other side of the world. By day the is a full time designer at an interactive advertisement agency in Los Angeles, and at night she wanders in her fantasy art world, trying to capture every inspiration she has to help share her vision with the world.

Merwe

Merwe is a superb illustrator and makes use of various vector elements in all of her work. She tends to stick to the fantasy side of the world, using flowly lines and strong colors.

Natalie Walsh

From her youngest days (age 10) selling knitted cat toys on consignment and earrings at the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco native Natalie Walsh has shown an inclination towards the artisanal and creative. After exploring textiles, stained glass, jewelry and photography, she graduated from the Textiles and Apparel Design program at Cornell University. She is now working as an Art Director having won awards for her fantastic illustrations which have appeared on everything from iPod covers to snowboard skins.

Yana Moskaluk

Yana Moskaluk is a Russian illustrator currently living in Moscow and has a very unique and interesting style to her work.

We want to know what your favorite illustration in this showcase is, and why – let us know in the comments section at the bottom of this showcase!

Quick Tip: The Graphic Styles Panel

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:17:00 +0000

The Graphic Styles Panel in Illustrator CS4 is more powerful than it’s ever been. Quickly add, create and save appearance attributes to make your work stylin’.

http://bit.ly/9DGZex

End of CS 1 ? It?s a Wrap

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 04:48:00 +0000

This session has seen a mix of character illustration articles that cover theory, techniques, and in depth case studies. You’ve learned how to come up with character concepts, develop a character’s backstory, sketch character ideas like a pro, the process of taking that sketch to a final solution, and more. While this session has posted mostly on Vectortuts+, future sessions will post on other Tuts+ sites and across our network. We’ll continue to expand with each session we release.

Tutorial Wrap

The Elements of Cute Character Design

You’ve always wanted to develop a character which has the potential to enchant the world and to compete with Hello Kitty? In this article I’d like to present some elements making a character cute and lovable and to support you in achieving your goals.

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Nailing the Basics

If you’re thinking of becoming a professional illustrator, character design will come up as a client request again and again, so keeping up on current trends is a must. To get started creating your own characters, you’ll need to nail the basics, which includes: getting comfortable sketching, refining your process, and streamlining your overall approach.

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Character Design Sketching Approaches

Character design comes in many styles, but they all start with the rough sketch. Often overlooked in online tutorials, technique and process videos, they are the foundation to creating quality characters. The following is an overview of rough sketches from some fantastic character design artists, with many different styles and approaches.

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Creating Personal Character Designs with Precision

Designing a character can apply to both personal and professional projects. The character can be a mascot that works in the context of a multi-national brand, or it can simply be inspired by a well-known character within pop culture. The later is usually referred to as “Fan Art.” The character “Mickey Rat” first appeared in the early 1970’s as a subversive underground comic that I enjoyed as a kid.

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Six Things I Think About When I’m Mutating a Rabbit

Hi, I’m Chris and I’m addicted to creating bizarre characters. I’ve got a real soft spot for strange and surreal beasts, hybridized creatures, and mutated animals. Some people might call what I do “random,” but there’s actually a good deal of thought and sometimes even planning that goes into designing the characters that end up in my artwork. Let’s take a peek inside my twisted character design methodology.

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Holistic Character Design

Cartoon characters are everywhere, from advertising to film, and the ones that stand the test of time all share something in common. They have substance over style. It’s all well and good designing innovative, cool looking characters, but if they’re only skin-deep, that’s where they’ll come unstuck. Great characters like ‘SpongeBob Square Pants’ have much more than just a unique look, they have several key elements that are instilled in the very core of their design. Over the course of this article, I’ll show you what they are and how to use them to create your own lovable characters.

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Character Design Sketching Approaches

In this tutorial we’ll go through the steps of designing and making an animated paper robot character. Not just a picture, this is a moving character that will sit nicely on top of your computer monitor. Push the robot body up and down and he stretches out his robot claws! We’ll start with the lines ready and learn the craft of coloring and then physically putting this paper character together.

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Navigating the Sea of Character Design Merchandising

Everywhere you look there’s opportunity for character merchandising, from the custom toy on your book shelf to the cartoon branded yogurt in your fridge. Fueled partly by the popularity of artist edition toys, sneakers and apparel, and partly by advancement in manufacturing and printing technology, character merchandising is a great avenue for designers and illustrators to develop their creations and bring them to a wider audience. The following article will teach you the basics of what you need in a character before it’s suitable for merchandising and what services are available for the DIY merchandiser.

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Creating a Collection of Quirky Caricatures

Last November we decided to round off the Tuts+ year with a bang; a huge giveaway (96 prizes, no less) to reward all the loyal Tuts+ readers. We felt it was a good opportunity to get visitors browsing the content on each and every one of the Tuts+ sites and it was high time the readers got to know who they were dealing with. We would release a series of caricatures; one of Skellie, one of Collis, one of each editor, plus some of the support and development team members. The job of producing these caricatures fell to me, and suddenly I was given the opportunity to create ridiculous drawings of all my Envato colleagues and make enemies of each one of them.

