IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 |
(music playing)
| | 00:04 |
Hi, I'm Angie Taylor, a motion graphic
designer who's been using Adobe
| | 00:09 |
Illustrator since 1996.
I've authored books about on motion
| | 00:13 |
graphic design, teach at my local art
college, and I regularly tour trade shows
| | 00:17 |
and seminars demonstrating my techniques.
My Illustrator drawings and animations
| | 00:23 |
have been featured in several broadcasts
for the BBC in the UK.
| | 00:28 |
Now, if you're new to Illustrator CS6,
you're in for a few lovely treats.
| | 00:33 |
It's a very useful upgrade to an already
amazing piece of software.
| | 00:37 |
In this course, I'll get you up and
running by covering some of the essential
| | 00:41 |
techniques that every Illustrator user
needs to know with a focus on some new features.
| | 00:47 |
As well as showing you some of the new
and changed features from CS6.
| | 00:51 |
I'll share some new ways of taking
advantage of some of the features you may
| | 00:55 |
already know.
Topics I'll cover in the course include
| | 00:59 |
drawing using primitive shapes provided
by the Shape tools, using the Pen tool
| | 01:03 |
for plotting precise curves and editing
paths.
| | 01:07 |
And working with the Pencil tool, which
can be used for freehand drawing.
| | 01:12 |
You'll also learn various techniques for
coloring artwork, including Live Trace
| | 01:17 |
and the Recolor Artwork panel.
And also how to apply brushes to artwork
| | 01:22 |
and effect the appearance of line work
using variable width profiles.
| | 01:27 |
We'll also explore Live Effects and the
Appearance panel which can take your
| | 01:31 |
illustrations to a whole new dimension.
Illustrator is a comprehensive set of
| | 01:36 |
tools for creating graphics and
illustrations.
| | 01:40 |
Throughout this course, you'll work from
examples to discover techniques that will
| | 01:44 |
help you create your own elements.
I'll also share a few tips and
| | 01:49 |
techniques, that will help make your
workflow much easier and more efficient.
| | 01:54 |
We look at the best ways of making
selections creating objects with a shape
| | 01:58 |
and reshape tools.
And examine how to sculpt chains with the
| | 02:02 |
blood brush and the razor tools.
Illustrator's such a fun application to
| | 02:06 |
use, and this course reflects that from
that's chewed.
| | 02:10 |
Once you've completed this enjoyable and
easy going video course, you should be
| | 02:14 |
familiar enough with all of the tools to
find your own way.
| | 02:18 |
Your confidence will grow, and you'll
become a better artist or designer as a result.
| | 02:24 |
So, what are you waiting for?
Dive right in and enjoy it.
| | 02:27 |
And happy drawing.
| | 02:28 |
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|
|
1. Getting to Know IllustratorSetting up a new document| 00:02 |
Setting up a new document couldn't be
easier in Illustrator.
| | 00:05 |
We just go to File> New.
And we are welcomed with a New Document
| | 00:09 |
dialog box where we can give our file a
name.
| | 00:13 |
We can choose a profile, whether it be
for Print, Web, Devices, Video and Film,
| | 00:18 |
or Flash Builder.
Or we can browse other profiles.
| | 00:23 |
I'm just going to choose Video and Film,
seeing as I work in video and film.
| | 00:27 |
And in there, we have all the presets
that you would normally expect to find
| | 00:31 |
for film and video, including standard
definition and high definition as well as
| | 00:36 |
film sizes.
And that's going to set the correct width
| | 00:41 |
and height measurements in pixels.
It's a landscape aspect ratio or orientation.
| | 00:47 |
And then in here at the bottom, we have
an advanced section where we can choose
| | 00:51 |
our color mode.
Of course, you would be working in RGB
| | 00:55 |
for film and television, and the
Transparency Grid you can choose to set
| | 01:00 |
to a different color.
I often choose dark for my Transparency
| | 01:05 |
Grid Color.
Now, if you were working in print, you
| | 01:08 |
would choose Print.
And then, choose the size of paper you
| | 01:12 |
were working on.
In the UK, we tend to work with A4.
| | 01:16 |
And your width and height and orientation
are all set up for you.
| | 01:21 |
And for Print, we're using CMYK, High
Resolution, 300 PPI.
| | 01:26 |
And the Preview Mode will allow you to
choose between a pixel and an overprint
| | 01:30 |
or default preview.
We're just going to keep it on default.
| | 01:35 |
Now, if I was to jump back to video and
film, and choose something like HDV1080,
| | 01:40 |
I can also choose to align objects to a
Pixel Grid.
| | 01:46 |
So, if it's important that objects are
aligned to a Pixel Grid, particularly if
| | 01:50 |
I'm actually designing for the web or
designing icons.
| | 01:54 |
That might be important for me to design
and keep it aligned to the Pixel Grid.
| | 02:00 |
You also have access to templates in here
if you want to load a template.
| | 02:04 |
Once I click OK, we're in our new
document.
| | 02:07 |
And you'll see that I have my artboard
automatically set up.
| | 02:11 |
And for video and film, I get my action
and title safe guides here.
| | 02:15 |
Now, if you want to have a look at those,
you can double-click the Artboard tool
| | 02:18 |
and you'll see this is where that's
switched on or off.
| | 02:22 |
So, if for some reason you don't want to
show your video's safe areas, you can
| | 02:25 |
turn that off in here.
So, that's a little bit about setting up
| | 02:30 |
your document working space.
You can also adjust it by going to File >
| | 02:35 |
Document Setup, and you'll get access to
some of the Document Setup options in there.
| | 02:42 |
So if you want to change the color of
your grid, for example, you can come in
| | 02:46 |
here and change it after you've setup the
document.
| | 02:52 |
So there we go, a little run-through of
setting up a new document in Adobe Illustrator.
| | 02:57 |
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| User interface tour| 00:00 |
There have been lots of improvements to
the user interface of Illustrator over
| | 00:05 |
the years, but none more so in version
CS6.
| | 00:10 |
You'll notice, first thing that we'll see
is a darker interface, and that can be
| | 00:13 |
changed by going to the Preferences which
on the Mac, you can find in the
| | 00:16 |
Illustrator menu.
On Windows you can find it in the Edit menu.
| | 00:22 |
And if we come down to User Interface,
you'll notice there, that there's a
| | 00:26 |
slider where I can adjust the brightness
of the UI, all the way down to a dark color.
| | 00:34 |
I tend to prefer the default setting of
Medium Dark.
| | 00:37 |
And you can choose to have your canvas
match the color of the user interface, or
| | 00:40 |
you can put that back to white.
I prefer having it dark, cuz I'm usually
| | 00:45 |
working in a dark environment doing
motion graphic design.
| | 00:49 |
So, I prefer a darker interface.
Now you can also choose to override the
| | 00:54 |
default of opening documents as tabs.
If you want to go back to individual
| | 00:59 |
documents you can deselect that there.
And there are a few new preferences in here.
| | 01:04 |
So, let's click on OK.
The next thing you'll notice is the
| | 01:08 |
tidier appearance of the interface.
You'll notice a lot of work has been done
| | 01:14 |
on the individual icons just to make
things a little bit tidier, and feel a
| | 01:17 |
bit more spacious really.
And the Control panel has been improved
| | 01:22 |
as well.
If I select an item in my art work,
| | 01:25 |
you'll notice that the Control panel is
contact sensitive.
| | 01:29 |
At the moment it's showing me controls
for my Path, Fill and Stroke Properties,
| | 01:33 |
Line Properties, Past (UNKNOWN) values,
and Style Properties, and Color, and Transform.
| | 01:40 |
Now if I was to select my text notice
that that updates, and it still maintains
| | 01:45 |
the Fill and Stroke properties here, and
the Line and Appearance properties for my
| | 01:49 |
Stroke values.
But it also has Character and Paragraph
| | 01:54 |
panels here available for me to click on
and access really quickly if I need them.
| | 02:00 |
If I double-click the text and make it
editable, that opens up my Font Controls
| | 02:04 |
here, so I don't actually have to go into
the Character panel to get to my basic
| | 02:09 |
values for adjusting my characters.
So, it's context sensitive depending on
| | 02:15 |
what you click on in your artwork and
which tools you have selected.
| | 02:19 |
Here, I have my brushes appearing,
allowing me to get access to those.
| | 02:23 |
Because this piece of art work has a
brush applied to it.
| | 02:28 |
There's also been a lot of improvements
to the work spaces.
| | 02:31 |
You'll notice that we have our preset
work spaces here that I can select from
| | 02:35 |
this menu, so if I choose Painting it
will open up my Painting panels.
| | 02:40 |
If I choose Tracing, it will open up
panels specifically for tracing.
| | 02:45 |
And if we go back to Essentials, it just
opens up my essentials in this little
| | 02:49 |
palette here, where I can click on
various options and just see them
| | 02:53 |
temporarily, hide and show them.
Now, if I want to create my own work
| | 03:00 |
space, I can, so let me just drag out my
Layers panel, and place that out here,
| | 03:04 |
and close my Art Boards panel.
And I do that just by clicking and
| | 03:09 |
dragging the Tab, as you saw me do there.
And I can drag that tab anywhere I want to.
| | 03:14 |
I could actually dock it along side my
little Short Cut panel here with my
| | 03:18 |
buttons to select my other panels.
And to do that I drag the panel over to
| | 03:24 |
the join between the Shortcut panel and
my main interface.
| | 03:28 |
And you'll see it highlights, once I have
a blue line I can let go and dock that in there.
| | 03:34 |
Now we've always been able to dock
panels, but I think that's its just been
| | 03:37 |
made a little easier in this version.
You can also open up new panels, so if I
| | 03:42 |
go to Window > Navigator, open up my
Navigator and drag that above the Layers
| | 03:46 |
panel, so I'm waiting until the highlight
moves above the Layers panel.
| | 03:53 |
So, now I have my layers and my
Navigator, and of course my Navigator
| | 03:56 |
allows me to zoom in in increments of 1.
So, I can get a much more detailed zoom,
| | 04:02 |
by using the Navigator, rather than just
using the Magnifying options down here,
| | 04:07 |
which only allow me to move in
increments.
| | 04:11 |
Now I can also drag items into the same
panel, so I could drag my Info panel.
| | 04:19 |
An then, drag it over to the Navigator,
and when the whole box highlights, I'm
| | 04:23 |
actually dragging it into the same panel.
So, we now have two tabs, within the same panel.
| | 04:30 |
Let's have a look at our colors as well.
There's been a lot of improvements to the
| | 04:34 |
color panel.
Let's open that up.
| | 04:37 |
Let's close our color guide for now, and
let's just dock the Color panel at the
| | 04:41 |
side of the Navigator.
And you'll notice that now we have a much
| | 04:45 |
bigger space to choose color from.
Particular if I go to Show options,
| | 04:50 |
you'll notice I now have a huge RGB
spectrum to choose my colors from.
| | 04:55 |
A really nice way of interactively
choosing my colors, and I can see the
| | 04:59 |
Swatch updating with the new color over
here.
| | 05:03 |
So, a really nice way of working with
that Color panel.
| | 05:08 |
Now if I open up my Swatches, you'll
notice if I drag them underneath my Color
| | 05:11 |
panel, you'll notice that they're all
fully editable.
| | 05:15 |
I can show a Large Thumbnail view, If I
go to Large List view, the names are
| | 05:19 |
fully editable now, and here I can just
double-click them and edit them in here.
| | 05:27 |
And if I double-click the color itself,
if I choose one of these colors, I can
| | 05:31 |
open up my Swatch options where I can
make changes, adjust that color and
| | 05:36 |
rename it.
So, a lot of improvements to the palettes
| | 05:42 |
in Illustrator, I think.
Okay, and one more improvement that I
| | 05:47 |
want to talk about.
If we go back to our preferences, so go
| | 05:51 |
to Illustrator > Preferences, and go into
General Preferences.
| | 05:58 |
So they've just generally been tidied-up.
And you'll notice the dialog boxes are
| | 06:02 |
just looking a lot more tidy.
And a little bit more logical to work
| | 06:06 |
your way through than before.
Also, if we're to open up a dialog box,
| | 06:11 |
say to change a tool, for example.
So, if I select my text here and I
| | 06:18 |
double-click the Scale tool to open it
up.
| | 06:21 |
You'll notice that we now have a Preview
option in all dialog boxes, so a Commit
| | 06:25 |
option is there.
So, that you can just make sure that the
| | 06:30 |
changes you're making are correct before
you click OK.
| | 06:34 |
Now we always had that in this Scale
dialog box, but some dialog boxes didn't
| | 06:37 |
have that most of them have that Preview
option now.
| | 06:41 |
And of course I can scale Strokes and
Effects from within the Scale dialog
| | 06:45 |
box now.
So, quite a few new improvements to the
| | 06:49 |
user interface.
There's full keyboard access in all
| | 06:53 |
dialog boxes as well, and layers are also
much easier to edit.
| | 06:58 |
We can now double-click the text, edit
the name of the layer, or double-click on
| | 07:02 |
the layer to open up the Layer options.
So, a few improvements in the user
| | 07:10 |
interface for Illustrator.
| | 07:14 |
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| Navigating within the workspace| 00:02 |
In this movie, we're going to have a look
at tips for navigating the workspace and
| | 00:05 |
your document within Illustrator.
Now, the first thing we're going to do is
| | 00:10 |
move over this main image here and I've
got superhero.ai open, which you can find
| | 00:15 |
in the Training Files folder.
And you'll notice that as I move across,
| | 00:21 |
anchor points are highlighted and
bounding boxes are highlighted as I move
| | 00:25 |
over my artwork.
And that's using something called Smart Guides.
| | 00:30 |
Now you can switch Smart Guides off.
You can go to the View menu, and you can
| | 00:34 |
go to Smart Guides and turn it off, and
then we won't get that behavior as we
| | 00:37 |
hover over.
However, Smart Guides are very useful
| | 00:41 |
when you're learning Illustrator.
So instead of doing that, what we're
| | 00:45 |
going to do is go to View > Smart Guides
to make sure it's switched on.
| | 00:49 |
And Cmd + U or Ctrl + U on Windows is a
short cut for that.
| | 00:53 |
And instead, what we're going to do to
stop from being distracted by this
| | 00:57 |
constant selection of, or highlight
rather of bounding boxes, is we're going
| | 01:01 |
to use the Preferences.
You go to Illustrator > Preferences, and
| | 01:06 |
if you're on Windows, that Preference
menu will be in the Edit menu.
| | 01:12 |
The, on Mac, it's in the Illustration
menu, and go to Smart Guide.
| | 01:17 |
In here, you'll see that you can adjust
the Smart Guides and how they work.
| | 01:21 |
Now, what I quite like about Smart
Guides, and I'm just going to cancel this.
| | 01:25 |
You don't need to.
What I like about them is when I Click
| | 01:28 |
and Drag to move something, it shows me a
little intersection highlight.
| | 01:33 |
Notice in green, it's showing me where my
image intersects with other elements.
| | 01:38 |
And that can be really useful for lining
things up with the edges of the artwork.
| | 01:42 |
So, I quite like to have that on, but I
don't like this constant highlighting of
| | 01:47 |
artwork like this.
So again, I'm going to go to Preferences
| | 01:52 |
and into Smart Guides.
And what I'm going to do is turn off
| | 01:56 |
Object Highlighting, which stops that
annoying highlight happening as I roll
| | 02:00 |
over my image.
I'm also going to turn off Anchor Path
| | 02:04 |
labels and Measurement labels for now,
and just leave on Alignment Guides.
| | 02:10 |
And now, you'll see that as I hover over,
I no longer get that annoying selection
| | 02:14 |
bounding box being shown.
But when I select this text and move it
| | 02:19 |
around, I still have guides for my
intersections.
| | 02:23 |
So, that's a little bit about how you can
customize Smart Guides.
| | 02:27 |
So, once we've done that, what we're
going to do is look at how you can
| | 02:30 |
actually navigate within the document.
Now, you'll be familiar with some of the
| | 02:34 |
tools here for navigation.
We've got the Zoom tool here and the Hand tool.
| | 02:38 |
Zoom tool is for zooming in and zooming
out, so you'll see if I click just once
| | 02:42 |
on it, it zooms in.
If I hold down the Alt key and click on
| | 02:47 |
it, it zooms out in increments.
Now, if I let go of the Alt key and I
| | 02:51 |
want to zoom in around her head, what I
can do is also drag a Marquee with it.
| | 02:57 |
And if I drag a Marquee, it will just
highlight that area and zoom into that
| | 03:01 |
area for me so that I can get into more
detail with my artwork.
| | 03:07 |
Similarly, if I hold down the Alt key, I
can zoom out to areas, which is a little
| | 03:11 |
bit less intuitive but it works
nonetheless.
| | 03:16 |
Once you're zoomed in, you need to then
be able to move around the image.
| | 03:20 |
And one way is to use the Hand tool.
And you'll see here if I select Hand
| | 03:23 |
tool, I can just grab that image and move
it around so that I can get access to the
| | 03:28 |
different areas of the artwork.
Now, I don't want to keep jumping between
| | 03:34 |
those two tools.
So there are keyboard shortcuts, Z will
| | 03:37 |
select the Zoom tool and H will select
the Hand tool.
| | 03:41 |
So, you could use those keyboard
shortcuts and jump between the two if you want.
| | 03:47 |
However, there's a keyboard shortcut
which allows you to quickly toggle to the
| | 03:51 |
Hand tool.
So, what I tend to do is I zoom in and
| | 03:54 |
out, using keyboard shortcuts.
And the keyboard shortcuts to zoom in and
| | 03:59 |
out are Cmd + Plus or Ctrl + Plus on
Windows to zoom in.
| | 04:03 |
Cmd + Minus or Ctrl + Minus to zoom out.
And once you're within the zoomed area,
| | 04:10 |
if I go back to my Selection tool with
any tools selected, I can temporarily
| | 04:15 |
press Space Bar.
And you'll see if I press and hold it, it
| | 04:20 |
keeps it as a Hand tool.
And as long as I'm holding down Space
| | 04:24 |
Bar, any tool that is selected will
change to the Hand tool.
| | 04:28 |
So, a really nice way of working there is
to use Cmd or Ctrl Plus and Minus to zoom
| | 04:32 |
in and zoom out.
And then Press and Hold Space Bar to
| | 04:37 |
quickly toggle to the Hand tool, so I can
then Click and Drag my image around
| | 04:41 |
inside this area.
Now you'll notice over here, I also have
| | 04:45 |
the Navigator panel open.
And this is another useful way of
| | 04:49 |
navigating my document.
Now we used Cmd + Plus or Ctrl + Plus and
| | 04:54 |
Minus on the keyboard to zoom in and out.
