Create Simple Flat Vector Characters

1. Intro: welcome to how to create simple, flat characters in Adobe Illustrator Hi, My name is John Lamb and I'm a game artist from London. In this class will learn how to create three simple, flat characters in Adobe Illustrator, starting with some simple basic shapes I'll take you through. Allow the tools and skills necessary for the project, including modifying shapes and simple drawing. By the end of the training, you'll have learned how to create three different flat characters off different body types that you can use in your own projects and designs. This'll Class is perfect for designers, illustrates is and anyone else looking to have some fun creating some simple, flat characters. So sign up using the link below and let's get started. 2. 1. Creating the Head: hi, everyone, and welcome back to the flat vector character class. In this lesson, we're going to learn how to create our character, starting with how to make the head. Now, before we begin to draw our character, we want to keep in mind what sort of character we want to create. What sorts of body type, male or female, young or old skin color, etcetera. Different characters may require different creative approaches, so the aim at the end of these lessons is to learn how to create these three distinctly different body types. So let's get started by creating a new document to go to file on new. I usually like to use a screen resolution like 10 80 by 7 20 but you can use whichever dimensions you prefer create. And next we want to set the color to use for the skin tone of my character. So let's go over here. First of all, now we want to remove the black from a color from the strokes that's just click to none. And then, for our color, let's go ahead and double click on the field. Here on, you can choose whichever sort of skin turn for the character you want to create, so let's go ahead on or if you already know what color you want to use. So let's go ahead and input a color here like so and then click. OK, but feel free to use whichever sort of color you want. And then one of the easiest and quickest ways to creating a symbol for that character is by using simple geometric forms. And we can access most of these shapes from the button over here. The rectangle tour. Now what you need to do is you need to go ahead and select this tour. If you just click, you can make a square or rectangle like so by clicking, dragging on the board. If you want to go ahead and select more shapes, click and hold the rectangle tour button here, and that will bring up some new options to choose from. So let's go ahead on Choose the rounded Rectangle tour for now, as this is what will be using for the majority of this course on, the easiest way to use this tool again is the sympathy click and drag, like so now, in order to control the amount of curve you have on the corners here. All you have to do is click and drag with a tool so that you can see the outline of the shape on before you let go off the mouse button. Just simply press the up key to make the corners rounder or the down arrow key to make the corners a little bit sharper like so, and you can see at the on the bottom right hand corner off our shape. The R is increasing in value to represent how curved the roundness of the corners are or decreasing in value. Awesome so you can just release the button to create your shape. So now we're just going to start off with a simple right round rectangle. So let's go ahead and draw a simple rectangle for the head, and then this draw another smaller one for the year. I'm just going to select the selection tool or press V on the keyboard on. You can go ahead on copy this year, so copy on, then pace to control sea to copy control V to Paste, which is going to place these ears on our head like so now what I like to do is I like to use the alignment tours so you can find the alignment tool here. And once I select both of these ears here, I can make sure that the vertically lines by clicking this also, you want to make sure that you're not aligned to the art boards. You want to align it to this selection. Certify, just quickly. Grab this out here like soc can see. So if I click aligned to, you can select Alliance selection or lyinto art boards. If you line it to the art board, it will center it to this. Whites are bored here, but I just want to line it to while I've been selecting. So that's click Alliance. You selection vertically aligned like so and then what you can do from here is you can group these two years by pressing control and G on the keyboard. And then let's move this to our head. Like so and then from here, you can make sure that they're also line to the center by selecting everything here by clicking and dragging with the mouse and then pressing the horizontal alliance center bottom like so just to make sure that everything is lined to the center, just going to click and drag this back into the toolbar like so awesome. Next thing you want to do is be once you create the eyes. Now let's do this by using the Ellipse store, so that's Click and hold on the rounded rectangle tool button here and select the lips still. And now let's go ahead and zoom into our face it by pressing control on the plus key on the keyboard. So just do that a few times so we can zoom in on the face. I'm just going to go ahead on draw our first I So again, by clicking and dragging like so on release. Once you're happy with the overall size and shape of the I. Now, we also wants to change the color, so making sure that the shape is still selected. Let's go ahead and go into the color box here, double click. Let's go ahead and choose a suitable color for the eye so you can go ahead and select a color here. Or, if you already know the number for your color, you can go ahead and input that I'm just going to import the color for my I like So