The great thing about learning to do a halftone pattern in Illustrator is that you can use any shape you want in your pattern. I did this tutorial with a star. It is essentially the same as my halftone pattern tutorial with circles. I also have a tutorial for a radial halftone.

Next, I want to do a blend. Go to Object > Blend > Blend Options to set up your blend options.

A dialogue box will pop up. Set your Spacing to Specified Steps. The number of steps should be the number of stars you want between your big and small stars. I went with 6.

Now you need to run the blend, so make sure your two red stars are selected. Go to Object > Blend > Make.

The blend creates several new stars between the two.

Since the blend creates a line of stars and not actual shapes, you’ll need to Flatten Transparency to convert them into shapes. Go to Object > Flatten Transparency.

A dialogue box will appear. Set the Raster/Vector balance to 100 and click OK.

Now your red stars are shapes.

Next, you’ll need to copy this row. Select all the stars and hold down the Option/Alt key and drag the stars down to line up with the next row. Holding down the Shift key while you perform the Option drag will constrain the objects to move in only one direction.

You can repeat the copy you just made by going to Object >Transform > Transform Again or by using the keyboard shortcut for it: Command/Control D.

Keep hitting Command/Control D until you get to the bottom. Now, you have a vector halftone with shapes. You can do this with any shape. As I said above, I also have a tutorial for a radial halftone.

I just read about a free Image Composite Editor from Microsoft. Basically, it can be used to combine multiple photos with overlapping vantage point into one larger image. I was amazed that it did a fairly accurate and instantaneous job. It blows the doors off of me in Photoshop with the clone tool.

You can read a review and see examples of it in action over at Cinema Squid’s Ink. They compiled a few large shots taken from movie screen captures. Here’s one from Starship Troopers compiled from 4 different shots.

IllustrationFriday has a weekly topic to illustrate for fun. This week’s topic was Packed. I don’t know if I’m craving some German food, but the first thing that popped into my head was a sausage. What could be better than meat packed into a casing? I guess I’m just thinking with my stomach again. Anyway, I did this one in Adobe Illustrator.

Adobe recently announced its Creative Suite 4 with a release in November. Since I try to buy every other version, I guess I’ll need to pony up the money for this version. I didn’t get CS3, so it will be nice to have some of the Macromedia products like Flash and Dreamweaver. As far as my workhorse, Illustrator, it looks like they added a few interesting features. Check out the new features in use at Adobe’s site:

Well, I can’t really talk too much about how great or horrible the new features are until I use them. I look forward to writing some new tutorials in CS4.

You can preorder the new CS4 at Amazon.

In case you didn’t know, IllustrationFriday has a weekly topic to illustrate for fun. This week’s topic was Island. I’m not sure what island this is, but the natives aren’t friendly. I did this one in Adobe Illustrator.

I recently finished a series of baby animal t-shirts.

Check them out at myCartoonShirt.com.

Have a bunch of cartoon illustrations? Want to animate them? Then, this tutorial is for you. This tutorial uses Illustrator, Photoshop and finally ImageReady to make a simple animated gif. Don’t worry. It’s not as complicated as it sounds (you can just use Photoshop if you don’t have Illustrator).

I start with a cartoon I did in Illustrator. Check out my other cartoon tutorial page for Illustrator tutorials.

As I said in the intro, you can do these steps in Photoshop if you prefer.

Since I’m going to animate the eyes, I want them on a separate layer. To create a new layer, use the Create New Layer button on the Layers palette. Once I have my new layer with the eyes on it, I want to duplicate it. To do this, drag the layer onto the New Layer button.

Now, move the eyes to a new spot on the duplicated layer.

Continue to duplicate the layers and move the eyes around until you have all the steps in your animation. I chose to do only four. Obviously, the more steps you do, the more fluid your animation will be.

Next, I export my Illustrator file to a PSD file.

Make sure you have the Write Layers box checked. This will export your layers to Photoshop.

Open your new PSD file in Photoshop or you can open it directly into ImageReady. Since I forgot to convert my file to RGB, I have to open mine in Photoshop first and convert it. Go to Image > Mode > RGB to convert it. You can also convert it in Illustrator first. Go to File > Document Color Mode > RGB Color.

Next, open your file in ImageReady. Click on the button at the bottom of the Toolbar.

Once in ImageReady, you’ll notice the Animation palette. If not, open it at Window > Animation.

Your first frame in the animation is open, but you’ll need to eliminate the extra eyes in the Layer palette. To do this, simply uncheck the Visibility of the top three layers. That’s the little icon that looks like an eye to the left of the layer name.

Next, make your second frame with the Duplicate Current Frame button. After that, go back to the Layer palette and turn the first set of eyes off and the second on. Repeat this step until you have all four frames.

You can play test your animation in the Animation Palette. Just hit Play.

Also you can modify the time between frames.

When you’re satisfied with the animation, go to File > Save Optimized As. It will save the file as an animated gif. Finally, I usually open the file in my internet browser to see if it works.

Here’s the end result. OK, so it’s not exactly world class animation, but it makes a nice sized animated icon.

I’ve been uploading like a madman at the stock art sites with a series of animal drawings.

You can see the whole series as they get uploaded at iStockphoto. I maxed out my upload queue, so it may take a while for them all to get uploaded.

Whether you’ve written a children’s book or have the masterful illustrations to go in a book, you need to get your creations out there to be discovered. The 2009 Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market can help you get your work seen by publishers. It has a list of publishers to send your manuscripts or artwork to.

Not a children’s illustrator? The new 2009 Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market comes out in October and is available for pre-order on Amazon.