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Creating a Collection of Quirky Caricatures

Thought some of you might like to see my process for designing a character. This one is filled with cocoa love and chocolaty goodness. I’ll take the concept from sketch through to vector final. You’ll learn the process of making a fun loving character based on a clear concept. Also, a quick warning – you may be overcome by the urge to consume copious amounts of chocolate by reading this, but fortunately it’s all part of the creative process.

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Creating a Collection of Quirky Caricatures

It’s important to not get overwhelmed with all the information out there on character illustration and design. In addition to finding a selection of high quality sites you want to participate in, I recommend buying one or two books at a time and working all the way through them. While you’re doing that, there are loads of videos and resources online to learn from as well. Let’s take a look at some of these sites and resources that have helped me build my skills, and can benefit you as well.

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Your Thoughts on CS1 – Character Illustration

Creative Sessions is a brand new project and we’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions. We’d also like to hear what topics you’d like us to cover in the future for two intensive weeks?

Please do leave any suggestions or comments you have below.

Coming Soon, Creative Sessions 2 – Illustrative Lettering

Our next session will be on Illustrative Lettering. In this next session you’ll learn all about using hand crafted lettering and fonts to make illustrations. Some of the most innovative work today turns lettering into stunning illustrations. Whether it’s to make sections of the New York Times stand out or for the next multi-media branding campaign, type-illustration amalgamations offer numerous possibilities. Read up on this a bit over on Eye, “Make each letter speak out loud.” We’ll have a great lineup of artists to learn from via case studies, articles, and more. This next session will release around the middle of May.

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How to Create a Cubist Masterpiece in Illustrator

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:17:00 +0000

Cubism is one of the most outstanding movements in abstract art. Geometric shapes, vivid colors, simple figures, and textures are all distinctive features of this style. Let’s try to recreate the cubist painting in Illustrator inspired by works of Pablo Picasso – after learning some simple techniques you’ll be able to easily paint your own cubist composition.

Introduction

Abstract art is my love. I adore all kinds of abstraction, and I hope most of you do too. It’s for this reason, I thought the avant-garde movement would be great for a series of tutorials on historic fine art periods. My first idea was cubism, the most distinctive movement of abstract art. Being simple and pure, but at the same time deep and clever, cubist paintings never leave the audience indifferent. I love cubism – it is fresh, vivid, and crazy, but most importantly, it’s rather easy to make.

Cubism, the avant-garde art movement, was born in the beginning of 20th century, and it quickly became a revolution in fine art. Pioneers of cubism, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, offered to use simple geometric shapes to depict any object. Analytic cubism showed any object as a combination of monochrome primitive figures blended into background. On the contrast, synthetic cubism was much more colorful, and it started a technique of collage. Today we’ll try to recreate the synthetic cubist style of Pablo Picasso in vector form using only Adobe Illustrator. We’ll use simple shapes, the pencil tool (to add a touch of hand work), the scissor tool (to break the objects apart), brushes (to imitate painting), and creative textures to complete the work.

Step 1: Getting started

Create a new document in Adobe Illustrator. Make it 1200 x 800 pixels, the color mode depends on where you want to use your image – use RGB for monitor and CMYK for print. Let’s make a background first – create a rectangle covering the entire canvas, fill it with light-blue color. Rename this layer to BG and lock it. Now navigate to WIndow > Swatch libraries in order to choose colors for your work. Open a library you like – for example, Earthtone or Vegetables will be good. The process outlined in this tutorial will be creative rather than technical, so I won’t give exact color codes – just choose the hues you feel are good from the color libraries.

Step 2: Creating rectangles

Create a new layer and name it "CHAOS". Here we will create a series of figures in random order. Grab the Rectangle Tool (M) and draw rectangles of different sizes. Create the rectangles over each other varying their size and shape, covering entire document (the background can show through the gaps). I made around 50 shapes. Now we’ll change the fill color of the figures – pick colors from the swatch library you selected and re-color the rectangles. Finally, change the stroke to a neutral color with 2 pt width.

Step 3: Adding randomness

To add a randomness, select all the rectangles and go to Object > Transform > Transform Each. Check the Preview and Random boxes, change the settings to your liking. There is no exact numbers – I’ve changed both horizontal and vertical scale to 120%, and entered 30 for the angle. Play with sliders until you like the result and the rectangles look random enough, apply the transformation. Open the Artistic brush library and apply the Charcoal-Feather brush to the rectangles (Window > Brush Libraries > Artistic > Chalk, Charcoal, Pencil), or try any other natural-looking brush.

Step 4: Duplicating a group

Group all of the rectangles on this layer (Command + G), now choose the Rotate Tool (R) and press Enter. Here insert 180 for angle and click Copy to create a rotated duplicate. Select the copied group, in the Transparency panel (Shift + Command + F10) change it’s blending mode to Multiply. The result depends on your colors, so you may want to try other blending modes to achieve the desired effect. You’ll have two groups of rectangles on this layer for now.

Step 5: Finalizing shapes

To finalize this colorful craziness, let’s add more chaos, select the entire layer in the layers panel (or Command + A). With "CHAOS" layer selected, go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Roughen. Enter 3 for size and 3 for detail, so that the effect is subtle. For points choose Corner and apply the effect. You can easily edit the settings of Roughen in the Appearance panel (Shift + F6), lock this layer now.

