One thing we do regularly at Go Media is create beautiful vector people. Having illustrated hundreds of these, I have worked out a few tips that I would like to share with you. This will make your job much easier.
Here is the final image we will be creating:
In this tutorial I will cover:
- Picking a photo
- Limiting your detail (picking a value range)
- Reducing work with better vectorizing techniques
- Exaggerating the good
- Putting it all together
Before we get started: Here are a few basics we need to cover before we begin. We are discussing creating vector illustrations of people. For the purpose of this tutorial I will be using Adobe Illustrator. Macromedia Freehand and Corel Draw are also suitable software programs for this task, but I prefer Illustrator.
With regards to creating vector illustrations on the computer there are several ways this can be accomplished. Here are three very common ways:
- You can sit down to your computer with a blank canvas and draw with no point of reference. This is extremely difficult although a few designers here do it.
- You can hand-draw a sketch of what you want first, scan that into the computer and illustrate off of that. This is a wonderful technique to create truly unique and polished illustrations. However this does take some hand-drawing skills.
- You can illustrate off of a photograph. This is the easiest and fastest method so we will use this method and use several photographs for this tutorial.
1. Picking a photo. Now, I think this step is VERY important. Based on what photo you start with, the vectorizing process can be either much easier or harder. Most photographs are the copy written material of a photographer so you’ll need to find a good source of cheap royalty free images. I usually use istockphoto.com. I-Stock Images are of a fairly high resolution and can be purchased for 1-5 dollars. Here are my recommendations for picking a photo:
• Images of high resolution with hard shadows are easier to vectorize than washed out images. One big part of this vectorizing process is deciding where to break up the image into shapes of color. If you have a high contrast photo with hard shadows, it’s much easier to see where the contours of a person’s face are.
Here is a sample of the difference between a good high-contrast image and a poor low-contrast image.
Bad: Washed Out Photo
This first image is fairly bright and washed out. The image is beautiful, but not good for vectorizing. There are no features to work off of.
Good: Nice Contrast!
This second face you can see has much more contrast. You can see a middle value, shadows and bright spots on her face. This will make choosing where you illustrate your vector lines much easier.
On this image you can see how I use the contrast of the image to help me decide where to put vector lines. This is obviously incomplete but you can see how shadows and bright spots are important.
• The image should be as beautiful or ugly as you want the final artwork. It is possible to take a not-so-pretty face and make it look prettier, but it is much easier to start with a beautiful photograph.
• The image does not have to be complete. I will frequently find a face I like and then combine it with a body from a different photo. This is one of the great advantages of vector art.
2. Limiting your detail (picking a value range) This is a good time to talk about how detailed you are going to get with your vector illustration. A vector illustration can be as simple as 1 color, like a silhouette or can get so complex that it has a photo-realistic look. How complex you get is your choice, but I have found that breaking an image up into 5 values is fairly optimal. With five values you get enough detail to show some cool features and it’s still simple enough that it won’t take too long to illustrate.
Here is a photo I have vectorized and will use to demonstrate how different amounts of color values will effect the final image.
Here are three illustrations working off of the same image but using different amounts of color values.
There is no right or wrong level of complexity, but I would say many more than 6 color values and you’re losing the point of vector illustration. Part of what you’re trying to do is simplify the image. If you’re going to get so complex that the vector art starts to look photo-realistic then why not just use the photo?
I will typically try to illustrate my artwork in around 5 color values. I think this is enough detail to create some beautiful artwork without being too complex. Also, when I look at an image it is easy for me to see two color values above and two color values below the middle value – that equals 5.
Don’t feel like you need to pick an exact number of shades and stick with it. Sometimes I’ll get halfway through an illustration and realize that I need a few more shades, or a few less. Make adjustments “on-the-fly” as you work.
3. Reducing work with better technique. Here are some quick tips on how to reduce work by using better techniques in Illustrator.
First, I always start by outlining the object or person I’m illustrating. You can see this path I’ve created in yellow.
