Take FLAT illustrations to the Next level! with Adobe illustrator and Adobe Photoshop!

1. Class introduction: Have you ever wanted to create flat illustrations like these? If so, then this class is for you. Flat illustrations are used widely now in many industries like motion graphics, ads, social media materials, cartoon and more. So learning this skill will surely opened up many doors for you. That's why in this class I will show you how to create this font-family illustration. The easy way we will learn together how to use shapes in Adobe Illustrator, how to create really simple characters and show you step-by-step how to put them into motion to serve your idea. It's a fun class that will leave you with new tips, tricks, and techniques that you can just use right away. So what are you waiting for? Let's jump into the first lesson. 2. Basic Shapes : So for the first lesson in this class, we will learn how to work with the basic shapes in Adobe Illustrator. So that's up and documents and here you can find the simple shapes. Let's create this rectangle. And you can see here these little circles new drag them like this. That rectangle corners are gerund and do rounded. It's really handy and we use this a lot. And when you hit 80 or select the direct tool, you can just select one corner to play with. It's very handy and we'll also use this. You can just select any number of corners if you want. And when you hit Alt, you can see that this changes not just rounded, we have a lot of shapes like this and you just drag and heads Alt again and change the attribute that it will happen to the ordinary and so on. So these are some handy tools that you can just use anytime. And this is the ellipse tool. If you hit Shift, you'll create the circle are right now, I will show you something. You'll just select both and choose this tool here, which called the shape builder tool or the Shift M. Feel. Just select this and select both of them. They are now, now one shape. If you were just heads all like this, you'll find that you can't subtract the intersection between the shapes that you have here. It's really handy and reuse this a lot in the future. So it was just a very simple intro. So let's head to the next lesson. 3. Create Face : For the second lesson here we will learn together how to create simple faces and like Avatar faces. And you can use this kel right away. So here from the shapes, as I told you, you will select they're tangled tool like this. We make this rectangle here and we hit I to select from this color palette here. And this will be the color palette I'll be using. You can choose any color you want. And I chose the skin color. And here I turned these into a rounded and select only the lower corners to be rounded just like this. And now, create another rounded rectangle for the eyes and hit Alt and drag to copy this, copy and paste. And now for the nose, I create another rounded rectangle. And from the colors panel here, I choose the color for the nose, just like this. And now another shape I will hit here, arrange, send to back or Shift Control. Square brackets from the keyboard. Try to remember this because we will be using this a lot. And now I will be heading control C, control F to copy this rounded rectangle here in place. And I'll make it smaller for the inner part of the ears. Let's make this smaller and maybe change its color a little bit. Just like that. We're just using the basic shapes in Adobe Illustrator and we're just copying. As you can see, we're almost symmetrical. We're almost working symmetrical. So here I hit a and select the upper corners like this and turned into rounded for the mustache. And then I had the transform like this too. I copied the mustache, had the transform just to flip this vertically and this is the mouth. Just like that. I hit the mouse and had the draw inside mode and get another rounded shape like this and hits, I just select the tongue color and this is these are the teeth or right? Make it a little bit bigger. And make this to the top. All right, Let's continue. You just think of the character or the avatar that you're trying to create here in Adobe Illustrator as simple shapes, you know, like big shape for the face, the ears, eyes, hair, the nose, if mouse and everything. And you will just find that this is really easy and you can create your own avatar today. And you can just use it anywhere. Okay, now I created the hair from three simple, rounded rectangles. And here you can see I just created some darker colors, skin color, rounded rectangles. Here I draw inside the face and I draw some dark parts like this. And maybe I can just choose this highlight color here in the hair and eyebrows. Let's take this and maybe a lighter color here on the nose. All right, so let's continue. All right, here Let's create another character for the mother, Z. You can see I chose and other color, a lighter color for the skin. You're free to use any color that you want. And I change the color for the ears and the eyebrows as well. And that's her nose. Maybe dust this light color or right. And the hair just like this. It's very simple. And another part here. Okay, make this left butt rounded and the hair a little bit bigger. Let's create another part here. Just like this. And let's copy the mouth from the father's face. And you'll find that everything just became so easy and add some highlights. And just as we did a Yeah, and make some earrings and some blush to the cheek. And that sets okay. All right. She looks very nice. Now let's copy the father's face and tried to work on it a little bit to create the grandfather. All right, Let's now add some beard and change the color of the hair. Just like this. All right. And in color, as you can see you as just working with the same shapes but changing some