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Final Image Preview

You too can cre­ate your very own digital characters!

Step 1:

Hone in on your dood­ling skills, as we are going to trans­form your char­ac­ter into a cool digital char­ac­ter! Scan in your char­ac­ter design into the com­puter. I use Pho­toshop and then save it as a *.jpg file.

For ref­er­ence, I have included this image as well as the fin­ished illus­trator file (Illus­trator CS2).
(Note: I used Illus­trator CS4 for this tutorial, but the pro­cess is the same for other versions)

Step 2:

When begin­ning a job you need to have a clear idea of what your tar­get format is i.e. will it be used for print or web? A print design would be saved either as CMYK or RGB and at 250dpi or higher. A design for the web would be saved as RGB and at 72-75dpi for screen.

Step 3:

Cre­ate new doc­u­ment in Illus­trator File>New. Keep in mind that this final illus­tra­tion will be used for print so I will be cre­at­ing a file with CMYK col­ors and at 300dpi.

For this Tutorial make sure that you have the fol­low­ing pan­els open (All can be accessed via the Win­dow menu):

• Lay­ers Panel
• Stroke Panel
• Color Panel
• Appear­ance Panel
• Pathfinder Panel

Step 4:

Import the image into Illus­trator File>Place. Name this Layer ‘Sketch’. This can be done by double-clicking on the actual layer name.

Step 5:

Select the image and set image trans­par­ency to 30%. I chose a 30% trans­par­ency because I want to be able to use this image as an over­lay and Trace behind it.
Now lock the layer – this can be done by going to the Lay­ers Panel and select­ing the check box next to the Eye icon.

Step 6:

Cre­ate new layer by using the drop-down menu on the top-right of the Lay­ers Panel select New Layer and name it ‘Art­work’. The short­cut for this is “Command-L” for Mac or “Ctrl-L” for PC.

Step 7:

Select the Pen Tool and using the Stroke Panel, set the Stroke weight to 1, and the Color to Black C:100 M:100 Y: 100 K: 100. The stroke weight refers to the thick­ness of the ‘line’.
Begin to draw basic out­line of char­ac­ter on ‘Art­work’ layer in this order:

1. Body
2. Head
3. Arm

Step 8:

Con­tinue draw­ing the out­line of char­ac­ter. When draw­ing the out­line of the thumb make sure that the path isn’t closed i.e. don’t connect

1. Thumb
2. Ear and Eyes – I cre­ated the eyes using the Ellipse Tool
3. Teeth and mouth

I choose this order because when design­ing a char­ac­ter I like to get the char­ac­ters main body shape right first and then go back and add the details.

Step 9:

Cre­ate a new Layer (“Command-L” for Mac or “Ctrl-L” for PC) and name it ‘Back­ground’.
Next cre­ate a simple box using the Roun­ded Rect­angle Tool on this layer with a Fill color of C:30 M:30 Y: 60 K: 0. Once you have fin­ished, lock this layer so you don’t acci­dent­ally select it.

Step 10:

Now we are going to add some color. I want to cre­ate a new orange color, so using the Color Panel insert the val­ues of C:0 M:50: Y:100: K:0. Then using the drop-down menu on the top-right of the Color Panel select Cre­ate New Swatch. This adds the new color to the Swatch Panel.

Reselect the ‘Art­work’ layer and color the char­ac­ters body, head and arms with the new orange color. I also darkened the orange slightly around the eye C:0 M:50: Y:100: K:10.

Step 11:

Add a belly but­ton that is made up of 2 circles using the Ellipse Tool. The inner ellipse is colored C:0 M:50: Y:100: K:10 and the outer ellipse is colored C:0 M:50: Y:100: K:10

Step 12:

Here I want to cre­ate a col­oured bor­der for the char­ac­ter.
Reselect the ‘Art­work’ layer and select all of the ele­ments that you want the bor­der to be around i.e. the head, body, arm thumb, teeth and mouth. Copy these objects (“Command-C” for Mac or “Ctrl-C” for PC).

Step 13:

Cre­ate a new Layer and call it ‘Bor­der’. With the ‘Bor­der’ layer selec­ted paste these objects using Edit>Paste in Front (“Command-F” for Mac or “Ctrl-F” for PC) to the new layer. The Paste in Front com­mand pastes the objects in exactly the same pos­i­tion in front of the cur­rently selec­ted object. Turn off the ‘Art­work’ layer so that you can see what you are select­ing on the ‘Bor­der’ layer.

Step 14:

With the ‘Bor­der’ objects selec­ted go to the Appear­ance Panel. Using the drop-down menu on the top-right of the Appear­ance Panel and press Clear appear­ance — this makes sure that all out­lines or effects are removed. I find that clear­ing the appear­ance of objects that are going to be merged/combined with the Pathfinder Tool, reduces the chance of strange errors with the objects. With these objects still selec­ted, give them a fill of Black C:100 M:100 Y: 100 K: 100.

Step 15:

With the objects still selec­ted go to the Pathfinder Panel and select Merge – this merges all of the objects into one com­plete object.
Add a Stroke to this object and add a weight of 6, colored Black C:100 M:100 Y: 100 K: 100.

Step 16:

Copy this object and paste it using Edit>Paste in Back (“Command-B” for Mac or “Ctrl-B” for PC) to the new layer. The Paste in Back com­mand pastes the objects in exactly the same pos­i­tion behind the cur­rently selec­ted object.
Change the Fill and Stroke color to C:15 M:15 Y: 30 K: 0.
Change the Stroke weight to 10.

Step 17:

These tech­niques can be used to util­ized to cre­ate lot of dif­fer­ent styles for example graf­fiti, retro or comic book designs. I also highly recom­mend exper­i­ment­ing with the Pathfinder Panel as this can be used to cre­ate some really cool sten­cil­ing effects.