Now, if I want to create a shape to represent her hair. I have created this shape in red. You will notice that I only focused on where the line runs across the outline of her head. I did a haphazard job completing the shape outside of her silhouette. I can now use the Pathfinder tool in Illustrator to chop off the “extra” shape that is outside of the head’s silhouette.
In order to do this we will first need to create a second head silhouette so the original one is not lost. Here is how to do that:
- Select your silhouette (it’s the yellow one)
- Make a “copy” by pressing the quick-key combination “Control-C” on the keyboard.
- Paste the copied silhouette in the exact same location, as the original silhouette by typing the quick-key combination “Control-F” (also known as Paste-in-front). This will make a second silhouette on top of the first. If you click it and move it, you’ll see there is still the original path underneath.
Now that there are two silhouettes paths (they are stacked so it will only look like one, but there are two there) we need to chop-off the extra shape outside of the silhouette from the hair path I made (in red.) To do this:
- Select the silhouette path (in yellow) and also select the hair path (the red one.) You can do this by clicking on one, then holding down your shift key when you click on the second shape.
- While they are BOTH selected go to your Pathfinder tool and press the intersecting tool. This will chop off any part of either shape that does not over-lap.
- Then, in the pathfinder window hit the expand button to remove the excess paths permanently.
Presto! You have a hair path that fits perfectly in place with the rest of your silhouette. I use this pathfinder tool a lot to quickly fit pieces together. You can use it to remove shapes, or merge shapes. If you are not familiar with all of the pathfinder tools I highly recommend playing around with it until you have a firm grasp on all of its uses. This will shave hours of work off of the vectorizing process.
4. Exaggerating the good. This is the fun part. When you are tracing an image you do not have to stick religiously with what you see. In fact, you really don’t want to stick with exactly what you’re seeing. Consider the image a sketch and your vector lines as the final drawing. With this in mind you want to correct the “mistakes” in your sketch (photograph). This is a silly example, but obviously if your image was of a woman and she had a big zit on her nose, you would not include it in your vector art right? Similarly if she has fairly small eye lashes, why not make them bigger? Why not add a little sparkle in her eye?
Obviously this technique takes a little bit of skill. If you have a background in traditional illustration it will help a lot. But, obviously exaggerating some features off of a photo is much much easier than illustrating a person from scratch.
Here is a sample of a photo with an unexaggerated set of features on her eyes and one that I took some liberties with. You can see how the enhanced eyes look much better (in my humble opinion.)
Particularly, I smoothed out the shadow lines around the eyes, increased the over-all size of the eyes, made the eye lashes much bigger, thinned the eye brows and finally, added a little extra sparkle to her eyes.
You can use this exaggerating technique on all parts of your image. Make hair bigger and more beautiful. Take a little weight off, or add it in just the right places. Make muscles bigger. Whatever you’re after – you’re in control so take some liberties.
5. Putting it all together. Now that you have a good understanding of some core principles of Creating vector illustrations like we do at Go Media, let me show you how I would create a kick ass piece of artwork.
First, I would try to find a killer image that has either part or all of the elements that I am going to need for the focal point of this piece of artwork.
This first image I found has a fantastic body position. I really like the way the leg extends out toward the camera. Unfortunately the face is rather obscured and the arm on the left looks kind of limp. I will need to find a better arm and a better face.
This second image I found has a great arm. The perspective looks like it will fit in place of the arm that’s on the first image – so we’ll use it and see how it goes.
This last lovely face I found online and will make good reference. It also seems to be at the correct perspective to fit on the body. Remember! You need to make sure your different “parts” will fit together. If you pick a body that is shot from above, then an arm that is shot straight-on, they may not fit together. Also you will notice that this face is turned slightly to the left. The body I found faces right. No problem! I can use the “Reflect” tool in Illustrator and flip it over so she’s facing slightly to the right!
Once I have all three “parts” done I will assemble them. Some resizing and rotating is necessary to get them to fit together and look nice. Also, I stroked the figure to help define her off of her background. Most of the hair I made up from scratch. Here and there I had to add little bits of color to bring the whole thing together.
