This tutorial is brought to you my good friend at february-stars.com
I thought I'd share this crash course in creating amazingly hot vector artwork.

Step 1: Required

High level of confidence using Flash and Photoshop CS
Problems: jamieroy[at]hotmail.com

Alright, well, lets get down to business. A lot of people have been asking me to write a tutorial on how to make crazy vector artwork.

Step 2: What We Are Working For

Step 3: Making the Rifles

Alright, so, we need an image to start with. For the purposes of this tutorial, we are going to start off with a rifle.

Now, we don't really want any of the details of the rifle... just the basic shape, so using Photoshop, open the image and go to Brightness/Contrast and set the contrast to 70%. Anything higher gives jagged edges.

Note: Depending on your image, (If you are using the same one I'm using) You may have to do other things to get the basic shape of your image. I usually fiddle around with Brightness/Contrast and tthe Cutout Filter (Filters>Artistic>Cutour). But for this image it was surprisingly easy.

Step 4: Colour Range

Under the menu bar, go to Select>Color Range to bring up the color range dialoge box. Set fuzziness to 0 and Check 'Inverse' and click anywhere that is white in the thumbnail image within the Color Range dialogue box.

Hit 'ok'
With the rifle now selected for you, cut and paste it into any sized document you want.

Step 5: Arranging the Weaponry

Depending on your mood, you can arrange your rifles any way you want... it's up to you, but I did it like so:

I did this by rotating the first rifle with the transform tool, and then I copied and pasted the rifle and hit CTRL-SHIFT-T to apply the transform to the copy. Do this a couple times to rotate each gun the same amount so you get the best results.

Save your image at full size, AS A PNG.

Step 6: Tentacles!

Alright, so we're going to switch into Flash.... err... Illustrator if you've got it. I don't own Illustrator so I do my vector work all in Flash, and so, these instructions reflect that. I would imagine the processes I use in Flash are relatively the same in Illustrator.

Go to File>Import>Import To Stage and locate your rifle image, and import it. Resize the page to fit your freshly opened image.

We are going to create those groovy tentacles. Create a new layer and lock the first layer, and grab the line tool and make a zig zag pattern like so:

Using the arrow tool, push and pull the centers of each section of the line to make a wave like so:

It takes a lot of practice to get the flow right... so don't give up.

Copy and Past-In-Place (CTRL-SHIFT-V) and then select your free transform tool and put the pivot point to the top right hand corner (Red Arrow), and rotate it slightly using the bottom left corner (Blue Arrow).

Now you have something like this:

Close off the opening with the line tool and fill it with whatever colour you desire, for me it was #FF9900, and then delete the lines so you just have the fill left over.

Step 7: Give 'em Some Colour!

Create as many tentacles as you want, and put each tentacle on a new layer, and vary the hue of the colour your using, ie, light and dark orange, with some white tentacles thrown in for good measure. We are going to be fiddling with the colour in Photoshop to make it glow, and it makes the colours you use brighter, so don't worry if they look sort of lame at this point.

Step 8: Now for the Twist!

Alright, let's intertwine those tentacles. If you look closely at one of the example images above you'll see that the tentacles appear to wrap around each other, or the tree's branches in the second example. To do this, create a layer at the bottom of all the other layers, I added a background layer and applied a gradient to it, if you have done the same, don't put this new layer behind the background layer. Now, unlock one of the tentacle layers and select a small chunk of the tentacle and cut and paste it in place on the new layer.
Example:

Number one shows the chunk I have selected, and number two shows the section pasted in the layer beneath everything.

Do this for everything, I made it so that there is a lot of interaction with the rifles, its up to you.

As you can see, I chose to have a tentacle go through the trigger hole, AND through the sight of another one.

Now, lets make some clouds.

Step 9: Clouds Are Pretty..

Grab the elipse tool, and set your fill colour to white, and click the red x for the line colour because we don't want lines in this case. Start drawing some clouds on a new layer!

To make these nifty flat bottomed clouds, just draw the cloud and then using the arrow tool, select a square area and chop off the bottom of the clouds

Step 10: Stars and Stuff

Add any other bits and pieces you want, I added some stars, and to do that, take a look at the picture below, set something similar up to it and then position it in the bottom left corner and drag stars to the tips of the lines.

In this last image you can see that I rotated the stars so that they fit the curve. My own preference, you don't have to do that if yu don't want to.

Step 11: Add a Background and Drips!

Export your image as a png, with a TRANSPARENT background, no fill whatsoever, and open that image in Photoshop.

I added a #333333 to #666666 gradient in the background.

I'm going to add some drips to the clouds, because I like doing that, using a hard edged brush, and using [ and ] keys to vary brush size, click THEN press shift and draw a line down, release shift. this draws perfectly straight lines.

When you want to add a second drip, click and THEN press shift, if you press shift and then click Photoshop will connect your previous line with the one you are about to draw. I used these brush settings:

Step 12: A Smooth Glow to Finish Her Off!

By now, you must be getting the hang of it, add whatever you feel it needs, but add whatever you are to a new layer. To get the glow effect, I duplicated the image outputted from flash, and Gaussian Blurred it by 3px, and then set the layer blending mode to Hard Light.

Step 13: Tada!!

Alright, well, as you may have noticed, this tutorial is pretty much a walk through of the tools and techniques I use when making something like this.

Its 99% up to you and your ability, creativity and inspiration to make what you want. Take a look at the two pink example images I have above, there's nothing new and exciting in those, its just knowing what tools to use and how to use them.

The integrity of the image you make is entirely dependent on your experience with Photoshop and Flash, so just keep working at it! Enjoy!

www.february-stars.com
fasterthanlight.devinatart.com

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial made by "fasterthanlight" hopefully there will be more to come.
I plan to get some out on basic animation.

Peace
www.darkmotion.com