Notice down here, there's a little menu
| | 05:00 |
which shows me my magnification and at
the moment, it's 400.
| | 05:05 |
If I click on that, you notice there are
incremental scales that I can quickly
| | 05:08 |
jump to.
I could go to 600.
| | 05:12 |
I could go to the maximum magnification
which is 6400, which is zoomed in so
| | 05:16 |
much, I can't really see detail unless I
move my image.
| | 05:21 |
So, let's just jump back quickly to 100%.
And you'll notice that there's a red
| | 05:28 |
rectangle in the, navigator, and that's
called the proxy preview area.
| | 05:33 |
If I zoom in again, I'm going to use Cmd
+ Plus on the keyboard to zoom in to
| | 05:37 |
about 200%.
You'll see that, that proxy preview area,
| | 05:42 |
highlights the area that we actually see
in the main document window, and I can
| | 05:46 |
actually move that around.
So I can be zoomed in say to 300%, and
| | 05:51 |
then I can use the proxy area just to
quickly move around my document, which is
| | 05:55 |
a really nice way of working.
I quite often have the Navigator panel
| | 06:00 |
open because it gives me an overview of
my entire image and allows me to zoom in
| | 06:04 |
and out as I need to.
Now, you'll notice down here we also have
| | 06:10 |
a Zoom Magnification field.
The nice thing about using this one is it
| | 06:14 |
actually allows me to go up in increments
of one.
| | 06:17 |
So, I can zoom in and zoom out in a lot
more detail than I can using the
| | 06:21 |
Incremental menu over here.
And I do that by selecting that value, or
| | 06:26 |
just clicking so that the insertion point
is inside there.
| | 06:32 |
And using the Up and Down Arrow keys on
the keyboard, I can go up and down in
| | 06:36 |
increments of 1%.
If I hold down Shift and click, I go in
| | 06:41 |
increments of 10%.
So, if you can't quite get the
| | 06:44 |
magnification value you want, use the
Navigator panel and go up in increments
| | 06:48 |
of 1%.
There's also a Zoom slider in here which
| | 06:52 |
allows you to zoom in using a slider, if
you prefer that way of working.
| | 06:57 |
Now, there are a couple of keyboard
shortcuts that are useful if you're
| | 07:00 |
zooming in and out.
So Cmd + 0 or Ctrl + 0 on Windows will
| | 07:04 |
fit your image to the main window.
You'll notice there, it just jumps to the
| | 07:11 |
maximum magnification that can be used to
fit your image into the document.
| | 07:17 |
If you want to go to 100%, you can
double-click the Zoom tool, and that will
| | 07:21 |
force your image to be 100%.
You can also double-click the Hand tool,
| | 07:27 |
and that will do the same as hitting Cmd
+ 0 or Ctrl + 0.
| | 07:32 |
It will just maximize the image to fit
the available workspace, so a couple of
| | 07:36 |
little tips for you in there.
If you forget these keyboard shortcuts,
| | 07:40 |
you can go to the View menu, and in here
we have all of our shortcuts for zooming
| | 07:45 |
in and zooming out.
Putting Artboard into the window, and all
| | 07:50 |
the other keyboard shortcuts that you may
want to use, Cmd + 1 will be actual size.
| | 07:58 |
And one more keyboard shortcut that's
quite handy is if you hold down the Cmd
| | 08:02 |
key or Ctrl key in windows and then press
Space Bar.
| | 08:06 |
It toggles to the Mgnification tool.
So, if you very quickly want to just zoom
| | 08:11 |
in on something, say while you're drawing
with the Pencil tool.
| | 08:16 |
You can hold down the Cmd key, hold down
Space Bar, keep them pressed down and you
| | 08:20 |
can zoom in and out.
Now, if you were really attentive, you
| | 08:24 |
would have seen that when I pressed those
down, spotlight appeared which allows me
| | 08:27 |
to search for files and content on the
Mac.
| | 08:31 |
It doesn't stop the tool working for us,
so don't worry if spotlight appears.
| | 08:35 |
You can still zoom in and out using that
keyboard shortcut.
| | 08:39 |
And then, if I hit Cmd + 1 or Ctrl + 1 on
Windows, that's just going to maximize it
| | 08:44 |
to 100% again.
So, that's a few tips and tricks for
| | 08:48 |
navigating your document while you're
working in Adobe Illustrator.
| | 08:54 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with artboards| 00:02 |
When you create a new document, it
creates what's known as an Artboard, and
| | 00:05 |
we're going to have a look at artboards in
this movie.
| | 00:08 |
If you open up artboards.ai and export
artboards.ai from the Training Files folder.
| | 00:16 |
You can follow along with me.
Now the first thing that we're going to do
| | 00:20 |
is create a new document just so you can
see when artboards are created.
| | 00:24 |
So if you go to File > New.
You'll be presented with a new document dialog.
| | 00:29 |
What I want you to do is choose from the
profile menu Print.
| | 00:33 |
And we'll choose Letter, just leave it as
the default setting.
| | 00:38 |
We'll leave all the other settings and
then we'll click OK.
| | 00:40 |
You'll notice that there is a white area
representing the area of my document.
| | 00:46 |
This is known as the Artboard, and if I
select this tool here, I can actually
| | 00:50 |
select that artboard and I can resize it
if I want to.
| | 00:55 |
So, if I want to adjust the size I can
do, I can use the Info palette as the
| | 00:59 |
guide to show me how big or small I'm
making it.
| | 01:04 |
I can even type in sizes if I want to, if
I know that I want it to be say 640 in
| | 01:08 |
width, I can just type in the value here,
and it will adjust the width accordingly.
| | 01:15 |
But there are also little buttons in here
for showing video safe areas if I'm
| | 01:19 |
working with video.
Also for showing crosshairs, showing me
| | 01:23 |
the center point of my document.
And also showing a center mark so that I
| | 01:27 |
can easily align objects within the
center of the document.
| | 01:32 |
There are also Artboard options here, if
I click on the Options, I can go in here
| | 01:36 |
and adjust the options for my Artboard in
a dialog box.
| | 01:42 |
So, for example, I could call this Front
Cover, actually.
| | 01:45 |
So, I could call that front cover.
I can adjust the settings in here, the
| | 01:50 |
height, the width.
I can change the display options for
| | 01:54 |
those center marks you saw.
And if we just click OK, you'll see that
| | 01:59 |
all those changes update.
And it's now called Front Cover.
| | 02:02 |
Now if I was making a multi-page
document, what I might want to do then is
| | 02:05 |
zoom out.
So, I'm using Cmd+Minus on the keyboard
| | 02:08 |
to zoom out.
Toggling spacebar, to move it over here
| | 02:12 |
and of course I'd be using Ctrl on
Windows where I use Cmd on the Mac.
| | 02:17 |
And then if I want to make a copy of
this, want to make page one.
| | 02:21 |
I can hold down the Alt key with the
Artboard tool selected.
| | 02:25 |
And you'll notice that I get a little
indicator showing me it's going to make a
| | 02:29 |
copy if I drag.
If I click and drag it, I can create a
| | 02:33 |
duplicate of my artboard.
Now I can use my smart guides to line it
| | 02:37 |
up as long as I wait until I see that
green line indicating that the center
| | 02:42 |
marks line up.
And I can let go and create my first page.
| | 02:47 |
So, I could call this page 01.
Okay, now there are lots of reasons for
| | 02:53 |
using artboards, but 1 one would be to
make our multipage document.
| | 02:57 |
And I've just missed thatUNKNOWN there,
so let's just put that in.
| | 03:01 |
Okay, and then I might Alt drag again and
let's make this page 2 and so on and so forth.
| | 03:10 |
Until you have all the pages that you
want to have in your design.
| | 03:13 |
Now if we go into artboards.ai, you'll
notice a document that already has pages
| | 03:20 |
set up.
And you'll see these have all got
| | 03:23 |
different names.
And these are for actual interactive web
| | 03:27 |
banners, as opposed to printed documents.
Now I can use my navigator just to look
| | 03:32 |
around those different pages.
But if I actually want to quickly jump
| | 03:36 |
from one page to another, say I'm zoomed
in around this one.
| | 03:40 |
Let's just Pull my zoom slider in a
little bit.
| | 03:43 |
So, I'm zoomed in around this document
here, or this page here, this artboard.
| | 03:48 |
To quickly get to another artboard
there's a couple of things that I can do,
| | 03:52 |
I can open up my Artboard panel.
Now if you can't see this you can go to
| | 03:56 |
the Window menu ,and choose Artboard and
that will open up the Artboards panel for you.
| | 04:03 |
If you have your little Shortcuts panel
here with all your shortcuts to your
| | 04:06 |
panels, you can click on this little
button here to open the Artboards.
| | 04:11 |
And by clicking on these, I can jump from
one artboard to the other very easily.
| | 04:17 |
Just double-click to jump to the artboard
that I want to move to.
| | 04:21 |
I can also use the up and down arrow keys
to go from one artboard to the other.
| | 04:25 |
I can create new artboard by clicking on
the New Artboard button.
| | 04:29 |
And jump to that Artboard and change its
options by using the Artboards panel.
| | 04:34 |
And there are a few extra options in the
Win menu if you need them.
| | 04:38 |
For doing things like deleting empty
artboards, like I have here.
| | 04:42 |
So, very quickly deletes that and I can
jump back to the artboard I want to work in.
| | 04:48 |
Now there's another little menu down here
which allows you to click on and you can
| | 04:52 |
choose whether you want to see the
artboard name.
| | 04:56 |
The current tool, the date and time, or
number of undos.
| | 04:59 |
If I go to artboard name, it's actually
telling me which artboard that I'm on at
| | 05:04 |
the time of working.
And you can also go into your Artboard
| | 05:08 |
Navigation menu here and choose a page to
work on from this menu.
| | 05:13 |
So, that's an alternative way of jumping
between your artboards using this little
| | 05:17 |
navigation feature down here.
Now another reason you might want to use
| | 05:24 |
artboards is for animation.
And if you open up Export Artboards A-I
| | 05:28 |
And have a look at this file, you'll
notice that I have lots of artboards
| | 05:32 |
here, with frames of an animation of a
dog walking in it.
| | 05:37 |
Now, if I want to output this as an
animation what I can do is actually
| | 05:41 |
export the artboards.
So, I can go to File >Export.
| | 05:45 |
And in the Export options I can choose to
use artboards and define a specific range
| | 05:50 |
that I want to use.
And that allows me to output it as a SWF
| | 05:55 |
file and save that SWF file as a ready
made animation.
| | 05:59 |
So, I could save that to the Desktop, as
a SWF file.
| | 06:03 |
So, I click on Export, I'm not going to go
through the options with you but the
| | 06:06 |
options are all covered in the Online
Help if you look under SWF Options.
| | 06:11 |
And click OK to create my SWF file.
So, you can create animation with
| | 06:16 |
artboards, you can also create multi-page
documents.
| | 06:20 |
Lots of different uses for them.
So, that's a little bit about how you can
| | 06:23 |
use artboards for two or three different
purposes using Illustrator.
| | 06:28 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding layers and objects| 00:02 |
Hi, in this movie, we're going to have a
look at layers and objects in Illustrator
| | 00:06 |
and, try and figure out why we use layers
and, how layers relate to objects.
| | 00:12 |
If you open up Layer > Object > Start >
AI, you can find that in the training
| | 00:15 |
files folder.
You can follow along with me.
| | 00:19 |
And here I have a document that has
multiple art boards and lots of graphical
| | 00:22 |
elements on it.
So, that I can click on the individual
| | 00:25 |
elements to select them, and you'll see
that they're highlighted as I click on them.
| | 00:30 |
Now, if we have a look at how this is set
up in the Layers panel, so I'm going to go
| | 00:34 |
over here to my Little panel Bar and
click on the Layers button.
| | 00:40 |
If you can't see that go to your
Essentials Workspace and just say Reset
| | 00:44 |
Essentials and it will reset it back to
the default and you can click on that button.
| | 00:50 |
Now, whilst that's out there, I'm also
going to drag it out, so I'm going to
| | 00:53 |
click on the Tab and drag it out so it's
sitting on top of my main document and
| | 00:57 |
close the Art Boards panel.
And I'm also going to move the cursor over
| | 01:03 |
the bottom corner, and extend my Layers
panel.
| | 01:06 |
You'll see that, this artwork contains
lots of different elements.
| | 01:11 |
If we have a look at our Layers panel, we
notice that there is one main layer
| | 01:14 |
called panels.
But within that layer there are lots of
| | 01:18 |
what we call objects.
So, each of the graphical elements that
| | 01:22 |
appears within the layer is an object, or
referred to as an object.
| | 01:27 |
And you can click on this Little Target
menu to select those objects.
| | 01:31 |
So you see, I can just click on these to
select them.
| | 01:35 |
If I select something that's actually
visible you can see that that's selected
| | 01:38 |
by the bounding box as well.
So, I can either select elements by
| | 01:42 |
clicking on them here, in the main work
space, or I can click on them here to
| | 01:46 |
select them.
Click on the Little Target button.
| | 01:51 |
If I click on the Target button for the
layer, it selects everything in the layer.
| | 01:56 |
And you'll see that everything is now
selected.
| | 01:58 |
Now, you'll notice that the order in
which things appear, in terms of from top
| | 02:03 |
or bottom in the Layer panel also
determines where it sits in terms of back
| | 02:08 |
to front.
So, you'll see that the images, if I
| | 02:13 |
switch them on and off using the Little
Eyeball, are behind all the other
| | 02:17 |
objects, okay?
So, these images are placed behind the
| | 02:21 |
other objects.
If I select those images, so I'm going to
| | 02:24 |
click to select and hold down Shift
clicking on the target buttons to select
| | 02:28 |
those images, and I moved them to the
top.
| | 02:32 |
I can either do that by dragging them all
the way up to the top, which would take a
| | 02:36 |
little bit of time, or going to the
object menu and saying arrange, bring to front.
| | 02:43 |
And that's going to place them at the top
of that stack and put them in front.
| | 02:49 |
You'll notice that they're now obscuring
the other layers.
| | 02:52 |
If I switch them off and then on again,
you can see clearly that obscuring the
| | 02:56 |
other objects behind.
So what I'm going to do is select them
| | 03:01 |
again, shift clicking to select them, and
pop them back to the back.
| | 03:06 |
So I'll go to object arrange, send to
back and now, they are in the correct place.
| | 03:11 |
Now, to avoid all of this, you'll notice
that it would take me ages to figure out
| | 03:15 |
which layer is which and organize them in
the way that I want to organize them, if
| | 03:19 |
I keep all of my objects in one layer.
So instead, what we do is we create
| | 03:24 |
multiple layers.
So, I'm going to create a layer for my
| | 03:27 |
images so that they're all on one layer.
So, I'm going to go down here and this is
| | 03:32 |
the New Layer button.
And if I hold down the ALT key when I
| | 03:36 |
click on it, it gives me an option to
give it a name as well.
| | 03:40 |
So I'm going to call it BG Images, and I'm
going to click on OK.
| | 03:45 |
Now, what I could do, is I could copy and
paste those images from here, into my
| | 03:49 |
background images layer.
But I'm not going to do that.
| | 03:54 |
What I'm going to do is show you another way
of moving those images into this layer.
| | 03:58 |
So close up the panels layer, and drag
the BG Images layer Underneath.
| | 04:04 |
And you'll notice that, as I drag, it
places it underneath the other layer in
| | 04:08 |
this stack.
Now, if I open up my panels layer and
| | 04:12 |
let's scroll down to the bottom.
And I have these selected as I said, I
| | 04:17 |
could cut and paste them.
So I'd go to edit cut.
| | 04:22 |
Now, you'll notice something funny
happens in Illustrator.
| | 04:25 |
If I go to Edit > Paste notice it doesn't
paste them in the correct place.
| | 04:29 |
A little tip for you if you're cutting
and pasting elements in Illustrator and
| | 04:33 |
you want it to be in the right place when
you paste it, what you need to do is say
| | 04:38 |
Paste In Front, or Paste In Back.
And what it will do then is paste it
| | 04:44 |
either in the foreground or the
background in the layer stack.
| | 04:48 |
Or you can say paste in place and that
will paste it wherever it needs to be.
| | 04:54 |
Now, you'll notice the, the problem with
that is it's pasting it on the same
| | 04:57 |
layer, so I'm going to undo paste.
And a couple of options if you do want to
| | 05:01 |
copy and paste, are close the layer and
lock it, and select the other layer and
| | 05:07 |
paste it, okay?
And again, I want to undo that and paste
| | 05:13 |
in front or behind.
So let's do Cmd + B, to paste behind and
| | 05:17 |
that will place that into here.
Now, I said that I was going to show you
| | 05:23 |
another option, and the other option Is
to with the layer unlocked open up the
| | 05:27 |
top layer and actually if you select this
little target button you can actually
| | 05:32 |
click on this little swatch and drag it
onto the other layer.
| | 05:39 |
So, by selecting them and dragging them
onto the other layer your basically, just
| | 05:44 |
taking the artwork itself putting on the
other layer.
| | 05:48 |
Now, notice that suddenly taking the art
work is not actually taking the
| | 05:53 |
individual objects, okay?
So slight difference there.
| | 05:59 |
So, depending on what you want to do you
can either paste into the background with
| | 06:02 |
the top layer locked or you can drag
individual elements in.
| | 06:07 |
So let's lock the top layer, go to paste
in back and we have our images in the
| | 06:12 |
correct place.
Now, if you go to layer objects end which
| | 06:17 |
is a different file so you need to open
up layer objects end and have a look at
| | 06:21 |
the layers in there.
You'll notice that all the buttons if we
| | 06:27 |
just zoom out a little bit so let's use
Cmd + Minus to Zoom Out so that we can
| | 06:31 |
see all of our art boards.
We could zoom in a little bit, and then
| | 06:36 |
total spacebar to get the hand tool to
move it into view.
| | 06:40 |
You'll notice what I've done here is I've
got all the buttons on a single layer so
| | 06:44 |
I can just switch them all off And all
the buttons for all the outputs will
| | 06:48 |
appear and disappear, okay?
Then I have got the top background for
| | 06:54 |
this one.
I can always duplicate that for other
| | 06:57 |
ones if I need to, I have got the side
buttons, they are all on one single
| | 07:00 |
layer, the video play buttons on it's on
layer there.
| | 07:05 |
The panels are on another layer and then
the images are on their own layer, and it
| | 07:09 |
just makes it much easier to reorganize
things.
| | 07:14 |
Instead of having to select individual
items and open up complicated layers with
| | 07:19 |
multiple objects.