Step 6: Starting main composition

Now it’s time for main elements of our composition. In cubist paintings, the objects look as they were broken apart and then re-assembled again, in a new fresh way. This can make you think that to imitate cubism, we can simply combine random shapes and sketches – but just like any other abstract art, cubist paintings have their rules. Simple chaotic colorful shapes will rather give you a Suprematism style, where flat geometric primitives build the entire composition. In cubism, on the other hand, we should picture real objects (portrait, still-life, or landscape) applying simple shapes to create new visual space. So we’ll make this picture using the rules of Synthetic cubism.

OK, enough theory – let’s make a table now. Create a new layer and name it "TABLE". Take a Pen Tool (P) and create a main elements of table – keep the default colors for now. Don’t try too hard to make shapes perfect – a touch of hand work is great, perfect proportions don’t matter. Make 6 shapes – 4 for the legs and 2 for the table base, just like in the image below.

Step 7: Breaking the table

I mentioned already that cubism presents objects in a new shape breaking it into parts and then re-assembling them. We’ll do the same with table now. Take the Scissors Tool (C) and cut the basic table elements (not legs) in two parts each by clicking every object twice – on both sides where you want the cuts (indicated by red circles). The result of this operation will be four open paths instead of two closed objects. Now select every new open path and press Command + J to join them – the table consists of 8 shapes now. I turned off the visibility of the underlying layer for now.

Step 8: Re-assembling the table

Open Pathfinder panel (Shift + Command + F9) and unite every table leg with a part of the table top. To do it, select both shapes you want to unite and press the Unite button on the Pathfinder panel to make a compound shape. Don’t press Expand for now, as we may want to transform the elements later. Users of Illustrator CS4 should Alt-click the Unite button to create compound shapes. The result is 4 united shapes.

Now transform every part of the table a bit with Selection Tool (V) – rotate, scale, or move them a bit so that the objects look crazy. You’ll want to transform the elements of the compound paths we just created – to do this, select the separate shape with Group Selection Tool, and once it’s selected you can select the Black Arrow (V) and move, scale, or rotate it easily. If you are happy with result, you can expand the compound paths – but I suggest that you don’t hurry and wait until the entire composition is built.

Step 9: Painting colors

Let’s apply colors to the table – change the fill of the 4 parts of table to some contrasting colors from the swatch library you chose at the beginning. I applied brown, beige, and blue. Now change the stroke color of all the shapes to dark brown (for the blue shape I applied a dark blue). Then, select them all and open brushes panel (F5). Find a Charcoal-Feather brush from Artistic brush library we used before and apply it. Finally, select the brown table part and in the Appearance panel (Shift + F6) add a new fill to it. Change it to some geometric pattern – I chose "Checkers Color" pattern from Decorative Geometric-2 pattern library (Window > Swatch library > Pattern). Now in the Transparency panel change it’s blending mode to Overlay.

Step 10: Adding detail

For another part of the table, I wanted to use a line pattern. However, all the line patterns are perfectly straight, so, to achieve a random line effect I decided to create it myself. With the Line Segment Tool (backslash) draw a line above the table. Now you must make about 20-30 copies of it. You can do it manually by duplicating a line and pressing Command + D many times to move again. Still, I like to apply the Transform effect to the line: Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform with parameters shown below (Vertical move: -15 px; number of copies: 30). Make sure the lines cover the needed part of table. Then expand the effect (Object > Expand Appearance), now ungroup the lines two times by pressing Shift + Command + G twice, and re-group (Command + G).

Step 11: Distorting lines

To make the lines wavy, select the group of lines, choose Warp Tool (Shift + R) and slightly distort them so that they look more hand-drawn and random. You can use other tools from this group if you want. Now, select the table part you want to apply the line to. Copy and paste it in front (Command + C and Command + F), then bring it to front of all the other objects (Shift + Command + Right Bracket Key). Finally, with the duplicate on top still selected, Shift + Click the lines group to add them to a selection, and make a clipping mask (Command + 7). The lines should be masked with table shape copy now. Lock this layer.

Step 12: Creating a guitar

Create a new layer and name it "GUITAR". We’ll make another object here, surprise, it will be a guitar! Let’s apply the same break-combine technique. This time it will be more simple. Take a Pencil Tool (N) and draw a guitar body on the right of the table. Again, we don’t need a perfect figure – just draw it approximately, and then Alt + Click to close the path. Leave the colors default for now. With the Scissors Tool (C) cut the shape in three parts, and close every part by joining it (Command + J).

Step 13: Applying colors

Now, just like we did for the table, transform each part of the guitar slightly, moving, scaling, and rotating it. Now, re-color every part to different shades of brown, and choose dark brown for the stroke, apply the same brush (Charcoal > Feather) to them. Finally, choose one part of the three and apply an additional fill to it, like we did for a part of the table. Use the Appearance panel and choose a geometric pattern (I used Plaid-3), you may also want to change the blending mode – I selected Soft Light.

