The art of vector illustration

THE ART OF

VECTOR ILLUSTRATION Concepts

Tools

Techniques

Phabio Rosa

THE ARTE OF

VECTOR ILLUSTRATION Concepts

Tools

Techniques

Phabio Rosa | 1° edition, 2015 | Lençóis Paulista-SP | Brazil

Copyright © 2015 Phabio Rosa. All rights reserved.

Cover: Guilherme Lopes Phabio Rosa Graphic design, layout and illustrations: Phabio Rosa Photo: Vinícius Giacomini Revision: Marcos Danilo Graciano

Dados Internacionais de Catalogação na Publicação (CIP) R7884a

Rosa, Phabio A arte da ilustração vetorial: conceitos, ferramentas e técnicas / Phabio Rosa. -- Lençóis Paulista, SP: Fábio Augusto Rosa, 2015.

60 p. ; 23 cm.

ISBN 978-85-918391-0-0 1. Artes gráficas. 2. Ilustração. 3. Vetor. I. Rosa, Phabio. II. Título.

CDD: 760

I dedicate this book fully and intensely to my mother, Don'Ana, who even in her most difficult times of life, can inspire me to help other people.

INTRODUCTION

Hello, my name is Fabio Augusto Rosa, I have a degree in a technical course in Graphic Arts at SENAI and graduated in Design at IESB in Bauru / SP . I have been an intern and worked with pre-press, typesetting, illustration and animation of characters and scenarios for games and educational materials. I am currently working as a self-employed designer / illustrator.

Since 2009, I have been experimenting and tweaking different styles of design and artwork for my personal projects in vector.

While most of my friends do amazing graphics in image editing programs and painting, such as Photoshop, I have always wondered "how could I do this effect in vector?" Then, after some attempts and studying techniques of other vector artists, many discoveries to illustrate vectorially emerged.

During my journey in college I realized how wide is the field of Design, I identifying myself more with illustration (of all types).

In all academic work in which I saw the opportunity to represent the graphic part or product by the means of illustration, I always did. Among many techniques of traditional and digital design, the one that has caught my attention was the vector illustration (forms based on mathematical calculations). This interest, of course, came from my influence from stylized designs, minimalistic and cartoons.

I cover in this book , my creative process of 100 % vector illustrations of characters and scenarios, using other tools besides the famous Pen Tool. This material is intended for intermediate and advanced users of Adobe Illustrator program, but if you are already familiar with the basic tools and resources of the program, you will also be able to understand what I am going to talk about.

Vector illustration can provide impressive results in short term and it applies in several fields in the market (editorial, animation, games and other). Because of this, I began to seek for more information on the subject and with the great variety of vector programs, I adapted better with the Adobe Illustrator interface.

With no further personal ado, let's begin our chat about vectors!

Phabio Rosa Len莽贸is Paulista-SP

SUMMARY

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13 14 15 16 17

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1 | ILLUSTRATOR Advantages and disadvantages Setting the desktop Setting new document

2 | WORKFLOW Creating brushes Building symbols Customizing textures Optimizing textures Automating processes

3 | VECTORIZATION The illustration Hierarchy of layers and shapes Line art: tools General settings Vectorial modeling Illustrating...

31 32 33

37 38 39 40 41

43 44 48 52 56

4 | COLORIZATION The colors Colorization: tools Rendering...

5 | QUICK TIPS Exporting objects from Illustrator Fake gradient Combining objects instantly Accurate selections Managing color

6 | VECTOR ANALYSIS Crab Fantasy Egypt Droid Nexus Underwater

ILLUSTRATOR Illustrator is a vector illustration program widely used in various areas of Design. In addition to drawing can develop visual signatures (logos), printing works, layouts and other graphic elements. What makes it more accessible is its integration with other Adobe manufacturer's programs.

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| THE ART OF VECTOR ILLUSTRATION

Advantages and disadvantages In these years I have been improving vector illustration techniques I realized that I must point out some advantages and disadvantages that I regard in the development stages of an art with Illustrator.

PROS • Accuracy in measurement of the objects; • Resizing Shapes, lines and effects without distortions; • Easy editing of Shapes; • Easy to create a simplified illustration; • Reuse of predefined objects and effects.

CONS • Limited effects; • Dynamism and fluidity are reduced; • Depending on the complexity of the illustration it may require many processes.

Knowing these limitations it is easier to see if it is feasible to do a vector illustration or if it is better to try to explore other digital programs. Most of the tools used in this book can be found in an Illustrator CS or higher. For this work, I used Illustrator CS6 in the English version.

