Ever since I was little I’ve been drawing and being creative. I’ve always enjoyed creating creatures and characters on paper with my pencil. Currently I’m into graphic design, illustration, and photography. Graphic design is what I’m in school for. In this article however I’d like to tell you about the way I create cartoons in Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator is a vector based program which basically means your artwork can be sized up or down without loss of quality.

Some digital artists use programs such as Photoshop or Corel. Well I enjoy using a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Adobe has created a plethora of software; which can be used for most any digital media, such as photography, videography, illustration, print design, T-shirt design, or web production.

The way I create my artwork is to sketch out the character, you can do this either with pencil and paper or you can use a tablet such as the Wacom Intuos series. Once you’ve completed your drawing scan it in to your computer if you drew it on paper. Once in the computer open Adobe Illustrator and put your sketch on the art board on the first layer. Now I would create a new layer so I can start illustrating. I created a new layer so I can turn of my sketch layer off and see my progress as I go on.

Generally I start with the outlines of the character, which would include all the facial features or whatever the object or character consists of. Once your done with the outline, make a new layer for the fill colors. When I’m adding the colors I usually make different selections. I mean like if your coloring the face and neck I keep them two different objects, so I can make one darker than the other for something like a shadow.

Once your done adding all of your details and such, you might want to go back to the outline layer and make the outlines a little darker than the fill color so all the outlines aren’t just black. Okay now I would bring all of that into Photoshop and add a light texture, but that depends on your taste and what you prefer. Once your done save it as a JPEG or PNG and upload it to the web. If you have a website that is good but if you don’t you can use sites like Deviant Art or Flicker.