Step 14: Adding details

Let’s add the details by drawing a guitar neck, hole, and strings. To create an impression of hand work, we won’t use Illustrator primitives like the circle or rectangle. Take the Pencil Tool (N) and draw a neck (long shape) and a hole (circular shape) manually. To close the path, don’t forget to Alt + Click. Fill them with a medium brown color, apply a dark-brown stroke, and apply the Charcoal-Feather brush to both shapes. Now for the strings, draw 5 wavy lines that start at the top of neck and go wherever you want. Group them together (Command + G), make sure no fill is applied, change the stroke color to 0,5 pt light yellow, apply a Charcoal-Rough brush from Artistic – Charcoal-Pencil brush library. When you are finished, lock this layer.

Step 15: Creating a woman

For those of you who think that the image looks too flat – don’t be afraid, we’ll texture the image creatively later. At this point we need to make the major object for our painting – the woman. The prototype of our lady is a woman in the style of Pablo Picasso’s famous works. Go ahead and look at his most outstanding paintings to get familiar with this style: Women of Pablo Picasso.

Let’s start with the figure. Create a new layer and name it "WOMAN". Open the Chalk-Charcoal-Pencil brush from the library – Window > Brush library > Artistic menu, so that this panel is always visible. Now take the Pencil Tool again (N) and draw the shape of a face side view, over the table shape. Alt + Click to close the path. Choose beige for fill color and gray-brown for the stroke and apply the Charcoal-Feather brush to the stroke. Draw a larger shape using Pencil Tool for the hair. Send it backwards (Command + Left Braket), fill it with brown and stroke it with a darker brown. Choose another brush for the hair from same Artistic library – Chalk-Scribble.

Step 16: Adding eyes

Let’s add a face, eyes and lips. First draw an eye shape with the Pencil, fill it with a very light gray and use a 1 pt black stroke with the Charcoal brush applied to it. Now draw a circle shape for the iris with the Pencil, change the fill to blue and stroke to black 5 pt, apply a Chalk-Scribble brush from the brush library.

Group both eye shapes (Command + G), and position it on the face shape. With Reflect Tool (O) Alt + Click near the nose, select Vertical axis and press Copy to duplicate the mirrored eye. Move and transform the eye a bit so that the eyes look like the image below.

Step 17: Creating cheeks and lips

Make a circle, this time with Ellipse Tool (L), fill it with a subtle pink color and position it under the eye to resemble a cheek. Add another shape – a triangle drawn with the Pen Tool (P) and place it under the circle, fill with light green color.

Let’s create lips now. With our favorite Pencil Tool (N) create two wavy lines for the lips – use no fill and a dark-red 1 pt stroke. The upper lip should be more curvy and long, while lower lip is shorter. Group both lines and apply the Charcoal-Smooth brush.

Step 18: Making a hat

To create a hat, use the Pen Tool (P) – just click to add points, trying to roughly imitate the shape of a hat. Fill it with medium-brown color, and for the stroke choose dark-brown 1 pt. Apply our usual Charcoal-Feather brush to it.

Just like every girl, this one loves flowers – so we’ll add a flower to her hat. To make a cubist rose, draw an irregular cornered shape with Pen Tool (P). Then add several more smaller triangular shapes on top of it, transform them to resemble a flower. Change the fill colors to various shades of blue, and apply gray 1 pt stroke with the Charcoal brush used on it. Group all the rose figures together.

Step 19: Adding details

Let’s add some small details – for example, my lady needs a more defined nose and eyebrows. For the nose, draw a short stroke with the Pencil Tool (P) to continue the lower line of the nose and apply the same stroke color (gray-brown) and brush (Charcoal) we used for the face. For the brows, just draw two black strokes with the Pencil and apply the Chalk-Scribble brush and position them over the eyes.

The last detail we need here is a touch of geometry. You may skip this step, but I wanted to do it. Create a simple triangle with the Pen over the woman’s head, choose any colors (I used orange shades) and apply the Charcoal-Soft brush. In the Transparency panel change the blending mode of the triangle – I chose Color Burn and reduced opacity to 50%. At this point I also selected all shapes on this layer and grouped them.

Step 20: Drawing an arm

We’ll create an arm now – it’s not a difficult task. Grab the Pencil Tool (N) and draw an irregular closed path for the arm. I’ve chosen a warm brown color for the fill and a darker shade for the stroke. As usual, apply the Charcoal-Feather brush to it. To create a hand, use the Pencil – don’t try to make it perfect, number of fingers is the only demand here. Fill it with a beige color, and apply the same stroke we used for the arm, apply the Charcoal-Feather brush.

We only need nails to complete the woman. Use simple triangle shape made with the Pencil or Polygon, then apply Filter > Stylize > Round corners with a radius of about 10 px to smooth the corners. Choose a red or orange color fill, and make 4 more copies to place it on every finger. Now group all the shapes we just made – an arm, a hand, and 5 nails. The lady is ready, you can lock this layer. At this point I moved the "WOMAN" layer under the " GUITAR" layer, so that the guitar strings go on top of the figure.

