Yea man, still getting used to Ai too. Is pretty hard in the beginning.
:)
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Going to not tear this apart fully, just some small pointers. ;)
The shoulder guard:
I am assuming it is a shoulder guard with spikes and thread, but there is a spike that has a line from the shoulder going through it, I would remove that line. Also, to give the impression of thread, I would draw a rectangle that starts from either side, touching the guard, and extends to the other side at the length of thread, fill it in with the colour, then add some lines like you have.
The face:
On the sunglasses, I am guessing that is supposed to be the reflection? It should be white with hard lines against the glasses, like you had in your sketch. When light reflects off of a glossy/shiny surface, like sunglasses, you will get hard lines on the light, not smooth gradients like skin. On the hat, the stitch lines look a little funny, you should only be able to see 3. One, starting at the edge of the visor, extending up, then curving to the top centre, same on the other side, and one in the centre going strait up. And, the spot were you put text and pictures on ball caps is within this 2 section area on a cap.
The hands:
Again, I assuming those are supposed to be gold or something, they should have a hard line from highlight to natural colour. I would also work on making the text not so similar to the background colour, it makes it hard to read. Also, you apply a very slight gradient to the metal part to go with a hard highlight, which would just help it even more.
Aside from those, just work on making your lines smooth.
You have so right in every single point.
I just wanted to get the coloring done asap so the fastest way to make highlights at the metal and glasses were to use gradients.
I'm fully aware of the spikes but I couldn't figure out how the remove the lines that goes through the spikes >.z
The cap, yeah had a hard time with hose sucker lines.
Yup I'm not able to make really smooth curves and lines yet, hopefully in time. I think I use to may anchor point and drags them around like crazy.
Arigato Sensei-San!