This is the result of my first serious foray into Adobe Illustrator, and I’m definitely satisfied with the results. It took several hours of tweaking to get something that satisfied me.

My process went something like this…

1. Isolate my hair, face, and shirt with Photoshop.
2. Use LiveTrace with specially tweaked settings for each part of my body to get smooth lines.
3. I drew in my eyes and mouth with the Pen Tool to give it a more cartoonish look.
4. I made sharp delineations on my collar to provide strong contrast and more shape.
5. Placed the AI file back inside Photoshop to add the gradient background, and export to the Web.

I think I might write a few tutorials in the near future, once I’ve gained more mastery of Illustrator.