WiseArts

I was charged with creating a Halloween-themed image of our company mascot to put into the monthly newsletter. This was probably the most exciting thing I did all day, so I thought I’d share a little bit about my creation process.

The art starts with a sketch on a crappy lined notepad that came from the office supply room. I didn’t draw very large, or get into much detail on this one. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.

The sketch is scanned and brought into Photoshop. I use my Wacom pressure-sensitive tablet to draw line art on a new layer atop the sketch. I’ve decided to add in a bucket-o-treats, so I made the canvas a little larger to accommodate it.

When the lines are done, I drop out the back layer and save it. Then I open up Adobe Illustrator and place the Photoshop file into the Illustrator file. I use the trace feature in Illustrator to vectorize my line art. I expand that and ungroup it. Then I use the magic wand to select and delete all the white areas.

I create a new layer underneath the line art layer. Then I lock the line art layer and start adding in the blocks of color underneath using the pen tool. And, that’s about it. The company mascot is a rubber chicken, BTW… hehehe I made him look a bit too lively, I think.