little details like the color of the hair, the color of the skin, and so the shape of the eyes, how close they are to each other. It just changed the whole avatar completely and it's really nice actually. So it's a really flat school process that you will really enjoy if you followed along with me. And I'd be more than happy to see what will you will come up with. All right, let's now create the daughter. Arrive to change the forums, the hair, and change the proportions of the face. Make it a little bit cuter. Make all the features of the face a little bit down because she is younger. All right. Maybe made this up. The pace a little bit smaller and smaller. And again, we copy the mouse. And she looks cuter, ready, let's continue on, right? Yeah, Let's change. Yeah, let's change it a little bit. I actually feel that it turned into water wide from Breaking Bad. It just looked a lot like amps. So we're just seems a little bit all right Now I copy the mother's face to create the grandmother. So you can see we can completely changed how she looks, just little changes like this. All right. Let's make some glasses. All right. Let's copy paste this and make some strokes. I just duplicated layers. One with a 100 percent capacity, that's for this truck with no fill and one with a little bit opacity for the glasses, for the glass of the glasses. And just add these parts here. As I said, there are some wrinkles or something with darker color, skin color. Right? Let's just copy those dark skin colors here. Just like this. And we change the hair of course. And as you can see, you choose now completely different from how the mother face looked. Yay. And I really feel that the look nice already and these are the faces for our family illustration. I hope you enjoyed this part and let's now jump into the next lesson. 4. Facial expressions : And now that we finished the faces in the last lesson, now we'll be working on the facial expressions. It's a palm parts, so let's get started. All right, I will copy the face here and I will just start working on the expressions as you can see for just took this eyebrows a little bit down and maybe just flip this a little bit like this, he will look more angry. Can you see how it just changed completely? Let's try it again. Okay, let's copy the face and now let's take these eyebrows just like that, a little bit higher and try to create a shocked face just like this. And grow inside. So makes the tongue this. That, yeah, that looks pretty nice. And maybe make the face a little bit longer. And just look very shocked. So let's copy the face again and maybe make another phase here. Just select the eyebrows and start working in the mouth. All right. Maybe that was a disappointed face or something. Okay, Let's hear. Create little dots like these. Just to give, you know, liker really happy face. Okay, let's try it again here. Let's just remove these eyes and creates another no half a circle and make the stroke like this and make the rounded ends from here from the Stroke panel. Can get it from the Windows menu of just can't find it. And let's just duplicate this copy paste by dragging and hitting old. That's just smells and make a little bit bigger to make him extremely happy. Just like that. I really like this face. I think we'll be using this. Let's make some joy tears here. Yeah, there's like this. That looks really fun. Looks really fun. I just can't imagine this character's already moving like in a motion graphics video or something. Yeah, he looks really happy. It will really help if you are at, you know, like the feel of animation or something that will really help you. All right, so let's make him like as if his frowning or something so angry. Yeah. Just little details to change the whole face. You can see I just took this mouse here below the mustache. Right? And just continuing this disappointed face here. All right. I actually like these expressions for the father. Alright, that's just organize them a little bit. Maybe. And take us here as facial expressions sheet somehow. All right. Let's now just copy-paste the eyes from the father here to the daughter space and make her mouth bigger as that, she's also happy unless just duplicate this expression because it really liked it. Just obligated for the whole family members. I think I'd like to make an illustration for a really happy family who are enjoying their time dancing or something. There'll be cool. Okay, So I'll make drawing side and the teeth just created this little bit shadow here. And the same for the girls mouse. Yay, That looks really fun. Okay. So for the grandfather, I will also make the same and copy-paste the eyes here. Maybe take them on at yeah. Far from from each other. Just like that. And take his eyebrows like this. Yeah, just expressed the happy feeling. And just take the mouth like this. It looks really fun. And finally, let's make the grandmother the same. If you just noticed, facial expressions are all about your eyebrows and your mouse shape, it just completely changed the face when you play little bit with how they look and how big they are, how down or up the R. That's really important. So that's all for this lesson and we now have all of the facial expressions for the family already. So let's head to the next lesson. 