Digital Tutors - Creating a Poseable 2D Character in Illustrator

In this Illustrator tutorial, we’ll be creating our own poseable 2D character. We’ll start by referencing our sketch that will give us an idea of what our character will look like and help us by acting as a guide for our ink lines.

We’ll create outlines for the head and choose colors for the skin and teeth. We’ll talk about how we’ll need to divide up each body part on its own layer so we can bend and position it with ease in an animation program. Then we’ll move on to each body part and create ink work and color fills.

Along the way we’ll be checking to see how we can pivot the joints and we’ll also create a guide layer that will help us remember exactly where we decided that pivot point should be. We’ll wrap up by creating alternate hand poses that will help our character be more expressive and can be easily swapped out.

This course goes over the process for creating our own 2D character and by the end of this Illustrator training you’ll have an understanding of the things you’ll need to keep in mind when creating an asset that will need to be animated.