Vector Inking a pencil sketch in Illustrator CS5

Just me doing the final vector inking for a pencil sketch so that it can be scaled up to any size for reproduction. Pulling line weights starts at 10:00. Sped up roughly 325% (had to squash it to 15 minutes to agree with Youtube but it took about 50 minutes). Original sketches by the incomparable Mike Larque. Illustrator CS5 and the new line weighting tool. Forgive the soundtrack - I just left it recording my system audio from iTunes ;)

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• adobe
• illustrator
• vector
• inking
• art
• comic
• character

[Jeeperuae]

We know you can do it, so there is no point of showing off! If you wanted to teach people how to do it, then you should explain, otherwise you're a show off....

[dizzidee]

@Jeeperuae Then I would have titled it "tutorial" :)

[dizzidee]

@j2cool2 I've never been great at manually drawing weighted strokes with illustrator - I always feel like my lines are too Jerky. Illustrator CS5 introduced a tool that lets you grab lines and manually yank their weights around in a smooth way, and that finally gives me the control that I wanted :)

[dizzidee]

I'll try to put together an actual tutorial with some narration rather than just this speedy working vid. The original piece was for a limited audience, and I tend to forget that anyone would actually come watch this outside it's original context :)

[StudioNFC]

This would be a lot more impressive if you actually explained shit in the video. 

[thenakedartist]

what do you mean using booleans?

[royalconcrete1]

enough of this...I'm going mountain biking...toodles

[royalconcrete1]

so booleans are actually the pathfinder tools...go figure

[royalconcrete1]

Can you begin to imagine how much time you would save me if you would do this video as a tuturial? I would love to learn booleans? Cutting those excess lines like you do ,would make me sooo happy. Please? Purdy Please?

[royalconcrete1]

I am soooo struggling with exactly what you showing....wish I knew what you were doing...But I am very glad to see what I want to do, can be done...thanks.

[kamenliter]

Never even realized that there was that line weight tool in CS5..very cool! I've always just done the freehand stroke weights or I draw a single weight line, than expand it, deleting points at either end, which results in something similar...but this is a pretty sweet new technique to use..and definitely quicker. Thanks for the video. Nice drawing (props to the penciller) and nice vector finish.