How Juan Afanador sees his characters from new angles.

"Turntable in Adobe Illustrator speeds up my workflow…it allows me to explore more of the creative side rather than doing repetitive tasks."

Step 1: Build your character.

Juan’s work starts with personality. For this piece, he sketched an irreverent cat with a big smile on his tablet, then vectorized the linework in Adobe Illustrator, grouping every part so the drawing could move as one.

Step 2: Rotate and tilt with Turntable.

With his feline friend selected, Juan selected Turntable in the Contextual task bar, then used the slider to rotate the character left and right, and tilted him up and down. “Turntable lets you rotate it 360 degrees without needing to re-vectorize,” he says.

Step 3: Place views on canvas.

Inside the Turntable menu, Juan selected Place views on canvas to see every pose at once, then picked the ones with the most cat-itude.

Step 4: Finalize and prep for production.

With his favorite view in place, Juan refined the linework, layered in his signature saturated colors, and prepped the artwork for print or animation. “Many creatives see AI tools as a threat, but they’re the complete opposite,” he says. “They truly enhance us.”