How to create simple turtle character in Adobe Illustrator

Turtle is an animal which carry it's home wherever it go. Move slow, and very cute. Currently, the turtle population in Indonesia is wane. And therefore, the government put it into the list of endangered animals. To protect it from extinction, we often hold events turtle release beach area. The aim is that the turtle can grow more than if left wild.

Today, i want to share with you about how to crate simple turtle character in Adobe Illustrator. From it is name, you can see that our turtle will be simple. What is it looks like?. Let's just look it below.

How to create simple turtle character in Adobe Illustrator

How to create it?. Just begin the tutorial.!

Creating the Head

Use Elipse tool. And create a 314 x 61 px shape.
Color it with R=184, G=197, B=24.
Go to Effect>Warp>Flag. It should be Horizontal, Bend=100 and Distortion Horizontal=100.
Go to Object>Expand apearance
Now we have to rotate it 22 degree. Go to Object>Transform>Rotate>22.

It is easy. Our turtle head should look like this picture below.

Creating the Eyes

Eyes is the easiest part of this tutorial. I am sure you can make it although i not show you how.

Use Elipse tool. Make three shapes with different size.
The one in the middle size must be Black
Place it like the picture below.

Creating the Lips

Use Elipse tool. Make two shapes then punch it.
Go to panel pathfinder, select the shape and Minus Front.
Now we have an eyebrow. But we will rotate it to be a lips.

Now back to the head. Place the lips we have under the eyes.

Creating the nose hole

Use elipse tool again, make two shape. One big and one smaller. Place it in front. It should be a nose hole.

Now we have to place a shadow so that our turtle's mouth and nose look better.

Use pen tools. From the nose hole, make a curve shape following the head's shape.
Select the head. Copy it (Ctrl + C), then send to back (Ctrl+B)
Now hold shift and select the curve. Intersect them.
For the color, i just make it darker then the head. it is R=166, G=177, B=22
Do not forget to send it backward.( CTRL + [ ). Place it behind the nose hole and lips.

Creating the Shell

This is the longest part of this tutorial. But we will make it simple for you.

Use Elipse tool, make three shapes. One with R=84, G=90, B=2 and the other is R=56, G=60, B=1. (the lighter color must be copied to back and locked with CTRL+2)
Then using pen tool, make a curved line cross over the basic shell. Make sure the line weight is 5 pt.
Now we have to expand it. Go to object>expand>Stroke.
Select the lighter color with the curved line, now go to pathfinder>Devide. With devide, all path which have beed devided can be separated. So the next step is to delete the part we do not need.
Color the curved line with the same color as the darker elipse.
Select the rest from our devide. [do not use select all! do clik one by one]. After that, Group it (CTRL+G).
Remember that we have a shape which it being locked?. Now unlok it. (CTRL+ALT+2)
Now, we switch it. We must lock the Group one. Select it and press CTRL+2
Make one shape with pen tools along the shell (from head, until the tail). And it should be lighter color, so i choose.. R=184, G=197, B=24.
Since it is not neat, we have to make it neat. We still have a basic shape at the back,right?. Do copy to back and intersect it with our shape.

The last step is, make it transparat 10%

If you are a little confuse, you can do it your way. Just make sure you do it like this picture bellow, Okay?

Using pen tools, make 3 curve shape around the line we have made before. Begin with white, and color it with R=135, G=142, B=37

Creating the leg

To make a leg, we just need elipse tool. Doing rotate with it. And Intersect.

Use elipse tool, shape it a little wide in the middle.
Rotate it around with Object>Transform>rotate>43
Now make again three small elipse at the bottom of the big one. It will be a nail.
Have you know about pathfinder>unite?. If yes, then you can unite the nail.
Now, i want the nail is not round like that. So you know how to do Intersect?. Then do it.

One finished, and we can go to more leg. May be this picture below will show us how.

Creating Beach background

Sand

To create the sand, i just using pen tools. And maunally make it like this picture bellow.

Ocean

To create ocean, same as above. I just use the pen tools. Make it a little round.
And for the high-light it is just elipse warped by horizontal arch. I know you can do it. But if you can not, i has the tutorial about it. Just click here.

Grass

Use pen tools. Then make a grass with it. Whatever grass it is, you can make it different from mine. Just use the pen.

Cloud

To make a cloud, we can shape it manually or just use the simbol. You can access it in window>symbol.
This picture below shows the symbols panel. At the bottom, we can choose different symbol. There are nature symbols so just choose it.

You can see the cloud?. It is looks like this..

Good, now how to change the color?. Double click it and we can go to color panel and decide what color we want. My cloud was R=95 G=217 B=255. But you can choose your own.

Now we place them all in like the picture below.

Shadowing the turtle and grass.

With Elipse tools, make a very thin elipse.
Rotate it about -10. Select the object, go to menu Object>Transform>rotate. Give it -10.
Go to Effect>blur>Gaussian blur. Give it about 15
If you do it correctly, the image i show you below will not be same as you do. Therefore, Stretch it following the turtle shell's size.

That is for our turtle, Now for the grass it is the same way.

With elipse tool, make an thin egg shape.
We do not rotate it, just go to gaussian blur. I give it a little, just 2

Work with the Layer

You know that our work are not just one. We create many things, so we have to group it into one. Such as, the head, the shell, bacground and shadow. My own layers is like this..

Placing all the components with neat will make us work faster. Okay, Now that we have made it all. We can see how the layer works.

I know this tutorial is still need to be edited so that all process are orderly gived. But i hope you understand how to do it all. Thank you for visiting.