Make Your Own Cartoons, 20+ Tutorials

This tutorial collection features basic Photoshop & Illustrator drawing techniques to advance coloring and Shading . If  you are good with pencil and paper, why not make your own cartoon and transform your work into digital art. You just need to learn how to effectively use modern digital tools & techniques. This is a collection of 20 old and new tutorials focusing specifically on creating cartoon objects and characters. These wealth of tutorials will help you understand how professionals work & use their skills to adopt to different situations, and will immensely improve your design skills.

1. I assume that you are familiar with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, but if  you are just starting out in Illustrator or Photoshop, you should look at some of the basic tutorials that teaches how to use these wonderful tools.
   • Illustrator Beginners Series
   • Illustrator Guides & Tutorials
   • Getting Started with Photoshop
   • Understanding Layer Masks In Photoshop
   • Photoshop's Pen Tool
   • Illustrators Pen Tool The Comprehensive Guide

2. Create a Basic Cartoon Eye

   Very basic tutorial shows how to create that cute shiny cartoon eye using Adobe Illustrator. The tutorial is valuable to beginners, If you are looking for much advance tutorial, please scroll down.

3. Draw a Basic Cartoon Duck Character illustration

   This tutorial will take you through basic shapes , using basic tools such as pathfinder, knife and eyedropper tools to create a cute duck character.

4. How to Illustrate Dynamic Hair Using Adobe Illustrator's Paintbrush Tool

   Tutorial focuses on basic drawing technique using illustrator. You will learn to draw basic stuff like  nose, ears, mouth from real human photograph. And as you progress, you will be creating hair and applying tone and shades.

5. How to Create an Illustrated Cartoon Character

   Pretty straight forward tutorial and to achieve this you will need very limited as it will only take a few tools.

6. How To Draw Ferb Step By Step

   This tutorial is about Ferb where author will guide you how to draw Ferb step by step in Illustrator. A very basic tutorial where beginners can also practice this easily.

7. How to create Angry Birds character

   In the tutorial you will be taught the basic principles in order to create an almost exact replica of famous game character Angrybird.

8. Draw A Funny Cop Illustration From A Sketch

   Another basic tutorial from smashingshare, shows how to draw a funny cop illustration from a sketch. This tutorial requires intermediate knowledge of Adobe Illustrator and advanced pen drawing skills.

9. Create a Cute Panda Bear Face

   In this tutorial you will learn to create a cute panda bear face icon all from ellipses. This techniques can be applied to other icons, illustrations, logos, or other projects.

10. Drunken Monkey Photoshop Tutorial

    An excellent Photoshop tutorial at Smashing Magazine, written by a Spanish guest artist. It's a step-by-step guide designing an attractive character called Drunken Monkey using advance techniques. You will learn how to familiarize with design requirements, adjusting the character proportions, get a clear pose & coloring the character.

11. Draw a Cute Vector Dog Character

    Step by step tutorial creating a simple Jake the Labrador dog in Adobe Illustrator. Tutorial explains basic use of Pen tool, using right stroke, adding colors & using gradients.

12. Create a Twitter Style Bird Mascot

    I just love this vector bird, because it is so cute and very easy to create. The Author shows how easy it is to create this Twitter style bird, just using Illustrator. There's no pencil sketch involved, no complicated steps needed, just pure illustrator.

13. Create Simple Cartoon Character Using Photoshop

    Another similar tutorial, but it is done in Photoshop. Good enough to fine tune your Photoshop skills.

14. How to Get that Anime Look in Photoshop

    It is a pretty lengthy tutorial (About 46 Steps) showing how to get smooth and shiny Anime look using Photoshop. You will learn to draw outline and build the correct hierarchy for the base colors, tones and highlights.

15. Create a Sketchy Hand-Drawn Camera Illustration in Illustrator

    Using Illustrator and bit of Photoshop, author shows how to create an image that looks like hand drawn rusty camera. Using the Pen tool and tracing the outlines, you can come-up with similar illustrations using various images.

16. How to Illustrate a Microscope in Illustrator

    Throughout this tutorial on how to illustrate a vector microscope you'll take advantage of numerous Illustrator tools. You will learn how to use blends, art brushes and 3D rendering in Adobe Illustrator.

17. Create a Fun holiday reindeer

    This tutorial covers illustration style, color selection, shading and touches on typography. The process of adapting your illustration during creation is also covered.

18. Create a Cool Vector Yeti Character in Illustrator

    Tutorial uses as many basic shapes as possible to achieve that quirky style of illustration, then bring the character to life with a palette of cold colors. Tutorial includes a good spread of intermediate to advanced tools and techniques.

19. Create A Cute Creature Character

    This tutorial uses custom brushes, the Paintbrush tool, Pen tool, and the Live Paint Bucket tool. Even if your not a huge fan of the cuteness, you can use these techniques for other illustrations, logos, and vector elements.

20. The making of Gloopix

    Learn how to correctly apply proper drawing principles and state of the art Adobe illustrator on demand techniques to make your mascot design really pop up from the cold paper sheet