Step 21: Additional shapes

I thought that the background looked too patchy, so I decided to add one more layer over the "CHAOS" layer. I named it "TRIANGLES" and created three simple triangular shapes near the corners of our document. If you do the same, then apply different fill colors to them and a neutral stroke with a brush from Chalk-Charcoal-Pencil library. Now select the entire layer and go to Effect > Distort & Transform > ZigZag, enter parameters you like and apply. Also, in the Transparency panel change the blending mode (I chose Screen) and reduce opacity. Lock the layer.

Step 22: Coloring

The major composition is ready now. Take a look at the colors on the picture – if you feel they are okay, just move to the next step. However, I wanted the temperature of my painting to be colder. This is very easy to fix – create a new layer on top of others and name it "COLOR". Now create a rectangle that covers the entire picture, and fill it with the desired color. I chose a deep greenish blue (#015353). Open the Transparency panel (Shift + Command + F10) and, with the rectangle selected, choose a blending mode that looks best – try Soft light, Color, Overlay, or any other. You’ll need to reduce the opacity of this shape to make the effect more subtle. Lock the "COLOR" layer now.

Notice how we changed the emotion of the image by adding a touch of a cool hue to it. This is a very easy method of changing the color temperature of your image or adding a color to the entire picture or only a part of it. You can use a gradient as well, or gradient mesh, and try various blending modes to darken or lighten the composition, or add a contrast to it.

Step 23: Texturing

At this point the composition looks too flat – it’s normal for a painting in synthetic cubism style. However, it lacks important details and focus, as many vivid colors are mixed together, and major objects blend in the background. It is not a problem, as synthetic cubism was a parent movement of collage, so we’ll make an accent of it. We will apply different textures to the background and main objects separately. This way we’ll emphasize the difference of these two surfaces, and make the painting look more realistic. Of course, it would be great to texture every object separately to imitate a hand rendered work, but it would take too much time and effort, and the final document will be enormous in size. So we’ll make only three textured surfaces – one for the background, one for the objects, and one for the overall texture of the entire image.

Let’s start with background texture first – create a new layer over the "TRIANGLES" layer but under other layers that contain main objects. Name it "TEXTURE-1". Draw a rectangle with the Rectangle Tool (M) 1200 x 800 px to cover the whole document and fill it with white-to-black gradient. Go to Effect > Artistic > Sponge (brush size – 2, definition – 12, smoothness – 5), apply another effect: Effect > Artistic > Rough Pastels (stroke length – 8, detail – 10, texture – canvas, scaling – 100, relief – 15) to roughly imitate brush strokes. Change the shapes’ blending to Soft Light, Lock the layer.

Step 24: Second texture

Illustrator raster effects can generate various types of random textures, try them and select the best one. The main idea is to create a different type of surface, so that the background and main objects contrast. To do it, we’ll mask the second texture on a new layer.

Create a new layer on top of all others and name it "TEXTURE-2" . Create a rectangle across the canvas with white-to-black gradient applied. Now apply Sponge effect again (brush size – 2, definition – 12, smoothness – 5), and for the second effect use Effect > Artistic > Paint Daubs (brush size – 9, sharpness – 15, brush type – simple). This effect looks like old cracked paint on the picture.

Step 25: Masking the layer

We can mask the texture object now and create other textures on this same layer. I want to mask the entire layer rather than a separate object so we can add any other objects we like to this layer, and all of them will be masked. I decided to create a layer transparency mask rather than a clipping mask, because the number of objects we need to add to mask is enormous, which is very uncomfortable for a clipping mask.

Unlock the layers "TABLE", "WOMAN", and "GUITAR" . Now select the entire table layer, then holding Shift select the whole woman layer, go to the guitar layer and holding Shift select the guitar shapes except for the strings. You’ll have all the main objects selected now. Copy everything (Command + C) and re-lock the layers.

Select the "TEXTURE-2" layer clicking the circle on the right of it’s name, and go to the Transparency pane, click on the right of the layer icon to activate the mask, and paste objects in front (Command + F). Make sure Clip box is checked, change the fill and stroke colors of mask objects to white. Unite all objects of the mask in the Pathfinder panel, go back to normal mode clicking the object icon in the Transparency panel, and change the blending mode of this layer to Overlay. Now the texture is visible only on the major objects of composition, you can add any other texture object to this layer, they all will be masked. Lock the layer.

Step 26: Third texture

Create the last layer on top of others and name it "TEXTURE-3" , we’ll create a texture to cover the entire document here. Draw a rectangle that is a bit wider than the artboard, fill it with medium gray color. Copy it and paste in front (Command + C and Command + F) and hide the copy for now (Command + 3). With the original rectangle selected, go to Effects > Artistic > Film Grain (grain – 4, highlight – 0, intensity – 10). Apply Spatter effect from Brush Strokes library to make the texture more random (spray radius – 14, smoothness – 7), go to Effects > Brush Strokes and apply Angled Strokes effect (direction balance – 50, stroke length – 15, sharpness – 3).

