• Welcome! Introduction to this Illustrator Course

This course will help you make original, custom illustrations in just a matter of minutes that look professional and can be used online, in videos and animations or for print purposes such as posters, letterheads, even t-shirts or other products.  

• New to Adobe Illustrator? Here’s the crash course to get you started.

This video walkthrough is for people who have never used Adobe Illustrator before. Get the grand tour, get to know your tools and windows in the interface.  

• Important Copyright Issues You Need to Know & Choosing a Photo as a Guide          

The first thing we need for this project is a good photo that we can trace over and turn into an illustration. Here is how to find copyright-free images.        

• Placing your photo as a guide in illustrator

Once you have the photo that you are going to use, now we are going to place it into Illustrator and use it as a guide.

• Setting up your brush and making a “Drawing” layer in Illustrator

Now that your image has been placed, it is time to make another layer to draw a black and white line drawing over the photograph. Get to know your brush settings with this video walkthrough.

• Draw the Black and White Line Drawing in Illustrator

Get some drawing tips for illustrating your image such as using a drawing pad or changing your brush size.

• Pause Here to Learn How to Save Properly and Save Yourself Pain and Suffering

It is important to save your work properly as things can go wrong. Save files in more than one place in case your hard drive gets corrupt.   

• Adding Color: Option #1. Coloring With the Brush Tools in Illustrator

Now we will colour in our image with the brush tools. Get some tips for colouring in with this video walkthrough.

• Adding Color: Option #2. Use The Live Paint Bucket Tool in Illustrator

Learn another way to colour in with the Live Paint Bucket tool. This can be harder to control so see which way you prefer.

• Adding Color: Option #3. Cheat and Go Color It In Photoshop

Learn how to save your file for use in Photoshop. Colouring in can be a lot simpler in Photoshop.

• Saving a Final Web Version in Illustrator

If you want to save this for the Web, change the colour settings to RGB mode first. Learn the optimum settings for saving for the Web.

• Saving a Final Web Version in Adobe Photoshop

Learn about the different formats you can save your files as in Photoshop and how to optimise them.