Here's the line drawing I start out with. It takes quite a while to get it looking right and everything in the correct position but it's time well spent.
Here's the line drawing I start out with. It takes quite a while to get it looking right and everything in the correct position but it's time well spent.
Once I have everything where I need it to be, I select the entire image and Expand it's Appearance and then merge it all together. This creates on shape. The colour comes next.
To do this, I drag a shape over my entire image so it sits below my linework. Once this is done, I select both the image and the shape and click 'Divide' which can be found in the Pathfinder window. I then use the auto selct tool to click and select the pieces of the image I don't want/need. Once I have done this, the image I will be left with should just be one colour. Now use the autoselect and shiftclick each piece I want re coloured. I then use my brush tool to go back over and put in the shadows and highlights.
To get to this final image, I copied the entire image onto a new layer and merged it all into one shape. I then created an offset path to this image, one at 12px then one at 14px. I then deleted the 12px path and created another offsetpath at -12px. This rounds all the corners off nicely.
Once I'd done all that, I placed the final image back ontop in the correct position so give this great outline effect.
