DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION FOR BEGINNERS

In this first module, you are going to look at the initial steps involved in starting and finishing a digital illustration. This will involve a basic understanding of Adobe Illustrator plus the other tools you will need to get started.

Coming up with ideas can be the hardest part of illustration and design. In the module, we will look at how you can find inspiration for ideas and what you can do to capture inspirational thoughts and images to help you.

Sketching out your ideas involves you working out what it is you are wanting to illustrate. We will have one of two options for this module. You might already have an idea of an illustration you want to sketch, or we can give you a subject to help you get started. Once you have the illustration idea, we will then look at how this should be sketched first.

Now that you have your illustration idea and have decided exactly what should be included (using the reference material you have gathered from module 3) we will now start to build and complete your sketch in pencil.

It’s now time to scan your finished sketch and start illustrating it. First, you will need to know how to set up your document in Adobe Illustrator and this is what we are going to cover in this module.

With your scanned sketch imported into your new document, we are now ready to start illustrating, building shapes and adding lines. Understanding some of the basic tools in Illustrator will be covered in the module and tutorials.

You have finished outlining and shaping your illustration and we are ready to start adding colour. We will also look at how to add gradients, shadows, shading, and textures

Once you have completed the illustration you will want to know how to save it and export it in different formats depending on how you want to use or do with your new illustration.