Make sure your handles are all balancing the workload and not allowing just one handle to be extremely long and carrying all of the weight. This same technique should be applied to your lettering. Notice that the handles are evenly balanced and distributed as well. Those are the "extrema" of the letter "O". You can see the shape is being evenly created by four main points.
The east and west anchor points on the side allow you to distribute the weight and width. For example, the extrema of the letter "O" would be the north and south anchor points that form the curve. In the case of lettering, we're talking about the extreme opposites of the letter to compose it with bezier handles. In mathematics, that generally means the maximum or minimum. Now, what does " extrema" mean? Firstly, it's plural for extremum. 2. Plotting Your Points on the Extremaīefore we begin working on the computer, we're going to practice vectoring by hand! With paper! Crazy, right? I promise you it'll give you a much larger understanding and appreciation for the wonderful Pen Tool.
We're going to focus on taking that sketch and redrawing it in handwriting vector format. Initial sketch/scan of the hand-drawn lettering you want to vectorįor this tutorial, you're going to use a sketch of some previous lettering you may have done from the previous tutorials.Let's begin! 1. Preparing the Tools You Will Need Keep an open mind, and I promise we'll create great things. There will be a beginning, and there will be an end, but it'll take us some time to get there! Long story short, it won't be a streamlined beginning and end. Third, I want you all to know that this tutorial might seem a bit jumbled up and all over the place, but I promise it's for the sake of teaching! I just want to share everything and anything to help your hand-lettering vector process. If you don't understand how it works or its functionality, I suggest reading up on that before you begin-it'll only make things easier later on.
#VECTORIZE HAND LETTERING HOW TO#
Second, this tutorial isn't about teaching you how to use/understand the Pen Tool. It's truly the best way to learn! I want you to take the information below and apply it to your very own lettering, so you'll have a finished piece that you can truly call yours! For your practice and experience, I suggest creating/using your own piece of hand-drawn lettering, rather than recreating mine. Three things to note before we get started putting your handwriting in vector form:įirst, the hand lettering vector process below uses some work I already created in a previous tutorial. Devilion is just one of thousands of simple calligraphy hand lettering alphabet fonts available on Envato Elements.
Find more simple calligraphy hand-lettering fonts like Devilion after the tutorial. The creative hand-lettering alphabet fonts from Envato Elements are great options for your immediate needs. Note: while this handwriting vector tutorial will teach you useful skills, it's a process. In the case of hand-drawn lettering, the key is to have relatively few anchor points while using proper point placement and a variety of other tricks to perfect those curves, angles, widths, etc. You can use the same process for any hand lettering you compose in Illustrator. This hand-lettering Illustrator tutorial will hopefully answer all your questions regarding vectoring letterforms-and vectoring nearly anything, for that matter. I had a decent understanding of the Pen Tool, but had no idea that learning just a few minor techniques would do wonders for my type and help create those smooth curves I was looking for. I remember a year ago I was having so much trouble vectoring my letterforms.