Design & Vectorize: Turn Your Drawing into a Transparent Sticker!

1. Introduction: Nothing makes me happier than seeing my illustration comes to life. From pins, to patches, hats to hoodies, I believe creativity, does not end on paper. Hey, my name is Alice. I'm an illustrator and also the creator of the brand, the Good Bunny club. Today, I'm excited to show you how I turn some sketches into a drawing, and then into an awesome transparent sticker. At the end of the class, you design a character on the sticker and have a polished vector file ready to send to a print shop. We'll go through the process together, from planning to execution, to prepping a file to print. Together, we'll brainstorm ideas, explore different design approaches, and revealed a technical steps when creating a sticker. Along the way, I'll also share my iPad Pro drawing techniques, Adobe Illustrator setups, and tips on how to make image trace our best friend. This class combines creative thinking and technical skills. Whether you're a beginner or a season designer. If you enjoy going beyond the page with your art, this class is for you. 2. Tools + Design: For this project, you'll need some paper and pencils for sketching your favorite digital drawing medium. I am using an iPad Pro, and the Procreate app. You can also use a tablet and Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator in order to factorize your file. Let's get started. What makes a good sticker? A sticker is usually quite small. Besides the art itself, having a unique shape and high contrast can also help to sticker to stand out. Well, circles, rectangles, and squares, maybe the most cost-effective to make, I usually prefer dicot for a custom shape. Of course, you can still incorporate geometric shape into your design. For example, in this design, I use the diamond shape for a base and layer it with a pair of scissors, then a skull. The diamond background helps contain and unifying the design. Without it, the element may appear scattered. Another option is to throw away the background and let the design speak for itself, which is especially effective when your sticker is a full body character. Since today I feel like drawing a character, let's go with this option. I'm going to draw my character from the Good Bunny club. If you don't know where to start, think of an emotion. If you want the viewer to feel happy, curious, inspired, or maybe a little confused and disturbed, then pick a few adjectives. They can go together or be completely irrelevant. I like things that are cute with a dark twist, so I chose a sweet, creepy and chill. Next, pick an animal as a starting point. A giraffe, a bear, a giraffe-bear. Think about the things it maybe doing, give them a prop or two. Lastly, the icing on the cake. Add some decorative elements such as patterns and shapes and there you have it. Here's my design, a cute bunny melting in the inside while chilling and eating it's own stuffing, because why not? Now it's your turn to create some sketches. I've made an info sheet to help you brainstorm ideas. You can find it at the bottom of this page, at the resource section. When you're done, upload your project to the project page and don't hesitate to ask for feedback or leave a comment in the community page as well. I'll see you in a bit. 3. Draw + Ink: We have some initial ideas. It's time to draw open Procreate on iPad Pro, create custom size, such a canvas to 2000 by 2000 pixel at 600 DPI. This will give us a physical size of about three by three inches. Take a picture of the sketch and inputted to the app. Lower the opacity, add a new layer and name it sketch. Trace over your design and adjust it accordingly. When you're done, turn off the photo layer. Let's see how we can take it to the next level by adding some clear element. A clear element means area on the Viner Sheet with no ink. It changes color and texture depending on the surface it is on. Given the sticker extra depth. For this project, I'm going to use three colors, only. Black, white, and clear. As you can see, this part will be black. Now, use a different color to mark the transparent areas. I am marking the fluffy stuff here and here because I want them to change color on different surfaces. That means the rest will be white. We have a plan, lets start inking, scale the sketch to fit the canvas. It may look a bit blurry, but that's okay. Turn opacity to around 25 percent, Then create a new layer, name it Black. This will be our ink player. I'm using a round brush with tipper ends, make sure the opacity is set to 100 percent. As you draw, keep in mind that an art work vectorized the best when has solid color and clean edges. Meaning that there will be no gradients or soft, fuzzy lines. But you can still create shading using lines or dots. My brush vary slightly in opacity depends on how hard I press. That's okay, I actually prefer it that way because it gives me a little bit more control, so just go over the light area a few times. Try your best to keep the lines as black as possible. For a smoother finish, increase the streamline setting, and keep inking. When you're done, you will have something like this. Now turn off the sketch layer and create new layer, name it background. Fill it with the color you're not using in your design. You can do that by picking the color here and drag it into the canvas. Then move the layer to the bottom, create another layer. Name it White. Put this between black and background so that white and fill in the white areas. You see here. The areas that are untouched will be transparent. You can change the background color to see how it will look in different setting. Now we have our finished design and that's export it, Turn off all the layers except black, you only needed to be black and white. Hit Share, export JPEG. I'd like to also keep a PSD file just in case. But this project, it is not necessary. Save your image to your device or a cloud and also share it with the class in the project section. 