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Some of the most fun illustration work you can do involves creating characters.

In this Illustrator tutorial we will be creating a small family of characters call The Oh My’s. I encourage you to play with the sizes, shapes, and colors to design your own unique characters and then post your designs to the Designerside Flickr group.

I’m using Adobe Illustrator CS3 but pretty much any version of Illustrator (or any vector application for that matter) should be able to accomplish all of these steps.

Before we get started, here is the final image we will be creating.

Step 1

Create a new document and set the size to 792px by 612px.

Step 2

Now we’ll start creating the first character. First, using your Rectangle Tool, create a rectangle. I did one 185px x 240px in dimension. Then, with the shape you just created selected, go to Effect > Stylize > Round Corners… and set the Radius to 50px. The benefit to doing it this way as opposed to just using the Rounded Rectangle Tool is you can make adjustments to the radius of the rounded corners later on if you’d like.

You should now have something similar to this:

Step 3

Next we need to create the upper half of the head. Using the Ellipse Tool create a circle that is 135px x 135px. You can set specific dimensions by just doing a single click on your document with the tool. A window will pop up that will let you set the exact dimensions.

After you’ve created the first circle, position it in the top left corner of the rectangle. Duplicate the circle and move it to the other side.

You should have something similar to this:

Step 4

We’ll now create the legs. The process for this is fairly similar to Step 3. Grab the Rectangle Tool and create two legs. Then use the method mention in Step 2 to add rounded corners to the legs.

Step 5

Before adding additional detail, we need to merge all of the shapes we’ve created thus far. Select all of the shapes in your document, then in the Pathfinder palette select “Add to shape area” and then click “Expand”.

We’ll then go ahead and add some color to the new shape. We’ll be creating a red gradient. The lighter color will be #F26A5D and the darker color will be #EF414D. Select the shape and fill it with the gradient. I set the lighter color position to 50% and the Type to Radial.

Step 6

Let’s create the eyes now. What we’ll do is just completely create one eye and then duplicate it and move it over for the other eye. For this step the only tool we’ll be using is the Ellipse Tool.

First create the white of the eye as an egg shape (fill the shape with white). Next create the iris as another egg shape. This time fill with a gray color. And then after that create some reflection in the eye by adding two small white circles within the iris.

We’ll also add a simple shadow below the eye by duplicating the main eye shape, placing it behind the eye and nudging it down a few pixels. Fill the shadow shape with solid black and then set the Transparency to 20%.

Step 7

Now we’ll create the mouth. First create a simple circle and placing it in the center of the character. Next we’ll create a set of upper and lower teeth. We do this by putting to rounded rectangles next to each other and merging the shapes. You then create another circle shape and place it behind your “teeth”. So you might have something similar to this:

You then select “Intersect shape areas” from the Pathfinder menu and then Expand that. Doing this gives the teeth a rounded top so it fits in the circle. You then duplicate and flip the teeth and put them at the bottom.

Step 8

Next create the belt. First create the belt buckle with the Ellipse Tool and then after that we’ll create the belt itself by using the Pen tool. Try to add a bit of curve on the ends to make it look more like it’s going around the figure.

Step 9

To finish off the figure, we’ll give him some simple shoes. First create circles over the feet like so:

Then draw a rectangle over the circles where you’d want to cut the circles. Select the two circles and then group them and then select the grouped circles and the rectangle. Click “Subtract from shape area” in the Pathfinder palette and click Expand.

Step 10

We’ll now create the background. It’s really simple.

First, using the pen tool create the ground and fill it with a green color.

Next just use the rectangle tool to create the sky and move the shape behind the grass layer. Fill the sky with a light blue gradient.

At this point, you’ve basically finished the project. As you can see from my final image, you can create variations of the character simply by duplicating the figure and changing the colors and size.

Feel free to download the Illustrator file for this tutorial to pick it apart a bit more. Also, be sure to post your completion (and varations) of this to the Designerside Flickr Group!