click OK. Once you've got that color and you'll see straightaway, the color of the shape has changed. Now, using the selection tool again, make sure that the ice selected control see to copy control V to paste. And now we just want it. Place our eyes where you want them on the face. On this exactly the same thing as what we did with the ears were just goingto make sure that these are aligned properly. Group them on, then select everything and then use the horizontal line sent it'll to make sure that it is all centered. Now you'll just rearrange these like so you'll see. Now if I select everything here and I click the horizontal alliance sent, it'll everything now snaps into place. Awesome. Just going to move these down a little bit. So cool. Remember, this only works for things that are perfectly symmetrical, so you can see here we've got to to is to eyes on. Obviously, our face is symmetrical drop. So that's why the alignment tool works. Now let's go ahead and select the pencil here, which is P on the keyboard, and we're just going to use this tool to draw the eyebrows. So I'm just going toe zoom into the face here a little bit more so we can see what we're doing. Now let's change the fill icon here and stop this Teoh. So you see, I had the face selected, so make sure you don't have any off your your shape selected when you do this, I'm just going to change the specter of Phil. So using the selection tool, click out that I want to change this into a stroke. I want to choose the right color. So if if you click on the eyes here, you see that I've changed the color of the color of the three. The filled to the ice. I'm just going to stop this back into a stroke, going to use the pencil here. I'm just going to click to create one point on. Now I'm going Teoh click and drag to create our second point there. When you drag with the pencil, you'll see that I'm creating these handles here, which can curve our stroke like so. So once I've released it, you'll see. Now that I've created an eyebrow, I'm just going to click or press escape on the keyboard to make sure that we're out of that tour. Use the selection tool again now over the top here. If I select the this stroke over to the top here, you'll see that we have our stroke options. So let's click on stroke to open up our stroke panel, and you can change the way that the line behaves, such as giving its rounded ends. So around it kept. If I zoom into, he stroke here and make this stroke a little bit bigger so you can see now. Previously, it was just a but cap, which is a straight straight end, But I can round that up like so. And just like what you saw me do here, you can also make the stroke weight thinner or thicker, like so we can also change the shape of the line by clicking on the profile says you can experiment with all these different types of lines. I'm just going to choose this profile here for now, creates our eyebrow shape. Awesome. Let's go ahead and click Calvert. I'm just gonna zoom out so we can see our whole face again. You can just sort of just the line like so I just want to copy this so copied control, See, and you can also copy and paste this into place by pressing control Shift and V on that will copy any shape or any line into the exact same place as the previous shape. So once you've done that, I'm just going to right click on the line. I'm going to go to transform. Just go to transform and you want to select, reflects and move over here so you can see so right click on the line, transform and select Reflect, and you want to select vertical click. OK, you'll see now that is swapped the line. But it's also swapped the line on this slide as well. So from top to bottom, so we can change that by going to stroke on. Then we can sip, used to flip across button here like so awesome and then because both the eyebrows are symmetrical. Weaken. Go ahead on group thes and let's align everything to the center like so excellent. So now that we have the general shape of the head, the ears and the eyes in the next lesson will go through how to create the hair on the mouth off our character. I see well, there 3. 2. Creating the Hair & Face: hi, everyone, and welcome back to the vector character class. So now that we have the head of our character next we want to create the hair. Let's go ahead and select the rounded rectangle tool again. And let's draw a shape over across the top of our heads, like so excellent. Now we want to change this back into a field so you can swap the stroke for a fill. Like so, she's going to use the selection tool on Just try and center it up on the top of my head. So now we want to send us to the backs of right. Click on that click on a range on. We want to select center back, so just move this year so you can see right click. Arrange on centre back, and that will send this shape behind our head. Next, who wants to create some hair, which is in front of the heads? So let's go back into our rounded rectangle toe on just going to draw out a new shape like so on. Next, using the selection tool, you can go ahead and place that in front like so Now let's go ahead and adjust these shapes . I'm just going to move this down a little bit. I'm just going to make this slightly bigger, using the selection tool like so, and you'll notice that we've got these white little little dots here. And if we go ahead and click on them, you can use these to make up the corners rounder or sharper by clicking and dragging on it . Let's go ahead and make this as around this possible on for the front of our We want to create some highlights, so let's go ahead on Choose a slightly lighter color. Then what we had for this here so you can go ahead and click on that used the rounded rectangle tool again. I'm just going to click and draw out another shape on top of my hair, like so on you selection tool to move this its place, and you can go