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How To Design a Wingless Bird Character in Adobe Illustrator

October 18, 2010 by Callum Chapman 7 Comments

In this tutorial we’re going to be creating a character from the “Heroes and Heartbreakers” series using Adobe Illustrator and a handful of handy techniques.

If you’re interested in this, you might want to check out one of our previous tutorials where we discuss similar techniques: How To Design A Rollerskating Girl In Illustrator.

Step 1

Open up Adobe Illustrator and create a new Basic RGB Document.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Place an image of the character into your document – you can use mine which can be found below. The size doesn’t matter as we’re working with vector images! The easiest way to place your file in is by either copying and pasting the image below, or by saving it and then going to File > Place.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

With the image now place, double-click on the layer it is placed on, and change the settings; changing the name, dimming the image and locking the layer.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Step 2

Select the Pen Tool. Using a 1 pixel black stroke, trace the left half of your characters main body shape – be sure to do this on a new layer.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

The reason we’re only tracing half of the shape is because we’re going to reflect it and then join it to make sure our tutorial stays symmetrical. With the same Pen Tool settings, trace the left side of both the characters hat and beak.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

It’s now time to duplicate and merge our left-sided shapes. Select all of them, and then go to Edit > Copy and then Edit > Paste in Front. With the selection still selected, go to Object > Reflect > Vertical and click OK.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Use the cursor keys to nudge your selection across so that your shapes match up.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

You’ll notice that our beak hasn’t quite matched up – nudge these shapes together separately until they do. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t end up centered, as we can do this later.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Select your two main body shapes, and then from the pathfinder palette (Window > Pathfinder) select the Unite option to merge the two shapes into one, creating a closed shape which we can now fill with color.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Repeat the step with your other shapes that are in two halves.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Step 3

It’s time to move onto our characters legs. We’re going to create each individual ‘section‘ of the leg separately. Using the same settings for the Pen Tool that we have been using throughout the tutorial so far, start to produce your shapes.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Keep on repeating this until you get to the bottom of the leg, making sure each shape overlaps the other.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Start tracing your characters left foot – I’m starting on the spaces in between the toes, as seen below.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Complete the rest of the foot using the Pen Tool.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Select all of the shapes that make up your characters legs and then copy them, paste them in front, reflect them and position them into place.

Step 4

It’s now time to move onto our eyes – instead of creating perfectly round circles, we’re just going to trace the shapes of our characters eye outlines. Do this using the Pen Tool with the same settings we have been using throughout the tutorial.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

With that done, we can now fill the outline with a dark grey or black and remove the stroke.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Using the Ellipse Tool, drag out a circle whilst holding the shift-key to keep it in proportion. Select the new shape, and then select the black background shape at the same time by holding the shift-key. From the pathfinder window, select the Minus-Front option. This will cut a hole in the original shape we created, making it appear as an eyeball. We will be adding effects to it later on.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Duplicate and reflect your eye, and position it on the other side of your characters face. Using the Pen Tool, create some blue highlights and place them beneath your characters eyes. You’ll notice that I have now hidden the stock image of our character as we no longer need it!

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Step 5

It’s time to start adding some more color to our character. The first shape I’m going to fill is the characters main body shape – in this case, I’m using a very light gradient, going from 3% to 6% black.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Remove the strokes from your individual beak shapes and fill them with two different yellow colors.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Create a blue highlight beneath your beak using the Pen Tool.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Using the Pen Tool, create a DIY stroke through the middle of the characters beak.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Create a new shape overlapping the bottom half of your beak. Add a gradient to it, going from a dark yellow/green to transparent.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Lower the transparency of the new shape to 50%. Repeat the process for the top half of the beak.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Step 6

Moving back onto the legs, go through one shape at a time and apply a yellow gradient to them, similar to the colors we used in our characters beak – you can also remove the strokes.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Keep on going through every shape that makes up your leg, and then repeat the process on your other leg.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Fill in the shapes that make up our characters feet. You may need to arrange the shapes by going to Object > Arrange.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Step 7

It’s time to add a little more depth to our characters main body. Grab the Pen Tool and create a shape over the left side of the main body, as seen below.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Select the main body shape of your character, and duplicate it. Select both shapes, and from the pathfinder window select Intersect to make your new shape fit nicely. Position the new shape beneath any other shapes on top of the body.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Create a white shape using the Pen Tool at the top of your characters head, and fill it with white with no stroke.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur and blur your new shape by around 1.5 pixels.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Lower the transparency of the shape to around 80%, and position it above your characters main body shape, but beneath the grey shadow we created a few steps ago.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Keep repeating these steps to add some more depth to the body of your character, but don’t go overboard!

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Step 8

The next step is to move back onto the characters eyes. To make our eyes more ‘eye-like‘ we’re just going to add some shadowing around the edges. Our character doesn’t have any pupils, so we just want to make them look like they’re embossed from the characters face a little. Grab the Pen Tool and create some shapes around the outer section of the eye.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Create a white circle, and place it beneath all your other eye shapes. Fill your outer shape (my red shape) with a light(ish) grey.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Keep building up the amount of shapes in your eye until you have something similar to below.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

With that done, copy and paste in front all of your new shapes, reflect them and position them into place on your characters right eye.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Step 9

Using the techniques we have been using throughout the tutorial, add some teeth to your characters beak/mouth, some dots to it’s forehead, and finally the hat.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Apply a 3D Extrude & Bevel with 0pt depth to change the angle of your dots.

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

We’re all done!

Here’s my final result – show us yours by linking to in the comments below!

Design a Wingless Bird Character in Illustrator

You can download the final result in AI format right here:

Download the ZIP file (191KB) (downloaded [download#24#hits] times already!)

Filed Under: Design, Illustrator, Tutorial

Comments

  1. Jarod @ Vibe Tutorials says

    October 18, 2010 at 8:05 am

    The tutorial is cool, but the mouth don’t look like the real one, it looks like the nose holes (that let the bird breath)

  2. Eric says

    October 18, 2010 at 9:55 am

    Nice tutorial Callum!

  3. helium says

    October 18, 2010 at 12:11 pm

    lol i actually LOVE this character, he looks awesome haah

  4. Radim says

    October 19, 2010 at 4:15 am

    Final bird look’s like evil zobie bird. But tutorial is fine.

  5. Callum Chapman says

    October 19, 2010 at 12:15 pm

    @Radim He’s from the Heroes and Heartbreakers series. Maybe the bird is a heartbreaker rather than a hero? ;)

  6. Brett Widmann says

    November 14, 2010 at 10:08 pm

    Great tutorial. The bird…. kind of creepy, but equally awesome.

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