Final Product What You’ll Be Creating A few times a each month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of Vectortuts+. This tutorial by Ryan Putnam of Vectips was first published in June 24th, 2008. This is one of the first tutorials we posted on the site and is a great way to get started with shape building in Illustrator to create cute, fun-lovin’ characters. If you haven’t done this [...]

This tutorial aims to guide you from sketchbook to screen; a “Fat Cat” doodled with biro translated into a neat vector caricature. Intermediate knowledge of Adobe Illustrator is advised. Let’s take a look at how to create a cheeky cat illustration – from initial concept through to vector goodness. Final Image Preview Preamble Talk to any Illustrator and they’ll preach the significance of sketching. The media you use are irrelevant, you could be doodling on [...]

Handle color changes and variations with ease by following this intermediate level tutorial. This is a special tutorial sponsored by Astute Graphics that incorporates the use of their high-quality Phantasm CS range Illustrator Pugins. We’ll work with Phantasm’s color shifting tools: Hue/Saturation and and Shift to Color, while we learn to contrast shapes when composing natural, vector scenes! Final Image Preview Tutorial Details Program: Adobe Illustrator CS4 and Phantasm CS range (Designer, Studio or Publisher) [...]

Adobe Illustrator is the most powerful vector software on the planet, and whether you’re using it alone, or in a workflow with other tools such as a 3D program, Photoshop, InDesign, or something else, it can be a great asset to any designer’s arsenal. However, Illustrator is also one of the most daunting programs to learn how to use, with a vast array of tools and features at your fingertips.  Some high quality tutorials will [...]

In this tutorial I will show you how to create a grimy text treatment utilizing Illustrator’s Blog brush, Live Paint, and a pen tablet. You can easily apply these techniques to other illustrates, type treatments and logos. Final Image Below is the final type treatment we be working towards. Tutorial Details Program :

Office life is very boring, what keeps us alive in our offices? You’re right, those hot and strict secretaries. This simple tutorial shows you how to create a beautiful female character using Illustrator. Final Image Preview With Pen Tool(P) draw the outline of the face. Fill it with a gradient from #fdc173 to #faaa59 and give it 1pt black stroke. Now try to achieve the form of the eye as you see in the image [...]

why not create a chocolate covered strawberry illustration for them? You can easily apply this illustration to your own greeting card, t-shirt, or anything else you can think of. Moreover, you can apply this tutorial to other illustrations and logos. Final Image Below is the final image we will working towards. Tutorial Detail Program: Adobe Illustrator CS4 Difficulty: Intermediate Topics Covered: Ellipse tool, Pencil tool, Pathfinder panel, Gradient panel, Custom Art Brush Estimated Completion Time: [...]

With a simple and direct methods described in this tutorial, you can create a female portrait easily. This process will have you creating anatomically correct human faces in no time. Tutorial Details Program: Adobe Illustrator CS 3 Difficulty: Intermediate Estimated Completion Time: 60 minutes Step 1 Let’s open a new document in Illustrator (File > New). Step 2 We start with the construction of the ideal female proportions of the head in full face. Create [...]

One of the most popular articles here on Blog.SpoonGraphics is how to create a vector cartoon character from a hand drawn sketch, an Adobe Illustrator tutorial covering the process of creating Captain Blackspoon. Using similar techniques, follow this tutorial to create your own vector character; Freddy the Fish. View larger version As with Captain Blackspoon, the process starts with a hand drawn doodle which is scanned into the computer. Open up Adobe Illustrator and place [...]

The tiger is one of the coolest animals in the earth. It’s a very powerful, dangerous, yet fascinating animal. In this tutorial, we will be drawing the tiger, but we will be doing it a little bit different. Instead of portraying the tiger as a savage and mean creature, I will teach you how to draw a cute little tiger that you will be able to use in your projects, as a desktop wallpaper, etc. [...]