5. Body poses : And now that we're done with the facial expressions in the last lesson, let's just head to the body poses. All right, It's a really fun part. So now let's create just simple rectangles here to make the body for the father. Just like this, I create a rectangle, chose this color for now, and now I choose a rounded rectangle just to make the upper body just like this. Or write. This part is really, really fun. This is where all the magic happens. So just let's follow along. All right. Okay, I get another rectangle here, just like this. Okay. For the arms and another two rounded rectangles for the legs. It's just really simple things and the magic is about to happen in a little bit. As you can see, it just looks like a sticky man or something. Nothing special about them. Right? So these are the legs and these are the arms. Okay, let's just take these pieces a little bit away. And now let's start working on the body pose for this character. Okay, Let's first choose these two and turn it into rounded corners. Are right. Just making small updates to face down. You just keep working on your illustration all along the way when you're working. All right, Let's continue. Now let's use this tool here. It's called the Puppet Warp tool. You can see you just put some pin points here on the shape that you're working on. And you just grab these points. It's just that easily. Let's try again. For this arm had the puppet barb. Let's try again. Let's try again. Had the Puppet Warp and add little points on the joints, on the shoulder and the elbow, and on the rest of the arm, you can move them, rotate them, and delete them. So let's do it again here we added three points, one on each joint. I escape moving around just to move the arm the way you want. Also here for the upper body, you just put some points. These are pinpoints. So wherever you put them it will just pin this part. So for the leg here with we put one pin on the head, 1 on the knee, and one down where the feet are. And you just keep moving around like this. So as you can see, the whole movement of the character just changed. Just like that. It's really easy, it's really fun. All right, you can create whatever shape you want. You can make dance moves for maybe admission video or something. So it's really fun. And the Puppet Warp tool is really great. You can just use it. Don't make anything. Okay, let's continue. So now let's make an ice move for the other characters. So I just copy the neck and this color here for the mother. And change the color, of course. All right, let's create the upper body here. Maybe take a little bit like this. All right. And just create her pants. That looks nice. Maybe change the color for it. That looks cool. All right. And those arms and again, the pop Dwyer put three joints and you move it around, described the shape that I want. And again, for the legs you make the same. Very simply, very easy. Right? You just keep adding life to these flat characters by making the moves that fits you, the idea that you have in mind. And as you can see, you can just get back to whatever parts you move before with the Puppet Warp and still update that. So that's really nice about this. And now let's work on the body for the daughter. Let's copy again the color and the neck, just like that. All right. And create the upper body here. Hey, let's just change this color. Make some contrast. As I told you, you just keep working on the colors along the way till you find something that fits. And as you can see here, I draw inside the arms to create his skin or right. And for the daughter, Let's make this cute skirt and two legs. Just like this and two arms. And again with a barbed wire of as three joints and keep moving around. Really fun, really simple. As I showed you before. And with the legs too. Meet this. And that. Yeah, that feels like dancing or like she's taken a photo or something. Yeah, that earring belongs to here. All right. So again, let's copy this neck and color, just like this and the creed, the upper body and maybe the add this little belly here and then create the legs. Maybe make this a little smaller because it looks a little bit weird. Less work on it later. All right, let's continue with the legs. Just like this. And again, Puppet Warp three joins and move it around, creature movement. And you're good to go. You just keep practicing that and you will find that a really amazing, by the way, the Puppet Warp tool is really handy also on the real photos, you can just get a free photo from Google or any stock website and you start working on it like more of the hands or make some dance moves to neutral movement, body maybe or something until happy a lot and making ads or something. So this grandfather is really happy that his actually flying. Yeah. And you can just change this for the Father. And now, as you can see, I'm just trying to make a decent composition between them. All right. And now for the ground, mother says create the upper body for it. And maybe she's wearing like a nice skirt. Just like that. All right. Hope you're following along with me now and hope you find that like a nice process. Believe me, when you try practicing this, you'll find a tree really, really fun and you'll find it really easy to create any character just this way. It's really easy. Basic shapes, Puppet Warp, and you're good to go. Okay? And again, the arms and legs with the Puppet Warp, three joins. Move it around. And that's it. All right. That actually looks nice. Here's keep moving around your characters to create the right composition that makes the whole scene cool. All right, Just keep trying, just keep moving around the sun. This just change some colors here to fit the composition and add more contrast to the group. Maybe you, this Fanon says this color maybe, okay. Maybe this arm can get a little bit bigger and this, to move around like this. And now let's create some shoes. Okay? Also from rounded rectangle shape, really simple and really easy as I showed you before. Okay? You just hit a and keep modifying any anchor points. Not may dwell. And I copied the shoes he entered here and had transformed to just flip it horizontally here. Okay. Having everything in a separate layer is really great because you can just move it all around really easily and maybe create this cute