You can just organize them onto layers
| | 07:24 |
and it makes it much easier for you to
set up the order, in terms of, where they
| | 07:28 |
appear, in your document.
| | 07:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making and moving selections| 00:02 |
Selecting items is really important in
Illustrator in order to color things,
| | 00:06 |
also move and adjust things in your
drawings after they've been drawn.
| | 00:12 |
And that's a nice thing by Illustrator,
it's creatively flexible, so I can change
| | 00:16 |
things after I've drawn them.
Now, I want you to go to the Essentials
| | 00:20 |
Workspace and reset it need be, so it
looks the same as mine.
| | 00:24 |
And then click on the Layers panel.
And I'm going to drag the Layers panel
| | 00:27 |
out here and close my artworks, just so
that we can see our Layer panel here.
| | 00:33 |
And what we're going to do, start with
the Selection tool.
| | 00:36 |
Now, the Selection tool is used to select
items.
| | 00:39 |
And you see that just by clicking on
Items, I make a selection, and it's
| | 00:43 |
highlighted here by the vectors that have
been used to draw it.
| | 00:48 |
Oh, it also selects it here in the Layers
panel.
| | 00:51 |
And if I open up that layer, you'll
notice that my heart now has a little
| | 00:55 |
indicator by it telling me it's selected.
I can also select items by selecting them
| | 01:00 |
here in the Layers panel.
Just by Clicking on the object's Target
| | 01:05 |
button, I can select it and isolate it.
And then, do things like adjust the size
| | 01:11 |
of it, for example, or fill the color
with a different color.
| | 01:17 |
So, I can make an adjustment to color
maybe.
| | 01:20 |
So, I can make an adjustment once I've
made a selection.
| | 01:23 |
And I can select individual objects
within the layer by clicking on their
| | 01:27 |
Target buttons, or I can select the
entire layer by clicking on its Target button.
| | 01:35 |
This will select all the objects
contained within the layer, as you can
| | 01:38 |
see here.
And then, I can make global changes, so I
| | 01:42 |
could just make the teddy bear a little
bit smaller by selecting the Bounding Box.
| | 01:48 |
And when it changes to a little arrow,
just adjusting the scale and holding down
| | 01:52 |
Shift to constrain it so that we get a
smaller teddy bear.
| | 01:57 |
We can also use that to move that into
position as well.
| | 02:00 |
So, making selections either per layer,
or per item in layer or object in layer
| | 02:05 |
is easy done, either in Layer panel or by
clicking on items here.
| | 02:11 |
It's not so easy to make a selection by
clicking and dragging here.
| | 02:15 |
Because if I click here and try and make
a selection, notice I'm actually moving
| | 02:19 |
that layer because it's not locked.
So, you tend to have to Click and Drag
| | 02:24 |
from outside the artboard, and then you
end up selecting items you don't want.
| | 02:30 |
So, you have to hold down Shift, deselect
those items, and you get into all sorts
| | 02:33 |
of mess.
So, I tend to use the selections over
| | 02:38 |
here, a little more than I would use the
selections here, by shift-selecting, okay.
| | 02:46 |
We also have, if we have a look in the
Pen Practice Layer, a couple of ways of
| | 02:50 |
moving items as well, using selections.
Now, a lot of people have seen, select
| | 02:56 |
items, cut them, and then paste them into
other layers, and that's fine.
| | 03:01 |
But an easier way is just to select an
item like the sun we have selected here,
| | 03:05 |
and this little red square indicates the
selected art.
| | 03:11 |
And I can actually drag that onto a new
layer.
| | 03:15 |
And basically, I've moved the sun now in
front of the clouds.
| | 03:18 |
Okay, so the clouds now go behind the
sun.
| | 03:22 |
So, you can move items just by clicking
and dragging them, like that.
| | 03:26 |
Okay, the next thing we're going to do is
have a look at this tool here, which is
| | 03:30 |
the Direct Selection tool.
What the Direct Selection tool allows you
| | 03:36 |
to do is, if I click on a path, it allows
me to select that path.
| | 03:41 |
And then, if I lick on a point on the
path, it allows me to make an adjustment
| | 03:44 |
to that point.
And of course, I can make select multiple
| | 03:48 |
points if I want to, hold down Shift to
select multiple points, and make
| | 03:52 |
adjustments to the shape.
Now, I can also select a point and adjust
| | 03:57 |
the curve.
So, notice that the handles come out, and
| | 04:00 |
I can now adjust the curve on either side
of that point.
| | 04:05 |
So, the Direct Selection tool is really
for fine-tuning shapes and adjusting the
| | 04:10 |
curves and the points on a path once
they've been drawn.
| | 04:16 |
So, there we go.
We can also pull that handle in just to
| | 04:19 |
straighten that at the edge there, and
move that out.
| | 04:23 |
So, you can use the Direct Selection tool
just to perfect shapes, get them exactly
| | 04:28 |
how you want them.
There are also other tools that you can
| | 04:31 |
use to do that, like the Convert Vertex
tool will just convert that to a straight
| | 04:35 |
edge for me very quickly.
But the Selection tool is great, if I
| | 04:40 |
want to keep the curve, but just want to
make an adjustment to it.
| | 04:45 |
Now, you do have to be careful.
You'll see there I've accidentally
| | 04:48 |
selected the background layer and moved
it.
| | 04:51 |
So, you do have to be careful when you're
making selections.
| | 04:54 |
Now, there's also a button up here in the
Control panel, which allows you to select objects.
| | 04:59 |
So, if I was to select, say one of the
clouds and I wanted to quickly select the
| | 05:02 |
other cloud.
I can just go up here and say Select Same
| | 05:06 |
Fill Color, and it will select both the
clouds.
| | 05:10 |
If I select one of the bear's paws, I
could go up here and I could say Same
| | 05:14 |
Fill Instruct Color, and it will choose
both the paws.
| | 05:18 |
I could even come back up here and say
Same Stroke Color.
| | 05:22 |
And because these have the same stroke
color as these, it will select all four
| | 05:26 |
of them.
Now, if I was to select this and then say
| | 05:30 |
Same Fill Color, it's going to select
both of these, but not these because they
| | 05:35 |
have a different color, but similar
weights.
| | 05:39 |
So, you'll see that you can start to
select items based on their Stroke
| | 05:43 |
Weight, or their Stroke Color, or their
Fill in Stroke Color, or their Opacity.
| | 05:50 |
All sorts of other ways of selecting
them.
| | 05:53 |
You can also get to that in the Select
menu.
| | 05:55 |
If we go here, we can go to same Blending
Mode, Filling Stroke, Fill Color, Opacity.
| | 06:01 |
And there also other instances in there
like Symbol Instances, Line block CDs,
| | 06:05 |
Graphic Styles and Appearance Attributes.
You can also select objects all in the
| | 06:12 |
Same Layers, All Directions Handles,
anything not aligned to the Pixel Grid.
| | 06:18 |
And there are various options for brush
strokes in there.
| | 06:21 |
So, lots of ways of saving selections.
You can also, once you've selected
| | 06:26 |
something, so select this, and then
select Same Stroke Color.
| | 06:31 |
So, we select those four, and then go up
to our Selection menu and say Save
| | 06:37 |
Selection, and we can call this Paws and
Feet.
| | 06:42 |
And we now have a selection for Paws and
Feet that we can go in and choose at any time.
| | 06:49 |
So, if I deselect it and want to go back
to my Paws and Feet, I just choose it and
| | 06:54 |
I quickly select them.
So, lots of different ways of selecting
| | 06:59 |
items in Illustrator.
| | 07:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Creating Images from ShapesUsing the shape tools| 00:02 |
Often when you're creating images in
Illustrator, it's easy to start off by
| | 00:06 |
using primitive shapes.
And I want you to select the Ellipse
| | 00:11 |
tool, first of all.
So, we'll select the Ellipse tool, and
| | 00:14 |
we're going to draw a circle.
Now, if I place the cursor over the
| | 00:17 |
center, here, and start to draw, you'll
see that the ellipse comes out from the
| | 00:21 |
center diagonally.
and I can make it long and slim or short
| | 00:25 |
and fat or the opposite.
And if I hold down Shift as I'm drawing,
| | 00:30 |
it will constrain it to create a perfect
circle.
| | 00:34 |
Now, if I hold down Alt while I'm
drawing, it will start to draw from the center.
| | 00:38 |
And that's a keyboard shortcut that I
like to use, just to draw from the center
| | 00:42 |
of my document.
Now, while I'm drawing, I can also hold
| | 00:46 |
down Space Bar, and that allows me to
move it slightly into position.
| | 00:50 |
So, I'm going to move it to about there,
then I'm going to release the mouse, and
| | 00:54 |
then release my keyboard shortcuts.
So, it's good to practice drawing with
| | 01:00 |
those modifier keys selected.
If you don't get it right first time,
| | 01:03 |
keep trying.
So, what we're going to do here, we're
| | 01:06 |
going to draw a skull.
So, I've drawn the main parts of the skull.
| | 01:11 |
Now, what I need to do is draw the jaw.
So, I'm going to choose the Rounded
| | 01:16 |
Rectangle tool.
And remember, we're not trying to make an
| | 01:19 |
exact scale, we're just trying to create
a rough outline of a skull shape.
| | 01:24 |
And I'm going to draw with the Rounded
Rectangle tool, down to round about there.
| | 01:30 |
And you'll see now we have the circle,
forming the big head of the skull, and
| | 01:34 |
then this square with rounded rectangles,
forming the jaw.
| | 01:39 |
We're then going to go back to here, and
we're going to choose the Ellipse tool
| | 01:42 |
again, and we're going to draw a couple
of eyes.
| | 01:45 |
So, I'm going to click where I want the
center of the eye to be.
| | 01:48 |
Again, as I drag hold down Alt and just
increase the size of it and holding down
| | 01:52 |
Shift as well, if I want to make it a
perfect circle.
| | 01:56 |
If I don't want to make it a perfect
circle, I can let go of Shift and just
| | 02:00 |
make it slightly longer than it is fat.
Now, once I've created those circles, I
| | 02:06 |
don't need to create other ones.
If I want one exactly the same, I can
| | 02:10 |
hold down the Alt key, and that allows me
to drag and duplicate that.
| | 02:15 |
And if I hold down Shift as I'm dragging,
you'll notice it keeps it aligned, it
| | 02:19 |
keeps it in a very straight line.
Now notice as I'm dragging, I'm getting
| | 02:25 |
my Smart Guides helping me line up the
objects wherever I want them.
| | 02:30 |
So, I want this to line up with the edge
of the jaw, so I'm going to pull it over
| | 02:33 |
here and then release.
Now, I've created them white with a black outline.
| | 02:40 |
I actually want to select them both, so
Shift-select them both.
| | 02:43 |
And I want it to be black with a white
outline.
| | 02:47 |
So, the easiest way is to swap the Fill
and Stroke.
| | 02:49 |
Now usually, I use Shift + X to do that,
but I'm going to click on this little
| | 02:52 |
button to do it here.
And then to bring this to the foreground,
| | 02:56 |
I'm going to click on the Stroke Swatch,
and I can do that by hitting X.
| | 03:03 |
And then to give it no fill, I'm going to
click on None and forward slash is the
| | 03:06 |
keyboard shortcut for that.
So, you'll see we're starting to build up
| | 03:11 |
our skull.
Now, you might think, well, that looks
| | 03:15 |
nothing like a skull so far because these
two shapes are definitely separate.
| | 03:19 |
Well, watch this.
What I can do is I can select that shape
| | 03:22 |
and then select the Shape Builder just to
pull those two shapes together.
| | 03:29 |
So, this is how it works.
I click and drag across the shapes to
| | 03:32 |
pull those shapes together, and now I
have one shape.
| | 03:36 |
Which is certainly looking more like a
skull shape.
| | 03:39 |
I'm going to back to my Selection tool
now.
| | 03:41 |
And I'm ready to draw the next shape.
The next shape I want to draw is a triangle.
| | 03:47 |
Now you'll notice we've got rectangles,
rounded rectangles, ellipses, polygons,
| | 03:51 |
stars, but we don't have triangles.
So, how do we draw a triangle?
| | 03:57 |
We'll use the Star tool to draw a
triangle, and here's how we do it.
| | 04:01 |
So we select the Star tool, and I'm going
to move over to the center here.
| | 04:05 |
And I'm going to click to start drawing.
Now you'll notice as I do, I can move
| | 04:09 |
that star around with my mouse or my pen.
If I hold down Shift, it will constrain it.
| | 04:16 |
So, that it's perfectly upright and
parallel with the bottom of the comp.
| | 04:21 |
Now, there are other modifiers I can hold
down.
| | 04:24 |
I can add points to the star by hitting
the Up Arrow key while I'm drawing and
| | 04:27 |
remove points by hitting the Down Arrow
key.
| | 04:31 |
And if I move down to three points, I get
a perfect triangle.
| | 04:35 |
And again, I can hold down Shift to just
make it drop into place and then release
| | 04:39 |
the mouse.
And again, we're going to swap the
| | 04:42 |
colors, so X will swap the colors.
And then for my foreground, I want no
| | 04:47 |
fill, so I'm hitting forward slash.
And the back one I'm selecting, and I'm
| | 04:52 |
going to select black for the color for
that.
| | 04:56 |
So, a few different ways of being able to
create shape, combine shapes, and start
| | 05:01 |
to create a basic outline for your
artwork.
| | 05:07 |
What I want you to do next, and I'm going
to leave you to do this exercise is
| | 05:11 |
create a bone.
And I want you to create a bone by
| | 05:15 |
creating a rectangle, filling it with
white.
| | 05:20 |
So, we're going to select white from our
color panel.
| | 05:22 |
With that selected, then we're going to
select the Ellipse tool, L will select
| | 05:27 |
the Ellipse tool.
We're going to create a couple of
| | 05:31 |
circles, one there, and then we're going
to select the Selection tool.
| | 05:36 |
Alt, hold down Alt, Click and Drag, and
then we're going to select both of those.
| | 05:41 |
So, Shift-click, and then Alt, Click and
Drag to this end, and we've created the
| | 05:45 |
rough shapes for a bone for our skull and
crossbones.
| | 05:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining shapes with the Pathfinder| 00:02 |
In this movie, we're going to have a look
at how to create more complex shapes from
| | 00:06 |
simple, basic shapes that you've created
using the Shape tools in Illustrator.
| | 00:12 |
Now, we're in cogstart.ai.
And in here, you can see some primitive
| | 00:17 |
shapes that I've drawn using the Shape
tools.
| | 00:22 |
So, I've used mainly the Ellipse tool and
the Star tool to create these shapes.
| | 00:28 |
The Star tool is really great because you
can select the Star tool, click and start
| | 00:32 |
to drag to draw it.
And there's lots more definer keys you
| | 00:36 |
can hold down as you're drawing.
Let me just switch off my Transparency Grid.
| | 00:40 |
I'm going to say Undo Star and just go to
View > Hide Transparency Grid, and that
| | 00:45 |
makes it easier for you to see what's
happening.
| | 00:51 |
So I select my Star tool, and as I draw,
you'll notice it will rotate.
| | 00:56 |
If I use the up and down arrow keys as I
draw, I can add points to my star.
| | 01:01 |
And that's basically how I've created the
star.
| | 01:04 |
You can also adjust the pointiness of the
star or how far the points emanate from
| | 01:08 |
the center of the star by holding down
the Cmd key as you drag.
| | 01:14 |
So, up and down arrow keys on the
keyboard determine how many points.
| | 01:18 |
And holding down the Cmd or Ctrl key on
Windows allows you to determine what I
| | 01:22 |
call the pointiness of the star.
So, we have a star and you'll notice in
| | 01:27 |
my Layers panel, I have one single layer
with the individual objects within.
| | 01:35 |
So I have my star path, on top of that I
have a circle, and on top of that a
| | 01:39 |
smaller circle, and then another one.
And I've color coded them so you can see
| | 01:44 |
clearly which one's which.
So, what I want to do is create a cog.
| | 01:49 |
And a cog can be quite difficult to draw
free hand.
| | 01:52 |
So instead, what we're going to do is
we're going to use the star.
| | 01:54 |
And what I want to do is I want to cut
the edges of the star, so cut the points off.
| | 02:00 |
So what I've done is I've drawn a circle
where I want those points to be cut off,
| | 02:04 |
so I want them to be cut off around about
here.
| | 02:08 |
So, if you imagine that is a dotted line
that I'm going to cut around with a pair
| | 02:11 |
of scissors, it's a good way to think
about it.
| | 02:14 |
And then, I'm going to open a panel
called the Pathfinder.
| | 02:17 |
So, if you go up to the Window menu and
go to Pathfinder, the Pathfinder panel
| | 02:21 |
should open, and you can place that
wherever you want it.
| | 02:26 |
It's a good idea to keep it open for this
exercise.
| | 02:28 |
Now, there's various different options.
You can unite paths, you can remove the
| | 02:33 |
front shape from the back shape, you can
intersect them.
| | 02:38 |
So, let's take a look at what some of
these do.
| | 02:40 |
Let's click on Minus Front.
And if I do Minus Front, it's removing
| | 02:44 |
the circle from the stars.
So, we're only left with the points, so
| | 02:48 |
we don't really want to do that.
So let's undo that, and let's click on
| | 02:53 |
Intersect, and you'll see that intersect
gives us what we want.
| | 02:57 |
If I turn off these two layers by
clicking on their little eyeballs, you'll
| | 03:01 |
see what's happened.
It's created a shape that's removed the
| | 03:05 |
points from the star forming.
Now, what I want to do now is I want to
| | 03:10 |
combine it with this shape.
So, we're actually removing these parts
| | 03:14 |
of the star, these little points down
here.
| | 03:17 |
So, it will start to look more like a cog
shape as the edge moves around like this.
| | 03:22 |
So, the way that we do it is by selecting
the shape.
| | 03:27 |
And then holding down Shift, and clicking
on the Target button for the shape above
| | 03:31 |
it, and then move over here.
And if we think about what we want to do,
| | 03:36 |
we actually want to combine the shapes
together.
| | 03:38 |
So, we're going to use this one, the
Unite option, and I click on that.
| | 03:43 |
And you'll see that suddenly I have the
shape a cogwheel.
| | 03:47 |
Now, we've got one other object in here.
So, I'm going to switch that on, and you
| | 03:52 |
can see that that's a circle that I'm
going to use to punch a hole in the shape
| | 03:56 |
to create the center hole for my cog.
So I hold down Shift, select the shape above.
| | 04:03 |
And this time, I'm going to remove the
circle from the red shape behind, and to
| | 04:07 |
do that I'm going to use this one.
