oleh : Chris Spooner

Below is a tutorial I’ve written for a cartoon character created in Adobe Illustrator. Feel free to check out my other tutorials here. Enjoy!
I start with placing a scanned pencil sketch in Illustrator. Go to File > Place and choose the sketch file. I usually use 72 dpi grayscale scans.

Next, I use the pen tool to trace over my scan. I like to use a color stroked line because it is easier to see. I also close all my paths, so each piece is an individual complete shape.

I remove the sketch once I’m finished tracing.

After I finish tracing, I eliminate the stroke and fill everything with black. With all my shapes still selected, I use object > offset path and set that to -1 pt. This will copy the shapes only 1 pt smaller. These new shapes I fill with white, so I can see them.

Next, I usually like to thicken up my black line by using the offset path again. I also like to scale the new black shapes to get a little line weight variation. Once I have my line weights correct, I zoom in close to make sure that none of my pieces have moved out of place.

Once my black and white lines look right, I start coloring. I start by filling my white shapes with basic flat colors.

After I’ve picked out the flat colors, I start drawing my shadow shapes with the pen tool. Remember to close the path on those too, so they are complete shapes.

Now, I use the pathfinder tools. Go to Window > Pathfinder to make sure the Pathfinder palette is open. The Pathfinder tools are used to combine or cut up two separate shapes. For this example, I’m going to use the Intersect Shape Areas.

First, I need to duplicate the the orange shell shape. I start by selecting the orange shell shape, then double click on the rotate symbol in the tool bar. This will bring up a dialogue box. I set the degrees to 0 and click COPY. This will create a duplicate orange shell shape in the exact same spot.

Next, I select my shadow shape and go to Object > Arrange > Send to Back. With the shadow shape still selected, I shift click on the orange shell. Now that I have both shapes selected, I go to the pathfinder palette and click on Intersect and then Expand. This creates a new shape where the two shapes intersected. I fill this shape with a slightly darker color to make it look like a shadow.