ahead and make one final highlights. Let's go ahead. Make one up here. I'm just going to use the I drop it'll to then select the white of the background to make this shape white on. I'm going to use the lips tool to make a circle, make a small little circle like so I knew the selection tool here. So the move these shapes into place. Awesome. Now next, what we're going to do is we're going to group these objects up. So let's go ahead and select all of these groups by pressing shift on the keyboard and then just clicking on the shapes, impressing control on G on the keyboard to group them. Send every time we select, these shapes will select all of them all at once. Cool on. I'm just going to go ahead and make one last remanded rectangle tool just to go across here and then using the selection tool, I'm going to send us to the back like so on. Let's go ahead and stick both of these shapes and turn this slightly like so, just rotating it ever so slightly. Just a little bit of character to the head, some slight adjustments to the size. Awesome. Now, next to add a little bit of final touches to our head, let's go ahead and create another rectangle tour just going to use to these one over here and just sort of giving it like, So let's move this down slightly so and I'm going to copy and paste another one, and we take this place this year. Awesome. So now we have the hair for character. Next, we want to create the mouth. So the first shape you will use for this is Theo Lips Store. So let's go ahead and select the Ellipse stool again. We just want half the circle, so that's going ahead and create a circles just bearing in mind how big you want your mouth to be. So you'll just be looking at half this circle. Then we want to use the director selection tool here or a on the keyboard. If we zoom in, tow our shape, you can see we've got these anchor points here so we can go ahead and select one of these anchor points, which is the top one, and then hit delete on the keyboard to delete that anchor point. And now we just want to seal up this whole here that we've created and shaped by using the pencil. So clicking on the anchor point with pencil and then clicking on the second anchor point here, two sealed out. It was him. So now we've got what mouth here next we want to create the teeth. So again, clicking on the Ellipse tour here, we want to create a sort of long circle here, pressed by on the keyboard to select the white off our background. I'm just going to line these to the center like so and then I'm going to select our mouth control, see to copy control shift V two paces in place, and I'm going to select this mouth shape plus the circle shape. And then, using the Pathfinder tour here, went to click on that. And you want to find the Intersect button here, and when you click on this, you'll see that we're only We're only left with the shape in between the mouth like so let's go ahead and press spy on the keyboard and then re color that What's next? We want to draw the tongue so that's used the lips tool again and again, overlapping the mouth like so Andi again, we want to go ahead, use the alliance will to make this all it's all centered, and now we want to do exactly the same thing. So we wanted to do dictate our mouth shape, control shift control seat, copy Control shift V to paste in place and in selecting both these shapes again. So 12 going to go to back to the path, find it all on, then click on Intersect to create, to cut out the excess shapes that we don't want. So that's just left with the tongue here and now. All we have to do here is select a suitable color for our ton. Like so awesome. So now we have our mouth here the next. The last thing that I want to do is I want to select the mouth shape. You can use the direct selection tool to bring up these two small, round white buttons here so you can see them here. I want to round off the mouth a little bit. So click and drag not too far along, otherwise will overlap the teeth, but just enough to make all mouth route nice and rounds awesome. So one final check to make sure that everything is aligned to the center, going to highlight everything. Press control G to group everything together, and now you can place on mouth onto our character like so you can also sort of slightly tilt on mouth It's a lot of character to our face. Awesome. So there you have it. Our first head for our flat vector character in the next lesson will go through how to create a medium sized body, see, will there? 4. 3. Create a Medium Body: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the flat Victor character class. In this lesson, we're going to learn how to create a medium sized body for our character. All right, now that we have the head of our character completed, let's go ahead and highlight the whole head and copy and paste this three times so that we have three heads prepared for our three different body types. I'm just going to go ahead and place these two extra heads outside of our art board, like so. Then we can come back to these later on. Excellent. Now, before we get started with the body, let's create a simple group of colors for us to pick from and to keep our characters consistent. So I'm just going to use the tangle tool here, and I'm just going to create some squares. Six. Create a perfect square press and hold the shift key on the keyboard while sure, creating it like so and you can create a perfect square. So let's go ahead and copy this on this paste this five times so that we've got five squares like so and I'm just going to use the alignment or here so that's highlight everything and make sure that everything is aligned on equal Awesome. Now let's go ahead and make sure that the first box the first box is selected and we just get used. The I drop it all here or press I on the keyboard on, we're going to select the color that we used for