Minus Front which will remove the front
| | 04:13 |
most shape from the back most shape.
And you'll see that that punches a hole
| | 04:18 |
in my cog for me.
So instead of drawing shapes like cogs by
| | 04:21 |
hand, which are quite difficult to draw.
You can combine more primitive shapes to
| | 04:27 |
create the shapes that you want.
Now, one more tip for you.
| | 04:31 |
If you want to retain the individual
shapes like the stars and the circles, in
| | 04:35 |
case you want to make changes.
What you can do is if we go back to File
| | 04:39 |
menu, and revert this back to the
beginning.
| | 04:43 |
So, I'm just going to click on Revert,
and we're back to our starting point.
| | 04:49 |
When you select shapes and use the
buttons over here, if you hold down the
| | 04:53 |
Alt key, or the Option key on Mac as you
use these.
| | 04:58 |
Basically, what it's going to do, if I
just switch on my Transparency Grid
| | 05:03 |
again, is it's going to still remove
those areas in terms of your drawing.
| | 05:09 |
But it's going to leave them available
here, if you want to make changes.
| | 05:14 |
So, I'll show you why that's important.
Let's open up the layer and let's
| | 05:18 |
continue doing that.
So that's Shift-click these two, and this
| | 05:23 |
time we use Unite.
So, I'm holding down Alt or Option and
| | 05:27 |
clicking Unite.
And again, it's maintained the shapes.
| | 05:31 |
We'll do it again, we'll hold down
Shift-click the path above, and hold down
| | 05:36 |
Option, this time when we click on Minus
front.
| | 05:41 |
Now, you'll notice it looks very
different to how it looked before, and
| | 05:44 |
the nice thing about this is, it's
maintained all of these points.
| | 05:49 |
So, if I wanted to do something like go
in here and just adjust that shape, it
| | 05:52 |
means it's much easier for me to do so.
So, I can start to create these more
| | 05:59 |
wacky kind of clog shapes.
Okay, so I think that's a little bit more flexible.
| | 06:06 |
Holding down Option or Alt will allow you
to correct compound shape so it can
| | 06:11 |
remain editable.
Now, if you have a look at cog end, I
| | 06:15 |
have two examples.
If we use the Selection tool and select
| | 06:18 |
them, you'll notice one has all of the
vectors available.
| | 06:22 |
We hide our Transparency Grid so you can
see that a bit better.
| | 06:26 |
And the other was done without holding
down the Option key or Alt key.
| | 06:30 |
So, that's the difference between the two
of them.
| | 06:34 |
So, little bit about combining shapes
together using the Pathfinder panel.
| | 06:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Grouping objects| 00:00 |
There are times where you want to keep
your objects on a single layer, but you
| | 00:05 |
may want to treat them as a group.
And here are a couple of examples of
| | 00:11 |
where you would find grouping useful.
Want I want you to do is open up Grouping
| | 00:16 |
Start AI if you have access to the
Training Files folder, and you can follow along.
| | 00:22 |
You can also open up Grouping Animations
Start AI, so we have two files for this section.
| | 00:29 |
We're going to start with Grouping Start AI.
And in here you can see I've got 2 layers.
| | 00:34 |
One with my bear in the background, and
one with this grid of squares here.
| | 00:40 |
Now if I open up that layer, it's easy
for me to select that as a layer.
| | 00:47 |
I want to create a reflection basically
of this.
| | 00:49 |
So, if I was to duplicate those shapes,
it would be virtually impossible for me
| | 00:54 |
to be able to determine which shapes
belonged with which of the grids I was
| | 00:59 |
working with.
So, I what I can do is group these
| | 01:05 |
together into one single group.
So I can go to Object > Group, and I want
| | 01:10 |
you to watch what happens in the Layers
panel when I do that.
| | 01:15 |
It groups them together into an
individual item.
| | 01:17 |
So I can call this Grid 01, okay?
And now it's much easier for me to
| | 01:25 |
duplicate that.
I can just select the Selection tool,
| | 01:29 |
hold down the Alt key and then that shows
me that it's going to create a duplicate
| | 01:33 |
copy and I can click and drag and use my
smart guides, just to align it.
| | 01:40 |
So that I can use this to create a
shadow.
| | 01:42 |
And it's very easy for me now to select
those as individual groups.
| | 01:47 |
If you have a look at the contents.
Contents look exactly the same.
| | 01:50 |
So it would have been virtually
impossible for me to work logically with
| | 01:55 |
all of those as individual elements.
Now, another reason for creating a group.
| | 02:01 |
Is if you've done a drawing with lots of
individual body parts.
| | 02:04 |
And you'll see that this bear has lots of
individual body parts.
| | 02:09 |
It's made up of lots of different shapes.
And you can see all of those shapes in there.
| | 02:13 |
I can select them independently of each
other by clicking on the Target menu.
| | 02:17 |
But by grouping them together, it means I
can also Switch Visibility On and Off
| | 02:22 |
very quickly for those elements within
the Layer.
| | 02:28 |
So, as well as having Objects within
Layers, you can have Groups of Objects
| | 02:31 |
within Layers and it just helps you
organize things a little bit better.
| | 02:36 |
So, let me just Create a Copy of this.
I can also Create a Copy by Dragging the
| | 02:40 |
Group onto this button here, the New
Layer button.
| | 02:44 |
And that's going to duplicate that group.
So, now I've got two bears in there.
| | 02:49 |
I can use one for the shadow and one for
the regular bear.
| | 02:54 |
Now, if I want to just adjust that one
and make a shadow from it, what I need to
| | 02:59 |
do is just move it to a different
location and we could just reverse scale
| | 03:03 |
it or something like that.
There's a few options that we can use for
| | 03:10 |
placing that into position.
I've just used the Bounding box there to
| | 03:14 |
very quickly, roughly position it where I
want to.
| | 03:18 |
And I can use the Bounding box to move
and scale that group as a single item.
| | 03:25 |
Now, another reason that you might want
to do grouping is if we go to Grouping
| | 03:29 |
Animation Start, and you'll notice here
I've drawn this little character, and if
| | 03:33 |
I open up my navigator you'll be able to
see the whole character, and there we can
| | 03:37 |
have a look at her.
And you'll notice that what I've done is
| | 03:42 |
drawn different body parts on different
Layers.
| | 03:46 |
So, I've got her spectacles or glasses,
her eyebrows on separate Layers and I've
| | 03:50 |
created this for an animation.
Now, some animations I may want to
| | 03:55 |
animate the mouth and the head separately
and the eyes I might want to move around.
| | 04:01 |
In other animations, I might just want to
have the head moving backwards and
| | 04:05 |
forwards, not having individual animated
elements like eyes and eyebrows.
| | 04:10 |
So, grouping allows me to group these
elements together into a single Layer.
| | 04:19 |
I may not necessarily want to animate the
glasses.
| | 04:22 |
I may just want to have the head bobbing
backwards and forwards, in which case,
| | 04:25 |
it's a bit of a waste of time having all
of these on separate Layers.
| | 04:30 |
Now if I was to group them.
I'm going to select the elements.
| | 04:34 |
I'm going to select the hat.
Hold down Shift, select the Jaw, the
| | 04:37 |
Head, the Pupils.
Everything that should be on the Head.
| | 04:41 |
And then I'm going to go to Object Group.
Now the only thing with that is it places
| | 04:48 |
it all onto one Layer, but if you open up
the group, you'll notice all these
| | 04:51 |
individual elements are back to being
individual objects.
| | 04:55 |
Which makes it really difficult for me to
navigate.
| | 04:59 |
Or to change it if I want to go back to
individual elements.
| | 05:02 |
So another option, if we go to Undo
group.
| | 05:05 |
Is actually to select the Layers, so
holding on shift and clicking on the
| | 05:09 |
Layer names to select the ones I want.
And I can hold down the Cmd key or Ctrl
| | 05:15 |
key on Windows to select Non Contiguous
items.
| | 05:19 |
What I can do instead is go to the Win
menu.
| | 05:22 |
And choose Collect in New Layer.
And what Collect in New Layer does is it
| | 05:27 |
places all of the elements in, but as
individual grouped objects.
| | 05:32 |
So, I still have access to the glasses
and all the individual groups like the
| | 05:37 |
head group.
Still is easy to select.
| | 05:43 |
So, sometimes instead of grouping, you're
better to actually collect the art work
| | 05:46 |
into a single Layer.
Now, it doesn't work with the Hat Layer.
| | 05:50 |
You'll see that the Hat's now behind, in
front of her neck.
| | 05:53 |
So, I would then just move that back into
that Layer there.
| | 05:56 |
And switch that back on.
So, sometimes grouping works, but
| | 06:01 |
sometimes you're better to collect into a
new Layer.
| | 06:05 |
And by doing that you maintain the groups
and the naming structure that you'd
| | 06:10 |
already set up for those Layers.
It just places them in there as kind of sub
| | 06:15 |
Layers, if you like.
| | 06:17 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Transforming objects| 00:00 |
We're going to have a look at some ways
that you can transform objects using
| | 00:05 |
Illustrator here.
And we're going to start by selecting
| | 00:10 |
these elements in here and creating
shadows from these elements by using the
| | 00:14 |
Transform options.
So I want you to open up transforming
| | 00:19 |
objects start AI if you have access to
the training files folder.
| | 00:24 |
And the first thing we're going to do is
select this group over here.
| | 00:27 |
Now, we can select it just by clicking on
one of the elements within the group, or
| | 00:31 |
we can select it by clicking on the
Target button here.
| | 00:36 |
Now you'll notice one's called Group and
the other one's called Shadow.
| | 00:39 |
It's actually the Shadow that we want to
select.
| | 00:42 |
So, select that by probably clicking the
Target button would be the easiest way.
| | 00:47 |
Now with the Direct Selection tool
selected, you can pick up, and move this element.
| | 00:52 |
If you'll notice, if you'll place the
cursor inside the bundling box, it
| | 00:56 |
changes to a move icon, or a selection
icon, depending on where you drag it.
| | 01:02 |
If you drag it over the corner handles,
it turns to a Rotate icon.
| | 01:05 |
You can actually use that to rotate your
element.
| | 01:09 |
Or, if you move it over the corner
handles, it will scale so you can use it
| | 01:13 |
to scale your element.
If you try out those, just undo when
| | 01:18 |
you've finished.
What we're going to do is just going to use
| | 01:21 |
that to pick it up and move it so if we
click in the art work, we can drag down,
| | 01:24 |
and you should see your smart guides
enabling you to position it where you
| | 01:28 |
want it to be positioned.
So that's one way of working.
| | 01:34 |
You can work with the Selection tool.
Now the only thing about that is it has
| | 01:39 |
some restrictions.
So another way of being able to rotate
| | 01:43 |
and move things, which gives you an
additional option of having an anchor
| | 01:47 |
point is if we undo that and we select
one these tools here.
| | 01:53 |
We have the Rotate tool, the Scale tool.
Now with the Rotate tool, what I can do
| | 01:58 |
is select it and you'll notice that
there's a little anchor point in the
| | 02:01 |
center of my layer.
And if I click here in the bottom, I can
| | 02:06 |
actually move that anchor point to the
bottom of my layer so that when I now
| | 02:10 |
rotate, it rotates around that as an
anchor point.
| | 02:15 |
If I hold and Shift as I drag, it rotates
in increments of 15 degrees which gives
| | 02:20 |
me a little bit more control.
So if you want to rotate around a
| | 02:25 |
specific point, you better using the
Rotation tool then just using the
| | 02:29 |
Standard Selection tool.
And again, I'm going to undo that and show
| | 02:34 |
you that you can do the same with Scale.
You can select Scale tool.
| | 02:40 |
Place the anchor point where you want it
and then when you Scale, it will Scale
| | 02:44 |
around that anchor point.
And again if I hold down Shift it will
| | 02:48 |
constrain it.
So, scaling and rotating can be done
| | 02:53 |
using those tools.
And I might want to stretch it a little
| | 02:56 |
bit if it's going to be a shadow.
Now, the other thing with a shadow is, it
| | 02:59 |
would kind of, if I imagine the shadow is
being cast on the floor.
| | 03:05 |
It wouldn't be cast vertically straight
down like that.
| | 03:08 |
It would have perspective.
It would gradually get fatter as it comes
| | 03:12 |
towards the screen.
So there's another tool which allows you
| | 03:15 |
to transform called the Free Transform
tool.
| | 03:17 |
And it's called Free Transform because it
allows you to freely transform.
| | 03:21 |
You can rotate, you can scale, you can
move your layer using the Free Transform tool.
| | 03:27 |
But the additional option that I'm
interested in showing you is the fact
| | 03:30 |
that it allows you to do things like
skew.
| | 03:34 |
So if I click and drag, and then hold
down the CMD key or Ctrl key on Windows,
| | 03:38 |
I can just drag that out and kind of skew
it so I get that kind of effect, as if
| | 03:42 |
it's a shadow being cast into the
foreground.
| | 03:48 |
If I undo that, and we'll try that again,
this time using Cmd + Alt, or Ctrl + Alt
| | 03:53 |
on Windows, you'll notice now it's
actually skewing on both edges.
| | 03:59 |
So instead of one edge being fixed and
the other edge skewing, it skews both.
| | 04:05 |
I'm going to undo that again, and the third
option is to click and drag, and after
| | 04:10 |
start dragging hold down Cmd or Ctrl, Alt
and Shift.
| | 04:15 |
And that allows you to create that kind
of perspective skew, where we're pulling
| | 04:20 |
it towards the foreground.
And we get this lovely effect of the
| | 04:25 |
shadow being cast towards us.
And because we've got Free Transform
| | 04:29 |
options, I can then scale it a little
bit.
| | 04:32 |
And get it exactly into position where I
want it.
| | 04:35 |
So different Rotation tools or Transform
tools give you different options.
| | 04:40 |
I tend to use the Free Transform tool
quite a lot and the keyboard short cut
| | 04:44 |
for that is E.
Now lets have a look at our bear what can
| | 04:49 |
we do with our bear, well lets select our
bear and the first thing we need to do, I
| | 04:53 |
am going to select the top one, is make it
look more like a shadow at the moment
| | 04:57 |
it's the same color as the bear himself
so if I want to be a shadow I need to
| | 05:01 |
make him a one color.
Black, probably.
| | 05:09 |
I'm going to turn off my top layer, so we
can only see him and we'll just move him
| | 05:11 |
across here.
So what I'm going to do is use a trick that
| | 05:15 |
we've already used which is the
Pathfinder Pallet, so select the bear and
| | 05:18 |
then go to Pathfinder.
What we're going to do is unite all of the
| | 05:23 |
shapes of the bear into one single shape,
so at the moment he's got lots of
| | 05:27 |
individual elements making up this bear
shape.
| | 05:31 |
So, we've selected them, we go to Unite,
and that unites all of his shapes together.
| | 05:38 |
Now something strange happens with this.
Let's just turn off the background layer.
| | 05:42 |
You'll notice that it creates a semi
transparent bear, and there are actually
| | 05:47 |
two groups created.
What I want you to do is select the
| | 05:50 |
second group, this one here.
Which is that little circular bubble
| | 05:55 |
icon, and we're going to delete that.
So let's just delete that.
| | 06:00 |
And we're left with one group which is
our bear.
| | 06:04 |
Now if we open the bear group, you'll see
that there are actually two objects in there.
| | 06:09 |
Now you'll notice the bear is
semi-transparent, but if we have a look
| | 06:12 |
at our opacity settings up here it's
saying it's 100% opacity and this is
| | 06:15 |
something that can catch you out in
Illustrator.
| | 06:19 |
If you have a group selected and there
are two individual elements within the
| | 06:23 |
group, the opacity table will not show up
here.
| | 06:27 |
You need to select the individual
elements and then when you do, you can
| | 06:30 |
see the opacity set in.
So notice that I've got two elements I've
| | 06:35 |
got that little tear at the top there.
And then I have the main bear what I'm
| | 06:39 |
going to do is just delete that one.
And when I delete that, select in the
| | 06:44 |
group will still not give me the correct
options.
| | 06:47 |
So if you want to see the Opacity options
for an object, don't select the group,
| | 06:51 |
select the item within the group.
And I can go in there and decide if I
| | 06:56 |
want it a little bit darker.
Okay, so let's switch on our bear so we
| | 07:01 |
can see the bear behind the shadow.
Now what we need to do is select our
| | 07:06 |
shadow bear and move him into position.
This time I'm going to use the Scale tool again.
| | 07:12 |
Now, if I double-click the Scale tool,
just be aware that you cannot actually
| | 07:16 |
create scales and scale adjustments,
uniform and non-uniform scale adjustments
| | 07:21 |
by using this dialog box.
So, if I wanted them to be minus 100%, on
| | 07:28 |
the y axis, and 100% on the x axis or
vice versa.
| | 07:35 |
Then I can go and enter these values in
here and reverse them in that way.
| | 07:39 |
But another way is just to select the
anchor point, and this time we're going to
| | 07:43 |
drag it down to his foot.
Okay, let's just drag it down to the
| | 07:49 |
bottom of his foot there.
And now I can just scale this.
| | 07:53 |
Now you'll notice that as I scale this,
it's doing all sorts of amazing things.
| | 07:58 |
So if you hold down Shift you'll notice
that it constrains it, so that I'm only
| | 08:01 |
scaling it on the y axis, not on the x
axis.
| | 08:07 |
And of course, I can rotate that and move
it into position, get it roughly where I
| | 08:12 |
want it.
Now instead of using the tool that we
| | 08:16 |
used before, the Free Transform tool,
we're going to use some different tools to
| | 08:20 |
distort this.
That's a little bit about how you can use
| | 08:25 |
some of the Transform tools.
The benefits of using these ones are a,
| | 08:30 |
you have the ability to set an anchor
point, b, you can double-click them and
| | 08:34 |
enter numeric values which is really
useful.
| | 08:39 |
You can also create copies of the
elements if you want to using those
| | 08:43 |
dialog boxes.
Free transform gives you options for
| | 08:47 |
skewing and perspective options.
And of course, the Selection tool is just
| | 08:52 |
handy, if you want to make a quick
adjustment.
| | 08:56 |
So lots of different tools.
Use different ones in different situations.
| | 09:03 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Isolating shapes| 00:00 |
There are times when you're working with
artwork in groups that you need to get
| | 00:04 |
into individual elements within the
group.
| | 00:08 |
For example, here you'll see I have this
woman's head all on a single layer.
| | 00:13 |
And actually trying to isolate elements
by going into the group in the layers
| | 00:17 |
panel is quite tedious and difficult to
do.
| | 00:21 |
So instead of doing that, what you can do
is you can isolate that element and make
| | 00:25 |
it easier to work with and select within.
