The Yeti character we’ll be creating is made up of basic shapes to maintain that simple illustration feel. The plump round shapes all help create a friendly and loveable character while the high shoulders and wide stance give him a slow and lazy personality.

View the vector Yeti character design

Whenever you start a character design it’s always worth creating a rough sketch to base any vector element on. Place the sketch (included in the member’s source file download) into an Illustrator document and use a large oval to outline the main body shape. Intersect the lower half of the oval with a temporary rectangle and use it to clip away the excess with the Subtract button from the Pathfinder palette.

Match up basic shapes to flesh out the overall appearance of the character. Toggle on Smart Guides (CMD+U) to make aligning elements super easy. Here I’m using two rounded rectangles for each leg, then a smaller circle aligned in the center which will be used to create a smooth join between them.

Blend the rectangle legs with the main oval body using the Merge button from the Pathfinder palette, then use the Direct Selection tool to delete out the upper points from the rectangles and lower point of the circle to leave two open paths.

Select one end of the open path and join it to fill the gap. Repeat this on the opposite side to leave a complete path outlining the whole body.

Draw a large circle to match the profile of the arms. Drag the lowermost point upwards to round off the arms near the hands.

Press CMD+C and CMD+F to copy and paste a duplicate of the main body shape, press CMD+Shift+] to send it to the top, then use this shape as a tool with the Pathfinder to ‘Subtract’ this shape from the arms. Right click and select Ungroup to split the arms into two separate elements.

Draw three increasingly sized circles at the bottom of the arm to represent a simple hand. Merge the circles together, then make a duplicate of the arm shape. Make sure the arm is positioned at the top of the stack (CMD+Shift+]), then use it to clip away the overlap.

Make a duplicate of the hand shape, send it to the top, select both the temporary hand shape and the body shape, then hit the Subtract button from the Pathfinder tool to clip away the overlap between the hand and the main body.

Draw three circles aligned side by side and align them to the foot area. Select the three circles and hit CMD+8 to create a Compound Path then make a duplicate of the main body shape and use the Pathfinder to ‘Intersect’ the circles to create a set of toes.

Draw a circle as a base of the facial outline, then use the Direct Selection tool to manipulate its shape by dragging the top and bottom points into place.

Use a black filled circle with a smaller white circle to create a simple eye, then hold ALT and drag the shapes to create a copy.

Draw a large and small circle elsewhere on the document and create a Blend between them by going to Object > Blend > Make.

Head back into the Blend options (Object > Blend > Blend Options) and change the settings to Specified Steps with a super high value of say 800.

Next, give the shape a Warp with the Envelope Distort feature (Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Warp). Use the Arc option and adjust the amount to bend the shape.

Reset the shape back into an editable object by going to Object > Expand. Select both the Object and Fill options.

The shape is currently made up of around 800 facets, so merge them all together with the Pathfinder to simplify it.

The outline of the shape still has lots of unnecessary points, so use the Simplify option from the Path menu to reduce to number of points while maintaining the same overall shape.

Position this random shape onto the face to represent the mouth, then draw three white circles as teeth. Merge the teeth into a single shape, make a duplicate of the mouth shape, send it to the top then use the Intersect option from the Pathfinder to clip them to size.

Repeat the process, but this time using a red circle to represent the tongue.

The overall structure of the character is complete, but yetis are generally quite furry. Ours looks pretty bald…

Draw a circle elsewhere on the artboard and drag out the right most point with the Direct Selection tool. Add this to the Brush palette as a new brush and select the Art Brush option. In the options make sure the direction of the brush is correct, then change the Method dropdown to Tints.

Use the Brush tool to draw in thick strands of fur around one half of the character’s body and arm. Don’t worry about the inner areas of the shapes, just pay attention to the new outline the brush strokes are creating.

Once brush strokes have been added to one half of the character select them all and go to Object > Expand Appearance to convert the strokes into solid shapes.

Copy and Paste the series of strokes then go to Object > Transform > Reflect to mirror them on the opposite side. Add a random colour fill to make it easy to see any overlaps, particularly on the top of the head.

Starting with an arm, select all the brush strokes along with the main arm shape and merge them together with the Pathfinder palette.

Repeat the process on the second arm, then replace the fill/stroke to white/black and send the arms to the bottom of the stack so they don’t overlap the body.

Select the body shape along with all the remaining brush strokes and merge them together. Replace the fill and stroke and adjust the stacking order so the facial features are visible again.

The series of brush strokes around the character gives him a loveable furriness!

Use more brush strokes to surround the facial outline and to add a belly outline. The strokes around the face should be directed inwards as opposed to outwards like the main body shapes.

Expand and blend the facial outline stroke together but this time use the Subtract option from the Pathfinder to clip out the outline from the facial outline shape. Increase the size of the face if necessary.

Expand and merge the belly outline shapes then use the Direct Selection tool to delete out all the points along the lower edge to leave a single line.

The character linework is now complete and is ready for an injection of colour to bring him to life.

Replace the white fills with a subtle blue/grey, then add a 3pt blue/grey stroke. Align the stroke to the Outside using the icons in the Stroke palette.

Fill the facial area with a slightly lighter blue tone and add the 3pt stroke, this time aligned to the inside.

Use these same colours to fill the hands and feet. These fills help inject some life to the character but it still looks a little flat.

Open the Appearance palette and select the Add New Stroke option to the body and arm shapes.

Adjust this fill to a light blue with the settings of 11pt in size aligned to the inside. Add the same fill to the facial outline, but aligned to the outside.

Tone down the impact of the eyes/mouth fills by making them a 90% black then add a couple of blue/grey strokes to the outside to help define them.

Draw a background for the Yeti and fill it with a complementing gradient to finish off the character design.

