Vector cartoon tutorial
This tutorial is advanced, so you must master the pen tool and most basic tools on Photoshop. If you don't know how the pen tool works, follow this tutorial.1) Before drawing, think about the physical and psychological aspects of your character. Will he be human/animal/object, tall/short, big/thin, rich/poor, evil/good, etc? This will determine the shape of his body, his eyes, his eyebrows, etc. Think of the readers: will they be young or old? This will influence the colors and the shapes of your character. After, you're ready to draw!
2) Scan or take a picture of your final drawing and open it in Photoshop. Here is mine: a tall, very thin, poor and innocent rat for a children book project at school.
3) Put the grid, it will help you for the next step (View, Show, Grid).
4) Create a new path, then place the anchor points around half of a shape. For this example, let's take the head of the rat.
5) Create a new layer (ctrl+shift+n) and name it. Then, select the path (ctrl+click on the path). Pick the color of your choice and fill the selection with it.
6) Now, we want a complete head. Click on the head layer and duplicate it (ctrl+j). Apply an horizontal symmetry (Edit, Transformation, Horizontal symmetry).
7) Repeat the steps 4 to 6 for all the parts of your characters.
8) Here is my result!
9) OPTIONAL: You can fusion the layers that are symmetrical. Then, you can apply various effects like I did.