4. Vectorize: We're halfway through the project, let's put that on our computer and vectorize the artwork. Open Adobe Illustrator, hit create new, select print, letter size, CMYK, go to preference, unit, and change the general two inches strock two points and type two points. Now import your art work into the software, place it in the center and click Image trace. Here the settings I use as a starting point. From far away, it looks pretty good, let's take a closer look. You can alternate view between tracing result and outline will source image. As you can see, some details are missing. Now, I'll go to the path and adjust accordingly, the past slider controls how tight the curves fit. The higher it goes, the more anchor points it gets, if you go low, the path will be smoother, but also loser. Moving on to the corners, the corners slider controls how likely are sharp point will turn into a corner point. You can see it in action here. Then you can also adjust the threshold. The pixel lighter than a value will be converted to white and the rest alternative black. Remember, the circle is quite small, the trace does not have to be absolutely perfect. Zoom out and look at the trace as a home. When you are happy with the result, click expand, then select all and go to object on group, or press command shift G, then hit V to select and remove the background. Your artwork is now vectorized. 5. Print Setup: We now have a vectorized image is timed to find a print shop up to make our sticker. A good print shop will tell you how much it will cost according to size and quantity. It will also have a clear file formatting guide for you to follow. Each plays might have a slightly different requirement. Make sure to always check with the principle first, I'm using makesticker.com to print my stickers. Here's how I prepare my file. First, decide how big you want your sticker to be. Select "All" and change the size here. Then download the grid background from the resource section at the end of the page. Go back to Illustrator, make a new layer called clear background. Placed the grid there. Move this layer to the bottom and lock it. If you're familiar with Photoshop, you will know that this background indicates the area is empty. This is for you and the printers reference only. It should not be printed. Press "Me" and select the clear areas, delete them so the grid shows through. When clear stickers or printed, there's always a layer of white ink behind all colored areas. Most print shop will do it for you. But I like to set it up myself to prevent miscommunication. Duplicate the art layer, namely the top one black and the one below White hide the white layer. Click on the white part, go to select, Same, Fill color". Now otherwise she'd be selected. Hit "Delete", leaving the black part of the design only. Select all and press command "G" to group everything. Next, hide the black layer and reveal the white layer. Select all, pathfinder unite. By doing so, we're merging all the paths into one chain. Keep the "R" selected, go to color and change it back to white. Turned on a black layer again. You have your design and a layer of white behind all the inked area. You sticker is almost ready. Now we need to mark the cut lines so the shop knows exactly where and how to catch a sticker. Most places require the cut line to be at least one eighth of an inch away from the artwork. To do this, select the "Direct Selection" Tool or press A click the path at the outermost part of your design. Go to paths. "Offset paths", type in 0.125 inches, joins round, hit, "Okay". It should look like a giant blob keeping selected add a new layer name it cut line, moved a blob into this layer by dragging the dot and the layer panel. Keep the blob selected and change it into strokes. Color it 100 percent magenta, and give it a 0.5 thickness. Round cap and round corner. You may see some wandering strokes here and there. We only need the other line. What we can do is to isolate the path by double-clicking it. select "Everything." Then while pressing "Shift", click the outer path to deselect it and delete the rest of the shocks. Double-click again to exit. Finally, create a new layer name I. Place it below the cut line layer. Then drag both the black and white layer into it. You're then you have an art layer here, your cut line and I'll set a clear background for reference. All you need to do as the send it to a print shop and wait for the stickers to show up at your door steps. 6. Conclusion: To sum things up, remember that unique shapes and high contrast make a sticker standout. Use transparency to add depth. Solid colors and clean edges vectorize the best. Design your sticker in CMYK. Use image trace to vectorize the design. Setup a white layer behind all colored areas. Create cutline one-eighth of an inch or more away from the artwork. Always refer to the print shop set up guide. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you have learned something new. If you have been following this class, please upload your progress and the final design to the project page and leave a comment below. Also, you can check out the bottom of this page for more resources, such as the procreate brushes I have used, my favorite drawing tools, and also the info sheet. Lastly, please follow me on Skillshare and my Instagram at thegoodbunnyclub for more art and design. I'll see you next time.