Making Cartoons Using Vectors

If you, like me, have tried making cartoons, you will probably have noticed that get a nice crisp image, like you see on TV is not very easy at all. I don’t have a very steady drawing hands, and my attempts at using pens, inks or paints have always been slightly frustrating. Every slight twitch can cause an accidental stroke that will ruin a picture you’ve spent hours working on. And getting consistent colour with physical media like paints can be tricky too. For these reasons I now use computers to produce my cartoons.

Not only do you have the luxury of an undo tool to remove those accidents, you can also produce smooth clean colour. But there is still a problem. It can still be hard to get your lines smooth, because even with practice you will find that your average mouse or drawing tablet is not as precise as a pen or pencil. This is where vectors come in handy. They can produce the smooth, black lines that give the cel shaded look, without the hassle of constantly redrawing lines with the airbrush and eraser.

Heres some examples of what I mean :-
Drawn with a drawing tablet - examples to be added
Drawn using vectors - examples to be added

As you can see, the image with the drawing tablet is often much rougher. You can get lines smooth using this technique if you wish (as I have done here), but it requires what feels like endless touching up. This is why the rougher drawing look is becoming an increasing familiar in web cartoons (and I’m not saying that it doesn’t look good, it is just a different style to the crisper cartoons that I prefer to make).To get smooth lines on a computer, by far the fastest way is to use the vector tools.

I make most of my cartoons on Photoshop, because I like the option to be able to sketch with the airbrush, as well as use vectors. But cartoons can be made as effectively in Illustrator. The main advantages of Illustrator are that any image you make will be infinitly scaleable and more suitable for printing, and the lines you make will be crisp. If you use Photoshop, you may need to do some touching up on the lines you create.