Looks like this corner of the forums doesn't see much use, but what the hey. This is probably the right place for this tutorial.
I want to share this stuff because I haven't seen this technique explained much, mainly the tutorials are all about Illustrator or PS. I use corelDRAW for all my work but I guess other programs, like Illustrator, have the same features as well. This tutorial is written for Corel v12 but will work on very old versions too.
If you're a complete newcomer to working with vectors this might not be a good way to get started, though it's not that complicated. But you need to know the basics of how vectors work and I'm not good at explaining those. On to the tutorial then.
First, take a picture of an extraordinarily beautiful human. Like Christina Ricci, in my example. After you've done a couple of these you really appreciate finding an expression such as she has on this picture!
Select the Freehand Tool (F5) and right-click on a nice, bright color on your palette to make it your default outline color. This way you can see better what you're doing. Click on a starting point along the line of her face, add points around the face, and finish where you started. it can be pretty rough and, of course, all points can be moved around freely anytime.
Next, select the Shape Tool (F10) and right-click on a line between any two points. This will pop up a menu where you can do stuff like add and remove points and change the way they behave. Select Convert to Curve. I've changed my keyboard shortcuts for fast access to these very important commands.
Now you can left-click and pull on the line with the Shape Tool selected. Make the lines fit her jaw and face nice and snug, and remember to also move the points where necessary.
Create another piece of the shadows on the sides of her face, it's good to make it loose and well outside the main face outline. Curve out those lines as before.
Select first the shadow piece, then, holding shift, the main outline to select both. The order is important. Find Arrange -> Shaping -> Intersect. This will cut away the part of the shadow that's left outside the main outline. Nice and precise. The other Shaping tools are very useful as well, especially Trim.
Depending on your preferences the uncut shadow piece may be left hanging around. If so, just delete it.
Assigning some arbitrary colors for the pieces reveal things more clearly.
Anyway, using this simple technique you can just keep going and adding as much detail as you want. It's time consuming, sure, but you can get some really nice and smooth vectors this way. When you add pieces for the eyes, nose and mouth, you don't really have to cut or intersect unless they overlap.
It's all a matter of experimenting and finding the right points and curves, depending on the current base image. Here you'll see the amount of detail my lazy ass got done before deciding to move on.
I remove the background and start assigning colors to the pieces. She looks pretty damn nasty, no?
Some of the pieces are probably in the wrong order so you may need to move them forwards or backwards (right-click -> order). I don't use layers in Corel, but I think I'll make that effort soon. You can browse, locate and rename your objects through Window -> Dockers -> Object Manager.
Now she's beginning to look human. The cheeks seem to be too wide comparing to the original photo but I'm going to fix that some other time.
After this I remove the outline color from all the pieces and start experimenting, adding details, messing with opacity values and just having fun. So here she is then!
The hair needs a
lot of work still but I decide to work around this by making a very light version, like this:
So this is the one I ended up with, for now, though I can't find the right shade of blue for the eyeliner. You can also make nice tones on the shadows and skin by using gradients instead of solid colors.
Hope someone understood something of this. If not, at least I got to show off my renditions of Christina. Feedback naturally appreciated!
Linear Mode
