Character design is a growing trend in web graphics and an important way to add a little life and branding to a site.
Two sites that offer some great examples of character design are Tapbots, which sells iPhone applications, and Firehost, a PCI-compliant hosting provider.
As a result of this trend, we have received a few requests for tutorials about creating advanced characters. In response to the requests, I will be offering a series of tutorials—starting with this one—aimed at demonstrating how to create character graphics.
In this video, I will show you an example of a character design I did of a "whistling yeti" and use it to explain the process of taking a character from a sketch, to a Photoshop document, to a color Illustrator illustration. I will also explain some of the methods involved, whether you choose to use a pen input device or simply a pen.
I will also briefly discuss an alternative method of character design that I will be teaching you that uses a photograph as the basis for a character. This method may be helpful for those of you who aren’t as confident in your drawing ability, but that still wish to create a detailed character.
In Part Two of this series on character design, I'll address drawing the initial sketch and some things to watch out for when doing so.
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