looks like a character/admin from powerpets

This could be easily animated. Very easily. Nice work, Liz.

and I have flash now tooooo! :D

...but I know even less about that program than I do Illustrator. ;^_^

HE JUST RUNS AROUND ON HIS HAMSTER WHEEL

newgrounds has a few realy awesome tutors liz :) and there if you want i can give you a few links in a note perhaps ? either way , keep up the great work ^_^

Well, you KNOW you can export those files as .fla's right? Just be sure to leave everything seperated and you can animate to your heart's content!

Also, this is awesome. Good to see more people enjoying Illustrator.

P.S. Live Trace and Live Paint are EFFIN' SWEET if you get a good ink scan.

I was thinking the same thing

I think it looks great. :3

Yay vectors! I love playing around in Illustrator. <3

ooo nice work. im just learning how to use vectorness at school in CS3...pen tool is not fun for me. XD
this is very loveleh as vector art. perhaps it can be another t-shirt logo~ :>

if yer wanting to ink in illustrator, use the paintbrush tool. it kicks the shit out of the pen tool and you have more control over how the lines look (specifically because of tablet pressure). :V I'd start with the 3pt brush first

still this kicks the shit out of my early illustrator attempts :P

my main problem with the brush tool is, even with pressure sensitivity on, it didn't seem like it gave me a lot of control over line thickness. if a line came out too thick or thin, I had to redraw it. The auto-smoothing also drive me nuts, but I can't find a way to turn that off (or at least lower the sensitivity). And is there a way to erase parts of a line without loosing the link thickness variation? I tried to use the eraser tool and it just turned my entire line one thickness. :(

I know this is me just trying to make Illustrator work like Photoshop. I just need to play with it more.

yeah it does take some time getting adjusted to the program, but after a while itll grow on you :P

In the "Brushes" tab you can double-click one of the brush icons to get to the settings. You can edit the the "Variation" slider (or the number if you want decimals) to change how thick/thin your lines start in comparison to the current diameter. The closer it is to the diameter, the thinner the line starts off. Me personally I only use 3pt Diameter with 3pt Variation.

There should be a small dialog box that allows you to change the weight of the highlighted line. In CS2 the box has 3 tabs and one of them is labeled stroke. You can enter different values to change the entire weight of the line. In my experience I usually always end up using decimal values. :V I haven't really found a way to edit individual anchor points, assuming that's even possible.

The auto-smoothing, well I don't think you can really turn that off, but from what I noticed the Zoom level tends to effect it. Drawing at high levels of zoom produces less smoother lines than at a low level of zoom, though that also equates to a longer stroke.

To be honest I don't really use the eraser tool much. What I tend to do is use the Direct Selection Tool and move around the anchor points (the small squares you see when you highlight a line) of the line till I get something I like. Sometimes I go back over a portion of a line with the paintbrush tool, usually starting at the anchor point closest to the end anchor point and draw a different end. You can also use the Scissors Tool to cut off an anchor point and separate your lines and modify them however. If all else fails I'll just do a new line. :P

This probably didn't help you at all so all else I can say is take your time when drawing your lines, going thick and thin whenever and don't rip off your head in frustration. Illustrator is a really annoying program to use when you first start, but after a while you'll get the hang of it.

Keep in mind that I'm using CS2 so I don't know if they changed anything about the interface or not. :X

aww! I love it... you look great

Illustrator is such a misleading and fickle program....But if you can figure it out it's somehow a god send.

!

It looks awesome ^^

It actually makes me want to see more screengrabs of your secondlife. Hope that's still possible!

Awesome ^^

I love your art. It makes me feel happy.

Pen tool no es tu amigo. ;.;

It hates me, too.

P.S. but the picture is awesome, regardless :D

That is awesome! It looks almost airbrushed form a distance. Sweet work.

Oooh, I'd love to buy a badge looking like that.

Well I do make digital badges which right now means Photoshop, but if you want me to give it a try in Illustrator I can do that instead. :)

Cool! I'll send you a note for details and reference info then.

Isn't CS4 spiffy? We're being taught on it in my grad work, and now that I'm adjusting to it, I freakin' love it haha. Very nice Illustrator work here ^^ And Illustrator isn't the easiest program to use in my opinion lol

It looks like Pop art

Oh wow! You look like a children's show character. ^^

Vector is very different from pixel, isn't it? The big advantage is that it can be scaled up and down easily without looking cubist. Andy Weir (who does Cheshire Crossing) uses it to form the parts he uses to compose his creation. If you're interested, he even included a how-to on his website.

There is a lot of Advantage to Vector, like McClaw pointed out. However, it behaves totaly differently. It's been forever since I picked up illustator (illustrator 10), but it can be very powerful. For your first play around with it, that's pretty damned impressive.

Just wait till you start playing with gradient meshes! *grin*

Ugh, gradient meshes....

awww! Well done!

Nice, it came out pretty good :D!
btw, did you use a tablet or just your mouse?

I used my tablet. I don't have my mouse hooked up to my mac right now, and it's just easier for me to do any type of drawing with a tablet anyway,

That's pretty kickass considering it's a beginning attempt. = )

My first couple of attempts... lets just say they were shoved in a wooden crate and locked away from human eyes ala "Raiders". o.O

Illustrator can be a beast to manage but I found it incredibly quick to pick up. Keep at it and you'll be doin' pictures as quickly as you do in Photoshop in no time. = )

You could use the pen tool in Illustrator to trace over lines to give them a very clean, sharp look... I'd say even better than SAI.

It just takes patience and practice =p

I know a little bit of Illustrator and Flash if you need assistence at all =p

Excellent art for your first work with Illustrator, Liz. Liz looks very cute and sweet. Awesome pose, colors and expression.

Hey! Not bad at ALL for a first attempt, seriously! I got your message about inking tips in Illustrator... and you're going to hate me, but I don't use the paintbrush tool AT ALL. Like, hardly ever ever. It doesn't work so well for me. I do all my inking and drawing with the pen tool... I'm so used to it that I love it, haha :D I know some folks have the patience for AI's paintbrush tool but I've never been able to get it to behave proper for me. So I just do all my vector work with the pen which allows me to get it as precise as I want.

My personal tip for anyone coming from Photoshop and wanting to learn Illustrator is... well, forget everything you know about Photoshop. Illustrator is a completely different animal and needs to be treated as such... each program has its strengths and weaknesses, and though Illustrator is less intuitive for a traditional artist.. after you get used to it and spend a few hours with it, you'll get the hang of it. Love comes after :)

damn you pen tool!!!!! lol

Ok, serious question now.... when you "ink" with the pen tool, do you draw one line and then apply a stroke, or do you draw one side of the inked line and then draw the inside? So, the line is a shape rather than one single stroked line?

Can't speak for Spunky, but when I use illustrator I always do the latter: use the pen tool to draw each side of the line individually.

Once you get the hang of some of the keyboard modifiers, and absorb the zen of the bezier curve, it becomes quite fast and easy to pound out exceptionally expressive and precise inks.

You do have to learn to concentrate less on the 'fillings' and more on the edges; vector drawing is all about edges. It also helps to have a plan before you lay down a line, as it tends to reward sketching a lot less than pixel-based programs.

Pretty much what Nicoya said... I treat the line as a shape, rather than a line. So I draw the "sides" of the line, turning it into a shape, as opposed to stroking the line. I DO use the stroke tool sometimes though, but it's on a case by case basis pending the look that I want. Nicoya's advice is very good!

It might not be what you usually do, but I like the look! Very interesting. ^_^

This is fantastic! She looks great, as usual. :)

Oh wow. That looks really cool! I wish you luck with learning all the tricks with using Illustrator.

I'm hoping so! Just need the fundage to afford a shirt stock...

I don't mind it if they have minimum orders. I mean, If I am forced to order 100 shirts, it's not like if I don't sell ot of them in one con they go bad. and the individual shirt cost goes down the more you order; I saw one place that I think had it down to like $5 a shirt if you ordered 150 or 200. True you'll make it back easy if you sell them at $20 a pop, but that's a LOT of cash to drop up front. A pre-order would help that, but I always get scared I'll settle on a design, offer a pre-order, and have 3 people buy in when I'd need 30 minimum.

because sushi is made of awesome

You are just soo cute

Darn it. I thought I commented on this already. D:

Excellent work Ms. Liz. Vectors are hard to get a hold of.

Illustrator fun! Good times ^.^

I just fadangled with it a bit ago and it's nice, but yeah, it seems to take forever.

Love it! :D

nice gradients

Is Cute ^^

This image is love.

I just came across your gallery today, and had a pang of nostalgia when I came across your Liz character. Is her style, like maybe her hair based on anything? Like maybe an old cartoon that I might have seen when growing up? I was thinking Littlest Pet Shop, but that's not it.

...Oh my god, I just realized what it is as I was typing this.
Have you ever seen Dragon Tales?

*chuckles* Annnyway, very nice art, and I look forward to seeing more.

Damn Liz! You can work the pen tool quite well! I use Illustrator everyday at my job, but I don't do anything like this.
As far as the program goes, just like with anything, practice makes perfect. The more you use it, the more you'll learn, and in turn, get faster at it too! ^^