So, if I right-click and select Isolate
| | 00:30 |
Selected Group, you'll see it dulls down
everything else so I can only select the
| | 00:35 |
elements within this group.
And now, I can go and select individual
| | 00:41 |
elements without the whole group being
selected.
| | 00:45 |
Now, I could even select the lips and
decide that I want to isolate them.
| | 00:49 |
So, I can isolate them and just play
around with those without worrying about
| | 00:53 |
accidentally selecting anything else
funny to make changes to them.
| | 00:58 |
You can also isolate by double-clicking.
Now, if we want to get out of Isolation
| | 01:04 |
Mode, we can click on the Back One Level
button.
| | 01:08 |
And you'll see that we're in a path that
is within a group that was within the
| | 01:11 |
Head layer.
And at the moment, in the Layers panel,
| | 01:15 |
we can only see that path.
As we hit the Back Arrow, you'll notice
| | 01:20 |
it starts showing us the group, and then
the head within the context of the whole character.
| | 01:27 |
Now, if I wanted to say, change the color
of the earrings, what I could do is
| | 01:30 |
double-click that, and that brings me
into Isolation Mode.
| | 01:35 |
Now I can select both of the earrings.
It could change to the color, and then
| | 01:40 |
jump back out of Isolation Mode by
hitting the Escape key until I'm back to
| | 01:44 |
my artwork.
So, if you ever want to work on one
| | 01:48 |
element, you can isolate it either by
right-clicking or just double-clicking on
| | 01:52 |
the element.
And keep double-clicking 'til the element
| | 01:56 |
is isolated.
And then, you have access to controls
| | 01:59 |
over just one element.
It's a really nice way of working.
| | 02:04 |
You do have to be careful by the way,
because you'll notice there that the
| | 02:07 |
holes of the glasses.
And the frame of the glasses are kind of
| | 02:11 |
as individual shapes within that group.
So, it will allow you to also change the
| | 02:16 |
holes of things.
If I deselect that, I'm going to select
| | 02:19 |
that and then go in and select that hole.
You'll notice I can adjust the size and
| | 02:24 |
shape of it and make the rim thicker.
So, there we go.
| | 02:28 |
A little bit about Isolation Mode, how it
can be used to edit your image more
| | 02:32 |
easily, particularly when working with
complex groups.
| | 02:36 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with text| 00:02 |
In this movie, we'll have a look at the
basics when working with text in Illustrator.
| | 00:06 |
And we're going to start by using the Type
tool.
| | 00:09 |
If you want to follow along, you can open
up Text Start AI and select the Type tool.
| | 00:15 |
And what we're going to do is, just first of
all, add some text, here.
| | 00:20 |
So what I'm going to do is go over to my
Layers panel and just make sure we're in
| | 00:23 |
the correct layer.
Now normally what I do is I create
| | 00:27 |
specific layers for different elements
within the design.
| | 00:33 |
So you see that as I switch these on and
off.
| | 00:35 |
Various different parts of the elements
are being made visible.
| | 00:39 |
And the layer that contains the text is
called panels.
| | 00:43 |
So, I want you to select the panels
layer, and then you can close the Layers panel.
| | 00:48 |
And then click once down here.
And you'll see a text insertion point
| | 00:54 |
appears where you click.
Now we're just going to choose the default,
| | 00:58 |
settings for now.
So just type in city guide.
| | 01:02 |
Okay.
So there we have our text, and if I
| | 01:06 |
select the Selection tool, you'll notice
it has a bounding box around it.
| | 01:12 |
If we go to the Layers panel and open up
the panels.
| | 01:15 |
You can see my city guide text object
within the layer.
| | 01:19 |
And I can toggle it on and off.
Now I can pick that up and move it as I
| | 01:23 |
would any other object.
And I can use my Smart Guides to align it
| | 01:27 |
with that symbol below.
So I'm going to drag it down there.
| | 01:32 |
And you'll notice that when I have text
selected, it automatically shows me,
| | 01:36 |
first of all the stroke and fill options,
opacity options and then the Character
| | 01:40 |
and Paragraph panel.
And if I make a change to the Character
| | 01:45 |
panel with the text selected.
For example, let's just adjust the font size.
| | 01:52 |
So let's click on this drop down menu and
choose 18.
| | 01:56 |
You'll notice that the text does in fact
change.
| | 01:59 |
So you don't need to make a textual
selection.
| | 02:02 |
You can just select using the selection
tool and any changes you make will be updated.
| | 02:07 |
So what we're going to do is choose bold,
so go to Bold.
| | 02:12 |
Okay, so we selected a bold font.
We're also going to come down here.
| | 02:17 |
And click on all caps to make it all
capital letters, and that means we don't
| | 02:21 |
have to retype it to get capital letters.
Let's also adjust the size a little bit
| | 02:26 |
more, but this time instead of using the
drop down menu or using the up and down
| | 02:30 |
Arrow keys here.
What we're going to do, is click on the
| | 02:34 |
text and then use the up and down Arrow
keys on the keyboard to make the text
| | 02:38 |
bigger or smaller.
And of course holding down shift, we'll
| | 02:42 |
go into increments of 10 if you want to
do that.
| | 02:45 |
So about 30 points is right for this.
Now we also want to change the color but
| | 02:49 |
notice there is no options for color in
the Character panel.
| | 02:52 |
So if we want to change the color, we
need to go over and choose a color for
| | 02:57 |
our text.
And you'll notice that indeed the color
| | 03:02 |
does update.
Now alternatively, you can choose the
| | 03:05 |
Eyedropper tool, and select something
that has the same color that you want the
| | 03:09 |
text to be.
Like this little symbol down here.
| | 03:14 |
And you'll see that that makes my text
orange.
| | 03:17 |
Now I'm going to select the Direct
selection tool once I've done that and
| | 03:20 |
just hit Shift + Down Arrow to move it
into position.
| | 03:25 |
So now we have that text in here what I
want to do is create an area of body text
| | 03:28 |
over here which gives us more information
about the city.
| | 03:33 |
In order to do that what I'm going to do
is create a shape to contain the text.
| | 03:39 |
And this is basically how you create a
frame for your text in Illustrator.
| | 03:44 |
Choose one of the Shape tools, I'm going
to choose the Rectangle tool, but you
| | 03:47 |
could make it circular frame if you
wanted to, or any other shape for that matter.
| | 03:53 |
And we're going to create a rectangle the
shape that we want it to be now.
| | 03:56 |
I'm using the Smart Guides just to line
it up with the other design elements to
| | 04:00 |
make sure it fits in exactly where I want
it.
| | 04:04 |
I don't need to worry about the color.
Because if I go into the Type tool and
| | 04:08 |
then select the ADF Type tool and click
on the Edge, the color will disappear and
| | 04:12 |
I can then just start typing text into
this spot.
| | 04:17 |
Now, obviously it's still using the same
settings from the last text that I typed,
| | 04:22 |
which is Media Pro bold 30 points.
I want to change that.
| | 04:28 |
Now if I change the settings now, if I go
up here and change that to 12 points,
| | 04:31 |
notice it hasn't affected the text.
And that's because the text is live, but
| | 04:37 |
not selected.
So if you have the type tool selected.
| | 04:41 |
And there's an insertion point flashing
like there is here, but none of the text
| | 04:45 |
is actually selected, then, changes that
you make up here won't make any
| | 04:48 |
difference to the text.
You need to actually make a selection by
| | 04:53 |
dragging the insertion point across the
text.
| | 04:56 |
And then you can go up here and change
the settings.
| | 05:00 |
And it will all update.
So we changed it to Media Pro regular 12 point.
| | 05:07 |
We're now going to copy and paste some text.
From a text document that I've saved for you.
| | 05:11 |
And it's called Text Example.
And you can find that in the Training
| | 05:16 |
Files folder.
So I'm going to select all of this text, go
| | 05:19 |
to Edit > Copy, and then go back into
Illustrator and make sure the text is selected.
| | 05:25 |
And we'll go to Edit > Paste.
And paste the text in there.
| | 05:30 |
Once it's in there, what we're going to do
is hit Cmd+A or Ctrl+A on Windows to
| | 05:34 |
select all.
We're going to open the Character panel by
| | 05:38 |
clicking it here.
Instantly, you can also open the
| | 05:41 |
Character panel by going to the Window
menu, all the way down to type and choose Character.
| | 05:48 |
And that opens the Standalone panel,
which will float above the main document,
| | 05:53 |
and we can ask it to Show Options to see
all of the options that are available
| | 05:57 |
from up here in the main Control panel.
So we don't want all caps, so remove all caps.
| | 06:05 |
We've got myriad pro regular 12 points.
So I think I'm going to bring it down a
| | 06:08 |
little bit.
So we'll use the arrow keys just to bring
| | 06:11 |
it down, maybe to about 11 points.
We're also going to adjust what's called the leading.
| | 06:16 |
And that will increase the space between
the lines of text.
| | 06:20 |
Giving us a little bit more spacing.
You also have options in there for tracking.
| | 06:24 |
If you want to increase to decrease the
spacing between letters.
| | 06:28 |
And you can also kern individual letters
pairs.
| | 06:31 |
If I wanted to do that over here, for
example, if I want to use this over here
| | 06:34 |
to close the gap between the G and the U,
I basically click between the two letters
| | 06:38 |
I want to kern.
And then adjust the setting accordingly
| | 06:45 |
to close that gap.
So individual letter appears can be
| | 06:49 |
turned, and entire sentences will be
tracked.
| | 06:54 |
Okay, so let's go back to the area text
and let's just bring the letting down a
| | 06:58 |
little bit.
It's a little bit too much, so we're
| | 07:01 |
going to go 15 would do for that.
And I'm also going to bring the tracking
| | 07:05 |
down cuz we don't really need any
tracking there.
| | 07:08 |
Now again, the color is determined using
the Color panel.
| | 07:12 |
So I'm going to click on the white swatch to
make it white.
| | 07:16 |
So there are other options as well that
you can apply to the text.
| | 07:19 |
We have a Paragraph panel, where you can
set the alignment, whether it's center
| | 07:22 |
aligned, left aligned, or right aligned.
It will place the text straight edged
| | 07:28 |
down one edge of the box that you've
created to contain the text.
| | 07:32 |
And then, it will use the character
spacing that you've set up in the
| | 07:35 |
Character panel to space the text as you
wish.
| | 07:39 |
And then it will try and fill the gap
with as much text as it can and create
| | 07:43 |
automatic wraps when it needs to go on
the next line.
| | 07:47 |
Now if you were to justify the text, if
does something different.
| | 07:52 |
It places it straight down one edge,
depending on whether you choose left or
| | 07:56 |
right justified.
And on the opposite edge, it will attempt
| | 08:00 |
to try and place it straight down that
edge as well, unless there's a huge gap,
| | 08:04 |
in which case it will leave a gap, often
on the last line.
| | 08:10 |
And in order to that, what it's doing is
taking control of the spacing, and you'll
| | 08:14 |
notice that the spacing Is no longer
even.
| | 08:18 |
There are some areas where there are more
gaps than others.
| | 08:21 |
So when you do that you need to be a
little bit careful with the spacing.
| | 08:26 |
And there are various settings that you
can use in here which will help that spacing.
| | 08:32 |
For example, we can put that on Adobe
Every Line Composer.
| | 08:36 |
And then it will try and work out the
spacing across all of the lines instead
| | 08:41 |
of on Single lines as it justifies.
So if we choose Every Line composer,
| | 08:46 |
you'll notice the spacing changes
slightly and we get a slightly more even spacing.
| | 08:53 |
So once with justification options you
can also fully justify text as well.
| | 08:57 |
There's also options for indenting the
first line of paragraph, to make the
| | 09:01 |
paragraphs stand out a little bit more,
or indenting the whole margin if you want
| | 09:05 |
to bring in the text from the margin a
little bit.
| | 09:10 |
You can bring it in, and then bring in
maybe the first word a little bit more
| | 09:13 |
just to accentuate the fact it's the
start of a new paragraph.
| | 09:18 |
You can also add spacing before or after
the paragraph by using these controls here.
| | 09:23 |
Once you've finished formatting your
text, you may then want to save your text
| | 09:27 |
as a style so that when you create more
text and new documents you can just use
| | 09:31 |
that preset style that you've already
saved.
| | 09:36 |
I'm going to very quickly show you how to
save a character style and apply it.
| | 09:40 |
You've also got paragraph styles.
So if you go in the Window menu and go
| | 09:44 |
down to type character styles.
Notice that there are also paragraph
| | 09:49 |
styles available there.
So we're just going to go to character
| | 09:53 |
styles and we're going to create a new
character style.
| | 09:57 |
So we click on this button and it creates
a new character style called character
| | 10:00 |
style two.
Now if we double-click it in this area
| | 10:03 |
here, not on the name cuz that will just
make the name editable.
| | 10:07 |
But this area here, it will open up a
dialog box and we can call it body text.
| | 10:13 |
And it will save attributes including
basic character formats, advanced
| | 10:18 |
character formats, color, and open type
features.
| | 10:22 |
And once we've done that we can click Ok
and we have our new body text style.
| | 10:27 |
Now while I"m in here with this text
selected if I choose my headline style
| | 10:31 |
and apply it to the text, notice its
applying this character style the orange
| | 10:36 |
large format text to my text.
Now because the paragraph style hasn't
| | 10:43 |
been saved, it's still to justify the
text.
| | 10:48 |
If we save paragraph styles, it will also
save the paragraph options as well.
| | 10:53 |
So just notice that it's now just a
single click to change the text to
| | 10:57 |
whichever formatting I want.
So there I'm back to my new body text style.
| | 11:03 |
So styles, both character styles and
paragraph styles, can save you a lot of
| | 11:07 |
time when recreating styles in other
documents.
| | 11:13 |
Now if you want to have a look at the
final one.
| | 11:16 |
If you go to textend.ai.
You'll see hear there's a lot more text
| | 11:20 |
being added.
Let's close up our panels so we can see this.
| | 11:25 |
And if you go in to, your Art Board
panel, you can double-click on each of
| | 11:29 |
these, double-click on the numbers to
have a look at the text that's being
| | 11:33 |
created in this document.
So that's a little bit about text
| | 11:40 |
formatting and how you can use styles
just to speed up the process of
| | 11:43 |
formatting text over multiple art boards
and multiple documents.
| | 11:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Applying ColorFills and strokes| 00:00 |
In this movie, we're going to have a look at
fills and strokes in Illustrator.
| | 00:05 |
How to apply them, how to control them,
and some tips and tricks for using them.
| | 00:11 |
Now if you open up fillstrokestart.ai,
you can follow along with me.
| | 00:17 |
And here you'll see we've got various
elements within this document.
| | 00:20 |
And what we're going to do is start by just
having a look at how to fill and stroke
| | 00:24 |
an object.
So what we're going to do is start with this
| | 00:28 |
object here.
And you'll see it already has a black
| | 00:31 |
stroke around it, and if I select it
notice that the Control panel up here
| | 00:35 |
updates to show me the Stroke Width and
the Variable Width Profile, which we'll
| | 00:39 |
have a look at later, Brush Definition,
which we'll also have a look at later and
| | 00:44 |
things likes Opacity and Style.
Now we're just going to first of all use the
| | 00:52 |
Stroke Weight, and we're just going to
increase that by a couple of notice, so
| | 00:55 |
we got to four points.
You can also place a cursor inside this
| | 01:00 |
and use the Arrow keys on the keyboard to
go up in time in increments of one, or
| | 01:04 |
holding Down + Shift in increments of
ten.
| | 01:08 |
There's also drop down menu where you can
choose predefined increments of stroke weight.
| | 01:14 |
You also have a stroke panel and if you
click on this button here, over here on
| | 01:18 |
my panel, if you can't see that go to
your essentials work space, choose Reset
| | 01:22 |
Essentials and you should see it.
And if you click on that, you'll notice
| | 01:28 |
that you also have exactly the same
options here for selecting the Weight,
| | 01:32 |
but if you click on the Weight menu here
and see Show Options.
| | 01:38 |
You also have access to other options
which we're going to be having a look at in
| | 01:42 |
a little while.
The other options are also available up
| | 01:46 |
here in the Ctrl panel, if you click on
the hyper-link text here.
| | 01:50 |
And that will open up an identical panel
here, which will also disappear if you
| | 01:54 |
click on it again.
Now, you also have fill options up here.
| | 01:58 |
And you'll notice if I click on the
downwards arrow here I could choose a
| | 02:02 |
color for the fill.
And if I click on this green color,
| | 02:06 |
that's going to fill this area with
green.
| | 02:09 |
And here we have our stroke options.
If I click on the drop down menu here, I
| | 02:14 |
can choose maybe None for my stroke
options.
| | 02:18 |
So you can use the control panel up here.
It's quite a nice way to get access to
| | 02:22 |
all the fill in stroke properties.
Now if you have your Fill active and you
| | 02:27 |
go to Opacity and drop it down to 50%,
you'll notice it drops it down to 50% opacity.
| | 02:35 |
Okay, if we put that back up to 100%, it
goes up to 100%.
| | 02:39 |
It's important to know that that's also
affecting the stroke if we put a stroke
| | 02:42 |
on there.
And let's put that back up to something a
| | 02:46 |
bit fatter, 13 points, and drop the
opacity down.
| | 02:51 |
Notice, it affects the fill and the
stroke, so important to note that this
| | 02:56 |
opacity setting affects the fill and the
stroke.
| | 03:01 |
Now, you can also adjust the fill and
stroke properties down here.
| | 03:05 |
In the tool panel, you can just click on
the Fill Swatch, which opens up the color
| | 03:09 |
picker, where you can choose a New Color.
So I'm going to choose a nice bright blue
| | 03:14 |
color, because this is going to be the sky
in the background.
| | 03:18 |
Then you can use this little icon here to
swap the fill and stroke, if you want to
| | 03:22 |
swap those colors.
So that the background becomes black and
| | 03:26 |
the stroke becomes the blue color.
There's a keyboard shortcut for that,
| | 03:30 |
which is Shift + X, which will swap the
fill and stroke.
| | 03:34 |
So we want it to be blue with no stroke.
So what we want to do is bring the stroke
| | 03:40 |
to the front, and then change that.
There are two ways of doing it, if I hit
| | 03:45 |
the X key on its own, notice it brings
the stroke to the front.
| | 03:49 |
Okay, so the stroke is now active, then I
can click on it.
| | 03:55 |
Double-click and choose a New Color if I
want to.
| | 03:58 |
So if I wanted to make it red or pink I
could do.
| | 04:01 |
If I want to make it have no stroke, I
can click on this button here.
| | 04:06 |
Or hit forward slash to choose that, and
now I have no stroke.
| | 04:11 |
Now, you want to get used to these little
keyboard shortcuts, so X toggles between
| | 04:14 |
fill and stroke.
