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View Full Version : Step-by-step: Illustrating in Flash


behemoth
11-26-2010, 08:56 AM
Here's a little sneek-peek of how I handle the illustration process in flash.

When it comes to illustrating in vector I prefer Flash over Illustrator any day. Illustrator is good for other things.

This is something I cooked up in studio last week, it's juxtaposed with a youth boxing logo (which I also designed but I'm focussing more on the illustration for now).

The idea was creating a cartoon character with oversized boxing gloves, a quirky take on youth boxing.

I always, ALWAYS begin with a sketch. It is ESSENTIAL to jot down a few scamps first in order to get the result you really need. I draw these by hand since I do them fairly quickly. I had no need to scan a high-res version of this so I simply took a photo of it with my webcam to save some time.

I doodled this with blue pencil and refined it with ballpoint.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i266/behemothi/Screenshot2010-11-16at45659PM.png

Now the tracing begins. I trace with the brush tool because it gives me a really nice edge, it allows me to get some really great line variations and accents. You'll notice that my bottom- or downward flowing lines tend to get heavier, I do that to give the illusion of weight, a simple technique that's super effective.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i266/behemothi/Screenshot2010-11-16at61831PM.png

It's only at this point that I realized that the character resembled Reily from The Boondocks too much, but I carried on regardless because I was on a deadline.

behemoth
11-26-2010, 08:57 AM
After I got feedback from the client they decided on a different pose, a 'safer' pose so I humoured them.
I threw in some greys for presentation purposes.
Flash is great for doing cell-colouring and it's super quick, but it's almost limited to just that. For a more painted edge I take things into Photoshop.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i266/behemothi/Screenshot2010-11-17at14821PM.png

Now I chucked in some colour, though I liked the grey approach a lot more, the client will probably settle on this.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i266/behemothi/Screenshot2010-11-17at121444PM.png

And there you have it!