Creating an OpenType font from your handwriting (Part 1)
OpenType fonts are very advanced, and have their own programming language (syntax). In this article we'll try to explain the features & workings of OpenType fonts.
OpenType fonts are extremely powerful, with capabilities like ligatures, stylistic alternates, stylistic sets and much more.
To get started we need to know that every letter of every language has a Unicode assigned to it, which is an international standard, and can be seen here.
The first thing when developing an OpenType font is to draw the glyphs [-the shapes for the letters]. In my case I'm making a font of my handwriting, so I start by writing the letters in my usual handwriting on a piece of blank paper, making sure that all the letters are of equal size. Make sure to write all the letters, numbers, punctuation & symbols you see on the keyboard, so your font won't have any missing glyphs.
Next, scan your handwriting with a high resolution scanner, and clean it up in Photoshop [if needed]. Save as a png with a transparent background.
Vectorising your handwriting
Then launch Illustrator, and place your handwriting png on the artboard. Go to the Window menu, and pick Image Trace. A new panel will appear. Play around with the sliders until you get nicely traced vectors of your handwriting. Then expand and ungroup them. You should get separate vectors of your letters.
Watch the above in action: