Design Tutorial 6 – Vector Zombie
Posted by ScotSpellman on Nov 2, 2011 in Diving Into Design | 0 comments
For my sixth tutorial, I wanted to work on some vector character concepts. Like characters you would see in comics or video games. While checking out vectorized character tutorials, I stumbled across this gem. I really liked the finished product so wanted to give it a try.
Holy crap, I had no clue how much effort and detail is put into making these characters. Granite I’m still perfecting the tools in Illustrator, so a professional would have probably finished this tutorial in half the time, but man this guy took forever. I probably have an easy 40+ hours into it, 1 hour here, 1 hour there etc. And I didn’t even do the blood pool effect part! I love the finished product, but man it sure gave me a lot of respect for vector artists out there.
The tutorial starts with a pencil sketch that is provided. I started outlining the parts and got most of it done, then my friend at work, Travis, a really good designer and artist (http://www.travisdahl.com) was helping me out and I ended up having to retrace the entire thing. One thing to remember is you want to always work all the way out to in. So background first, in this case it was the outline of my zombie character and then work on all the little features. I guess is pretty common in art, I should have taken more art classes in school, lol. At the point when I finished the outline, I had a good 4 hours into it already because I had to retrace a bunch of stuff. Pen tool FTW! I used the pen tool more on this tutorial than I ever have, really getting good with that guy now.
Another thing I liked about this tutorial is the shading aspect. I’ve never really dealt with shading before, especially on a complex vector zombie, but glad that this tutorial made me do it. Creating the shade was challenging at first, but then got a little easier. It’s all about dealing with masks and Gaussian blur to make sure the lines aren’t too sharp.
Overall, this has been my favorite tutorial to date. I want to start sketching out some of my own characters now and vectorize them 
. I finished the zombie right before Halloween, perfect timing for my new facebook profile pic, lol.
Here is the finished product: 
Download Scot’s AI source file: VectorZombie.ai
View the tutorial here: http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/character-design/how-to-create-a-stinking-zombie-flesh-eater-in-illustrator/
Thumbnail: http://www.scotspellman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Vector-Zombie.jpg