Vector Illustrator Freebies

1. Gorgeous Ornate Vector Patterns

2. Grungy Fleur De Lis Seamless Vector Pattern By  Patternhead

3. Magic Patterns By Pehaa

4. The Geek In Me By Pica-Ae

5. Complex Paisley Vector Patterns

6. Twisted Floral Vector Patterns By Patternhead

7. Ornamental Seamless Pattern

8. Vintage Velvet pattern From Patternhead

9. Stylized Clouds Pixel Patterns By Patternhead

10. Elegant Swirls Vector Patterns

11. Retro Pattern By Designious

12. Free Range Duck Pattern

13. Forget Me Nots Pattern

14. Halftone Madness Illustrator Patterns

15. Valentine’s Day vector Patterns By Colorburned

16. Seamless Destroyed Vectors By Colorburned

17. Alice In Wonderland Pattern [Needs Credit]

18. High Quality Subtle Grunge Vectors – Think Design Blog

Vector Illustrator Pattern Resources

I have found these nifty little pattern tutorials very useful when creating my own vector patterns and swatches.

1. Create A Seamless Folk Pattern Tutorial – Pehaa

2. Create A Damask Pattern Using Madpattern Illustrator Template – Vectortuts+

3. Create A Trendy Seamless Type Pattern – Vectips

4. One Minute To Make Seamless Plaid Patterns In Illustrator

Premium Vector Pattern Resources

These websites sell some amazing vector patterns at dirt cheap prices. Like being in a candy store!

Patternshop

Floralcy

Patterrific

I hope you have enjoyed this little roundup and that you find these resources useful for your design needs. If you know of any websites that provide free or premium high quality vector patterns, please let us know by leaving us a link in the comments below.

Earlier this year, I started a self project. I called it Project 365 Vector Characters. Even as a child, I was always doodling wacky creatures and animals in my sketch pad. I would give them names and assign funny attributes to them. After discovering the joy that is Illustrator a couple of years ago, it was but a natural rite of passage to crossover my whimsy character development addiction  to vectors.

When I started the one-vector-character-a-day exercise, I never realised that it would become a journey in learning new techniques of character creation and presentation. Before long I was experimenting with colours, textures, shapes, shadows and perspectives. I have only ever had a tattered copy of Drawing On The Funny Side Of The Brain and the rest has been gut feeling and trial and error. I don’t think I have a particular style like a lot of the illustrators do. I am more of an amateur. The things I have learnt as the days go by in my self-project are things I haven’t read online or in any book or magazine, so I thought I’d share.

Conceptualization – Asking Six Important Questions

1. What is it? – Entity

Before I start designing my daily character, I sit down for a couple of minutes with or without my sketch pad. I ask myself, "What is it going to be?". The answer to that question yo-yos wildly from day to day depending on my mood or the current happenings of my life. The burst of idea that reverberates inside my head after I ask myself that question, is usually the one I go with. My brain could say "Fruit Ninja!" or "Sock Monster!" or "Floating Cloud Cows!" or "Tooth Ghoul That Lives In A Pea Pod!" and I would obey.

Deciding what your character is going to be from a wide spectrum of craziness in this world or outside of it is the first solid step towards building a great character. You may then either sketch it out to save you time later or start the process on your computer right away if you have already visualised the character in your mind’s eye.

2. Where is it from? – Origin

After establishing the character’s species or kind, the next step is to ask yourself about its origins. Where is it from? Where does it live? Is it from outer space, a strange alien planet? Does it live in your pantry and come out at night when you sleep? Is it part of a world within yours that you don’t know exists? The answers to these questions will help you start thinking about the appearance of the character in much more detail. A creature’s geographical location is vital in creating appropriate body shape and facial features or lack of them.

3. What is its story? – Story

Everyone has a story. No matter how big or little. It defines who we are and adds to our character. In a similar fashion, creating a background story for your character will help you flesh out it’s quirks and nuances that can only develop from having a past, an existence. The character’s story helps develop its personality and in quick succession, it’s mood. If your character is a sombre clown’s abandoned hat that got squashed by the elephant, you know not to give it a smiley face. If your character is an innocent looking ragamuffin doll that lives in a Parisian chocolate shop and munches the cookies that come alive at night, you know you have to create a creepy horror with the face of an angel.