boots for the little daughter. And just like this, when you create a character, you just make sure to select oldest layer of the character and had control or Command G just to make them as a group. And you can just double-click and the group to modify it separately. The separation mode that makes it easy for you to select the whole character with, without losing or missing any layers. And now for the grandmother, we also did this shows just like that. All right, let's continue. I really loved how happy they are now. They look really nice and cool. Alright, so now let's just draw inside here and create some, some strokes like this. Yes. Maybe make this darker. Maybe make this also dark. These little details just add some depth to your character. It makes it really fun to work with. All right, let's just work more on the perspective of this character in though his face, it a little bit tilted to the left. So let's just change where everything is faced. This like that. Yeah, and it feels like changed orientation. Alright, maybe change. Pleasing here for the mom. Add some details. All right. I make this darker. And that looks nice. Okay. Okay. And maybe here, just add some skin to the arms. And it looks really nice. And also you can add some details. All right. So you have a and change the depth of the arms or just to modify any part. If you're not cool. All right. Just move this a little bit to the right. Just for the perspective that we talked about before and how his face is tilted to the right. And looks really nice. Okay. Just select this here and make it a little bit darker and send it to the back. And also this one. Let me just change this. Barely think just the micro anymore. All right, again, with a kid. Take everything to this part just to modify the decimal, defied the perspective and the orientation of the face. Really simple, really fun. And you just keep going. Okay. And also the nose. And just tilt the hair a little bit like this. And let's keep woman, I really like how the composition already looks. Let's keep going here with a fun thing. We will just start working here on something really fun. Here in the swatches panel, we will just here add some patterns and as you can see, you can find tons of patterns. Just like that. Let's first move this group here to another art board. Okay. So as you can see, I just I chose the best that he's wearing and I'd obligated it in place by hitting Control C, Control F, and selected the upper layer and just select any pattern. Play here with these blending modes. Just to find the right feeling for this pattern. And I hit Control C, Control F several times just to make it darker. I duplicated the layer many times. As you can see, I made the same here. I selected the skirt control C control F to copy and place and xy. And then I selected the upper one. And I will do this for all the layers here in this illustration. Also for the mothers top, Control C, Control F, and select the upper top. And then select any pattern and just apply very easily. Okay, and then for the skirt Control C Control F, select the upper one for left a pattern. And that's it. It's very simple. Okay, let's keep moving. All right. Let's now create some hands. Yeah, I'll make it very simple. Just like this. You create the fall new query, the fingers. All right. Make Love is small. Just like that. Okay, It's really fats the Style area like it. And now let's make a thumb. Now let's copy this hand tool. All of the group. This looks really cute. I, I select the whole hands, the palm, fingers, and her control G, for it to be a group so we can just select easily and copy it. All right. Let's copy it again here for the grandfather. And as you can notice, I just change the color for the hands to match each one of them. And now we're at grandmother. I really like how this hand looks bulky and that's the dance more bins that the are all making. Alright, let's make some modifications here to the legs and feet. And now let's draw inside here and make some shadows. This one of the greatest steps that you will make your illustrations because it will add so much depth to it and we'll just add some realism to it. And like how the shading lighting just change the whole beam. That's just make this mother a group. Maybe put this here. I'm just trying to find the right composition between them so that we don't miss any detail or rights. And not to have any overlapping here. Not so much. Maybe maybe here it would be cool. Okay. That looks nice. Okay, let's add some pattern here. We also saw that the pants Control C, Control F, select the upper one and choose any pattern from this swatches panel. And here for the pants I will draw inside, add some shadows. And here for the arm drawing side, add some shadows. The shadow will be a darker color from the same color. Okay, and just keep moving. We will add this to each layer and the illustration. There's just change the position of this shoe. All right, let's keep going. And now let's create dust helical ground for this group as if they're standing on something. Maybe this little bit down. And here, that's drawn side to add this little part of shadow. All right, That looks really nice. And here in the Herald, so let's draw inside and add some, right, some shadow. And for the mother, we just forgot to move the face thing. And let's hear add some shadow as well. Let's keep more than. All right. And also here in the grandmother leg, we just add this effect of shadows. It added some depths. And here with the blending mode, Multiply. Let's hear also add multiply effect. Yeah, for this hair bang. As you can notice, just added some depths to the hair is not just it's not just flat anymore. I'll write. This style is really trending and it's really used nowadays. And now for the last step, let's head to the next lesson. 