the skin like So now our first box is exactly the same color as the skin that the color we used for the head. Now for the other colors, we can use this color as a base and gradually make it darker as we go along. So let's go ahead and select this, uh, this square here and you can either select all of the squares and using the eyedropper select the same color. We're just going to go into the second square on select a darker color, like so on each time you go along. In fact, let's go ahead and select a lot of the squares, and then each time you go along, you can make it slightly darker on a slightly darker and so on until you get to the last. Great Now, in fact, for the last square, we want to use. We want to make this into ah highlights square, so that's select our lightest color. And instead of going darker, we want to go lighter like so excellent. So whatever shit we met, we now make. We can use the eyedropper tool and select these colors easily whenever we want. Just remember to select this shape that you want colors before using the I drop it all to select the color like so excellent. Now it's just to get out of that. Just click anywhere on the art board. I'm just going to select the skin color so that we can draw out our neck. So let's start by clicking and dragging to draw out a neck like so. And now I'm just going to copy this neck on control Shift V to paste this into place. I'm just going to move it up to create our shadow I on the keyboard to select our shadow color and now just can't respect both shapes. Right click Arrange center back and we have our neck. It's just moving this into place accident. Now let's just go back to the rounded rectangle tool again, and now we conjoined the rest of our body. So starting with the chest, I'm just going to draw out a rounded rectangle tool for the chest. Here, switch back to our skin color. She's going to move this around into the right place, and now that's draw the rest off the torso like so cool. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to select all of these shapes here and used the online to sent it'll to make sure everything is centered. Excellent. From here, we can create some details to help sell the torso using the path by nettles. So first up, let's give our character some underwear said to do this, that's copy and paste this into place like so and now what we're going to do is you're going to use a rectangle tool, and we're going to cover the area off this shape that we weren't removed. So let's just go ahead and cover this like so So we're just aiming tohave. This area here for our underwear said. Now that's select both these shapes here and let's select the Pathfinder tour on. We went to select minus front, and this will remove that shape, and we're left with underwear shape and all that's left to do is press spy on the keyboard to select White off our our board. Excellent. Now let's add some shadow for our chest. So again, just duplicate this chest by pressing control, see, and then control shift V to paste into place. And now let's go ahead and slipped a shallow color. And now that's press control. Shift V again to paste are chest again. Move this slightly up like so and now that select both of those shapes and again pressing the minus front button to remove that. All that's left is the shape off the shutter for chest. Awesome. Now let's go ahead and zoom in here. Do you create some nipples for our chest? Let's go and select the Ellipse talk. I'm just going to go on slate a darker color here for the details and draw one nipple here like so on control. See, to copy control Shift V to paste it into place. Just going to move this long so we've got two nipples here. I'm just going to group. Those nipples are controlled G to group, and now let's go ahead and make sure that these nipples aligns Teoh the center by clicking our horizontal lineman button on all that's left to do here for our torso. Let's create a small little highlight for a chest and then selecting the highlights color. Excellent. Now let's draw some legs. I'm going to zoom out here, and in fact, if we move this character out off the art board so we can see our underwear, let's go ahead and select our colors as well, so you can. Easily, he's easily slipped them next to our character. So I want to select our normal skin color and just get to draw out the fi for a character here. And then we're going to draw out the shin so the show is going to be slightly smaller than the thigh. What I'm going to do is I'm going to select our shin and make this a darker color and that send this to the back. I'm going to select both of these shapes here. On what a line the sides off our leg said it straight. Now to do this or we have to do is slip both objects and click on the horizontal line to the left to line. It's the left. Or if you want to sit Linus to the rights where you can click horizontal lines of the right , just choose which side you want your shin to be placed on. And now let's use the Ellipse tour to draw outfit. So let's create a circle for a foot here. Like so, just going to delete the bottom anchor point using the direct selection tool. So direct selection tool slept the anchor point here. Press delete to create a semi circle press P button on the keyboard, select our pencil and connect the dots. Excellent. Now using our direct selection tool, I'm just going to use these white circles here to curve our foot just around the corners. Now all that's left to do is to move this foot into place like so excellent. Let's choose a darker color for our foot just to add a little bit of form to our leg. Now we can leave the leg like this and then just sort of duplicates two legs. Let's go ahead and arrange this to the back, or we can give our character a stance, so let's go ahead and select both of these leg shapes, press control G on the keyboard to group these. I'm