How Do You Create Hand-Drawn Images for Your E-Learning?

Excellent sketches Jerson

And some cool ideas shared by others.

Best option I've found is to sketch using Noteshelf on an iPad.  It gives me fat better (smoother and more fluid) results than my Bamboo tablet.

@Jerson - You have some mad drawing skills. Very impressive, always love seeing your work, clients must be over the moon with the characters and clean look you can give things.

@Tim - That is the tablet I have too and again, I am just getting used to it and playing around with the software. I've never been an 'artist' however I'm finding it enjoyable to plug gaps in my courses by using hand drawn images!

Hey Josh,

I get the clean lines when I use a combination of my tablet/mouse and Illustrator. When I want a more natural look I use photoshop. There are a few tutorial videos that show you how to "draw" with illustrator. I'll see if I can find them.  I like using my tablet with illustrator for a more flowing lines look. If I need precision I switch to my mouse.

Inkscape is a pretty useful tool for illustrating as well as general image building.  The trace feature is particularly handy for achieving net results with the former.  Plus it's free and there are loads of tutorials around.  

@Paul, @Bret, @Lucia and @Simon: Thank you so much for the software recommendations! I've only glanced at them so far, but there are some great (and beautiful) possibilities there that I'll check out further.

Do any of you have recommendations for the kind (or kindS, if more than one helps) of stylus to use for drawing on an iPad? I just have a little stylus they sold me with my iPhone - so not the ideal drawing instrument.

Any thoughts?

Hey Jackie,

I had a Bamboo stylus. It worked and responded very well. I actually use it on my Ipad mini to sketch out some ideas first.  I did some research and everyone said this was a good introductory stylus specifically for drawing.  There are more expensive stylus out there that are pressure sensitive (depending on the app), but I would recommend those for pros. 

Some of the drawing apps I have are ProCreate (Paid), SketchbookX (Free), IDraw(Paid), and Adobe Ideas(Free).  Precreate and sketchbook are for raster based graphics. IDraw and Ideas are for vector based graphics.  I like Ideas because you draw like you would normally and you can then export it as vector based drawing which you can manipulate later on, downside, you can only output as a PDF.

I'd really appreciate seeing those, I'm still getting used to my tablet and whilst I may not be able to replicate the quality you can produce it would be good to get my foot on the ladder!

@Jerson: Thanks for the stylus scoop. The Bamboo looks good. Gotta get one!

@Jackie,  If you have the chance, go to a store and see if you can test out a few different stylus. You might find that you prefer the feel of another brand or it has the responsiveness you like.

@Josh,  Here is a link to a tutorial on using the tablet with illustrator. 

http://www.astutegraphics.com/blog/vector-drawing-with-a-graphic-tablet-part-1-path-creation/

Another cool app I like is Kuler. Its for the Iphone/iPod.  It produces a color scheme from a photo or an image you see through your camera. Great if you like the colors of picture and need some help with using the right colors.

Jackie, this is a really wonderful discussion. It truly amazes me how generous everyone here is with their time and expertise. Personally I find the Wacom tablet with Photoshop or Illustrator affords the artist the most control over the line quality and its characteristics. I find Photoshop easier to draw with than Illustrator, which seems built for vectors, but that might certainly be due to the learning curve for both products.  They are so complex and so capable of every little nuance ... so much fun!

Yaaaay!! @Barb joined us - and with her very first post! Yes, it's astounding how generous people are with their time and expertise here. You might want to mention it to your grad students as a great resource, too!

Thanks for sharing what you use - and your VERY cool illustration. I'm no artist, like you and others here, but I should still practice more on my Wacom - and try out playing with the results in Photoshop and Illustrator. This may be one of my summer projects.

Thanks Jackie for the warm welcome. I wonder if someone would give me a suggestion for how to stop the screen from moving around as you are working on the drawing in Adobe Ideas on the Ipad. Also a warning. If you delete a layer, it is gone for good. There is NO undo for that decision. 

You can be certain I will send my students to look at and eventually join your community.

Barbara

Thanks for the information about Adobe Ideas. I made this image below with a combo of Ideas and Photoshop. One thing I'd like to share is: the undo on Adobe Ideas does NOT undo a layer you deleted by accident! Question- when you draw sometimes the image moves around on you ... any ideas or suggestions how to stop that? 

It might be moving around because you have more than two points of contact. You can use two fingers to easily move around the page. Your palm might be registering as a second input.

Hey Jerson - 

Have you tried out Manga Studio? My wife picked up the Pro version for a series of illustrations and she loves it. Similar to illustrator except it's really built with illustrating characters in mind. The brush tools are fantastic.

I just wish I could draw....fullstop :(

@Steve ,Yes  I have tried Manga Studio. I really liked the different variety of preset pens you can choose from to draw in almost any style. It took me a while to get comfortable with how the software works but I managed to do a few drawings. I went back to illustrator after discovering that I could "draw" with it as well using the paintbrush and blob brush tool. These have been great to get that natural drawn look and prevent it from being too mechanical looking after just using the mouse. There is also that pen width tool (dont' remember the name right now) that lets you adjust the width of the stroke at various points.  If you look at the faces of my Child character posted earlier, you can see some of this. Most of it is just strokes with different widths. It makes it easier to reshape this way.

Thanks - however...I have my wonderful illustrator Laura to thanks for those.

All I do is have some absinthe to aid creativity , call her up and describe visual weirdness and a story - which she interprets beautifully.

Now that's a creative process to get custom images that I hadn't considered, @Bruce!

Since I've never been very good about getting what I see in my head out through my hands and onto paper, I've found other ways to create custom graphics. Although they're not "hand drawn" per se, I've had great success using basic shape tools in PowerPoint and Adobe's CS (Photoshop, Illustrator mainly) to create custom items for projects.

Here's an example of what I happen to be working on today - taking a list of 20 fun-facts about food, and turning it into an infographic.

Everything you see was created using rectangles, elipses, polygons, and line segments. Add in some color sparingly, and presto - custom graphics. 

Granted this will be for print, it could easily be repurposed into Storyline using the same techniqe

@Michael - Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate getting to see what you did and having an idea of how you did it. I like that you still have that kind of custom look and the style remains consistent throughout. And it's a simple, doable idea that doesn't require freehand drawing!

I created a couple courses using hand-drawn characters and it wasn't super difficult, and proposed a session at one of the eLearning conferences about it, but was rejected. So now no one will ever know!!!!! 

Here's a good primer on figuring out WHAT to draw from Dave Gray: http://www.davegrayinfo.com/2012/12/17/how-to-know-what-to-draw/ 

Hope that helps

Holly