Designing with Phantasm and VectorFirstAid with Illustrator Adam Grason

This piece was inspired for me and my family's love for the ocean and for all ocean life. I’ve always wanted to draw a tiger shark and with my son's help I made it the focal point of this tutorial.

First off I always highly recommend that people start adding texture once you have the base form and layout down. I knew for this one that the notorious striped pattern was the first thing I wanted to tackle. I started there and moved my way throughout the form and background until I had something that had the desired shading and depth I wanted.

Here is where Astute Graphics comes in. Have you ever worked on an entire piece and realized you needed to re-color it? With Phantasm you can adjust colors, shading, brightness and so on with just a few clicks and drags. I wanted to give a darkness to the depths and also wanted to refine the blue just a bit. With Phantasm that was  extremity easy and saved me a ton of time. Now let’s talk about files size. The number one question I am asked is how I am able to keep files sizes down and how my computer doesn’t combust with all the texture. For years I have created work arounds and tactics to do just that. But Astute Graphics has allowed me to leave that worry with their plugin in VectorFirstAid. It allows me to examine my entire piece for useless points, pixels and clutter. With a few clicks I’m able to remove unnecessary details and it leaves me with a much smaller and less robust file. Astute Graphics Plugins will not only help you make better art it will also save you the time you may be wasting on trying to adjust all these things manually. I couldn’t speak more highly about them and the way they help me create art that is as efficient as it is gorgeous.