just going to move this slightly like so and then moved to for long. Cool. Now you can. All that's left to do here is to select the leg. Let's make our leg a little bit longer. Press control. G to group these these legs together these shapes. And then I'm going to press control, see, and to copy that into place bright click our leg and let's go to transform, reflect and reflect vertical to make the opposite leg. Excellent. And now let's send this to the back as well. So group these legs together on Let's centralize thes Excellent Cool. Now, once you're happy with the leg or we have to do now is create the arms. We can do this simply by using the pencil here, making sure that the Phil is selected as a stroke. Like so and then what we want to do is you want to draw a line from the shoulder and then another point for the wrist, and then just click and drag once you've drawn the point for the risk to create a curve for arm, just like when we created the eyebrows. Then once we're happy with the overall shape of arm, just press escape on the keyboards, and what we want to do here is we want to adjust the size of our armed by going into the stroke options here and then making the weight off our stroke a bit larger. Let's make us a little bit thicker or our character. And now this. Go ahead and put the cap as around cap. Now that's place our shoulder into a suitable position, like so Onda. We can also use the arrow keys and our keyboards to move our shape by small little increments. I'm just going to send this to the back and next, Who wants to create the hand? So just zooming in here using the rounded rectangle tool again, we want to make sure that we've changed it from a stroke to a film, and we just want to create a shape for the part like so and now just draw a few fingers like so. So just one thing to hear on the fact I'm just going to copy this finger and paste. This just moved thes fingers along slightly slightly lower. So we've got it. Shape for a hand, Make this a little bit bigger and also again to paste one more finger for our thumb. Like so, in fact, for the thumb. Let's choose a slightly darker color on Move this to the back. So right click on the thumb, arrange and center back. Excellent. Now I'm just going toe group A with these shapes together and move this into the correct place for our hand. Just looking at our character here. You can see that arm is a little bit too long. So if you want to make adjustments to our arm, just simply use the direct selection tool, select the anchor point and then just move it up and around like so and then using the normal selection tool again. But our hand into place Awesome. Now let's go ahead and group arm and our hands by pressing control G on the keyboard and then send this back to the back. We're going to duplicate this arm, right click transform, reflects vertical and then move this into place. Aziz. Well, she's going to send this to the back, and lastly, we can also slipped both of these arms. Make sure that it is sensitive group those armed together slicked everything and then center aligned. These you can see one side center line. These our highlight here has also moved to the center, so we don't want that to happen. You can move this back into place and group this along with our chest. Like so cool. We can also make one more highlight or are fine. Excellent. And there we have it, a medium sized flat vector character. And the next lesson we'll learn how to draw a thin victor character. See you all there. 5. 4. Create a Slim Body: hi, everyone, and welcome back to the flat vector character class. In this lesson, we're going to learn how to create a thin sized body for our character. So to start creating are thin character. Let's grab our second head here. I'm just going to move this close to our first character for reference and then using these selection tool, I'm just going to make this a little bit thinner, like so just to create the appearance off a thinner face for often character they're creating. The rest of the body is quite similar to the medium sized body. So let's start off by creating the neck by using the rounded rectangle tool like so on. Then we're going to move this behind our heads on selecting a dark color for our excellent . Now, the next thing we want to do is you want to create these shoulders for character, so let's go ahead and do that on move this into the center, and then the rest of it also like so cool now for the chest. We can actually grab the chest of our medium size by the year, so I'm just going to copy that and paste this next to our thin character. I'm just going to resize it slightly to make it a little bit smaller, to fit off in character and then moving into position, like so let's make our shoulders a little bit bigger and ran off the cornice accident. Now to draw the rest off the torso. Let's go ahead and create some abs, so let's go ahead and create a shape for APS here and select a lighter shade here. Like that on again. We want to create the underwear for a character as well. In fact, this shape here is a little bit too, too thick for thin characters on risk cancer. Make our tourists a little bit thinner like so. Now, in order to resize these rectangle, these rounded rectangular shapes Sometimes you have toe make the corners a little bit less round in order to resize them. And then once you're happy with the size off the rectangle, you can then go ahead and round off the corners again except cool. Now let's go ahead and create the underwear, so I'm just going to copy the torso here, control C control Shift V to create that or so and now it's cover the area that we don't want, expect both shapes and then using the Pathfinder tool minus front. And there we have our underwear. I'm just going to make underwear a little bit small. Lesser correct. So let's go ahead using the direct selection toe. I'm