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A Cow As Chinese New Year Zodiac For 2009

Chinese New Year is coming next 2 weeks. It is Cow year for year 2009 in Chinese zodiac. So, I do a tutorial on how to create a cow. Last year, I created a rat in Photoshop but this year, I am going to use Illustrator. I also include a Chinese New Year Newsletter/e-card for you. Feel free to download, put in your message and send it to your friends! Let’s start then.

Result

Step 1

First of all, we start from skecth. I skecth on a paper and then scan it into my PC.

Step 2

Open Illustrator, place the image (sketch) into the document. Place it as the bottom layer. Lock it. Create a new layer above it and set the transparency to 50% or 60%. Start draw out the basic shape. It doesn’t have to be very accurate. Smooth, natural and balance are the keys here. You can check out my previous tutorial on Illustrate Image Into Vector or Sketch To Vector. Below is the basic shape I got.

Step 3

We are not going to use the stroke here. We are going to draw out the outline manually. We will be using the pathfinder tool very often since now.

Step 4

Try to Zoom in and to draw out the details line. Below are some shortcut keys to speed up the work.

• Zoom in = CTRL + +
• Zoom out = CTRL + -
• Paste infront = CTRL + F
• Move a layer down = CTRL + [
• Move a layer top = CTRL + ]

Step 5

Draw out the eyes amd legs. We are going to use pathfinder too.

Step 6

Now, the cow is alomost donw. What we need to do here is to add some details and gradients.

Step 7

Hurray! Done!

Happy Chinese New year!

I take this chance to say Happy Chinese New Year to all of you. By the way, “cow”, pronounce in Mandarin is same as “new”. So, When you say Happy New Year to someone. It means you are greeting him a Happy Cow Year! Interesting, right? Alright, I have compile the e-card and the source file of the cow vector. You can download them now!

e-card

Download