A quick tip on coloring: I try to put together my color palette before I begin filling in my vector shapes. I will usually pick a single color and then make a variety of shades of that color. Make sure to focus on the value of the colors (how bright or dark are they?) You will need to have a nice scale of color values from very dark to very bright.
Once I have the focal point of the composition complete the hard work is done. At this point I merely need to jazz it up with some additional design elements. I could create all of these design elements from scratch, but this could take an entire week and I don’t have that kind of time. There are plenty of sources for stock vector art such as our Go Media vector packs that can cheaply provide you with the tools you’ll need to either create a complete composition or provide you with the elements you need to finish off your own original artwork.
For this piece I will use some of the stock vector art from the Go Media Vector Packs. These royalty free stock vector packs are a real bargain for our clients. If I had to create every vector element on each project nobody could afford us. So, I tend to focus on making one or two new focal elements on a design, then work in a variety of pre-made stock elements to create a unique and amazing piece of vector artwork in a reasonable amount of time. Our clients truly appreciate this technique for keeping production time and costs down.
Once I combined these vector elements with my new artwork - this is what I made. Not bad. One thing I like to do is make parts of my background the same exact color as my image. In this way it makes my girl blend in with the background. Once again, this is a fun technique that Vector art has over other forms of illustration. You will also notice a slight shade I put on her that looks like some kind of lingere. In order to do this I simply created the vector shape, filled it with the same maroon color as the background and then set it’s Opacity to 50%.
**Note of encouragement: This tutorial probably makes it look like I slapped together this final design in a few hours. Don’t be fooled. I struggled with it for several days. Getting the outlines drawn was a day, then getting the colors to look right and then working in the additional design elements took a LOT of work. So, don’t get discouraged if things don’t seem to go together right away. Keep moving things around, changing colors and reworking it until you see something you like. The fact that you CAN move things around is one of the biggest advantages to working with vector art – so take advantage of it.**
That’s all folks. Hope you enjoyed my tutorial. For more great stuff please visit our website at: www.gomedia.us
December 29th, 2006 at 2:18 am
Great! I love vector! And this tutorial just gave me a rush of orgasmic excitement! Keep it up.
December 29th, 2006 at 2:21 am
Also, this is a great resource for ANYONE, new or old to the deliciously exciting world of vector.
December 29th, 2006 at 5:57 am
very nice.
December 29th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Jacob thats cause you never had a real orgasm
December 29th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Another Fine Tutorial By Go Media. Keep E’m Coming.
By The Way, You Don’t Specify What Programs You Use For What Parts Of The Tut. It Would Really Help If We Knew What Tools You Used For The Most Part.
December 29th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Danny,
It says in the 2nd paragraph:
“For the purpose of this tutorial I will be using Adobe Illustrator.”
December 29th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Oh, Well Thanks For That Correction.
December 30th, 2006 at 1:33 am
Joey,
i was first to comment so i wanted it to be good, XD
December 30th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
“Give them a fish, they will eat for a day… Teach them to fish, they will eat for a lifet ime!” Happy New Years fellow designers! Thanks Bill.
December 31st, 2006 at 5:19 pm
This entire tutorial was done in Adobe Illustrator. That’s it! Glad you enjoyed it.
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
another great tutorial, thanks Jeff.
January 3rd, 2007 at 4:24 am
very nice tutorial. keep it up Jeff.
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Brilliant tutorial. Where do you find these killer images to vector?
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Haha great great tutorial.
but what have you been looking at in your spare time!
January 3rd, 2007 at 10:01 pm
this is a great tutorial..u teach us how to minimise our working hour with some technic which is some of us,including me didn’t realise when to use that technic/tool
n i really enjoy reading your tutorial…thanks
January 5th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Wow, this is so a nice tutorial.
Thank you very much .
This is the tutorial of the week on pixel2ife, congratulations !!