just selecting these small anchors here and now, using the eyedropper tool for the white color. Excellent. And then a belly button that's used the lips store here to create a belly button. Excellent. From here, let's go ahead and create the legs so exactly same ways recreated the legs for our medium character. Let's go ahead and use the random rectangle tool. Create the fi for character, and then we want to create the shin or character so our legs are going to be a little bit thinner than our previous character. Now, the good thing about having our previous characters, you can easily use the hydra little to select the colors that we want or to make things easier that scrub our color selection here, and then we can easily move back and forth from our colors. Let's align these left. It's going to be put off. I toothy front service like this properly right? Click, arrange and then bring to front. And now I'm just going Teoh, select our previous character and this one group, the Lake Group again. I just want to select the foot kiss. I'm going to duplicate this foot, and I'm going to make it a little bit smaller so that it suits thin character like so court . That's group the leg. Move this at an angle just like our previous character and what you're happy with, a angle that's goes in group that on. It's just this slightly range since the back, and now he wants to duplicate this leg. So do you get this leg transform, reflect and vertical on? Move this since place course now just going toe. Send these back again and just to make sure everything is aligns this, select everything here, go to the line and then horizontal line to center. So excellent. Now that's left. Now what's left is to create the arm. So exactly same. Where is how we create the arms for previous character? Let's go ahead and grab the pencil here. In fact, if we select the arm off our previous character, this will automatically select the same presets off this arm history, but the same color. It's turned into a stroke here. If you select the pencil, it will also create the same size stroke with the same size width off our arm. Here, let's go ahead and use this tool here. So that's used the pen Tal P on the keyboard to create an arm for our thin character. So right click or left click for the shoulder point and then click again for the risk point . Then we can use the direct selection tool to just accordingly, so we can also adjust the handle here as well so we can move the curve and change the way. There are arm sort of looks on our character, like so and now because I characters is a thin character. Let's go ahead and change the stroke here from 40 to something like that, say 35 a little bit thinner in our previous character. Just going to just the curve here and now that send this to back, see what it looks like cool looking, unlike in the look of this that's changed, but this slightly know it down like so again using the arrow keys on the keyboard. Just making sure that you've got the directs the selection tool here. Select the arm. Just use the arrow keys to move it up or down by small increments. And now I'm just going to group these arms so I can copy the hands here on use the same hand for often character. I'm just going to make this slightly smaller, a swell so that suits the size of our character like so cool. Now all that's left. Let's make this bigger. Actually, I think it looks a little bit better, Has a big hand. And now all we have to do is group this arm by pressing control G on the keyboard. Press control, see to copy on control shift V to paste it in place. Right. Click and transform reflect vertical. And now it can move off second dome into the correct position. Like so cool. That's group. Both of those arms select everything and, as usual, horizontal lines sensor to make sure everything is the lines and that send these arms to the back accident. Now all that's left is to create a small little highlight for locates. I'm just going to copy this highlight on Let's pace this into place and there we have it, a thin sized, flat victor character. In the next lesson, we'll learn how to draw a big Victor character. See you all there. 6. 5. Create a Big Body: hi, everyone, and welcome back to the flat vector character class. In this lesson, we're going to learn how to create the big size body for character. Now, for the final body type of character, he is going to be the biggest, so we need to reflect that in the size of his head. Let's go ahead and grab this face here moving into position, and we're going to use the selection tool here to make my head a little bit bigger. Like so on may be a little bit wider as well, Like so cool. Now moving on to the body off our character. Let's select the lips to all this time. We're just going to draw a perfect circle by holding shift key on the keyboard, and this will be the color for character. Let's move this into position. Use the eyedropper tool to select the color that you want, and now let's go ahead and create these shadow for our nick. So making a smaller circle here and selecting a shadow color. Let's go ahead and bring these colors closer so it's easier to access. And now let's slick both these circles, right click arrange center back so you can see. But we're doing Let's move these up a little bit, like so on this. Move our shadow up as well, making this circle a little bit smaller. So that fits behind our heads. And that's just thes to make it so that everything is centralized. Excellent. Next, we want to draw a big chest for our character. Then we can go ahead and select the chest that we had for our first character. Duplicate this, and this time let's make this a little bit bigger. Place this in tow place like so, and we can also you'll notice how that now that we've made the shape bigger, this shape behind has started to come out a little bit as well. Now, in