If I wanted no fill, I would toggle by
| | 04:19 |
hitting X and then hit forward slash to
give it no fill.
| | 04:23 |
If I want to undo that, I can come down
here and choose the last selected color.
| | 04:29 |
And you'll see there's a keyboard
shortcut for that indicated in the popup
| | 04:32 |
when I hover over it.
So, you can have a look at all the
| | 04:35 |
different keyboard shortcuts by just
hovering over the buttons.
| | 04:40 |
If you want to go back to the default
fill in stroke, let's select this box
| | 04:43 |
down here.
If I want to choose the default fill in
| | 04:45 |
stroke, I can click on this button here.
And that will just give it a black
| | 04:50 |
outline, one point outline, or stroke and
a white fill, and the keyboard shortcut
| | 04:54 |
for selecting that is D.
So, let's color a few things, let's
| | 05:00 |
select this path here, now this is an
open path, and you'll see that with an
| | 05:04 |
open path I can still fill it.
Now, at the moment it has a black stroke
| | 05:10 |
and no fill.
Now, I could click on my fill swatch and
| | 05:13 |
then choose color from the color picker,
but instead of doing that I could just
| | 05:17 |
simply move over my color picker which I
have displayed over here.
| | 05:22 |
And if I make that bigger I can
interactively choose a color to fill that
| | 05:26 |
with and you'll see now it has a green
fill.
| | 05:32 |
If you want to remove the black stroke,
we can click on the stroke swatch to
| | 05:36 |
bring it forwards.
And then we can simply click on the no
| | 05:40 |
stroke swatch over here, so you have
options that you can select over here,
| | 05:44 |
you can select over here, or up here
depending on what you want to do.
| | 05:50 |
Now, something like a shadow we may want
to have a semi-transparent, so if I
| | 05:54 |
select the shadow and then we go into
this panel here this will allow us to
| | 05:58 |
control transparency.
So, I could bring the transparency down
| | 06:04 |
to 60% and there we see we have a
semi-transparent shadow.
| | 06:08 |
We're also going to have a look at some
other ways of creating shadows when we
| | 06:11 |
have a look at gradients.
Well, some in here you can also use the
| | 06:17 |
transparency dialog to create a mask.
If we have a look underneath this
| | 06:23 |
gradient, you'll see I have this grid of
squares.
| | 06:27 |
And what I've done is I've placed another
layer on top that has a gradient on it.
| | 06:32 |
And I want to use that gradient to
gradually make the layer transparent as
| | 06:35 |
it comes towards the camera.
And I can do that just by selecting both
| | 06:39 |
of thsoe layers.
So, by dragging a marquee around them I
| | 06:43 |
select them both, and then clicking on
make mask, and you'll see that that gives
| | 06:48 |
me semi-transparency depending on whether
something was black or white in that
| | 06:53 |
layer that was above the layer that I
want to mask.
| | 06:59 |
So, basically you put your mask layer on
top of the layer that you want to affect
| | 07:03 |
the transparency of.
Now at the moment, the black areas in the
| | 07:08 |
mask are creating transparency.
But if I click on invert mask, I can
| | 07:12 |
invert it so the white areas are creating
transparency and now you'll see that I
| | 07:17 |
have my shadow or reflection.
This is more like a reflection, becoming
| | 07:22 |
more transparent as it moves towards the
screen.
| | 07:26 |
Now, a few more things to show you about
strokes and fills.
| | 07:29 |
First of all, let's select the Stroke
here and let's go up to our Stroke
| | 07:32 |
Options up here.
Now, you'll notice at the moment, if you
| | 07:36 |
have a look at the end of the Stroke, so
let's just select our Magnifying Glass
| | 07:40 |
and Zoom In over the end of the stroke.
Notice, it has a flat end, or flat cap.
| | 07:48 |
If we go into the Stroke options, I could
change that to be a round end, or I can
| | 07:52 |
extend a projecting cap, which still
gives us a flat edge, but it extends
| | 07:56 |
beyond the end of my anchor point.
Which can be useful in some situations,
| | 08:03 |
so you can choose what you would prefer
there.
| | 08:06 |
Now, if we go back to box cap, which is
the default setting, you can also choose
| | 08:11 |
to apply what's called available with
profile.
| | 08:16 |
I'm going to zoom out a little, so I'm just
going to hit Cmd + Minus or Ctrl + Minus on
| | 08:21 |
Windows to zoom out a little, and you'll
notice that this path has the same width
| | 08:25 |
all the way along a unified width.
But with this menu I can choose to give
| | 08:33 |
it a variable width.
So, thinner at the ends than it is in the middle.
| | 08:38 |
And now you see it tapering off towards
the ends.
| | 08:41 |
If I make that stroke even bigger, it
exaggerates that even more.
| | 08:48 |
Now, there are other options available in
the Stroke settings.
| | 08:52 |
If we have a look down here at these
paths here and go into our Stroke Options
| | 08:56 |
you'll notice, let me just move that
across so you can see it, you'll notice
| | 09:00 |
we have options here for a dashed line.
So if I want to give it a dashed line
| | 09:06 |
instead of a continuous line, I can do
that.
| | 09:09 |
And I can decide what size the gaps are
if I want to make smaller gaps, and
| | 09:13 |
bigger lines in between the gaps.
I can adjust them individually here.
| | 09:19 |
So, or if I want bigger spaces and
smaller dashes, then I can enter the
| | 09:23 |
values here numerically.
I can also put arrow heads on.
| | 09:28 |
So if I want to have arrows, I can very
simply apply an arrow and adjust the
| | 09:32 |
scale of that arrow by adjusting the
settings in here.
| | 09:37 |
And of course I can have arrow heads at
the beginning and the end.
| | 09:41 |
And they can be the same, they can be
different, all sorts of controls over the
| | 09:45 |
scale and the style of the arrowheads.
And various different ways of aligning
| | 09:50 |
those arrowheads.
If I was to come in here, and select the
| | 09:54 |
convert anchor point tool, then create a
curved line.
| | 10:01 |
You'll notice that we have the arrows
aligning along that path.
| | 10:06 |
I can choose how they align along the
path, whether they extend beyond the edge
| | 10:10 |
of the path, as if they were capping the
edge of the path, or the default which is
| | 10:14 |
to have them end at the anchor point.
So a lot of control over that, you also
| | 10:21 |
have access to your variable width
profiles within here, as well.
| | 10:25 |
So we can apply those two strokes.
And finally, if we have a look over here,
| | 10:31 |
you'll notice that there are options for
things like corners.
| | 10:35 |
So, if I for example, want to have a
round edge, you'll notice, if I just
| | 10:39 |
increase my stroke width there, you'll
notice now we have a nice rounded edge
| | 10:43 |
for my stroke, or for the corners rather,
rather than the default which is a sharp
| | 10:47 |
edge like this.
You can also choose this one which will
| | 10:53 |
give you a beveled edge, so three choices
beveled, round, or the default corner.
| | 10:58 |
You can also choose how to align the
stroke, and the default is to have the
| | 11:02 |
stroke aligned around the center of the
path.
| | 11:07 |
So, you'll notice the path moves along
the center of my stroke and the stroke
| | 11:11 |
extends on either side of the path.
I can add the stroke a line on the inside
| | 11:16 |
of the path if I want, but notice if I do
that I lose the ability to have round
| | 11:20 |
edges because the path is effectively
cropping the edge of my stroke, so in
| | 11:24 |
order to see the round edges it needs to
be either outside or aligning to the
| | 11:28 |
center of the path.
So there's a few options.
| | 11:35 |
Have a play with that.
Try out some different options, different
| | 11:39 |
weight settings.
Try applying different colors and
| | 11:42 |
transparency's to you fill strokes.
And see what you can come up with in
| | 11:46 |
terms of a few ideas.
If you want, take a look at the end
| | 11:50 |
result of this one, go to fill stroke
and, and you can see some of my examples.
| | 11:55 |
The only one I haven't shown you here is
where we have gradient strokes applied
| | 12:00 |
and gradient fills applied, which we'll
be having a look at in the next movie.
| | 12:06 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Gradients| 00:00 |
Quite often to give your illustrations a
little more depth, you want to use
| | 00:04 |
gradient rather then flat colors to fill
your art work.
| | 00:08 |
And that's what we're going to have a
look at here and start working with gradients.
| | 00:14 |
If you want to follow along, you can open
up gradient start A-I from the training
| | 00:18 |
files folder.
And in here you'll see we've got several
| | 00:22 |
shapes, with flat color applied to them.
In this case here the shadow has
| | 00:27 |
semi-transparent color which we've set up
using the opacity options in the
| | 00:32 |
Transparency panel.
So I want you to go to your Essentials Workspace.
| | 00:37 |
If you want to reset it just say Reset.
So that you see the same as I have here.
| | 00:42 |
And then, what were going to do is were
going to start by selecting this element
| | 00:46 |
here, this green hill that we're going to
use for our bear to be dancing on.
| | 00:53 |
So now were going to apply our gradient
and now the first thing you would
| | 00:56 |
naturally do is go to the gradient panel
which is this one over here.
| | 01:01 |
And you'll see you don't get much help
from the gradient panel when you first
| | 01:05 |
open it, but you can click on this wing
menu here and choose show options, and it
| | 01:09 |
will show you the options in here.
And it will load the last applied
| | 01:15 |
gradient, and if you click that you will
activate it.
| | 01:19 |
Now if you haven't used a gradient
before, there may not be anything
| | 01:21 |
available there for you to use.
So I usually recommend to people although
| | 01:26 |
it may be counterproductive, is start
with gradients by going to the swatches
| | 01:30 |
menu, because in the swatches menu you
can not only get access to gradients that
| | 01:34 |
are attached in this document, but you
can also load gradients.
| | 01:40 |
And this is by far the best way to start
with gradients.
| | 01:44 |
So, open the swatches panel and click on
this little wing menu here, and you'll
| | 01:48 |
see that a menu appears.
You can also access that by clicking
| | 01:53 |
here, and in here you have access to all
of your swatches.
| | 01:58 |
And swatches are basically little.
Shortcuts to colors and gradients, and
| | 02:04 |
patterns, and things like that.
So what we're going to do is go into our
| | 02:08 |
gradient section and if you are going
into this menu here you would get to it
| | 02:12 |
by going to Open swatch library.
And then going into Gradients.
| | 02:17 |
So this button here is just really a
shortcut.
| | 02:20 |
So we're going down to Gradients, and in
there we have several different sections
| | 02:24 |
of gradients: Brights, Color
Combinations, Color Harmonies, Earthtones.
| | 02:29 |
Now, Earthtones appeals to me because
this is grass, so let's choose Earthtones.
| | 02:36 |
And it loads up a panel containing all of
the available earth tones.
| | 02:41 |
Now, what I need to do with this is
actually click on one to select it.
| | 02:46 |
And there are various different linear
and radial gradients in there.
| | 02:50 |
So if I select this one, notice it
applies it to my gradient.
| | 02:54 |
And it places it in here, into my
Swatches panel, where I can select it
| | 02:59 |
later on.
Now if I don't want to apply it, but just
| | 03:03 |
want to add some gradients to my Swatches
panel, what I can do is deselect the
| | 03:07 |
gradient and then add some more.
So let's just close the Earthtones one,
| | 03:13 |
cuz I want something a little bit more
cartoony and bright.
| | 03:16 |
So we're going to go back in here.
And go into gradients.
| | 03:20 |
And we'll maybe choose fruits and
vegetables, cuz that will have a lot of
| | 03:23 |
bright greens in it.
So let's click on this one, and you'll
| | 03:26 |
notice it adds it to my selection.
We'll click on another couple.
| | 03:30 |
So this just gives us a selection to try
out.
| | 03:33 |
So we're going to go to into our libraries
menu again.
| | 03:37 |
And this time we're going to choose,
let's have a look through, let's choose
| | 03:41 |
some brights, we've got some bright
colors.
| | 03:45 |
And here we have a nice green, linear
gradient, so I'm going to add that and add
| | 03:48 |
the one next to it.
So once I've got those added I can close
| | 03:52 |
these swatch libraries here.
These are just basically libraries to
| | 03:56 |
take from and once I'm finished with them
I can close them.
| | 04:00 |
Actually, before I do I'm going to add this
one in, which I may use one of these for
| | 04:04 |
the sky, and then I'm going to close it, and
then I'm going to select my shape and start
| | 04:07 |
trying out the different swatches to see
which one suits.
| | 04:14 |
Basically I'm just looking for the
closest one to what I'm looking for, and
| | 04:17 |
I actually quite like this one.
Which is my Green Pepper swatch.
| | 04:22 |
Now once I've loaded the gradient, I can
then go into my Gradient panel and start
| | 04:26 |
to make changes to it.
And you'll notice that I have these
| | 04:30 |
little swatch indicators, which allow me
to drag colors within the gradient around.
| | 04:36 |
And you can see there that this little
gradient slider swatch refers to this
| | 04:41 |
area here, and so forth.
So if I want to extend the amount of dark
| | 04:46 |
green on either side, I can just pull
these sliders in a little bit.
| | 04:50 |
And then I have these little indicators,
these other gradients sliders, which
| | 04:54 |
allow me to adjust the location of the
division between the 2 colors.
| | 04:59 |
Now that one was about 28%.
If I want the color to change about 50%
| | 05:04 |
between the 2 colors, then I can.
So you're basically just spreading the
| | 05:10 |
color out a little bit by doing that.
Okay, so you can have a little play with
| | 05:13 |
that if you want to.
You can also adjust the angle of the
| | 05:17 |
gradient, so if I put that at 90.
Degrees, you'll notice that now the lines
| | 05:22 |
are moving horizontally rather than
vertically.
| | 05:27 |
So I can start to see if I adjust that a
little bit I can move that lighter color
| | 05:32 |
closer to the top and in fact, I can
actually remove these colors if I want to.
| | 05:38 |
So if I want to get rid of that dark
green.
| | 05:40 |
I can select it and then delete that stop
on the gradient, and just have the
| | 05:45 |
lighter colors.
You can also create new swatches, just by
| | 05:50 |
clicking anywhere on the bottom here
where you see the plus sign, next to your cursor.
| | 05:56 |
You can add a color.
And if you double-click, you can actually
| | 06:00 |
change the color.
Of that swatch, okay.
| | 06:04 |
You can also delete them just by clicking
and dragging them off, and that will
| | 06:07 |
remove them from that selection.
So that's a linear gradient.
| | 06:13 |
As well as adjusting it using the
settings in here, you can also use the
| | 06:16 |
Gradient tool, and if I select the
Gradient tool, it gives me this little
| | 06:20 |
indicator And as I hovered over it,
you'll notice it shows me the stoppers on
| | 06:24 |
my gradient or the sliders on my
gradient.
| | 06:29 |
And these relate to the sliders here.
It just gives me a more interactive way
| | 06:33 |
of adjusting the colors or just deleting
the colors if I decide to do that.
| | 06:38 |
You can also do things like rotate the
gradient in here.
| | 06:43 |
And it can be a little bit tricky, you
have to hover over these areas to scale
| | 06:46 |
the gradient, I wait 'til I see that
scale indicator.
| | 06:51 |
And to rotate the gradient's a little bit
more tricky, you need to hover over until
| | 06:55 |
you see it change to the rotation tool,
and then you can change the angle of the
| | 06:59 |
gradient as well, so.
Nice to be able to change that interactively.
| | 07:06 |
Now let's have a look at the sky.
So let's select this area here.
| | 07:10 |
And this time what we're going to do is
select a different gradient.
| | 07:13 |
So we're going to go back to our Swatches.
And we're going to select this one here,
| | 07:17 |
which gives us some nice sky colors.
In fact I quite like this one, so I might
| | 07:21 |
go for this one instead.
So once we have our swatch selected,
| | 07:25 |
again we're going to the gradients panel.
We may decide we want to make this a
| | 07:29 |
little bit lighter, just to.
Increase the contrast.
| | 07:34 |
We may also want to adjust the colors of
these little sliders, so you see what I
| | 07:38 |
do is I start with a swatch as a starting
point for my gradient, and then I go in
| | 07:43 |
and tweak it to get it more exactly how I
want it.
| | 07:49 |
And that can be just adjusting colors.
It can also be adjusting the position of
| | 07:54 |
the sliders here.
Now in this situation, I'm going to
| | 07:57 |
decide to go for a radial gradiant, which
gives us something completely different.
| | 08:02 |
And if I switch to radial, you'll notice
now that we have the light area in the
| | 08:06 |
center that gets darker as it's moving
out.
| | 08:10 |
If I add another slider here, and make
that a light color, you can really see
| | 08:14 |
that start to happen.
So you can see that we have the center of
| | 08:20 |
the radial gradient here, and it gets
lighter as it goes out towards the edge.
| | 08:25 |
Now this is where the gradient tool comes
in really handy.
| | 08:28 |
Cuz if I select the gradient tool now, I
get this really nice indicator of my
| | 08:33 |
radial gradient.
And I can drag it around, decide where I
| | 08:37 |
want the gradient to start.
So I may want to start over here.
| | 08:42 |
I can extend it, so I can scale it out,
to extend it even further.
| | 08:46 |
Let's just pull it down a little bit.
I can adjust these little sliders And
| | 08:51 |
adjust the position, maybe even get rid
of some colors, leave that one out.
| | 08:58 |
It really just gives me a lot of control,
and of course I can rotate it as well if
| | 09:02 |
I need to rotate it.
So using the Gradient tool just gives me
| | 09:07 |
a lot more control over how these colors
are appearing.
| | 09:11 |
On my gradient.
And it's just a lot nicer to be able to
| | 09:14 |
do that interactively.
So we now get a more night time looking
| | 09:18 |
gradient than we had initially.
And of course if we want to save this, we
| | 09:23 |
can drag out our Gradient panel, open up
our Swatches panel, and just drag the new
| | 09:27 |
gradient in.
So you can start to save your own custom
| | 09:32 |
gradients in the Swatches panel.
Now we're going to have a look at our little
| | 09:38 |
bear silhouette here.
Now at the moment, this has transparency.
| | 09:42 |
It's 50% transparent.
But what I really want to do is have it
| | 09:46 |
opaque at the beginning and transparent
at the end.
| | 09:49 |
And you can do this using gradients.
So basically what I'm going to do is just
| | 09:54 |
put that on 100% opacity.
And instead of using this to control the
| | 09:58 |
opacity, what we're going to do is use a
gradient.
| | 10:02 |
So I'm going to go back in to my swatches.
