How to Make Awesome Graphics in Illustrator
Digital artists who know how to make great looking graphics with Illustrator know that a key aspect of their skill is creating idealized, simplified shapes that remove all the bumps, burrs and other flaws of existing images, especially those from photos. They use the program's Pen tool to create a foundation for these shapes, then use refinement tools such as Smooth on that foundation. The Pen and its related tools are able to create attractive graphics because they employ Bezier curves, which are shapes that use math calculations to ensure the outline passing through the shape's points are smooth.
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Instructions
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Click the "File" menu, then navigate to and double-click an image on your computer you really like, such as a photo of a person or scene. Illustrator will load the photo.
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Click the tool palette icon shaped like an eyedropper to run the color sampling tool, then click inside one of the shapes in the image. For example, if you loaded the image of a face, click inside the iris for one of the eyes. This action will load the iris' color, which you will use in creating a vector shaped like the iris.
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Click the tool palette icon shaped like a nib pen, then click a point on the outline for the shape whose color you just sampled. For the face example just described, click a point on the edge of the iris.
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Drag to another point on the outline mentioned, then click again to plot another point. Repeat this step until you've completely traced the outline. Notice the shape you created has sharp corners, which are the result of the straight lines from the Pen tool. You'll now smooth the shape to make it more pleasing to the eye.
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Click the tool palette icon shaped like a pencil wrapped in a spring to run the Smooth tool. Drag over a portion of the shape you made. Illustrator will change the straight lines to curved ones, which makes your shape's outline flow more gracefully.
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Repeat the previous three steps for the remaining shapes in your original picture to create vectors for those shapes. The result will be an attractive, idealized version of the original picture.
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References
- "Illustrator CS5 Bible"; Ted Alspach; 2010
- "Design Basics"; David Lauer; 2007