Step 27: Last texture

Un-hide the gray rectangle we copied before, select it and go to Object > Create gradient mesh, enter 4 for columns and 4 for rows (or you can insert different values if you want). Select mesh points separately with Direct Selection (A) and change their color, I used yellow, orange, brown, and blue, you can also move the handles of anchor points to control the color transition. Once you are ready, go to Effects > Texture > Grain (intensity – 40, contrast – 50, grain type – clumped), and apply a Dry brush effect from Artistic effects library (brush size – 1, brush detail – 8, texture – 2).

Step 28: Finalizing

Change the blending mode of the entire "TEXTURE-3" layer to Overlay – select the layer and go to Transparency panel, you can also reduce the opacity or choose another blending mode you like. You may also want to choose different modes for objects on this layer, in this case simply edit them separately.

If you think that 4 texture layers are too much – you can remove them or make them transparent. However, I think the textures we just made added a touch of hand work to our image, you can combine techniques of texturing to your liking, as Illustrator raster effects generate plenty of great random textures. You may want to save the ones we made for future artworks, to do this, save the texture objects in Graphic Styles panel and name them accordingly. The result is below.

Conclusion

That’s all, and the painting is ready now! We just created an vector artwork in the cubist style. Pablo Picasso and his numerous colorful works in synthetic cubism gave us an inspiration for this image. I think the only thing we missed is a title – let’s name this painting "Woman with guitar". Not very creative, I know, but Picasso liked to use such simple names for his artworks. Play with the settings and try various blending combinations – even our "Woman with guitar" can look different when changing the blending modes of texture and color layers, just look at the image below.

The techniques we applied while creating this masterpiece can be used to make any image in a cubist style. Use simple shapes and brushes, pencil and pen, scissors and pathfinder, effects and textures, vivid colors and blending modes to create your own Picasso painting. Print it, frame it, name it, and enjoy – although not all your family members will understand this crazy geometry, you could always say that it’s a lost work of the outstanding cubist artist Pablo Picasso.

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Tutorial Roundup for Getting Started with InDesign

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:47:00 +0000

InDesign is my application of choice for any large scale print jobs. Any project that is made up of multiple pages is a breeze with InDesign’s advanced desktop publishing powers. This roundup of tutorials is especially for those of you looking to get started with InDesign. Follow these guides to learn all about specific tools, or go through complete design projects step by step.

Interview with Jesse Hora Dot Com

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 12:17:00 +0000

Jesse Hora Dot Com is an illustrator and art director living in Chicago, IL. He has a true love for typography and lettering, a playful comedic voice, and a stark, stripped down vector style, which has caught the eye of Kanye West, and helped numerous high end clients. Jesse puts just as much passion, and careful crafting, into his commercial work as he does his constant creative explorations. Fans of Vectortuts+ will know Jesse’s artwork on first glance. He’s written quite a few tutorials for us. Get to know him better in this interview.

Q Hello Jesse, please tell us a bit about yourself, where you’re from and how you got started in the creative industry? How long have you been illustrating and designing? What training did you get and is this a path you would recommend to others?

Hello. My name is Jesse Hora, most folks know me as Jesse Hora Dot Com. I am an art director, specializing in design, illustration and lettering. Born and raised in the Midwest, I am currently located in the beautiful Ukrainian Village neighborhood of Chicago, IL. I started doing freelance design and illustration about five years ago and now am running a one-man studio. Over the years, I have had the pleasure of working for some incredible clients, including Adidas Originals, Mt. Dew, Miller Brewing Co., Sims Snowboards, WarnerBros+Reprise Records, The Onion and Chicago Magazine, just to name a few.

I actually started my career path during college, at Grand Valley State University, from which I received my BFA with an emphasis in Graphic Design. The college experience allowed me the opportunity to experiment, explore, and experience things that I otherwise would not have been able to. I would recommend college, though if you asked me shortly after graduation I would’ve given you a far different answer. Over time, and with experience, I have realized just how much I learned in school, though most of it not in the classroom. Honestly, having life experience and being an interesting person is all the training you need.

Q What’s a typical workday like for you? How much of your work is client directed versus self-initiated? How does your personal work influence your client work and vice versa?

A normal day starts with an espresso and taking my English bulldog, Hogan aka The Hoag Monster, for a very short walk so he can do his deed. Then kissing my girlfriend goodbye as she runs out the door on her way to work, after which I go on a run myself. By ten I’m showered, up, and shuffling through a metric ton of email. Depending on what needs to be done that day, I chat on the phone, scribble down concepts and ideas in my sketchbook, meet with clients, eat lunch, draw and bury my head in AI, PS and ID. By seven I’ll either meet my girlfriend and friends out for a drink or help cook a nice vegetarian meal at home.

Self-initiated projects have always been my backbone. Making and making and making for making’s sake has not only kept my art parts satisfied, but also has played a major role in bringing commercial work my way. As of right now, I am a one man studio; so handling all of the client/account duties has started to cut back on time for my personal work. My head will always be flooded with ideas, which is a gift or a curse depending, so the biggest obstacle is finding the time to do them. My answer is to bridge the gap between the two: client and personal. Instead of keeping a list of ideas to myself and letting them sit around, collecting dust, waiting for me to have free-time to execute them, I keep them close and find ways to integrate them into my client work. This way I’m satisfying my clients and myself. There’s no reason to keep all the good ideas to myself.

