With Christmas just around the corner and the days getting colder and colder, we’ll soon be out building snowmen. But before that, lets build our very own vector version!
We’ll be using simple shape tools, the pen tool, the brush tool, the drop-shadow effect and various pathfinder tools in this tutorial, making it great for those in the festive mood and learning their way around the UI of Illustrator.
Step 1
Open up Illustrator and create a new Basic RGB Document. The default settings for this tutorial are fine – I’m using an A4 sized document.
Grab the Ellipse Tool and drag out a circle whilst holding the Shift key down to keep it round. Select the Direct Selection Tool. This tool allows you to select each individual anchor point and move it around to change the shape of the object. Click and drag the anchor point on the left of your circle outwards and downwards a little until you have something that looks like below.
Repeat the process with the bottom, right side and top anchor points. We don’t want to lose the main shape of our circle too much, but everybody knows real snowmen aren’t perfect, so we don’t want our illustrated one to be perfect, either!
Step 2
Repeat the step again but this time making sure the circle is smaller and a little longer.
Once again, repeat the step again, this time even smaller for the head of our snowman.
Step 3
We’ve got the main body shape of our snowman complete. Easy, huh? Now it’s time to add a scarf shape. Select the Pen Tool and draw a shape similar to as you see below.
With the shape still selected, go to Object > Arrange > Send Backward to hide the unwanted area of the scarf shape behind the snowmans head.
Reselect the Pen Tool if you don’t already have it selected and draw a couple of scarf ends as seen in the image below.
With the two shapes still selected, send them back two layers. You can do this by hitting Cmd+[ (or Ctrl+[) twice.
If they don’t look right at first, use the Direct Selection Tool to change the shape of your scarf, and try rotate the scarf. This is what I ended up with:
Step 4
Select the Paint Brush Tool and select the 5pt Angled Brush. Paint a couple of blobs on the snowmans face – these are to be his eyes. Stones are NEVER circle, so I went for a jagged and messy look!
Reselect the Ellipse Tool and drag out a small circle whilst holding the Shift key to keep it round. Remove its stroke if it had one, and changes the foregroud color to Orange.
Using the Direct Selection Tool, drag one anchor point out to the side.
With the orange shape (it’s a carrot incase you hadn’t guessed!) still selected, go to Object > Transform > Shear and enter the settings you see below. This alters the shape of the carrot for us, making it look more three-dimensional with very minimal work!
Step 5
Select all three of your main body shapes (lower, middle and head) by holding the Shift key and clicking. Add a Light Grey (1.5% Black) to White Gradient to the body shapes.
Select the Pen Tool and draw a big black shape as seen below.
Reselect the three main body shapes. Once you have them all selected, go to Edit > Copy and then Edit > Paste in Front. This will duplicate the three body shapes directly in front of our originals. Go to Window > Pathfinder and with the three body shapes still selected hit the Unite icon to merge the shapes together. Go to Object > Arrange > Bring to Front. Remove the fill color and stroke, and with the shape still selected hold the Shift key and select the big black shape. With the Pathfinder window still open, click on the Intersect Icon. You should be left with a cut out of our black shape – you may need to turn it black again!
We want the black shape to be above our main body shapes but below our scarf. Select your three scarf shapes and go to Object > Arrange > Bring to Front. Change the Blending Mode of our black shape to Soft Light.
Step 6
Select the Rectangle Tool and click somewhere on your canvas. Change the measurements to 5mm wide and 150mm long.
With you long rectangle still selected, press Cmd+C and then Cmd+F to duplicate it. Press the enter key and move it horizontally by 5mm.
Repeat this process until you have a long line of black rectangles.
Select the remaining black rectangles and change the foreground color to green.
Select all of your rectangles and group them together by going to Object > Group. Rotate the rectangles so they look something like below:
Select one of the dangly shapes from the scarf. Copy and paste it and move the selection on top of our stripy pattern. Select the scarf shape and the pattern at the same time, and in the Pathfinder window click on Crop. Move the scarf shape back into position.
Repeat the step again to fill the other areas of the scarf with our stripy pattern.
Select the floaty part of the scarf on the right hand side. Go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow and enter the settings seen below.
Zoom right into our scarf and using the Brush Tool paint a small black area as seen below.
Change the Opacity of the shape we just drew to 10%.
Select the main area of our scarf and in the same way as earlier add a drop shadow using the settings seen below.
Select the Brush Tool again and add a few more scriggly lines as we did earlier to other areas of the scarf.
Select all of our new scriggly lines and lower the opacity to 10%.
Step 7
We’re getting ourselves quite a handsome looking Snowman now! Zoom into the Snowmans carrot nose and add a 1px stroke in a slightly darker orange.
With the same orange still in your palette, choose the Pen Tool and start adding some detail to the carrot as see below. Use a 1px stroke with no foreground/fill color.
Select the Ellipse Tool and drag out a black circle whilst holding the Shift key to keep it round. Drag out another circle, this time about a one third of the size and in white, place it on top of the black circle, lower the opacity to about 30% and then group the two shapes together by going to Object > Group.
Open the Brushes Palette by going to Window > Brushes. With you circle shapes still selected, click on the New Brush symbol, and select Pattern Brush. Make sure your brush settings are the same as below.
Select the new brush from the palette, and with the brush tool draw a straight line down the center of our snowman. This should leave you with a nice row of buttons – you may need to position them underneath other objects!
Step 8
Grab the Pen Tool and draw a stick-like shape similar to below for one of his arms.
Repeat the step again for the arm on the other side.
Zoom right in to the end of our arms where they meet with the snowman. Grab the Brush Tool and in a light grey draw a shape similar to below. Position it beneath the arm by going to Object > Arrange > Send Backward.
Repeat the same step on the other side of the Snowman. Lower the Opacity of both of the new shapes to 35%.
Select the two stick arms and add a dark to light brown gradient.
Select the three main shapes of our Snowmans body and change the stroke color to a light grey.
Step 9
Zoom into the scarf and resize it so the top two corners match with the edge of the snowmans head.
Add some stringy bits to the scarf using the pen tool, and we’re done! That’s one Mr.Frosty the Snowman finished! Very simple, but snowmen are!
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