Had my first real intro to Illustrator about a week ago, I've used it in the past but only for typography so what you see here is what I've learned/taught myself in the past few days. Cnc is welcome. Self portrait Superhero emblems - I'm not sure what's up with the outlines of these because there weren't any problems when I saved them (this one's for a friend) And some sprites because why not. These were done in Photoshop. Katniss from The Hunger Games, Cloud and Tifa from FFVII.
It's a technique called cell shading; because Illustrator works in shapes, the illusion of light can sometimes be difficult to create. Cell shading makes 'light' with shapes. You'd probably recognize it from cartoons and such, just didn't know it by name. For example: Notice how the shadows really are just one block of color? That's cell shading. Onto the comments on your pieces though, try to vary your outlines in Illustrator--particularly, on some of the shadow/highlights shapes. Don't remove it from all, but it can create a bit smoother/more natural look when cell shading. The symbols/logos look really good to me though, some of the lines are a little shaky but if you're just getting started in Illustrator that's totally understandable, I've been using it on and off for a few years now and mine are even worse, haha. Saving them in a format like PNG or JPEG can create some weird effects that aren't your fault, too--I know mine sometimes get these lines on them that are almost impossible to get rid of. ._. Sprites look nice too, never done them before so I haven't many comments.
It's actually vitiligo xD Our professor wanted us to experiment with style so I chose a more minimalist approach and tried to use as few color variations as possible. But that's definitely something I wanted to experiment with and probably will for future assignments. Hm...I'll have to check the settings I saved it in then, I had a feeling it might be the format so worst comes to worst I'll save it with a white background and manually remove it in Photoshop. Thanks though, both of you. :]
Well, still shading I suppose, haha. Yeah, for some reason Illustrator's Save For Web thing really blows, you can open .AI files in Photoshop though, and export them as transparent PNGs, so it's not a big deal.