Animated Character Design in Adobe Illustrator

Animated Character Design in Adobe Illustrator

I’m very pleased to offer my readers a couple of free tutorials from my very first video2brain workshop on Adobe Illustrator. This workshop will teach you how to use Illustrator’s tools and features to prepare 2D files for animation in Adobe After Effects.

You’ll learn how to make the most of Illustrator’s drawing tools and Autotrace feature, and to how use Live Paint and Kuler to recolor artwork. You’ll also get tons of tips and tricks for giving artwork a hand-drawn look and find out how to set up layers, aspect ratios, and transparency options for importing into After Effects.

I’ll share many of my techniques for using Illutrator’s extensive drawing capabilities to create characters for animation. Topics covered include:

  • Setting up your workspace for video and animation
  • Working with Autotrace, Live Paint, and Kuler
  • Using multiple artboards for creating storyboards
  • Taking advantage of views and workspaces
  • Drawing freehand in Illustrator using a variety of tools including the new improved Eraser tool and the Blob Brush tool

Whether you’re a motion graphic designer, animators, storyboard artists, video editors or illustrators, if you want to create 2D animation from flat, vector-based artwork, this workshop will be an invaluable resource.

The lessons are wrapped in a feature-rich interface that lets you jump to any topic and bookmark individual sections for later review. Full-Screen mode provides a hi-def, immersive experience, and Watch-and-Work mode shrinks the video into a small window so you can play the videos alongside your application. Also included are exercise files that give you an easy way to try out the techniques you learn.

Click here to get an overview of the workshop and download free tutorials using the following links;

Working with Live Paint

Working with the Brush Tool

Is drawing important for designers?

Is drawing important for designers?

Drawing from Sketchbook © Angie Taylor 1999

It’s a hot debate, as a designer, is it important to have drawing skills? I mean, you don’t need to draw anymore really? Surely computers can do it all for you now, download a few images, treat them with filters, composite them together in Adobe PhotoshopBob’s yer uncle (as we say in the UK!)

But drawing is not only a process used to create finished aesthetic imagery to include in a finished design, it’s much more than that. It’s a learning process that is an important stage in the development of a confident visual language. When you draw something you learn to see with a different, more focused awareness. You start to question why things appear in a certain way, as a result you can understand how things are constructed, how light interacts with surfaces and how colors affect each other. Things that may not occur to you by just simply looking at an object. you need to truly understand these things to make your drawings work. Even if you don’t like your finished drawings, that really doesn’t matter, it’s the process of losing yourself in the craft of drawing that matters.

And it’s never too late to learn, in the Drawing chapter of my book, Design Essentials for the Motion Media Artist I talk about my mother who didn’t start drawing till she was in her 70’s. It has made a huge difference to her life and now she can draw and paint like she would never have thought. You can check out excerpts from this chapter using Amazon’s “Search Inside” feature now. The chapter also contains some of the exercises that helped me learn to draw during my time at Art College. There’s also a resources section on this website that contains some tips, tricks and links to useful tutorials, websites and a complete reading list.

Drawing Exercise from Design Essentials book - draw 6 circular objects with the same drawing implement achieving different textures for each

Drawing Exercise from Design Essentials book - draw 6 circular objects with the same drawing implement achieving different textures for each

Writing this book inspired me to include more about drawing in my software tutorial too. I recently recorded a new video training workshop for video2brain on Animation Character Design in Adobe Illustrator which will be available soon. In this tutorial I showed that you don’t need to limit yourself to using traditional drawing materials. In one of the tutorials I show how to create body shapes from primitive shapes and then use Illustrators fabulous drawing tools to sculpt these into more organic shapes, it’s an addictive and very creative process.

So, I hope that you’ll give drawing a chance, pick up whichever implement inspires you to make marks and get sketching! don’t worry about the outcome, just enjoy the process!

Using primitive shapes in Adobe Illustrator to create complex body shapes © Angie Taylor 2010

Using primitive shapes in Adobe Illustrator to create complex body shapes © Angie Taylor 2010

RIP Ari Up

RIP Ari Up

The Last picture I took of Ari on Brighton Beack earlier this year.

It was with a huge amount of sadness and shock that I heard about the death of my friend, Ari Up this week. I first met Ari in Aberdeen in 1978 when I was 14 and she was 16, fronting my all-time favorite band, the Slits. She was my hero back then, I totally looked up to her. I’m honored to say that she also became my friend, and what a caring, compassionate and life-enhancing friend she really was! She made me feel OK about who I was – a strange, bespectacled, gay, noisy, ugly-duckling with frizzy hair – not your typical girl!

I had become immersed in the punk movement because it initially represented originality, individuality, anarchy, creativity, chaos, inventiveness but had become disillusioned when it all started to change into conformity to it’s own set of established rules. The Slits were a proud exception, they never conformed to the male-dominated, tribe-like constructs of punk. Instead they truly stuck to it’s core principles, ignoring it’s prescribed fashions and making it up themselves as they went along their merry, musical way.