Once your core story is in place, it is very easy to build that up using multiple characters living within that storyline. It ends up making each character even more interesting and brings to light the possibility of adding new features to your original character.

4. What are its strengths and flaws? – Quirks

Superman could fly. Bugs bunny could annoy you to death. Tarzan could swing. Homer could guzzle beer. John Wayne had a swagger. The monkey George was curious. Remy rat could cook. Santa Claus is jolly. Ellen Degeneres is funny. Every super hero or character always has a strong point and a weakness. Giving your character a strength, an ability; will help you set the scene for the next question to ask, "What is its prop?"

5. What is its prop? – Props

Based on the character’s personality,it’s story, strengths and flaws; you will be able to easily decide a prop for it. The prop defines the character and becomes one with it. You will rarely ever be able to see or picture Harry Potter without his wand, or Frodo without his ring. The coyote from Roadrunner will always have his Acme gadgets and The Cat In The Hat will never be without his red and white striped headgear.

6. Technicalities – Styles

I usually decide at the very last moment whether my character is going to have outlines or just solid shapes. Deciding things like whether to apply textures, patterns, shadows, depth and specific colours will add to the mood and overall look and feel of your character. Exaggerations are a great way of making your character stick out. Everybody loves a whimsy looking character with an unusually looking big head now, don’t they? Some characters are purely made out of shapes. Some are given depth with the use of textures and shadows. The style you choose is a personal preference. It is the very last decisive factor in the conceptualizing of your character and very often, one that will either make or break a character. Depending on the origin, quirks and storyline, use a style that compliments those factors and your character will flourish.

Summary

There are 6 basic and very essential questions at the root of any character design concept. You can start off from there and make it as simple or as complicated as you wish.

• Entity
• Origin
• Story
• Quirks
• Props
• Styles

Before I go

Have you created a character before? Do you do it on a regular basis? What are some of the steps you follow? Are there more questions besides the ones listed, that you ask yourself? Do you always sketch your character? Please share your advice and experiences with us in the comment section below. Thanks for stopping by and if you have enjoyed this article, please feel free to share the word.

A few months ago I refreshed my Twitter Background. I had been toying with the idea of doing a simple but striking mixed-media illustration for the background. When it was done, I received countless nice emails praising the design and many more wanting to know how I had achieved that effect. This cursory tutorial is for all those who wrote to know the method. In this tutorial, I explain the process of creating a mixed-media illustration using a photograph and re-creating some of the elements from the photograph in vector format. The process touches base with creating a composition of the raster and vector elements in a beautiful, modern digital artwork.

What Is Mixed Media?

Mixed media artwork refers to art made via the use of different mediums. In visual art, this could refer to an artwork on canvas that combines paint, ink and decoupage. In digital art, it refers to using raster and vector graphics in a medley of creative placements.

Tutorial Overview

• Choosing the right raster graphic. For eg. a photograph.
• Studying the photograph for design elements and qualities.
• Creating complimenting vector graphics.
• Composition.
• Finishing artwork with secondary design elements.

1. Choosing The Right Raster Graphic

Use a strong photograph as the base of your design.You will be re-creating elements from that photograph in vector format to achieve that "flows out of the photograph" look and feel.

For my project I needed a picture of me that was looking up. I short-listed a couple of photographs before deciding on the one used here. The background of my page was going to be gray, so I took the warmth away from the photograph, making it brighter and cooler, focusing on the grays and blues in the picture. I also cut out my outline from the sky and roughed up the edges in preparation for the final artwork.

2. Studying The Photograph For Design Elements & Qualities

Outline the most striking qualities of your photograph. What visual element of the photograph stands out the most? Is it the color or the perspective? Is it the unique paisley pattern or bold lines? Once the points are listed out, decide on the elements you want to build on.

For my project I liked the ornate patterns in the top I am wearing and felt that I could extend that design beautifully into vector artwork. With the pattern in my top being extremely busy, I decided to make the accompanying vector graphics fairly simple and monotone with stark black outlines.