order to rectify this or we need to do is select the shape I make this round again. Like so excellent. Let's bring this shape up a little bit and maybe let's bring this shadow in front. So let's bring this shadow in front for a split second. So that's above a chest, and now we can bring our head and arrange this back to front course. Um, now what we want to do is we want to create the stomach off our character so it knows to do this we have to do here is again. Draw another circle. Let's draw a bigger circle here to create the stomach. It's like the appropriate color. And let's send this to back so we can see what we're doing so we can move this up a little bit. I think this is a little bit too big, so let's make this slightly smaller, and we want to place this just below our chest, like so. And in fact, let's make this the color off the shadow. And now let's make a smaller circle. Make this the brighter color on. Let's put this somewhere up here a little bit bigger and send these both the back. And now, if we go ahead and align these to the center, you'll see that we've created a nice little sort of shadow or underbelly for our stomach. Cool. Now let's go ahead and create the belly button for this character's let's select the appropriate color. It's like the Ellipse Store and create a belly button Vince Place, and finally we want to create the underwear for character. Now, for a big character. It's a simpler is creating in the lips, toe another circle, sexing whites and then sending this see the back, put this into place. Maybe he needs to be a little bit bigger. And now we've got the underwear for our character. Let's make sure everything is aligned properly. Next, we want to give our characters some thick legs. The creation of legs is exactly same as what we've done before for previous characters, except they're going to be a lot bigger. So let's go ahead and create the legs here by using the rectangular. It'll be round, retaken saw, create some big fires here and select the correct color. And let's create some big shins here as well. Cool, Align these. We want to select the foot again. Select the foot. Do click this foot. We want to make this foot bigger just to help support the weight off our character. Maybe a little bit. Let's make this. It's a front and now select both these legs. Put this certain angle as you've done for the previous two characters, and send this to the back just to see what this looks like. Cool. Happy with this Once you're happy with shape of your leg, grab your leg on a duplicate. That transform reflects vertical. Andi. Send this to the other side. Right click. Arrange center back. Now I'm just going to slick both these legs group them said this symmetrical, and this way we can easily it line the objects to center. Excellent. Now we've got our body off our large character and the legs of our large character. The final thing that we need to do is the arms. Now we can easily draw out the arms again, or we can take the arms off our character here. So let's copy that on. Move this into place and we can increase the stroke size Off are like So let's make this arm size 55 and you can see the armed looks slightly awkward here so we can use the direct selection tour here. It's like these points and just the way that the art looks, that's bring this point, or this show the point. Here, bring this arm a little bit closer. Let's put this behind the shoulder point hand like so I'm just going to use this handle to make the cover of our arm a little bit more and bring this down. We can also copy one of our hands. Paste it. And this time we want to make this a little bit bigger. Excellent. And then, once you're happy with the way that your hands on your arm looks, we can select both of these group control. See to copy control shift V to paste right click transform reflect an insect vertical. Then we can move the second arm into place like so and then, as usual, both these arms group them service symmetrical. We can now make sure everything is aligned to the center next time. Now, if you wants to create a little bit more contrast for the character, we can actually change the color off arm. So selecting the arms here. So using the direct selection tool slick both arms, we can use the eyedropper tool to now select a darker color. Now, if you select the color like this, you'll notice that it becomes a fill instead of a stroke. So in order to change this back to a stroke, let's go back. Teoh the stroke button here. In fact, let's swap this into struck first and now in the stroke till here, we can increase the weights back to 55. And in fact, what will want to do here is will also wants to change the stroke into around its cap like so now. Right click. Arrange center back, and you might also want to change the color off the hands. So let's go ahead and select the hands. So I'm just going toe ungroomed this selection here just to make selecting the hands slightly easier on group. Everything. It's like both hands. It's the color that you want on. I'm just going to sell it. Use a direct selection tool to select the thumbs here and select a darker color for the thumbs. Excellent. And finally putting a highlight on the thigh. Just make this a little bit bigger. Cool. And there we have it, a big sized, flat vector character. In the next lesson, we'll learn how to create different color schemes for our different skin colors. See you all there 7. 