How to create avatars, avatar illustrations in Adobe Illustrator

Drawing character illustrations is always a fun experience, even more so when you draw characters based on a real person. Avatar is a portrait drawn with an illustrative style, showing the difference but still not revealing your identity.

In this tutorial, let's use the vector tools in Adobe Illustrator to create a simple avatar character, and with the same background you can also create many different personalities. To begin with, you need to know the basic techniques of Adobe Illustrator.

The character designs that we will be working on here are completely simplified into basic shapes to create a common face frame configuration. To represent different people, you just need to change the hairstyle, skin color.

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Draw basic avatar illustration with Adobe Illustrator

The avatar illustration will be surrounded by a circle, so using the Ellipse Tool , hold Shift to draw a perfect circle. Increase Stroke to 6pt .

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Use the Retangle Tool to draw a rectangle inside the circle to make the face of the character, then you use the Selection Tool , hold Shift and select both shapes, balance them with Align (Windows >> Align) .

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Drag the small circle to the center to make corners.

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You draw a circle to make the character's eye, turn off the Stroke color and choose the black Fill color . Then press Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V to make a copy and position it symmetrically.

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Select 2 circles and group them together:

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Balancing eyes in the middle of face with Align .

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Turn on the Round Cap Stroke feature by following these steps:

1. Select Windows >> Stroke .
2. In the window that appears, select the icon 3 dashes >> Show Options .

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1. Continue to select Round Cap to make your two ends of the line always rounded.

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To draw eyebrows, draw a circle, then use the Direct Selection Tool to select and press Delete to delete 2 points of the circle, you will only have 1 quarter of the circle left:

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Align the eyebrows to the correct position and make the same on the other side.

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Make copies of eyebrows to use as a nose and mouth.

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Draw the neck of the character using a small rectangle, using the Direct Selection Tool , click and make the lower corners.

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Put the details in the right place.

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Using the Scrissors Tool , tap the intersection between the two strokes. At this point your brush has been divided into different sections. You just need to delete the leftovers.

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Draw a big circle to illustrate the character's role, you just need to put in the right position and cut away the excess is perfect.

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Now that you have created the background for your avatar illustrations, from here try to personalize them to create different characters.

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Personalize the character

Start customizing this basic face with a hairstyle. Draw a large rectangle, center align and circle the top two corners.

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Click the 3-dot icon in the toolbar, navigate to Arc Tool and drag this tool onto the toolbar to be able to use it.

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Use Arc Tool to draw bangs for the character.

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Cut off the excess lines with the Scrissors Tool :

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You create a different hairstyle for the male character with overlapping circles.

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Select Windows >> Pathfinder to open the Pathfinder window . Continue using the Selection Tool , hold Shift and select all the circles then use the Unite feature in Pathfinder to put them all together:

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Use the Scrissors Tool and the Eraser Tool to erase the extra strokes.

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Use 2 halves of the circle to make the character's ears.

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Create a simple pair to decorate the character, now you can remove the eyebrows and use it as a frame.

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Color

The easiest way to add color to your illustration is to use the Live Paint Bucket tool . You choose Live Paint Bucket similar to how to open Arc Tool as above.

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Select all the details of the character with the Selection Tool , then select the color and paint with the Live Paint Bucket .

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Combining the hair color and skin color of the main character is the key to helping the viewer to easily identify who it represents.

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To apply a color from Live Paint to Fill , do the following: Select all objects >> Select Object >> Expand . >> Check only in the Object box >> OK .

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Now that you have created avatars for 2 characters, continue to use this basic image to create other individuals for yourself, your friends or anyone else.

Good luck!