[Sejskaler]

Hello there!

It seems people want tutorials here, so I will go over some basics I personally use.

First thing first, if you want to create a great illustration, especially vector, you need some great lineart.
What's important here is line dynamics.
A straight line might be used when painting, as an example, if you look at much anime-esque art, you will see lines that are plain, they are indifferent and static all through the work. That's fine, because the lines are not a big part of it.

BUT when it comes to illustration, it's extremely important since it's a big part of it.

You want it to be smooth, you want it to fit together like one big line, do you see a difference here?
Spoiler (Click to View)

Ok, so on the left one, you can see some lines, like in the top left, that aren't connected. Here's a zoom of the skulls, bottom is not reworked, top is reworked.
Spoiler (Click to View)

But Chris, how do we do this?

It's actually REALLY simple, but tedious work. It's a lot about you you feel it should be, I like to connect the lines by extending.
First of all, if you work in illustrator, you want to make sure the lines are set up for drawing. I will just be going over my settings, they are rather simple:
Spoiler (Click to View)

As you can see, it's a simple brush with pressure, the variation for angle, I just put somewhere every time, makes it fun to have something new to work with, so change these around until you like it.

But Chris, I don't have a drawing pad!

No problemo, we can use this simple tool, right here:
Spoiler (Click to View)
The width tool, you simply make a line, as long as it's a line, you can press a point and change the line form like this:
Spoiler (Click to View)
You just click and drag a point, it's a lot more variation than the presets, those should only be used for something very fast.

Ok, so, now we've got that down, Chris! What do we do now?

Now comes the tedious part, honestly, this is where you might want to cry while doing it :P
First of all, we make sure the line dynamic is all good, it's looking varried? GREAT! now we take the whole thing and change it to solids, how do we do this?
Spoiler (Click to View)
Expand appearance!

Okay, done that?
Now all the lines are paths.
That means we can manipulate them, so what you want to do is take the points of the lines and fit them together, like here:
Spoiler (Click to View)

You simply make all of it fit, use the direct selection tool (white arrow beside the normal selection tool)

Now that you've learned that, you simply keep doing it:
Spoiler (Click to View)

For EVERY SINGLE LINE
You might want to put the two endpoints together to give it a sharp swing.
When you are done, it should look like the result at the top.
Here's another example where I have done it to every line except for the details.
You might even want to change the line thickness when doing it to give more variation, you simply move the points.
Spoiler (Click to View)

BUT! WAIT! THERE'S MORE!
This step is a step you CAN take before making the lines connect, that's your choice, I prefer not to do so because it can split the lines in a weird way.
Anyways, select your paths, go to object, like before, press live paint and make (remember to expand appearance first) - now go to object, live paint, expand.
What this does is disconnect the lines, meaning that if a line was going through, you can simply delete it:
Spoiler (Click to View)
You can now just delete it, while still being able to manipulate the lines.
I would recommend doing this either before fixing the lines, or after fixing the lines, not in the middle, it might give problems. You should try both techniques to see what you prefer.

When you are done, do the live paint again and you can apply colour, but that's for another tutorial :D

Well, I guess this is the basics of lines, remember to connect them all to get some really good outputs!

Hope this helped you aspiring illustrators out there. Regards

[Mαxim]

We need more like these tutorials. Well-done and thank you for contributing.

[Horizon]

Such a HQ informative tutorial. Very very useful and as mentioned above we need more of these! Thanks.

[Sejskaler]

We need more like these tutorials. Well-done and thank you for contributing.

Thank you very much :D

Such a HQ informative tutorial. Very very useful and as mentioned above we need more of these! Thanks.

Thank you and no problem

Do you guys have something specifically you would like a tutorial on?

[Injun Joe]

Great tutorial, it enlightened me.

[Sejskaler]

Great tutorial, it enlightened me.

Thank you :D
Hope to see some stuff from you!