6. Create Skin Color Schemes: hi, everyone, and welcome back to the flat vector character class and this lesson. We're going to learn how to create different color schemes for characters. Okay, now that we have our basic three different character types, the next thing we want to think about is how to customise them in order to create a wide variety of characters to use for your projects. So let's look at some different color schemes that we can use. So, taking our original color scheme, we construct all of the boxes here, copy them and then pasting them, he created Do pickup. We can now use these duplicate squares to create a different color scheme for characters, So let's go ahead and zoom in here so you can see our squares a little bit more clearly. So starting with the first color, which will act as the base or the base skin tone for color weaken. Select this square double click on the color box here and that. Select another color so you can either select a different type of color here or if you really know what sort of color you want to go for. You can input the number here or input the code here like so and then choosing a darker shade off that color as you move along, as we did previously. So select all of these colors here. Let's use the eyedropper tool. Teoh. Select that color, and now let's select a darker shade like so and then slate the next three and select a darker shade, continuously going darker. So the last two double click on the color square and use the final dark color. And for the final square want Teoh. Use that as our highlight square, so let's highlights. Let's use the idea authority. Teoh. Use the original color here and now that select a lighter color, and this will be our highlight for the character. Same thing is what we used for our chest here and the fight here, just as a little bit of shiny nous to the skin. Excellent. Now we want to apply these new colors, Teoh the new set of characters. So let's zoom out here and we want to set a love our characters here, like so making sure we select all of the shapes were going to press control, see to copy these characters and now control V to paste them on. What we're going to do now is going to use our new color scheme for these characters that bring this color scheme up here, going to zoom in on one of our characters. And now all we have to do is we use the direct selection tours to select the shapes off the character that we want colored. So just using a combination of this direct selection tool on the I drop, it'll to apply the new color schemes to our characters. Let's do this for our medium size character. First, it's using this as an example. So first I'm going to select the head on, then used the eyedropper tool to select the new skin type than your skin tone. Like so and you can. You can also use the direct selection tour to select multiple shapes by holding shift on the keyboard. So that's hold shift on the keyboard to select all off the shapes that we want colored in. So just we just want to select the shapes which have the same color at the moment, so that includes all these fingers here and also the neck here as well. So once you've collected all of the same colors, used the eyedropper tool to select the skin color that you want, like So now the reason why didn't selected the arms because the arms is actually a a stroke . So let's go ahead and slept the arms here. We can actually convert these armed into a shape. So let's select those arms here, go to object, expand and then select both Phil and stroke like so And it will actually turn these arms these strokes into a shape. And now, if we use the eyedropper tool canasta, that's the color that we want, like, so excellent. Now, another way of doing that is, if you want, if you still want to have the arms of stroke just so that we can easily edit the shape of our arms by using the direction, toe the direct selection tool and just moving the anchor points like so all we have to do from here is select the arms use the I drop. It'll select the color that we want, change the fill back into a stroke, like so and then using the stroke options here, we can change the weight back to the number that we wanted, so I think it was something like 35 and then selecting the arms again. We can then use the stroke options here to make sure the stroke is now rounded as around cap like so excellent. Now let's go ahead and change the colors for the rest of the body. So here we want to make sure that we select all these shadow colors so that select the shadow for our head or on our neck here, that shadow under our chest, the thumps and also the lecture. So all of these objects used the same color. We want to go down a shade so that select the next shade down, like so, using the eyedropper tool. And now you'll see that all of these shapes have changed color excellent. And now we want to do the same for the feet. So that's used the direct selection tool to select the feet holding shift to select the other foot and then selecting the darker shade like so and now we want to use the highlights so that select the highlights. Both highlights perspiring the keyboards and then stated the highlights color. Next, Ellen. Now, finally, the nipples It's like these nipples here on select the darkest color using the eyedropper tool. Cool. So that's how you create a new color scheme for your characters and also how to apply them to existing characters that you've created. So that's it for this lesson in the next listen will go through the conclusion of what we learned in the project. See you all that. 8. 7. Conclusion: So with that, we've come to the end off the flat vector character class. Now that you know the basics of creating different types of characters, try and experiment with different shapes and colors. You can use the basic characters here as a base on, maybe exaggerate them even more, make them even bigger or even thinner. Try different hairstyles and facial expressions and create a set using female characters. I hope you've learned a lot in this demo and that you've learned some new things in Adobe Illustrator that you can take to use in your own future projects and designs. Make sure to upload your project to the product gallery so that we can see your creations, and I'll see you next time for the next vector tutorial.