January 9th, 2007 at 9:10 am
wow really amazing tut .. but
i want to ask about the line on the photo ..
[like this in red , ellow and white] whats the tool i will use (pen tool , mesh tool or another one ?!
thnx alot GOMEDIA
January 9th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
abdullrhman, use the pen tool. That’s it.
January 9th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
How long did it take you to get to your skill level in illustrator? I use photoshop a lot and I’m a wiz with that program but i recently decided it was time to move onto something new and vector has always had a place in my heart.
January 10th, 2007 at 1:23 am
this is extremely cool and very helpful!
January 10th, 2007 at 3:00 am
Nick,
Well Bill has been drawing his whole life, he’s 32 now. His career as a graphic designer was drawing comic books. So his background in illustration goes way back. Basically, the principles of illustration are the same - traditional and digital, you just have to learn the tools.
January 10th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Well I suppose I have a ways to go but I’m young yet. I need to work on my pen tool skills, great work Mr. Bill.
January 10th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
did u have any account in this site [deviantat.com]
and thnx alooot
January 11th, 2007 at 3:45 am
nice tutorial! I learn a lots of techniques! thanks!
January 11th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Hey, great work and cool tutorial, I wouldn’t have thought of combining body parts like that.
January 14th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
I think this tutorial is superb. I especially like how you made it all too simple. And by that, I think you’ve succeeded in encouraging the audience to just get down to business and start vectoring.
January 14th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Extremely useful.
I’ll try this first thing tomorrow.
Thanks!
January 15th, 2007 at 10:49 am
yummy that’s great!!! congratulations!
January 15th, 2007 at 10:59 am
this was a pretty profound tutorial. It helped me with a niceeeeeeeeee illustration that I just did for display and for my artwork collection.
Thanks!!!
January 18th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
excelente, me gustaria aprender mucho mas sobre illustrator. simplemente muy bien hecho!!
January 19th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Awesome! Great tutorial!
January 29th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
مشكووووور ØÂبوب
Thankxxx
January 31st, 2007 at 8:43 pm
U R great !
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:26 am
very useful ideas
February 22nd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Great post on vectors. I had a quick question. I am trying my best to learn how to draw logos and put them into Illustrator. I know that I am a beginner when it comes to graphic design, but if you could point me to some basic tutorials on logo design and such my blog readers and I would be most grateful
March 16th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
very fine!!!!
April 21st, 2007 at 10:39 pm
This is definitely my go-to site for tips and tricks now. Looking forward to learning a lot from you guys at gomediazine
April 24th, 2007 at 11:19 am
hey man you really killed it!!
in a good way for sure : ). props
April 29th, 2007 at 1:13 am
Absolutely fantastic. It will still take some time to get used to that blasted pen tool. My lines still go in all the directions I don’t want them to. Thanks a heap!
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Wow–
I’ve just started with Illustrator and actually use the art over photo technique to get the images I need as I have a horrible scanner and don’t always make the best ‘from scratch’ images on the computer. It’s great to see that this is an acceptable and easy way of creating or recreating!
May 5th, 2007 at 1:33 am
i am a young jamaican thats just starting in the designing world.i sow some of ur illustraions and i love them.
what advices would you give to a person who would love to become a professional designer.
May 21st, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Thanks a lot for a great tutorial that makes those stunning vector graphics seem less impossible to create by yourself! Awesome work.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:02 am
can u pls tell me what programs u use to create the these pictures .. i want to start making my own posters but i cant find any good programs to use .. i have corol 12 and photo shop 9 but i cant seem to get the resulst i want from them ..
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:30 pm
pieter: If you actually read the tutorial you’ll see that he uses Adobe Illustrator, but that Macromedia Freehand and Corel Draw are also are suitable although he prefers Illustrator.
May 26th, 2007 at 6:34 am
can I buy the GoMedia vector packs also in germany?
great tutorial, thanks!
greetings!
May 28th, 2007 at 3:14 am
how can i buy the go media vector pack in china ?