6. final effects : And now that we've finished our illustration now to the best part and my favorite part of the axle, you really enjoy it. All right, Let's just finalized this with adding some special effects. Let's create a new document in Photoshop and Control C, control V as a smart object. The illustration will just copy paste it here in the blank document in Photoshop. Yea, and let's get started. Or right. Let's create a layer just below them and hit G and add some gradient just like this. As you can see, you just added some, some mood here. And now we're trying some brushes. I need a soft brush to add some effects. I created a new layer and hit Alt between the two layers just to mask the new layer into the illustration so that we can create this cool effects. So the new layer that's fast in the illustration is multiply. The blending mode is multiply. And you just had any color that you want. And with the soft brush, just to soften standard brush in Photoshop, you just add these cool little small effects. All right? If this is too fast for you, you can just rewind or you can just watch it slowly here from the class. But we will keep repeating this so you will follow along with me. Alright, so with a soft brush on this multiply blending mode and New Layer Mask into your illustration, you just adding some effects just like that in, like some shadows here and there. Just add some life to your illustration so it's not flat anymore. Okay. One of the not-so-good things, our illustration, flat illustrations that's coming directly from Australia, that it's, it's lacking the depth, it's lacking that live effect. So that's why you'd like to use as these special effects or digital painting in Photoshop to add this life. And as you can notice, we created another layer and we also hit Alt between the two layers to mass into the illustration and the blending mode this time is overlay. And with a really, really light, a light color, like a white or a really light yellow color. You just with the same soft brush, give some overlay highlights to your character here and there. All right. You also can use the purple color. It also adds this pinkish effect, as you can see here on the face. Can you know that this is, I just loved this effect, guys. I just love it. All right. And again, back to the, to the yellow color. Back to the yellow color. To add this cool effect to this highlights in August, dodge effect. As you can notice, I just move between the pinkish purple color and the yellow color or the cyan color. I'm just playing with the colors to add this cool effects. Keep going with all the colors that you have in your color palette to see what, what affects THE really fits your character illustration. While I just love how they turned out. All right. Just keep adding those effects to your characters. Maybe some pinkish effects here and there. It's as if it's like disco lights or something, ambient light from a party that the RNN. Now let's hit D and just type in any word that you want. For this case, I will type the word family and create it a little bit rounded rectangle here, just below them. And let's try something here. I make it all surrounded. You had to you and make it rounded. You choose a light color. Maybe here. As you can see, I just move around to see what's working. You just keep trying. In this step. I just liked trying everything to see what's best fats my illustration. I made another layer into this typeface and I made the head G and made this orange gradient. Just love it. Okay? When you double-click on your illustration vector, smart object, you just get directed, redirected to Illustrator so you can change any simple detail or anything bad that's in your illustration. And when you had saved in Illustrator, it just updates here automatically. It's one of the great things between the Adobe products. And again back here to change this. And maybe I will just continue. Let's remove this and hit Save. And as you can see, the grounds is removed. Okay, let's change it to white. Instead of removing it. Now let's change the color of this of this shoes and had Control S in the Adobe Illustrator, and it automatically gets updated here or right. Now in the typeface, I just tried to create some round the corners here in white, just like this. And had overlay and take the opacity a little bit down to add some cool effects. All right, I just loved this overlay highlight effect over everything. That's create some shadows behind them. Yazid, this overlapped on the typeface. I love this effect. I just love it. You guys, you can just try it and you'll find it completely insane. Yeah. And as you can see, you just changed completely from how it looked in Adobe Illustrator. It just got so must live in it. And now I create another layer mask in the typeface. And again, it's overlay. And I choose just a light magenta color and just give these dots effects here and there, while I love it. And again, light orange or yellow. To add this amazing gradients to your typeface. I'm sorry that this will really help you to create some awesome designs. And that's it. I think it's all for this illustration. I just love it. Hope you also loved it and hope you just follow along with me. Thanks a lot for watching That was on the Yammer with you. Just be free to make your own character and upload it in the project section. And also it will be really nice for you to leave her view or a suggestion, or if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer it. Also feel free to check my channel for more classes on character illustrations and more. Make sure to follow me on Instagram for live updates, drawing time-lapse videos and more. And also my YouTube channel for tutorials and creative talk. Thanks again for watching and see you in next classes.