And go in to the menu at the bottom and
| | 10:06 |
choose gradient, fades.
And fades are great because they go from
| | 10:11 |
transparent to solid over a period of
time.
| | 10:15 |
And if I choose this one, the first one.
Your notice it fades the color out gradually.
| | 10:21 |
And you can adjust it just like you can
any other gradient so I may decide I want
| | 10:24 |
to start with a blue color instead of
black so I choose the color that I want
| | 10:28 |
to start with.
Okay and then I may decide that I want to
| | 10:33 |
have it opaque for a little longer make
it a bit stronger.
| | 10:39 |
I can also choose whether I want radial
or linear.
| | 10:42 |
And I can use the gradient tool on it as
well, if I decide to.
| | 10:47 |
Just select it, and then select my
gradient tool.
| | 10:51 |
Now you'll notice that the gradient tool
isn't working.
| | 10:54 |
I find that this sometimes happens.
And if we have a look in our layers
| | 10:58 |
panel, you'll see why.
It's because this layer is grouped.
| | 11:03 |
Sometimes I find that if it's a group,
you have to ungroup it before you can use
| | 11:07 |
the Gradient tool.
So that's a little gotcha..
| | 11:11 |
If you notice that something's grouped,
you'll not be able to use the Gradient tool.
| | 11:15 |
You need to ungroup it in order to use
it.
| | 11:19 |
Once you've done that, you can use the
gradient tool as I used it before.
| | 11:23 |
You can rotate it, let's just rotate that
a little bit more and we'll also scale it
| | 11:28 |
down a little bit more and get it into
position exactly where we want it.
| | 11:34 |
And now it looks as if our shadow is
fading out over the distance between
| | 11:38 |
where the bear contacts the ground.
And the foreground, so we get a much
| | 11:44 |
nicer effect.
You can also still go into the
| | 11:47 |
transparency settings and just bring that
down a little bit if you want that, maybe
| | 11:51 |
on 80%, and also use a blending mode, so
you could apply something like the
| | 11:55 |
Multiply Blending mode, so you're not
getting as strong a color on, where the
| | 11:59 |
two layers combine.
So that's a little bit about using
| | 12:05 |
gradients for coloring and adding a bit
more depth to your images, but also for
| | 12:10 |
adding semi-transparency to layers is a
nice way of adding any transparency there
| | 12:15 |
to your layers.
| | 12:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Coloring artwork| 00:02 |
Up to now, we've selected colors by
selecting objects and then choosing
| | 00:05 |
colors from them.
So, we basically select an object and we
| | 00:09 |
can click on the color swatch and choose
a new color for it.
| | 00:14 |
Now, there are other ways of choosing and
selecting and applying colors in
| | 00:17 |
Illustrator which are a bit more
intuitive.
| | 00:20 |
And that's what we're going to have a
look at here.
| | 00:23 |
We're going to start in swatchesstart.ai.
And you can find that in the Training
| | 00:28 |
Files folder.
And you'll see that I have this lady's
| | 00:31 |
dress selected.
Now, you'll see some different options up
| | 00:35 |
here to the ones that you'll have seen
before.
| | 00:38 |
And if we open up our Swatches panel and
have a look at the swatch, you may get an
| | 00:42 |
idea why.
You'll notice it's got a little white
| | 00:45 |
triangle at the bottom of it.
If we double-click this and open up the
| | 00:49 |
Swatch options, you'll see that this is a
Process Color.
| | 00:53 |
So, Process Colors are colors that you
can make global.
| | 00:57 |
So that basically, when I change the
color, it will update all the instances
| | 01:01 |
of that color.
So, if we make that a really bright red
| | 01:05 |
and then click OK, notice that not only
the dress changed.
| | 01:10 |
But also the gloves and the other parts
that were colored with that same color changed.
| | 01:15 |
So, a process color like this, or a
global process color will change
| | 01:19 |
simultaneously when you change one
selected item.
| | 01:24 |
The others will all update simultaneously
and you just apply that.
| | 01:29 |
You just add that option by clicking on
Global.
| | 01:32 |
If I turn off Global, it just becomes a
regular color now.
| | 01:36 |
And if I make changes to that selected
color now, just here in the main
| | 01:39 |
interface, only that instance of it will
be affected.
| | 01:44 |
So, if you're working with various
objects of the same color, make the color
| | 01:48 |
a Global color.
And then, you only have to adjust it once
| | 01:51 |
and all of the elements will update.
So that's one tip.
| | 01:56 |
Another tip is to use what's down here,
the Color Guide, to help you select color.
| | 02:01 |
So for example, I have her dress colored
orange.
| | 02:04 |
I don't particularly want her gloves to
be colored the same color, so I'm going
| | 02:08 |
to take the Global Color off and choose
another color for them.
| | 02:12 |
And what I'm doing here is I'm using this
panel here, the Color Guide.
| | 02:17 |
And you can also get access to that if
you can't see it by going to the Window
| | 02:20 |
menu and choosing Color Guide.
And what Color Guide will do is it will
| | 02:25 |
give you a suggestion of colors to choose
from, based on various different rules.
| | 02:32 |
And I have Complimentary selected, so I
want Complimentary Colors, but you could
| | 02:36 |
choose something different.
You could choose some monochromatic color
| | 02:40 |
schemes for example, or you could choose
some more clashing colors.
| | 02:45 |
High contrast color schemes that will
give you something really quite dramatic.
| | 02:49 |
I'm going to go back to Complementary 2
cuz I quite like that, and you can also
| | 02:54 |
choose how it varies the colors.
Does it vary them based on tints and shades?
| | 03:01 |
Does it vary them based on warm and cool
versions of the colors?
| | 03:04 |
Or does it vary them by showing you vivid
and muted versions of the colors?
| | 03:10 |
I'm going to go for vivid and muted, and
I'm going to select that color of blue
| | 03:13 |
for the gloves.
And then, I'm going to select her hat,
| | 03:17 |
and we'll choose a darker browny orange
for her hat.
| | 03:22 |
So it just gives you more suggestions to
work from.
| | 03:24 |
And we could also color her shoes, a
separate color, as well.
| | 03:27 |
So, using the Color Guide and Swatches,
you can very quickly find a color scheme
| | 03:31 |
that works.
And apply some really nice colored
| | 03:35 |
designs to your artwork.
The other thing that swatches offer you
| | 03:40 |
are patterns.
And if we go into our Library button down
| | 03:44 |
here, we can go down to Patterns and
choose Decorative.
| | 03:48 |
And maybe go into Decorative Legacy, and
you'll see there are lots of patterns
| | 03:53 |
that we could apply to our artwork to
create different styles of dresses for my character.
| | 04:01 |
So, lots of options for you to have a
look at in terms of swatches and the
| | 04:05 |
color guide.
But what we really want is a more
| | 04:09 |
intuitive way of applying color, so we'll
come back to this later.
| | 04:13 |
So, we're going to use a different method
to paint one of our images.
| | 04:18 |
And if you want to follow along, you can
open livepaintstart.ai, which you can
| | 04:21 |
find in the Training Files folder.
What we're going to do is paint this dog
| | 04:26 |
various different colors.
Now normally, as I said before, what I
| | 04:30 |
would do is select an item and then
choose a color, but you'll notice this is
| | 04:33 |
a group.
So, it means if I want to select
| | 04:37 |
different items, I have to go around
selecting within the image, opening up
| | 04:40 |
the image, opening up the group.
Opening up all the individual elements
| | 04:44 |
and selecting them, which is just not
practical.
| | 04:47 |
So, what we're going to do is we're going
to use live paint to paint this.
| | 04:52 |
And basically, this image, just so you
know where it was created, it was created
| | 04:55 |
by, I drew it by hand.
And then, I scanned it in and used Image
| | 05:00 |
Trace to create the outlines from it.
And at the moment, it's black and white
| | 05:05 |
but we need to color it.
So, what to do is select the dog.
| | 05:08 |
So, just click it on to select it.
And then if you go down, you should see
| | 05:12 |
the Shape Builder tool here if you've got
the default settings.
| | 05:16 |
I want you to Click and Hold on that and
choose Live Paint Bucket, which is
| | 05:20 |
underneath it.
You can also select Live Paint Bucket by
| | 05:23 |
hitting K.
Now, what I want to do is I want to make
| | 05:26 |
this into what we call a Live Paint
Group.
| | 05:29 |
And you'll notice that if I hover over
the image, it says click to make a Live
| | 05:32 |
Paint Group.
So, I'm going to do that.
| | 05:35 |
And we have made a Live Paint Group.
Well, how do we know?
| | 05:38 |
Well, we know because if we hover over,
we'll suddenly see things highlighted in red.
| | 05:44 |
You see that as I hover over this, things
are highlighted in red.
| | 05:48 |
In fact, if I deselect the shape, so I'm
going to move the cursor away from the object.
| | 05:53 |
And I'm going to hold down the Cmd key or
Ctrl key on Windows, and click away to
| | 05:58 |
deselect so that the object is no longer
selected.
| | 06:02 |
Notice however, if I hover over, that
it's still highlighting the areas as I
| | 06:06 |
hover over.
And basically, it's highlighting the
| | 06:10 |
areas that it's going to paint for me as
I choose my colors.
| | 06:14 |
So, what we're going to do is we're going
to select this brown color here and we're
| | 06:18 |
going to start painting.
So with the brown color selected, move
| | 06:23 |
over here.
And if you click once on his leg, notice
| | 06:26 |
it fills that area with color.
So very quickly, I can color my dog.
| | 06:32 |
So, let's click on this area here as well
to color that bit.
| | 06:36 |
And I think we'll do his tail brown, so
click on his tail.
| | 06:39 |
And we'll also click on his hindquarters,
make them brown.
| | 06:44 |
And let's also do this leg here, and this
leg here.
| | 06:48 |
We'll maybe have him having one white leg
at the back, so let's leave that heel white.
| | 06:53 |
And then for his face, we're going to
make 1 half of his face brown and the
| | 06:56 |
other half white.
So, click on this area here to make that
| | 07:00 |
brown, and this area here to make that
brown.
| | 07:03 |
And you'll see it's a much more intuitive
way of coloring artwork just by clicking
| | 07:07 |
on the areas that you want to make brown.
So let's do that ear as well, so he's
| | 07:12 |
only got a white patch on that side of
his face.
| | 07:15 |
So very quickly, we can create some nice
color schemes.
| | 07:18 |
I'm also going to choose from my Color
Guide, a lighter brown color for his
| | 07:22 |
harness, and I'm going to color the
harness with that lighter brown color.
| | 07:27 |
So, he's starting to look pretty good
already.
| | 07:30 |
But what we need is a pink for his
tongue.
| | 07:32 |
And over here in the Swatches panel, I
already have created a swatch for his tongue.
| | 07:38 |
So select that swatch, and then move over
his tongue to apply that color to his tongue.
| | 07:44 |
All we need to do now is choose a color
for his eyes, so I'm going to choose a
| | 07:47 |
dark blue color from the harmony
suggestions that are here.
| | 07:51 |
And then, I'm going to move over his eyes
and click to paint each of those that
| | 07:55 |
nice blue color.
So within a few minutes without having to
| | 08:00 |
make selections, I can color in my
artwork using the Paint Bucket tool.
| | 08:05 |
It really is a fantastic tool.
Now the final tool I'm going to show you
| | 08:10 |
is utterly amazing.
If you select this item, so you can
| | 08:14 |
either drag around it to select it, if
you've got multiple items.
| | 08:19 |
Or just clicking on it once would select
it in this situation, because it's a group.
| | 08:23 |
If you click on this button here, there's
also the Recolor Artwork dialog box.
| | 08:29 |
Where you can actually shift colors
around and change them within the dialog box.
| | 08:34 |
So for example, I could select this
color, decide I want to make it slightly
| | 08:38 |
redder and just adjust it.
Or I can select groups of color and
| | 08:42 |
adjust them together.
So, let's have a look at how we would do that.
| | 08:46 |
Let's go to the Edit section, and here
you can see all the colors that go
| | 08:49 |
together to make up my image.
Aand I can just move the colors around
| | 08:54 |
the color wheel until I get the color I'm
really happy with.
| | 08:58 |
Now as I said, I can adjust groups.
So if I click on this button, it will
| | 09:02 |
link the harmony colors together so that
when I change one color, all the other
| | 09:07 |
colors will update.
So, a really powerful tool for changing
| | 09:12 |
color here.
Now, the other nice thing is, we can come
| | 09:15 |
down here to the bottom and we can choose
Swatch Libraries to apply.
| | 09:20 |
Or we can come in here and say, do a
Global Adjust, and just bring the
| | 09:24 |
luminosity down.
So, if you want to globally change the
| | 09:28 |
colors in your image, this is a really
good way of doing it using this dialog box.
| | 09:34 |
So, that's a little introduction to the
Recolor Artwork dialog box.
| | 09:38 |
And a little bit of information about
that and Live Paint will take you a long
| | 09:43 |
way in recoloring your artwork.
If you want to find out more about those
| | 09:48 |
features, of course, you can go to the
Online Help.
| | 09:51 |
Which will give you lots more detailed
information about each of those features.
| | 09:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Alternative TechniquesUsing the Appearance panel| 00:02 |
In this movie, we're going to have a look
at the wonderful Appearance panel.
| | 00:05 |
If you've never used the Appearance panel
in Illustrator, you're in for a big treat.
| | 00:10 |
So, we're going to start off by opening
the Appearance panel.
| | 00:13 |
So if, if you don't have it open already,
go to Window > Appearance, Shift + F6 is
| | 00:17 |
the short cut for that.
It's going to open it up from my little
| | 00:22 |
Shortcut panel, and it will appear and
disappear as I click on this button here.
| | 00:27 |
Now I want it to stay forward, so I'm
going to drag it above the color panel so
| | 00:32 |
that it appears up here.
And what we can do is just collapse our
| | 00:37 |
Color panel for now.
We don't need to see that for now.
| | 00:41 |
And let's just resize that.
Okay, so here's our Appearance panel.
| | 00:46 |
At the moment, it's not doing much.
We have a type layer selected, and it's
| | 00:50 |
telling me I have a type layer and it has
Opacity Settings so I can go in there and
| | 00:53 |
adjust the opacity, which is nice.
Give it a blending move.
| | 00:59 |
So maybe choose hard light.
I'm going to put that up to 90%.
| | 01:03 |
So you have it past the options, that's
great but what else can we do in here?
| | 01:09 |
Well, there are amazing things that we
can do in here.
| | 01:11 |
At the moment, we have a fill in stroke
applied to our text.
| | 01:17 |
But did you know I can actually apply
multiple fills and strokes in Illustrator.
| | 01:22 |
And you can see that this star has
multiple strokes applied.
| | 01:26 |
If I select that, notice in the
Appearance panel that I can see settings
| | 01:29 |
for each of those fills and strokes.
And I can adjust them here in this panel.
| | 01:36 |
So I can go in and make adjustments to my
Stroke Settings, change the color, the
| | 01:41 |
size, and all different properties of my
stroke.
| | 01:46 |
So, how did we set that up?
Well, let's select the text layer again
| | 01:49 |
and let's have a look.
So, what we're going to do is create a
| | 01:52 |
new stroke, and it's created a black
stroke.
| | 01:56 |
And if you look carefully, let's just
zoom in a little bit.
| | 01:59 |
So, I'm going to go to my Navigator,
close my Graphic Styles.
| | 02:03 |
And I'm just going to zoom in so that we
can see the text a little bit more
| | 02:06 |
clearly, and let's just move that
selection down on here.
| | 02:11 |
So basically, it's added a one point
stroke on top of my existing stroke.
| | 02:16 |
And if I'm to make it bigger, you'll
notice it just starts to get bigger.
| | 02:19 |
Now, I'm going to make it as big as the
existing stroke.
| | 02:24 |
And I'm going to leave it as black at the
moment.
| | 02:26 |
So, the default is that it will override
whatever stroke you have selected.
| | 02:31 |
And notice that even though I've got my
text selected, it's overridden the Fill
| | 02:34 |
Property as well.
So, I could go in here and choose a color.
| | 02:39 |
I can click on this little downward
facing arrow, and choose a color for my fill.
| | 02:45 |
And you'll see that it overrides the
settings that were done here in the panel.
| | 02:49 |
So, let's choose that orange color again,
I quite like that color so I'm going to
| | 02:52 |
leave that there.
Now if I make the stroke bigger, it
| | 02:56 |
starts to encroach over the fill.
But watch what happens.
| | 03:01 |
I can actually drag my stroke underneath
my fill, or drag my fill above my stroke.
| | 03:07 |
So, I can now make my stroke nice and fat
without loosing the detail of the text.
| | 03:12 |
So, I can create that effect that you get
on cartoons where we have a nice thick
| | 03:16 |
back black stroke, but the edges of the
text are still fully readable.
| | 03:22 |
Now, I'm going to change the color of the
stroke.
| | 03:24 |
So, I'm going to go in here and choose
and orange color.
| | 03:28 |
And in fact, let's darken it a little
bit.
| | 03:30 |
So, let's open up our HSB sliders and
just say Show Options, and just darken
| | 03:35 |
that down a little bit.
So ,we've got a nice dark color, and I'm
| | 03:40 |
using my Navigator as an overview.
Now, what if I want to add another stroke?
| | 03:46 |
Instantly, I can go in there and adjust
Opacity Settings for the stroke so I
| | 03:50 |
could have a semi-transparent stroke if I
wanted to.
| | 03:55 |
Bit weird, but I can do it if I want to.
Okay, so let's add another stroke.
| | 04:03 |
So I click on Add New Stroke button.
That adds a new stroke on top of the
| | 04:09 |
existing strokes.
And let's make it smaller.
| | 04:11 |
Okay, let's make it about 5 points and
let's choose a bright yellow color.
| | 04:16 |
And now, that's applied on top of the
fill and on top of the stroke.
| | 04:21 |
Now, I may want it behind the fill but on
top of the stroke, in which case I can
| | 04:25 |
just drag it down the layer stack until
it's in the right place.
| | 04:30 |
And make adjustments to the size of it as
required.
| | 04:33 |
So, you can see I can start to build up
these quite complex appearances.
| | 04:38 |
Now, if I close those up, you'll see I
have my multiple strokes and my fill.
| | 04:44 |
What about other things that you can
apply in the impudence panel?
| | 04:47 |
Well, let's just go back to 100% view,
and let's just move that image down.
| | 04:54 |
So, what about effects?
If we go up to the Effect menu and choose
| | 04:57 |
Warp, and I'm just going to choose an Arc
Warp, notice that it's applied to the
| | 05:02 |
stroke that I've just selected.