3. Creating Vector Graphics

Fire up illustrator. Create the vector design elements. Experiment with stark contrasts as this will highlight the vector and raster aspects of your piece beautifully. If your photograph is color, go for monotone vector graphics and vice versa.

For my project I decided to make graphics that were similar to the paisley patterns but not exactly the same as I didn’t want the visual to be crowded. I gave it a sketchy, hand drawn effect by not making all the curves perfectly smooth. The bird was blacked out and all details were left out to break the "white" in the vectors.

4. Composition

Import the photo into Photoshop. Import vectors as Smart Objects into photoshop so you can make changes to them on the fly. Create the composition from a sketch or from experimentally arranging the elements at will. Don’t be too rigid. Sometimes going with the flow and evolving along the way produces a more natural effect.

For my project, I wanted to blend the swirls and the bird with my photo to express thoughts coming out over the top of my head and Twitter being my constant companion. The roughed out white edges I gave the photograph in Step 1 helped achieve the transition perfectly.

5. Finishing Touches

Once the elements are in place, use subtle effects like shadows, textures, patterns, overlays and gradients to tie the piece in perfectly. For my piece, I simply used the LBOI checkered gray background.

In Parting

I used Photoshop to process my photograph initially and then creating the composition and applying the effects. I used Illustrator for all the vector artwork seen in the piece. I hope you have enjoyed reading my process for creating organic mixed media illustrations. Have you created similar pieces? Are there any other methods you use? Please join the discussion below or drop me a line if you have any questions.

Days 108-114

Character Names – Tunka, Tri, Sqa, Cica, Ulgi, Krunkle, Pinkston Froth

I said I wasn’t doing storylines for these set of 100 characters. But boy, does my mind have a mind of its own. When I was doing this roundup, I couldn’t help my brain from concocting tall tales to place around these little dudes. Some of them have a story this week. I love making up stories and because I can’t do them in the real world, this is the best outlet.

Our son recently celebrated his 6th birthday and for his birthday he got a small fish tank for a present. He beamed proudly when he brought home his first two pets in a plastic bag. He christened his goldfishes Ruk and Roy. Both our sons have since been fascinated by the tank. It has replaced television in our home during certain pockets of time. They push two red chairs to the tallboy where the tank sits, climb up and stare at it for ages. The idea for Tunka came to me as I watched this daily exercise of theirs. How fun and totally wild would it be if Ruk and Roy became the tank’s eyes and it came to life!

Tri, Sqa and Cica are the Shape Ninjas. They have a lot of attitude because they secretly know how utterly useless they are.

Ulgi is well ugly. A hippo lazing in a pond, swallowed an unusual looking frog one day and ballooned itself into a glop that gets uglier each day.

Krunkle was born in a design studio when a bunch of cardboard letters left over from a typography shoot and glued onto some defunct floppy disks, short-circuited.

Pinkston Froth is not your average, creamy ice cream. His flavor is marshmallow and his creamy skin can take you on a wild ride. Wicked indeed!

Time Taken : 20 minutes – 35 minutes for each character on any given day

Softwares : Illustrator CS 4 & Photoshop CS 4

In 2010, I have challenged myself to create 365 vector characters, one for each day of the year. Please Subscribe To My Feed to follow the series or Bookmark My Flickr Page to stay updated on the newest characters everyday.

Days 101-107

Character Names – Rami, Trippo, Gaff, Ludwig, Vaclu, Ampra, Tuski

100 characters later, I decided to change things for the next 100 characters. I will be now doing weekly roundups. I will still be designing one character everyday but only rounding them up at the end of the week. The characters still have names but there won’t be any storylines accompanying them. Since my challenge was designing a character per day, abandoning the storylines [which was a quirky extra] is just to buy me time for the million and one other projects I have going on.

Rami is an elvis wannabe. Ludwig is a wig that got thrown in the ocean, turned green and started showing signs of life. Ampra was my experimentation with a solid ampersand.

Time Taken : 20 minutes – 35 minutes

Softwares : Illustrator CS 4 & Photoshop CS 4

In 2010, I have challenged myself to create 365 vector characters, one for each day of the year. Please Subscribe To My Feed to follow the series or Bookmark My Flickr Page to stay updated on the newest characters everyday.