1. Scan your image–the higher the quality, the better. This will ensure all your little details will remain when you Live Trace.
2. Bring your image into Photoshop. Adjust the contrast and the levels (Image –> Adjustments –> Levels or Brightness/Contrast), making sure that all your lines are extremely defined. (Not so much that you lose lines in your sketch, but very dark. Don’t worry if it’s not smooth–Live Trace will smooth it all out.)
3. While your in Photoshop, check to see if there are any spare black marks or tracings that you need to get rid of. Erase those.
4. Leave your image the size it is, don’t adjust that at all, and copy and paste your image into Illustrator.
5. Now, when you Live Trace because your image was so large and you took the time to adjust levels and contrast you should get that hand drawn, sketchy look.
6. Expand and Ungroup your image, and get rid of all the white space by clicking a black area of your picture, any piece, then go to Select –> Same –> Fill Color and it will select all the black in your image. Now go back to Select –> Inverse. Hit the Delete (or Backspace) key and all your white space is gone!
7. Now, highlight all of your image. Go to Pathfinder and under Shape Modes click your first option “Add to shape area”. Wah-la! Vector image! If you want people to be able to edit your vector image then skip this step and simply group your image. =]