A little while ago, I posted about a tutorial on SpoonGraphics about creating a gang of vector ninjas in Illustrator. I did get around to playing with the tutorial with these results:
(OK, so it’s a single ninja, not a gang. But look out for those ninja stars!)
I highly recommend the tutorial for many reasons. First off, it’s a great one to do if you’re new to Illustrator because it does talk a little bit about combining shapes and using the Pathfinder tools and the Appearances palette. It’s super simple stuff and yet the result is … cute. The bit about the Appearances palette is also useful for putting multiple strokes on an object if you’re unsure of that. You can make cool stripes and borders that way … but that’s for another post.
The other reason I really like the tutorial is because it deals with some fundamentals of drawing. It explains that the ninja is just a series of simple shapes: circles, rectangles and rounded rectangles. Once you figure out what combination of shapes you can use to create things, you can draw other things. For instance, a cat is a circle, a bunch of rounded rectangles for the legs and tail, triangles for ears and a big rectangle or rounded rectangle for the body.
Another thing you can learn from the tutorial is the solving the problem of positioning. Like trying to figure out how you would draw the arms and legs of the ninja in different positions or holding different weapons. Or how you would make him do a flip. Or how you would draw the shadow if the ninja is off the ground. Things like that. Those are really fundamental questions and if you want to start drawing vector characters, you’ll run into those problems time and again. So doing tutorials like this is helpful in practicing drawing.
Do give it a whirl!
