[Tutorial] Making Graphics in Adobe Illustrator

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gomoto846
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Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 1:39 am
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[Tutorial] Making Graphics in Adobe Illustrator

Post by gomoto846 »

I'm not sure if there is a better way to do this, but I have found this effective:

1)Open bike cutout in illustrator.

2)Use Live Trace (or Image Trace depending on what version you have) and play with the settings until you get the closest version to the actual cutout (because Live Trace is not exact). It should be pretty close regardless. Look up some tutorials on Youtube if you don't know how to use Live Trace.

3)The cutout will be usable after Live Tracing it. Now make a new layer called "Mask", copy(Ctrl+C) and paste in place(Ctrl+F) the traced cutout into it, and make a rectangle (any color) that is the size of your artboard. Then copy and paste your cutout in front of the rectangle, select everything in the "Mask" layer, and use the "Minus Front" option in your pathfinder window (which can be accessed here: Window > Pathfinder). You should now have a working mask. Lock the mask layer and you can start drawing on your art layer.

4) Make your graphics.

5)To put your skin on the bike's Photoshop template, clip all of your artwork by making clipping masks of every piece of the cutout. (If there is a design element on multiple pieces of the cutout, you will have to copy and paste it in place for however many pieces of the cutout the design element is on, and clip one copied element per one piece of cutout) Once you've clipped every piece individually, copy and paste it all over to Ps as a vector smart object and line it up to the template as best you can.

Your graphics are now ready to be saved in game via the Photoshop Template.

Hope that helps somebody.
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