Add a simple radial gradient fill to a circle then squash it into a flat oval.

Position these shapes underneath the Yeti’s feet to add a touch of shading to help ground the character.

This leaves our cool vector Yeti character complete! Group together all the shapes that make up the figure so it’s ready for use as a mascot for your product or website.

Download the source file

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The design we’re creating today features a range of sharp vector shard shapes each with a vibrant mix of colours. These colours interact with the help of blending modes to create an intricate piece of digital art.

View the abstract shards poster design

Open up Illustrator and use the Pen tool to create a random triangular shape with three clicks. Give this shape a gradient fill with three colour swatches. Here I’m using white, a rich mid-blue and a dark blue.

Use the Gradient tool to adjust the angle of the gradient flow by clicking and dragging across the shape in a random direction.

Repeat these two steps to create variously sized triangular shapes across the document, each with a unique gradient angle.

Add shapes of various sizes to cover as much of the document area as possible. Don’t worry about overlapping shapes, when the blending mode is added these overlaps will create cool effects.

Continue adding triangular shapes to completely fill the document artboard. Make sure the gradient angle is changed for each shape.

Once the document is completely filled with shapes, drag a selection across the whole artboard to select all the elements.

Change the blending mode of these shapes to Hard Light to allow the gradient overlays to interact and intensify the colours.

The blending mode effect really adds to the design, allowing transparency to create an intricate design where all the overlapping shapes are visible.

Select all the elements once again then go to Effect > Stylize > Inner Glow. Alter the settings to Hard Light, White, 30% Opacity and 5mm Blur. Hit OK and wait for the effect to process on each element. This Inner Glow effect simply adds more vibrant tones to the design and brightens up each shape’s edges.

The vector stage of the design is now complete, but let’s finish it off with some subtle textures. Paste the graphic into a high res Photoshop poster document.

Open up a Stained Paper texture and paste it on a new layer above the design. Remove the yellow tint by desaturating the image then change the blending mode to Color Burn.

The grainy texture of the paper will be combined with the sharp vector shapes to give the design a more tactile feel. Reduce the opacity of the texture layer to adjust the impact of the grain.

Press CMD+A to Select All, then right click and Transform Selection. Minus 100px from the overall selection dimensions then press CMD+Shift+I to invert the selection. This leaves a 50px border selection around the edges of the document.

Activate the paper texture layer and Copy/Paste the selection onto a new layer. Change this layer’s blending mode to Color Burn to create a cool border effect to frame the design.

This leaves our cool abstract shard design complete! The overall process was pretty simple seeing as the Hard Light blending mode did most of the job. It’s just a case of taking the time to initially build up the layers of elements and manually.

Download the source file

The Flaming Lips by Stewart Scott-Curran

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Despite being an extremely popular subject it’s pretty difficult finding guides or tutorials that actually explain the process in detail. There’s stacks of ‘speed painting’ videos you can watch in awe, but they don’t really offer any tips or advice. There’s also plenty of design process explanations, but most seem to be aimed at advanced artists and often resemble the image above, where the design goes from a rough sketch to the completed piece in just a couple of steps! Thankfully there’s a small bunch of tutorials that explain the basics and provide useful information such as brush settings and sensitivity levels. The best of which are featured below:

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This style of embossed text is similar to old pewter badges and emblems, which makes it perfect for any kind of old-world medieval design. In Photoshop the effect is created just using the Bevel & Emboss and Satin features, but we’ll be creating this exact design as part of the complete tutorial.

Open up Photoshop and create a document with a black background. Enter your wording of choice using a suitable font. Here I’m going with the old-world theme with the cool free font named Sorts Mill Goudy.

Double click the text layer in the layers palette to open up the Layer Style window. The main metal effect is created using the Bevel & Emboss feature. Change the Technique to Chisel Hard to begin.

Adjust the sliders for the Size and Depth to max out the bevel effect. The actual figures required will depend on the size of your document, but make adjustments while the Preview option is checked. Reduce the highlights and shadows at the bottom of the window to 60-80% opacity.

The effect looks somewhat realistic with just a Bevel & Emboss effect, but an addition of a Satin overlay really helps add extra realism with more highlights/shadows. Change the colour to a dark grey then adjust the angle to 27 degrees. Move the Distance and Size sliders to 12px and 24px, then change the Contour preset to the thumbnail with two peaks. Head back to the Opacity slider to tone down the effect until it blends nicely, 60% should do!

That’s the basic pewter style metal text effect complete. This tutorial would be a little short if I stopped here, so let’s finish off the overall design with some cool textures and lighting effects.

Open up a subtle grunge texture from LostandTaken.com and paste it into the document. Press CMD+I to invert the image then reduce the opacity to 70%.

On a new layer dab a spot of light blue using a large soft brush. Change this layer’s blending mode to Overlay and set the opacity to 50%.

Repeat the process, but with a darker blue and a white spot on two more layers. Change these layers to Soft Light at 50% and 100% respectively.

CMD-Click the thumbnail of the original text layer to load its selection, then fill this selection with black on a new layer.

Press CMD+T to Transform and squash the black filled text from the top until it appears reflected on the underside of the metal text. Right click and select Perspective then pull out a side handle to flare out the shape.

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and give the black text layer blurring of 10px to give the impression of a shadow.

Make any final alignments and adjustments to the shadow then drop its opacity to around 50%.

Elsewhere on the document add a spot of white using a small soft brush, then transform and squash the shape down to just 1px in height.

Hold ALT and press the up cursor key to make a copy, then CMD+T and rotate by 90 degrees.

Finish off this little specular highlight flare with another small white spot in the centre and merge all the layers together.

Rotate and position the highlight over the text to finish off the shiny pewter style metal text effect.

Download the source file

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