So I will use the same language to describe the program's resources.

SOME DEVICES The physical part of the computer (Hardware) is very important when using a vector program, for all the flexibility allowed art edition at any time, impacts on processing speed that your computer has. Currently my computer has this configuration: Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz (Intel) Memory: 3 GB RAM Video: GeForce GT 520 Hard drive: 320 GB Tablet: Wacom Intuos 3 (A5) - Pen Tablet For the cases of illustrations that I will present, I often use a tablet instead of the mouse.

Since it is an illustration, I prefer to keep the same feeling as if you were drawing on paper.

But you are free to make your choice.

Illustrator |

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Setting the desktop First, let's leave the Illustrator with all the preferences in the manufacturer standard, hold Shift + Ctrl + Alt while the program is being opened (Splash screen). Now, the Illustrator offers innumerous tools, palettes (located on the Window menu) and other resources for you to manage all your project. Since we will work with illustration, I suggest that you reduce the maximum palettes focusing on what you really considered necessary.

Tip: Combine your palettes in groups. When you press the shortcut key of one of them, the palette group will hide or show.

I recommend you arrange your desktop in a way that you feel comfortable. If you are not satisfied with the amount of tools and palettes on the desktop, remember that you can memorize the shortcuts keys to display them only when necessary. Or, pressing Shift + Tab to hide / show all palettes.

LAYERS PALETTE The Layers palette works as transparent sheets overlapped (layers). Here you can organize and partially change your illustration.

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| THE ART OF VECTOR ILLUSTRATION

APPEARANCE PALETTE Allows you to set the whole structure of a Shape or Stroke. You can add / remove a New Fill a New Stroke or New Effects.

BRUSHES PALETTE In the Brushes palette are all kinds of brushes, as Art Brush, Calligraphic Brush and Pattern Brush.

You can also create your own brushes (check page 13).

STROKE PALETTE It provides various settings and adjustments thickness / shape of the line. It will be a resource commonly used specially in the lines art and for some details in rendering.

TRANSPARENCY PALETTE Enables you to set the Blending Mode; such as Multiply, Overlay and others. Also, you can create a Make Opacity Mask, which is widely used in rendering technique.

Illustrator |

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COLOR PALETTE AND SWATCHES PALETTE The Color palette displays various color modes RGB, CMYK and HSB to make the mixtures of colors. The Swatches palette, you can create your library samples using solid colors, gradients and patterns to apply in the illustration.

GRADIENT PALETTE The Gradient palette, also known as gradient. It is very useful when you want to apply smooth transition of color effect in the illustration. This effect can be linear or radial.

PATHFINDER PALETTE The Pathfinder palette, is widely used to match shapes. It has options to build or deconstruct simple shapes and also complex shapes.

ALIGN PALETTE AND TRANSFORM PALETTE Align palette is great to do alignments of objects and also the distribution of space between them.

With the Transform palette, you can make changes to the measurement of the object and can also set the Scale Strokes & Effects.

Finally, you can save your customization of the desktop. Go to Window > Workspace > Save Workspace. ď‚ŤNote: The use of vector tools will be explained in detail on page 21.

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| THE ART OF VECTOR ILLUSTRATION

Setting new document The choice of the format will vary according to your project. In personal illustrations, I prefer to use the measurement 1024x768 pixels to illustrate characters and when I develop graphics with scenarios, I use the measurement 1366x768 pixels.

In the advanced options, the Color Mode, I define as RGB when I illustrate to the screen (digital) and CMYK for printing. Raster Effects is the visual quality that the effects applied to objects will have, select Screen to screen and High for printing. The other settings I keep in default (Preview Mode: Default and disable the Align New Objects to Pixel Grid).

Illustrator |

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THE ARTE OF

VECTOR ILLUSTRATION Concepts

Tools

CONTACT phabio.rosa@gmail.com www.phabiorosa.blogspot.com.br www.facebook.com/phabiorosa

Book details Publisher: Phabio Rosa (2015) Paperback: 60 pages (colored) Language: Portuguese Dimensions: 7.8 x 9 inches ISBN: 978-85-918391-0-0

Thank you for viewing

Techniques

Phabio Rosa is a designer and illustrator. In this work he addresses all his creative process in 100% vector illustration of characters and scenarios in various styles. You will learn how to vectorize and render your art dynamically using other tools besides the famous Pen Tool and PathďŹ nder resources. You will also meet some processes to improve your workflow and optimize your production. This material is intended for users who have a basic knowledge of Adobe Illustrator software tools.

ISBN 978-85-918391-0-0

9 788591 839100