Adding a touch of blood to an illustration can instantly make an image seem more sinister. I’ve added blood to a couple of pages of Green Corner, as well as the 2008 Hallowe’en special. Creating blood in Illustrator is very simple. For the base: Set your fill colour to: C 0/ M 100/ Y 60/…
Fog can be used in an illustration to enhance a spooky mood and chilly atmosphere or simply as an effect to draw attention to the focal point. My last two Hallowe’en specials for Green Corner have used fog, but each illustration has a very different mood. The Red Riding Hood illustration has a subtly chilly,…
This tutorial requires the use of two tools in Illustrator: the flare tool (located under the rectangle and ellipse tools) the spiral tool (located under the line segment tool) The end result of the tutorial will be to create a fireball that can be used as an effect in vector artwork. Below is an example…
This tutorial covers the process of creating a fantasy pinup illustration with Illustrator CS3. This tutorial uses Live Paint, so you will need CS2 or above to follow. If you need an alternative method for a legacy version of Illustrator, please download my Creating Comics with Illustrator tutorial which includes instructions for that. Only an…
Click the image to see a larger version. I have moved the separate pieces apart to show the divisions. A friend asked me recently what the difference is between the knife and scissors tools. You’ll notice in the image above that the knife tends to cut on a squiggly path. It also creates closed shapes,…
This mini tutorial gives instructions on how to make multi-part dialogue balloons for cartooning. You may like to download a copy of my angled brushes before using this technique. The brushes are free to use. Please to not redistribute or sell them. If you need an older version, just let me know. Download the Illustrator…
I usually don’t post this frequently, but I wanted to mention that my tutorial for creating comics with Illustrator is being promoted over on Vectortuts. Vectortuts is a vector tutorial blog that I regularly read and recommend to anyone who wants to find some quality Illustrator tutorials online. Everyone has different techniques, and there’s always…
My tutorial for creating comic pages with Adobe Illustrator is available in PDF format here (948 KB). The tutorial is geared toward the novice user, but more experienced users may find some interesting techniques as well. Please let me know if you have any questions about items not answered in the tutorial. Edit: The location…
Here’s a simple tip for allowing people with Adobe Reader to be able to save form data in a PDF form or comment directly on a PDF. Open your PDF (e.g. file.pdf) in Acrobat Professional 8. Select “enable usage rights in Adobe Reader” from the “Advanced” menu. Save the Reader-enabled copy with a new file…