May 28th, 2007 at 10:39 am
@?
Yeah if you can use Paypal
June 15th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Great Tutorial…
Following the tutorial I ended up with this.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alperbuluc/554154314/ There are lots of tweaks need to done. But I think it’s good for a couple of hours of work.
July 3rd, 2007 at 11:05 pm
nice tracing.
July 19th, 2007 at 10:00 am
sir ,
i need some help from you in this area can you help me.
July 22nd, 2007 at 10:39 am
good job.. thanks
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:14 pm
heyall…
I started doing ’solid color’ illustration work back in 1980 with rapidographs on acetate (and many, many sketches)…I grundgingly made the move to illustrator several years ago and although I certainly apprecte seeing quality work….I can’t help but feel slightly jealous…seriouly, great work guys…T~
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:34 am
Helpful tutorial and great artwork!
August 24th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Thank you for making vector images sound easy.
You are a natural teacher and artist…mmmm..could have used your great teaching skills in my INDESIGN class…lots’ of substandard instruction out there.
September 21st, 2007 at 11:11 pm
good tutor but I can’t see every screen shoot other, only first screenshoot opened….
btw thanks for tutor… si ya… (from:IND.)
September 29th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Nice! I like ours illustrations much!
October 14th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
hello tankio paeles send file vector
October 18th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Jacob, who gives a flying fuck that you were first to comment.
Great tutorial by the way.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:23 am
谢谢,教程..æâ€Â¶Ã¨â€”Â了! (=^ ^=)
October 31st, 2007 at 9:30 am
I love this one.. GREAT TUTORIAL. Thanks alot. ^^
November 4th, 2007 at 2:58 am
Man youre not inspiring, you guys are inspire’s itself!
November 8th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
hi i love this site becozzz i learn more illustration in this site…
November 9th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
This site has some of the very best tutorials I’ve come across anywhere.Not just a very high standard of artistic accomplishment but I especially appreciate the details such as how long it took and the difficulties involved.I find this a much more encouraging and inspirational approach than those where all the personal detail is left out.Many thanks and hope to see more.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Thanks for that great tutorial, good advises.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Great Tutorial!!!
but im kinda new on this thing and i dont know how you did the red and yellow line…
January 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
sorry i saw the previous comment and i saw what im looking for….
thanks again!!!
January 9th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
The Spirits Within
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:17 pm
That is an awesome vector tutorial! I wish I could find images of a girl that cool!! ;-D
February 8th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Delicious!
February 16th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Nice tutorial. I’ve recentley Stumbled Upon your site, arsenal, and webzine. Really good stuff, with alot of great resources. I will continue to check yall out. Keep up the good work!
February 19th, 2008 at 5:07 am
Türkçe site açmışsınız dersler inglizce ne iş anlamadim. Çal çal kopyala kopyala yapıştır mantığı sizde. bi ban çekemde bu siteye bi görün.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Wow! nice tutorial!
-Quan
http://www.doggieoutfitter.com
March 6th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Hi, nice tutorial you posted. I’ve try for quiet some time to vectorize the photo. But somehow, I can’t figure out where to add shadow and highlight, especially in the face and in the hair (hair is the most difficult one for me). So how can I know where to add it?
Any suggestion?
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Great tutorial guys. Keep them coming.
Thomas.
http://www.KPrints.com
April 21st, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Nice Tutorial on vector design, I like the way you do it,
Cheers!
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:16 am
Oo nice tutorial!
May 6th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Does anyone know if the “coming soon” wings used in this image were ever released/sold by Go Media? I looked through all the vector packs but couldn’t find it anywhere.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:21 am
I don’t believe it is available yet.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Thanks for the reply, Jeff. I would be interested in purchasing if/when it shows up in one of your vector packs, so I’ll keep checking back.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:00 am
one short word wow. I learn something new everyday today was no exception.
Thanks
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Very nice tutorials.
Thank you very much.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I Love this tutorial. I tried it though it took time and damn it was a great outcome!! I appreciate it alot!