Over the past year Glitschka Studios has developed a series of skill based design courses for Lynda.com. The latest course is called "Drawing Vector Graphics: Color & Detail."
This course covers color theory and exploration, lighting, shadow and highlight detail, additional detailing methods, style selection and everything in between regarding the creation of vector based illustration.
We spent two months designing and refining the content used in the production of this course. We also developed extensive exercise files to support it as well. You can download an example exercise file called "How Color Affects Other Color" here.
With every course we strive to make the experience immersive through a systematic approach. This makes them entertaining, easy to follow and works well for both private and for classroom teaching environments. Below are several illustrations I created specifically for this course and use them to demonstrate various build methods and detailing insights you can use when creating vector based illustration work.
Lights Camera Action
The creation of a skill-based course involves a lot of writing. From initial outlines to final scripts we shoot from in studio. I craft all of it to be as authentic as possible. Authentic meaning it's actually something I'd say to another creative. I spend many hours finessing my word structures and continually simplify the information so it's distilled into distinct clarity. I'm proud of the production value we have achieved with these courses.
The course is a combination of live action video and screen capture. (No stunt doubles)
Creating Emotion Through Color
Regardless of what style you illustrate in color can carry a mood all it's own. We demonstrate how changing color themes on this "Happy Go Lucky" illustration can evoke a variety of responses by utilizing warm or cool palettes.
A colorful character.
Vector Professor
I imagine this guy talking in a thick German accent instructing you not to be a bezier dummkopf. We use this illustration to deconstruct the compilation of various methods to construct an illustration like this.
The "Vector Professor" illustration.
Spot Detailing with Radial Blends
Through out the course I take you into detailing context that explains how to pull off seemingly complex illustration methods in very simple ways that anyone can do. We demonstrate this via a "Monster Bird" illustration.
"Monster Bird" character illustration.
Using Custom Brushes for Shadows and Highlights
The course goes over the creation of your own custom brushes for illustrator and how to put them to use in your illustration as well. This "Surf Safari" illustration is used to show how to add shading, highlights and other detailing using your own custom brushes.
Symbiotic "Surf Safari" illustration.
Detailing with Custom Brushes
You can achieve authentic results using custom brushes to detail out your vector illustrations like shown in this "Fish" character which was pulled from the "Surf Safari" illustration above.
Custom brushes-o-plenty in this happy amphibian.
Using Gradient Blends and Blend Modes
We use various blend modes and gradients to pull off this "Freaky Tiki" illustration.
Do not anger the creative gods, you must watch this design course! View here.
Using Inner and Outer Glow Effects
We'll cover the use of inner and outer glow effects to create captivating visual details as shown in this "Bad Seed" illustration. But through out this course you'll notice that I use all these various methods in many of the examples shown. They all work together, such as using the gaussian blur effect to diffuse the floating orbs in this illustration.
Happy little "Bad Seed" illustration.
Texturizing Your Artwork
Vector art can be too clean, too perfect and sterile. So we'll show you how to add real-world surface textures and bring a nice touch of humanity to vector art as shown in this "Burning Conscience" illustration.
It's fun to make your art look like crap via textures!
Thick and Thin Linears with the Width Tool
My courses are process driven, not distinctly tool driven. But that said we cover various tools. We'll cover the use of the width tool to create organic linear line illustrations like this one created for a project called "Senor Goucho."
Whether you call it a linear or continuous line illustration we cover it in this course.
This post just covers a fraction of what we go over in this course. It's filled with tips and tricks that will help you avoid common pitfalls when illustrating with vector based artwork and will expand your creative horizon by giving you practical methodology you can immediately put to use in your own creative pursuits. We hope you enjoy it. To access all our skill-based design courses visit Lynda.com.