Ari and the other Slits had immense musical talent and originality which was sadly never fully recognized by the mainstream industry while Ari was alive. Their seminal album “Cut” is listed in many high-profile lists of all time top albums, and it received well-deserved critical acclaim. But their music was often too challenging, uncomfortable or simply unfashionable (a term often used to describe art that is ground-breaking). But they produced so much more that remains largely ignored, including the amazing Earthbeat with it’s wonderful tribal meanderings. Give their music another listen – I dare you!

Ari at the last Slits gig in Brighton

Throughout the last few years I got to know Ari better. We worked together on some filming I did for The Slits and Ari’s other band, the True Warriors. I still have footage that we always planned to get out there but I never had time to edit. So, keep your eyes peeled and watch this space. My next project will be to edit the interviews I did with Ari and cut some of the concert footage, as a tribute to my friend.

A still from the videos I shot at the Underworld gig in Camden

Ari was never afraid to stand up for what she believed in. She always stuck up for the down-trodden in society and accepted people whoever they were. She was always gracious and kind-hearted to her “fans” and made everyone around her feel special. She was truly on-in-a-million and I will miss her so much.

Love you Ari – big style!

Here’s a link to “Heard it through the Grapevine” that we shot at the Meltdown Festival a few years back.

And FM from the Camden Underworld gig.

Adobe After Effects Training DVD and book

Adobe After Effects Training DVD and book

Well, it’s all happening this week! My new book, “Design Essentials for the Motion Media Artist” finally went on sale. I’m so excited and can’t wait to hear what people think of it – waiting for the first reviews is always an anxious time!

As well as the book, I also have a new training DVD on the way which I worked on with the amazing Todd Kopriva from Adobe. “Adobe After Effects CS5 – Learn by Video” was produced by the brilliant team at video2brain and is available to pre-order now.


As a little taster of what’s to come is available to view completely free now. Adobe After Effects CS5: Frequently Asked Questions – Zip Past Common Hurdles
In this free course, Todd Kopriva, co-author of Adobe After Effects CS5 Learn by Video, helps you avoid common After Effects hiccups with a collection of answers to Frequently Asked Questions. Whether you´re having audio hiccups, getting pixelated vector graphics, or getting oversized files or jerky playback, Todd equips you to zip past these common hurdles and get back to creating great effects. I hope you enjoy these free tutorials and look forward to hearing your feedback.

After Effects CS5 – Learn By Video by Angie Taylor and Todd Kopriva

Well, what a busy old month I’ve had! I’ve crossed several time zones and been on more flights than I care to mention. But all for good reason.

Earlier this month I went to Graz, Austria to record an After Effects training DVD for the amazing folks at Video2Brain. It was really good to be back providing training for After Effects again. I’ve been looking for a new method of delivery since I stopped updating my “Creative After Effects” books and Video2Brain provide the perfect vehicle for it.

I’ll also be recording some more Video2Brain titles very soon and will keep you posted on those too. The DVD is available for pre-order now. 10 hours of me and Adobe’s own Todd Kopriva teaching you all we know about our favorite motion graphics application, Adobe After Effects CS5! Order it today and save 37% off!

GridIron Software have been very supportive too. It’s so refreshing to work for a company that actively encourages employees to keep real contact with the creative industry it services. I must say it’s too rare. There are so many occasions where I’ve seen creative people join software companies, only to be consumed totally by the business aspect of their job till eventually they struggle to use the products in a creative way or even understand the customers requirements. I’m very grateful to GridIron Software for having the foresight to avoid these problems and for allowing me to remain in touch with the creative aspects of my role.

I’m also happy to report that Adobe have also adopted a similar approach. I shared the training delivery with the amazing Todd Kopriva from Adobe. Together we recorded almost 18 hours of video based training in just over a week. It was intense but very rewarding. I really enjoyed working with Todd so thanks to Adobe too for allowing him to be involved in such a great project.

So I left Gratz, via Frankfurt, got home to Brighton and slept for a few hours and was then whisked off to Ottawa (via Halifax) the next day to meet with my new colleagues at GridIron Software. It was really great to meet the new team and have some face to face time with colleagues that I usually only meet remotely with.

On my way to the airport after four days of meetings I was then kidnapped by my friends and taken to a lovely cottage in the Canadian wilderness for a perfect wind-down weekend of swimming, fishing, eating and campfire singing. It felt very good to finally have some time off after four consecutive weeks of work.

I finally got home last Tuesday and it’s taken me a whole week to unpack and settle back into home life. It’s good to be home and be able to focus on my work again.

Beauty Box for Photoshop released!

Stop press! Digital Anarchy have released Beauty Box Photo for Photoshop. This is fantastic news, means I don’t have to process all my photos in AE anymore, I can run exactly the same software directly in Photoshop! :-)

It provides easy digital retouching for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements users. It allows you to quickly and easily erase skin blemishes and even out skin tones – achieving a consistently professional result in seconds.

Beauty Box PS uses advanced skin smoothing techniques that can also be found in the AE/ FCP/ PremPro version of Beauty Box for video that I blogged about last week. Check out the free trial, you’ll be amazed at how good a job it does! Oh, and, did I mention it’s on sale as an introductory offer at $79.00, bloody bargain if you ask me! ;-)