Digital Tutors - Creating Film Noir Styled Artwork in Illustrator

Duration 2h 4m

Difficulty Level Intermediate

Project Files Included

Software used

Illustrator CC v17.0

What you will learn

While Illustrator does excel at creating logos, icons and other vector graphics it is an illustration program at its heart. So, to begin this Illustrator tutorial, after preparing our file to work in, we will start by learning a number of ways to block in the shadows or black shapes of our image.

While adding to the darkest values, we will learn about important tools like the pen tool, blob brush and pencil tool and see the strengths of each. After simplifying our sketch to only black and white values, we will begin to soften some of the transitions between the two by using a powerful feature in Illustrator known as blends.

If this is your first time working with blends, this will serve as a great introduction because we?ll focus on using them to create simple hatching and cross hatching patterns.

After going through this tutorial, you will have a great idea of how to execute a film noir styled illustration inside of Adobe Illustrator.

Tutor

Eddie Russell

1. Introduction and project overview 01:16

2. Setting up our file with a matte 08:30

3. Beginning to block in areas of black 11:27

4. Continuing to block in areas of black 12:17

5. Stroking paths for areas of detail 12:25

6. Creating the feather boa on the model 11:48

7. Creating basic blends for tonal variation 12:55

8. Working with a blends spine 07:23

9. Masking out blends 11:44

10. Layering blends together 08:28

11. Creating the blends for the face 12:05

12. Using scroll pens 07:14

13. Creating a background blend 06:42