Monster Character Series Part 1
I’m in a monster character illustration mood this month, after the creation of Frankenspoon I thought it would be cool to create a mini-series of tutorials on how to create a set of simple monster characters. Hopefully these will be easy enough to follow by Illustrator beginners, with mostly the basic tools and shapes being used.
Part one of the series will cover the creation of this flying bat ghost type fellow, so to begin launch up Adobe Illustrator.
Draw a circle onto the artboard, (hold shift). Then with the Pen Tool add two additional anchor points to the path as shown. (Hover over the path and you will see a little plus sign appear on the pen-cursor icon, simply click to add a point)
With the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow) select and delete the lower most point of the circle, this will leave an unclosed path as shown above.
Back with the pen tool, click on the open end point on the bottom left of the circle to continue this path. Create a zig-zag line across to the opposite end point and complete the path. When hovering over the final end point you will notice an O appear on the cursor to indicate you are about to close the path by joining with this end point.
Use the Direct Selection Tool again to select all of the points on the lower half of the circle. Once selected nudge these downwards with the cursor key to extend the body of the character.
Select the circle tool again and draw two eyes with a black fill, creating these at different sizes gives the monster quirky characteristics.
A little skill with the Pen Tool is required next to draw a wing shape off the edge of the character’s body. Take some time to learn how the Bezier Curves affect the shape of the path. Once complete, fill the shape with black.
Instead of drawing another wing, copy and paste the one that has just been created and head to Object > Transform > Reflect. Choose the Vertical axis to mirror the wing, then position on the opposite side.
Select the main body, and thicken the stroke to give a definite outline. Click the little icon underneath to align the stroke to the outside of the shape.
Select the eyes, and add light grey strokes to the outside of these shapes.
A slight highlight on the wings can be made with the pen tool, zoom right in and follow the shape of the wing and fill this shape with a deep blue.
Back onto the body copy and paste in front (CTRL + F) the shape and change the black stroke to a thinner light grey outline, align this stroke to the inside.
Your scary Flying Bat Ghost is complete. Subscribe or check back soon to put some of these techniques into practice, and learn a couple of new tricks on the next monster character!
Like This Post? - Sharing & donating are great ways to say Thanks!
October 17th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
An excellent quick tutorial! Thanks a lot!
October 20th, 2007 at 3:45 am
nice keep em coming,great
October 20th, 2007 at 11:00 am
[...] one of the mini-series covered the creation of the Flying Bat Ghost, now we’ll take a look at the Dumb Blue Sucker Monster! Again, using mostly the basic tools and [...]
October 20th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
I want thanks too. I’m beginner and I searched some easy tutorial.
October 21st, 2007 at 1:40 am
O_O nice tut!
October 21st, 2007 at 9:04 am
[...] Creating Monster Characters in Illustrator - Part 1 [...]
October 28th, 2007 at 12:19 am
Amazing is so simply, that is perfect,.. very good tutorial,. excellent thanks for all
October 28th, 2007 at 12:40 am
cool so easy
November 6th, 2007 at 2:32 am
thats hot!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:50 am
Great! & Simple
I learned new and easy stuff thanks !
November 14th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
[...] Im half way through my first A level graphics project, my porject is about typography. I’m thinking out side the box from the rest on my class, there all using pictures of fire,death etc and using simple fonts. But im using graffiti as it is a kind of typography and im going to making little monsters simaliar to this the one’s in this tutorial. [...]
November 24th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Thanks for this great tut!
November 30th, 2007 at 1:02 am
These are great. and easy to make.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
lkklk
December 11th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
[...] Tutorials - website - One of my favorite illustrator designers teaches you how to make monsters in [...]
December 12th, 2007 at 5:27 am
thanx to you… this is really great!
December 16th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Hello Blog.Spoongraphics!
I search all the web for some tutorials.
And i founded Pixel2life!
There is no one tutorial in the Dutch for Illustrator, well i just searched for English!
And i found you’re website.
I love it and make more Cartoons, this is simple english talk and i can read it (i hope my english is not to bad).
Good Job.
Go on!
Greets from the Netherlands!
Dominic
January 8th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
We’re drawing this for class
January 25th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Nice! Very easy to follow for beginners
Sometimes its just hard to find some good classic tutorials and these are the kind I am looking for thanks a bunch Spoongraphics!
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:43 pm
A great tutorial! Thanx!
February 4th, 2008 at 9:42 am
An excellent tutorial! I always wondered how one could make such interesting images so quickly. Thanks to you, I am learning!
February 9th, 2008 at 2:50 am
[...] above using Illustrator, you can check out a few good tutorials on the subject at SpoonGraphics: 1 2 3 [...]
February 17th, 2008 at 5:58 am
[...] doing these (1,2,3,4) tutorials, this is my very own monster. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social [...]
February 24th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
[...] made this little guy as kind of a modification of this monster tutorial from Spoon Graphics. I was going for kind of an old-school Pacman vibe. I guess this would be an [...]
February 29th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
[...] one of the mini-series covered the creation of the Flying Bat Ghost, now we’ll take a look at the Dumb Blue Sucker Monster! Again, using mostly the basic tools and [...]
March 10th, 2008 at 10:28 am
thanks a lot
March 10th, 2008 at 11:19 am
wow that is simple thx
March 21st, 2008 at 6:49 am
it was good but alite hard for me i didnt complete it thow it confused me
March 25th, 2008 at 5:48 am
[...] Monster Character Series Part 1 [...]
March 28th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
[...] in honour of Stefan G. Bucher’s Daily Monster and my penchant for smiling, Monster Character Series Part 1 wins mention number [...]
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
[...] Tutorials - website - One of my favorite illustrator designers teaches you how to make monsters in [...]
April 29th, 2008 at 3:51 am
[...] posted a great tutorials on How To Create Your Own Vector Cartoon Character and followed it up with Monster Character Series Part 1, 2, 3, & [...]
May 8th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
not bad