Q What role does sketching and craft play in your work? How does attitude and random happenstance come out in your work? How would you define your approach to illustration and design?

Sketching is super important in my daily workflow. It helps me to get my ideas down quickly so that they aren’t lost when I have to leave the project and come back to it later. Being able to render a fairly thorough sketch by hand is a good asset to have as well; it helps convey ideas to clients quickly.

Craft is so important and too often is overlooked. I was fortunate enough (depending on how you look at it), to go through a foundations boot-camp in college that drilled the importance of craft into my head. It has become second nature. Taking the time to do something right from the start, and seeing it through completion, is the basis of craft and is fundamental in my work process.

My attitude, personality and general out look on life are definitely a main characteristic in my work. Often a funny little idea will pop into my head, and others might think it stupid or just plain silly, but that’s fine with me, because it made me smile. Laughter and general having of a good time is something that a lot of people don’t have in their daily lives. Which is a tragedy in my eyes. So with my work, I look to evoke a smirk, smile or even full-blown laughing out loud!

Q What influences your work from the past? Are there any particular eras, movements, ephemera, cultures, or artists that really stand out and have made an impact on you?

There are so many ways to approach this question; I elect to give you a laundry list of things that I have drawn inspiration from, weather that is aesthetically or otherwise: 1920’s fashion, 1950’s fashion illustration, hippie culture, Alphonse Mucha, Americana, funny haircuts, late 80’s & early 90’s NBA, ’sk8′ culture, pin-up girls, vintage tattoo lettering, gang graffiti, hip-hop music, trading cards, high-top sneakers, mid-western ephemera, the internet…

Q We see your love for all kinds of letters in much of your work. What do you find fascinating about typography, illustrative lettering, and combining type with image?

I love letters. Typography to me is just so beautiful, in ways that images without type cannot be. Since letters, in most cases, are intended to be read, there are aspects of interaction with the viewer. One of my favorite things to do, for example at a gallery opening, is to watch people look at my typographic work for the first time. I get to see their ah ha or I get it moment happen – beautiful.

Q How did your character illustration approach develop? Could you tell us a bit about your Athlete Objects project?

Cartoons have always been a big part of my life because my grandpa and I used to read the funnies together when I was a kid. So I grew up loving all kinds of cartoon characters. Roger Rabbit and The Simpsons are some namely influences, not so much for their visual aesthetic, but for the comedic voice.

These influences helped me to develop a sarcastic, satirical, tongue-n-cheek, ironic, playful sense of humor and approach to characters. With the Athlete Objects project this sense of humor is applied to another childhood love, late 80’s and early 90’s NBA basketball. So Larry Bird becomes a middle finger (The Bird), Clyde ‘The Glide’ Drexler become a paper airplane and Bill Laimbeer becomes Bill ‘Lamb Beer’. Hilarity ensues.

Q What are the highlights of your career so far? What clients or individuals have been key in influencing your creative and career growth? What illustration job would you love to get (your dream job)?

There are two highlights that come to mind. First, being internet friends with Josh Spear. If you don’t know who he is, you should. He probably doesn’t know this, but he really inspired me to be awesome when I was still in college. Having his support, via the short lived Spear Collective and his site, helped me to gain some recognition and land dream jobs like the Adidas Originals in-store campaign, even though I was fairly new to the industry.

Secondly, which completely came out of left field and still is crazy to me to this day, was being posted about on Kanye West’s blog. He may not have posted it personally, but it’s on his blog so he has seen my work and didn’t hate it. Which is good enough for me. I might sound fanboy-ish about Kanye, I know people either love or hate him, but I am a big fan. Needless to say a dream job would be to work with Mr. West or anybody in the G.O.O.D music family.

Q To what extent does illustrating and designing feel like play, and when does it feel like work? What do you do to keep things fun?

I love my job. I get to come up with ideas and make pretty pictures for people; and they pay me for it! It’s all of the other stuff that becomes work, the client management, meetings, pitches, presentations, accounting, etc… At the end of the day I’m running a business, and as long as I don’t let the business come before the art, then it should be smooth sailing.

Q Could you tell us about your involvement with the Illustration Corporation? How has being a part of this illustration collective helped you land projects, collaborate, or what other benefits has it brought?

A few folks that work together at an awesome advertising agency here in Chicago started the Ill. Corp.. It was noticed that collectively they had some illustration skills, and formed the Ill. Corp. I was fortunate enough to be one of the few people that were invited to join the group. It’s been really nice to have an illustration rep. because when any business related issues/questions come about, the lovely Susan is a pro. We are a fairly newly formed group so it will take some time to become established, but thus far we have been part of The Directory of Illustration as well as a small gallery show. Being connected to such a talented group of people has provided a great deal of motivation.

Q What excites you about vector art, design, and illustration? What are you working on now? What are your plans for the future?

One of my favorite aspects of creating vector art is the flexibility. I can go from working on a small web icon, to a screen-printed poster, to someone’s shirt, to a billboard the size of a building, flawlessly. It’s truly awesome. And I don’t mean ‘like, dude its awesome man’. I mean, awe inspiring.

