This week’s IllustrationFriday topic was Poise. I went with an alligator patiently waiting to strike at his prey, a little bird. I did this one in Adobe Illustrator. I have a bunch of tutorials for Illustrator and other programs on this site. Feel free to check them out here.

This a tutorial for making cartoon doodle illustrations in Adobe Illustrator. For this tutorial, you’ll need an additional plug-in (it’s free) for Illustrator. It’s a tool that let’s you find Open Paths. It is and invaluable plug-in for stock artists and anyone else too.

I start with my traced sketch that I drew with the Pen Tool and a stroked line.

Next, I drag my layer from the Layer Palette onto the Create New Layer button. This will create a duplicate layer.

I want to turn the visibility off on my new layer because I won’t be working on it right now. Click on the little icon that looks like an eye to the left of the layer to make it invisible.

Now, I select the original layer and use my new plug-in. Go to Select > Object > Open Paths. This will select all the lines that aren’t closed shapes.

Since I’m going to use this layer as my colored shape layer and the top layer as my line art, I want to delete the all the Open Paths. So, I hit delete on the keyboard.

Next, I select all. Go to Select > All or use the keyboard shortcut Command/Control A. With everything selected, I put a fill color on the shapes and eliminate the stroke color.

Now, I turn the visibility back on for my other layer.

With both layers visible, I want to select all again. After you have selected everything, go to Object > Group. Grouping the objects will pull them all onto the top layer. The reason I want to do this is that some of my shapes need to overlap some of my lines. So, I need everything on one layer to do that.

Next, I want to add a Brush stroke to all my lines. To do this I’ll need to select all my lines. Yeah, I should have done this before I merged my layers, but I like to do things the hard way. Anyway, select one of your lines, then go to Select > Same > Stroke Color.

Then, open your Brush Palette and pick the brush you want to use. I used one of the defaults. You may need to adjust the stroke weight after you pick the brush.

I still need to move my shapes around, so some of my shapes are overlapping the lines. To do this, I select the objects I want to move and use the Object > Arrange > Send to Back.

Here’s my illustration with everything arranged correctly.

Next, I want to turn my lines into shapes. To do this, I’m going to use the Flatten Transparency. Select all, and go to Object > Flatten Transparency.

A dialogue box pops up. Move the slider to 100% vector and click OK.

Finally, I adjust the colors of my shapes and I’m done.

I’m a little late with my IllustrationFriday this week. The topic was Subtract. I’ve kind of been on a monster kick lately, so here’s a little monster I drew up to meet the theme. I created him in Adobe Illustrator.

I drew a cartoon Elvis for IllustrationFriday’s topic this week. I also did a second one that is a Frankenstein Elvis. Or is that Franken-Elvis? Or Elvis-stein? Whatever, here’s the illustration.

IllustrationFriday’s topic this week was Legendary. I was feeling inspired, so I did a second illustration for this theme. I guess I was influenced by the Vegas trip I was planning. Anyway, here’s my little Elvis guy that I drew in Illustrator.

IllustrationFriday’s topic this week was Legendary. These are my lengends of karate. I think they were inspired by the legendary Hong Kong Fuey. I did these last week when I was working on my animal series. You can check out the surfing ones I did as well here.

Making images for microstock, I end up resizing a lot of Illustrator files. I use the Action palette in Photoshop to help save some time doing the tedious operation of resizing files. With that said, here is a little tutorial for the Action palette.

I start by taking my Illustrator eps file and dragging it onto the Photoshop application icon to open it. A dialogue box pops up. For this example, I want my end file to be 470 pixels by 470 pixels, so I set my greatest dimension (height or width) to a little under 470. I went with 450. Since the Constrain Proportions box is checked, the other dimension will change automatically to keep my file proportional. I click OK and my file opens up.

Next, I want to use the Action palette. To open it, go to Window > Actions.

I click the Create New Action button at the bottom of the palette.

A dialogue box pops up. I name my Action and click Record.

If you look at the Action palette, you’ll notice the red Record light is lit up. Basically, it is recording the actions you are doing on the screen until you Stop it. So, let’s record your canvas resize. Go to Image > Canvas Size.

A dialogue pops up. I set my canvas size to 470 x 470 and click OK.

Notice, I’m still recording. Next, I want Save for Web. Go to File > Save for Web. Set your image specs and Save it to a folder. Take note of the folder you save to because this action will always save to that folder.

Finally for your last recorded action, close the file.

Now, go back to the Action palette and hit the Stop Recording button.

Now that I have my new Action, it is time to do some heavy lifting with it. Select several files that need resizing and drag them onto the Photoshop application icon to open them. A dialogue box will pop up for each file. Like before, set the greatest dimension to below 470 (I used 450).

After all your files are open, select your 470×470 action from the palette and hit Play. Photoshop quickly goes through the Canvas Size, the Save for Web and Closes the file. If you check the folder you set up for it to save in, you’ll find your resized file. Now hit Play for the rest of the files and you’re done.

I was working on some more drawings in my cartoon animal series this weekend. I have a lightbox for them on iStockphoto if you want to see the whole series.

Anyway, here’s my favorite animal from the weekend, the surf dog. I was also working on some karate animals, but I’ll put those in another post.