Giraffe 1

This giraffe is just using shapes and adjusting them. You should add a body and combine it with the neck shape.

without a body

no filters/gradients

without a body

filters & gradients


with body

no filters/gradients

with body, combined

filters, no gradients

with body

filters & gradients



Head & Body

Make your Canvas Size 600 x 600.

All shapes have stroke 1-pixel soft, black. Fill can be any color.

  1. Neck & antlers: Rounded Rectangle tool
  2. Head & Nose: Ellipse tool.
  3. Eyes: first draw a white ellipse, then a black ellipse for the pupil. Group the eye and pupil together, then copy & paste. Rotate and move behind the nose.
  4. Ears: Draw a Circle and adjust the points using the Subselection tool (using ALT-drag). Then copy and paste to get the 2nd  ear and move it into place, also Flip horizontally (Modify>Transform), maybe rotate a bit more.
  5. Nose: Add to nose (black shape), draw a circle and adjust points. Also add black ovals to top of the antlers/horns.
  6. Mouth: Add mouth –draw a circle and adjust points.
  1. Draw a body shape and combine with the neck.
  2. You can also draw legs and a tail.
  3. You might also want to adjust the antlers and ears so they're behind the head layer.

You'll have something like this...

Spots

  1. Set the main face/body parts to a solid color.
  2. Then set the "horns" to a different shade (lighter or darker) of that color.
  3. Now add a new layer folder above the first one. Then lock the first layer. Name this layer "Spots".
  4. With that same shade fill color, add spots to the giraffe’s body/ears - using Ellipses and adjusting with the white arrow tool  - no stroke!

You should have something like this...

Fill & Effects

Set the Fill for the body parts to a radial gradient - one shade lighter than the main color so it looks like the light is hitting it from above)

Add FILTERS (such as Inner Shadow/Glows to the edges or center of the parts. 

Inner Shadow

For example, select the body shape, add Inner Shadow filter. Change the direction of the shadow so it's at the bottom right, and change the color to a darker shade of what we already have, and make it wider. 

Hide the original photo you used to trace and finish colors.

 

You can set the shadow to have some softness or only 1. 

To maintain a black outline/stroke, copy & paste the outline shape, remove the effects and fill.