After a slow second half of last year I have come back like gangbusters. I am busier now than I ever have been. At the moment on my ‘to-do’ list of client project are apparel graphics, advertising collateral, identity & branding, album artwork, web design and of course tuts! A main factor for my insane workload is that I am in the midst of some big upgrades to the company structure. I can’t really blow the lid of it at the moment, but lets just stay big things in 2010!

Q Thanks for the interview Jesse! It’s awesome to work with you here on Vectortuts+. Is there any advice that you’d like to give aspiring illustrators and designers who are working hard to grow professionally?

Thank you!!! The single best bit of advice I could offer for an aspiring illustrator, designer is to do, do, do. Make shit all day. You need to find your own way in the creative industry, there is no set blueprint (that I have discovered, yet), and so the only option is to plow full speed ahead. Be better, faster, more awesome, more often! Be brilliant!

Jesse Hora Dot Com on Web

Portfolio

Twitter

http://bit.ly/aQ7chI

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 03:48:00 +0000

Weekly Vector Inspiration 67:
This post is part of a weekly series showcasing inspirational vector art. Altho.. http://bit.ly/cPO4HR

Icon Pack

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:20:00 +0000

Author Website: sizer92.deviantart.com
File type: *.eps | *.ai (with jpg preview)
File Size: 589 KB

Halloween RSS Icon Pack

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:55:00 +0000

Author Website: dapino-colada.nl
File type: *.eps | *.ai
File Size: 759 KB

Dodge Viper

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:33:00 +0000

Wallpaper by : ab6421.deviantart.com
Click here to view/download

Vector Graph and Chart Icons

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:44:00 +0000

Author Website: www.designlots.com
File type: *.eps | *.ai
File Size: 548 KB

Cool Abstract Vector Pack

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:46:00 +0000

Author website : vectoroom.com
File type : *.eps
File size : 1 MB

Illustrator CS4 For Dummies

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:54:00 +0000

File info:

Author(s): Ted Alspach
Publisher: For Dummies
Date : 2008
Pages : 384
Format : PDF
OCR : Y
Quality :
Language : English
ISBN-10 : 0470396563

How to Do Everything Adobe Illustrator CS4

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:28:00 +0000

File Info :

Sue Jenkins | March 2009 | ISBN: 0071603107 | PDF | 337 pages | English | 5 MB

Cute Penguin

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:03:00 +0000

Vector by : www.vector.tutsplus.com
Click here to download

Magic Hands

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:13:00 +0000

Wallpaper by : vectorwallpapers.net
Click here to view/download

Music Wallpaper

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:03:00 +0000

Wallpaper by : vectorwallpapers.net
Click here to view/download

Corner swirls vector pack

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:03:00 +0000

File name : Corner swirls vector pack
File type : *.eps
File size : 2718Kb
Download

Airplane Vector Pack

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:49:00 +0000

Owner	:	muzika08-works.blogspot.com
File Type	:	.ai
File Size	:	1082 Kb

Download here

Rare RSS Icons

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:52:00 +0000

File name	:	Rare RSS Icon
File Type	:	.zip
File Size	:	2.5 Mb

Download

Green Eco Set

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:26:00 +0000

File name	:	Green Eco Set
File Type	:	.rar (.AI Inside)
File Size	:	8.407 Kb

Download

kd678txmjn

Glossy Icon Set for Web Applications

noreply@blogger.com (Harits Baladi) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:55:00 +0000

File name	:	Glossy Icon Set for Web Applications
File Type	:	.rar (.eps Inside)
File Size	:	404 Kb

Download

All about vector design, vector pack and more

Adding Security to PDF Files in Illustrator

Why Use Security?

Adding Security to Your PDF Files

Require a Password to Open Document

Use a Password to Restrict Editing Security and Permissions Password

Printing Allowed

Changes Allowed

Copying of Content

Enable Text Access

Enable Plaintext Metadata

Save as a Preset

Do You Secure You PDF files?

Product Development and Design Process, Powww! Zing! Bamm!

The Product

The Research

Sketching it Out

From Sketch to Vector

Fill’er Up!

Illustrator to Photoshop

Presentation

At the End

How To Design a Sweet Linework & Typography Combo

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Step 8

Step 9

Step 10

Step 11

Step 12

Step 13

Step 14

Step 15

Step 16

Step 17

Step 18

Conclusion

Inspiration: Fashion-Centric Vector Illustrators

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Creating a Collection of Quirky Caricatures

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How to Create a Cubist Masterpiece in Illustrator

Introduction

Step 1: Getting started

Step 2: Creating rectangles

Step 3: Adding randomness

Step 4: Duplicating a group

Step 5: Finalizing shapes

Step 6: Starting main composition

Step 7: Breaking the table

Step 8: Re-assembling the table

Step 9: Painting colors

Step 10: Adding detail

Step 11: Distorting lines

Step 12: Creating a guitar

Step 13: Applying colors

Step 14: Adding details

Step 15: Creating a woman

Step 16: Adding eyes

Step 17: Creating cheeks and lips

Step 18: Making a hat