So if I apply a warp, I can apply it
| | 05:08 |
selectively to different areas of my
text.
| | 05:12 |
But I don't want to do that.
I want to apply it to all of the text.
| | 05:15 |
So if I select the type, and now go to
Effect Warp, I can go in here and choose
| | 05:20 |
a shape, and it will now be applied to
the entire group of text.
| | 05:26 |
So, let's choose something like the fish
shape.
| | 05:28 |
So, we're going to adjust the scale of
that a little bit.
| | 05:32 |
So, we've got a little bit of a
distortion on there.
| | 05:34 |
You can also adjust the horizontal and
vertical distortion a little bit to get
| | 05:38 |
it looking a little bit more three
dimensional.
| | 05:41 |
So, there we have our fish shaped tanks.
And of course, we could then, maybe just
| | 05:47 |
Make the stroke a little bit wobbly so I
can select the stroke and go up to effects.
| | 05:53 |
And let's go into our Styles section.
In fact, no, let's do something more exciting.
| | 06:00 |
Go to Distort and Transform, and what
we're going to do is just go into Roughing.
| | 06:06 |
And I just want to roughen up that path a
little bit.
| | 06:08 |
So, I'm going to click on my Preview
Option.
| | 06:10 |
Just bring down the size and bring down
the detail a little bit, and also put
| | 06:15 |
smooth corners, and that just gives us a
more kind of random look.
| | 06:21 |
Now, if I click on OK, you'll notice that
these appearances appear now in the
| | 06:26 |
Appearance panel.
If I open up this stroke, you'll notice
| | 06:30 |
the Roughen effect is applied to that
stroke, and I can switch that on or off.
| | 06:36 |
I can also decide, actually I didn't want
to apply it there.
| | 06:39 |
I want to apply it to this one and I can
move it to the background stroke and make
| | 06:43 |
changes to the properties just by
clicking on the link.
| | 06:47 |
And making the changes that I want to
make.
| | 06:50 |
So, you'll notice that there's a lot more
control over how you can drag and drop
| | 06:55 |
appearances within one object.
And also, I can get access to my Warp
| | 07:01 |
Settings as well at anytime.
So, everything that you do in here is live.
| | 07:05 |
The text is still editable.
So if, if I want to change it to say
| | 07:10 |
Buggles, if that's his name, I can just
change it to the G's and all of the
| | 07:13 |
appearances will update.
And show me my new text, and you'll see
| | 07:19 |
that all the appearances are still
applied.
| | 07:23 |
Let's just undo that typing and go back
to Bubbles, which is actually his real name.
| | 07:28 |
And let's have a look at the star up
here.
| | 07:30 |
Now what I want to do with this star is I
want to add a round corners effect to it
| | 07:34 |
and transform it.
So, the first thing that I'm going to do,
| | 07:39 |
let's start with transform.
So, I'm going to go to Distort and
| | 07:42 |
Transform, choose Transform.
And again, I have a Preview button in here.
| | 07:47 |
What I want to do is create three copies
of my star and offset them horizontally.
| | 07:53 |
And what this allows me to do is do
exactly that, I've created three copies.
| | 07:57 |
And once I've reached the extent of my
slider, I can then use the arrow keys on
| | 08:01 |
the keyboard with Shift held down just to
create a little bit of distance between them.
| | 08:07 |
Now, of course I can also adjust the
angle and the scale if I want to create
| | 08:11 |
these kind of circular effects, where
they tail off into the fish bowl.
| | 08:17 |
But I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to just leave those on 100, and
| | 08:22 |
I'm going to reset the rotate value.
And all we're going to do is just use
| | 08:27 |
this to create a grid.
So, I'm going to click on OK.
| | 08:31 |
Then what I'm going to do is add another
instance of the Transform effect.
| | 08:36 |
At this time, I'm going to use it to
offset them vertically.
| | 08:39 |
Now it's telling me do I want to add
another instance, I'm going to say yes I do.
| | 08:44 |
And this time, I'm going to offset it
again, so three copies.
| | 08:48 |
But this time, I'm going to offset them
vertically.
| | 08:51 |
And again, I can just select the text.
And hit the Upper key with the Shift held
| | 08:57 |
down to create a grid of stars.
So once I've done that, I'm then going to
| | 09:02 |
add the stylize effect called Round
Corners.
| | 09:05 |
And that's going to be able to round the
corners of my star for me and make them
| | 09:09 |
look a little bit softer.
I'm going to bring that value down to
| | 09:13 |
about 5, let's just preview that see if
we're happy with it.
| | 09:17 |
And I am, so I'm going to click on OK.
And you'll notice now that I have two
| | 09:23 |
transform effects and I have my round
corners effect.
| | 09:27 |
Now, you'll notice the round corners
effect is applied before the strokes.
| | 09:31 |
I can actually drag that down and apply
it after, or apply it after the transform effects.
| | 09:37 |
And sometimes, it will have a knock on
effect.
| | 09:40 |
So, the order in which you apply these
effects can be important.
| | 09:45 |
But fully editable, absolutely fantastic.
And of course, I can go into my (UNKNOWN)
| | 09:49 |
settings and apply it.
And use something like hard light
| | 09:53 |
blending mode to blend that with the
background, and just bring the opacity
| | 09:57 |
down to about 70%.
Now, let's try overlay.
| | 10:01 |
Okay, so a massive amount of flexibility
allows you to create fully editable
| | 10:07 |
artwork in Illustrator.
And at any time, get back into that
| | 10:12 |
artwork to make changes.
For example, if I want to scale the star
| | 10:16 |
down, all I do is scale one star down,
and all of them scale down.
| | 10:21 |
So, a really flexible way of working.
We can change our blending modes at any time.
| | 10:29 |
So, let's choose Color or Luminosity to
get them looking more blue and applied
| | 10:34 |
with the background color.
So, I'm getting a bit carried away, so
| | 10:40 |
I'm going to let you leave me.
And you can go and play with this and see
| | 10:43 |
what you can come up with.
So, that's a little bit about the amazing
| | 10:47 |
Appearance panel.
| | 10:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating shapes with the Blob Brush and Eraser tools| 00:02 |
In this movie, we're going to use the
Blob Brush tool.
| | 00:04 |
Now, I'm just going to show you a couple
of things with the Blob Brush tool.
| | 00:07 |
Notice, if I select the Blob Brush tool
from here, and I can also select it using
| | 00:12 |
Shift + B.
I can just start to paint, as you would expect.
| | 00:18 |
As I can paint with the brushes.
Now you'll notice something different
| | 00:22 |
happens now though.
When I hold down the Cmd or Ctrl on
| | 00:25 |
Windows and select it, notice it creates
a solid shape.
| | 00:29 |
And as I draw, I add to the shape.
So it's creating a vector shape from my
| | 00:34 |
brush strokes which is a really nice way
of working.
| | 00:38 |
Now, you can use it just to draw free
hand like I'm doing here and create a
| | 00:42 |
continuous shape.
But one way that I like to use is is to
| | 00:46 |
create a kind of sculpture effect, with a
combination of that and another tool
| | 00:50 |
called the Eraser tool.
So there's my Blob Brush tool.
| | 00:55 |
Now if I select my Eraser tool, I can
actually carve shapes into that, and
| | 01:00 |
start to cut shapes from my Blob.
So there we go, that's two tools that are
| | 01:06 |
really useful to use in conjunction with
each other.
| | 01:09 |
So what we're going to do is use these to
create a little teddy bear, using
| | 01:12 |
primitive shapes.
So, I'm going to go to the Blob Brush
| | 01:17 |
tool, and I'm going to make it really big.
And if I hold down the Left Square
| | 01:22 |
Bracket key, that will make my brushes
smaller.
| | 01:26 |
If I hold down the Right Square Bracket
key, it will make my brushes bigger.
| | 01:29 |
You can also double-click on the Blob
Brush tool and make it bigger.
| | 01:34 |
By using the settings in there.
I'm going to choose quite a big shape.
| | 01:38 |
Now this is going to be the head of my teddy
bear.
| | 01:40 |
And then I'm going to make the brush even
bigger, and we're going to make the body of
| | 01:44 |
the teddy bear here.
Okay, so let's just click around about
| | 01:49 |
there, nice, big, fat one.
Okay, we're also going to create some arms.
| | 01:55 |
Now, to create the arms, I'm going to make
it slightly smaller.
| | 01:58 |
As if the arms are curving around and
then coming round the front of this body.
| | 02:02 |
And we're going to make him hold something.
So there we have one arm there and the
| | 02:06 |
other arm there.
We're not worrying too much about the detail.
| | 02:11 |
We're just getting roughly the shape of
our teddy bear.
| | 02:15 |
Then we need to create some legs.
So I'm just going to make that a little bit smaller.
| | 02:19 |
And all I'm going to do is create the feet,
and then if I hold down Shift and drag,
| | 02:23 |
it allows me to create a straight line.
I'm going to click here, hold down Shift and
| | 02:28 |
drag to the center and that allows me to
create a straight line.
| | 02:32 |
Now, if I'm not quite happy with it I can
add to the shape by clicking and dragging
| | 02:37 |
as we saw earlier and that's absolutely
fine.
| | 02:41 |
Now, I need to make a couple of ears, so
I'm going to make the brush a lot smaller
| | 02:45 |
for the ears, and then we're going to
place the ears around about there.
| | 02:52 |
So we have the rough shape of our teddy
bear.
| | 02:54 |
Now I'm going to choose a different
color.
| | 02:55 |
Up till now, if we go back to the
Selection tool and select our teddy bear,
| | 02:59 |
you'll notice that each item that I've
made with the Blob Brush tool adds to
| | 03:03 |
this compound shape.
If I select the Blob Brush again, and
| | 03:09 |
this time select a different color like a
light color, watch what happens.
| | 03:15 |
If I click here, and I'm just going to make
the brush little bit bigger and to create
| | 03:19 |
like a muzzle for the bear.
And you'll notice it creates a new shape.
| | 03:25 |
When we have a look on our Layers panel,
you'll see it's on top of our other shape.
| | 03:31 |
So, when you choose a new color, you will
paint a different shape.
| | 03:36 |
Now we're also going to choose another color
for the ears, so I'm going to click on here.
| | 03:41 |
And we're going to make our brush smaller,
and we're going to click to create the
| | 03:45 |
inside of the ears.
Okay, so just click there once, and click
| | 03:49 |
there once, to create the inside of the
ears.
| | 03:54 |
We're then going to choose a palish brown,
so this brown here I'm going to choose.
| | 03:59 |
to create the hands, so I'm going to make
them bigger and we're going to imagine
| | 04:04 |
that his arm is curving around and then
holding something here.
| | 04:09 |
So there we have one hand and there we
have the other hand.
| | 04:14 |
Now it's a kind of stylized bear, so
we're going to put something in his hands
| | 04:18 |
as well a little bit later.
Now we need feet as well, so I'm going to
| | 04:23 |
position that over here using left and
right square bracket keys, just to get
| | 04:27 |
the size right before I click.
And we'll choose a slightly lighter color
| | 04:32 |
for the feet, so there's the feet there,
and there.
| | 04:37 |
Okay, so we have the rough shape for our
bear, we also need to create eyes.
| | 04:41 |
So I'm going to choose a black color for the
eyes, make my brush a lot smaller, so
| | 04:44 |
again left and right square bracket keys
will make the brushes bigger and smaller.
| | 04:50 |
So once I have it exactly where I want
it, click once, and then click again to
| | 04:55 |
create the eyes.
We'll also create a nose, which will be a
| | 04:59 |
little bit bigger.
And the nose will be around about there.
| | 05:03 |
Now the next thing that I'm going to do is
I'm going to create a little mouth.
| | 05:07 |
And for that I need to zoom in, so I'm
going to hit Cmd + + on the keyboard or Ctrl
| | 05:11 |
+ + if you're on Windows, and I'm going to
make the brush size a lot smaller.
| | 05:17 |
And then I'm going to Click and Drag, and as
I'm dragging, Hold down Shift to
| | 05:21 |
constrain it, so that we get a nice
straight line there.
| | 05:25 |
And then I'm going to Drag this up a little
bit to create a little smile.
| | 05:32 |
And Drag and Hold down Shift, and then
Release Shift and move up a little bit to
| | 05:37 |
create the other side.
So we've got a nice little smile on our
| | 05:41 |
bear's face now.
Now, the next thing we're going to do is use
| | 05:45 |
our Eraser tool, so what I need to do is
get a curve off the edges of these ears, okay?
| | 05:52 |
So what I'm going to do is select the Eraser
tool and make that bigger again by using
| | 05:56 |
the + and - keys on the keyboard.
I can get that to the size I want it, and
| | 06:01 |
then just click once.
Now you'll notice if I don't make a
| | 06:05 |
selection, if I was to deselect, then
choose the Erasure tool, and Click, I
| | 06:09 |
would remove everything.
So the reason I've made the selection
| | 06:14 |
there is to just make sure that I don't
accidentally delete anything I don't want to.
| | 06:20 |
When I make a selection, the Eraser tool
will only work on the selected areas.
| | 06:24 |
Now the way that I did that was just by,
well I've got the Eraser tool selected,
| | 06:29 |
holding down the Cmd will temporarily
toggle to the Selection tool.
| | 06:35 |
And then I can hold down shift to make
multiple selections.
| | 06:39 |
Okay, so get this brush exactly the size
we want it, so we want it a little bit bigger.
| | 06:45 |
And then I'm going to click just to remove
those edges and we have the ears for our bear.
| | 06:50 |
Now, what we're going to do is create a
little heart for him to hold, I know it
| | 06:54 |
is is enough, but we are going to do it.
So I'm going to create a red color from
| | 06:59 |
my color guide palette.
And then choose my Blob Brush tool again
| | 07:04 |
if I haven't already got it selected.
And we're going to make it a lot bigger.
| | 07:10 |
So, we're going to create first of all, the
top of the heart.
| | 07:12 |
So, I reckon about that big, and we're
going to click once.
| | 07:17 |
Now don't worry about the fact that it's
in front of the hands at the moment.
| | 07:20 |
We just want to click to create the two
sides of the heart.
| | 07:23 |
And then I'm going to click again at the
bottom here.
| | 07:26 |
So by doing that, we've created one
compound shape.
| | 07:29 |
Now I can fatten that up a bit if I want
to, just adjust the, the shape so it's
| | 07:33 |
roughly a heart shape.
Then if we go into our Layers panel,
| | 07:38 |
you'll notice the heart shape is on top
of the arms, so we need to Drag that down
| | 07:43 |
the layer stack till it's underneath his
hands, and he's now holding a heart,
| | 07:47 |
isn't that cute.
And we're now going to switch with that
| | 07:53 |
selected, so select it by Clicking on the
Target button, here in the Layers panel.
| | 07:59 |
So we select the little Target button
here.
| | 08:01 |
And they we'll select the Eraser tool.
And with a fairly big brush, not too big
| | 08:07 |
but, big enough.
What we're going to do is Hold down Shift
| | 08:11 |
and Click and Drag just to cut the bottom
off the heart.
| | 08:16 |
And we'll do the same with this one.
So, Hold down Shift, Click and Drag, and
| | 08:21 |
that's just going to cut the bottom of the
heart.
| | 08:24 |
And there we have our little teddy bear
holding a heart, using the Blob Brush
| | 08:29 |
tool and the Eraser tool.
| | 08:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Pen and Pencil tools| 00:02 |
In this movie, we're going to use the Pen
and Pencil tool to draw some basic shapes.
| | 00:06 |
And just get used to using these tools.
It's important you get used to the Pen tool.
| | 00:11 |
Because you will need to use it to make
adjustments to shapes.
| | 00:15 |
And the best way to practice using is
just by drawing with it.
| | 00:19 |
Now we've got a layer here with a teddy
bear on it.
| | 00:21 |
I want you to lock that layer.
So you click on the Lock button here in
| | 00:24 |
the Layers panel.
If you can't see the Layers panel.
| | 00:27 |
Go to your Essential Work Space.
Reset essentials and then click on this
| | 00:31 |
button here to open up your layers.
And just make sure that's locked.
| | 00:36 |
We're going to create another layer to draw
on.
| | 00:39 |
If you hold down the Alt key and click on
the New Layer button.
| | 00:42 |
It will bring up a dialog box so we can
rename it.
| | 00:45 |
So we'll call it Pen Practice.
Okay.
| | 00:51 |
And we'll click on OK.
And we're just going to hide our Background
| | 00:54 |
layer for a second.
So switch the Eyeball off for the
| | 00:57 |
Background layer.
Now the Pen tool works like this.
| | 01:01 |
If you click to create a point, and then
let go of the Mouse and click again to
| | 01:05 |
create another point, it will create
straight lines.
| | 01:09 |
And I could create straight lines using
my smart guides to figure out where I
| | 01:13 |
need to plot my points to create the
shapes I want.
| | 01:18 |
So if I want to create right angle
triangle, I can click here, and then I
| | 01:22 |
continue clicking to create my straight
edges.
| | 01:29 |
Okay, so clicking with a Pen tool will
just create straight edges, okay?
| | 01:34 |
So we could create a whole list of
straight edges and angled edges by
| | 01:38 |
clicking with the Pen tool.
Now if we don't want to do that, let's
| | 01:43 |
undo the last few steps.
If we want to create a closed shape we
| | 01:47 |
can click to create our first point,
click to create our second.
| | 01:54 |
Let's do our right angle triangle, so
we'll click on the intersection there.
| | 01:58 |
And then you'll notice that as I hover
over the first point I clicked on.
| | 02:02 |
I get a little circle popping up and
that's telling me I'm about to create a
| | 02:05 |
closed path.
If I click, I've created a closed path.
| | 02:11 |
And if I switch my fill in stroke, by
hitting Shift + X or clicking on that
| | 02:15 |
button there, you'll see that this is
filled with color So you can create
| | 02:18 |
geometric shapes with a pen tool.
But what we're going to do is just delete that.
| | 02:25 |
So I'm going to get my selection tool.
Select it, hit backspace to delete it.
| | 02:29 |
And this time what we're going to do is
select the pen tool again.
| | 02:33 |
And we're going to create just a square.
So we're going to go up to the top here.
| | 02:37 |
Click once in the corner.
Now you'll notice I'd accidentally
| | 02:40 |
clicked here, outside my work area.
Outside my art board.
| | 02:45 |
So I'm just going to undo that, and then hit
backspace to delete that point.
| | 02:50 |
So we're going to click here on the
intersection.
| | 02:52 |
Hold down Shift, and click over here.
And that will create a completely
| | 02:56 |
straight edge.
Then we're going to click down here.
| | 02:59 |
And then we're going to hold down Shift
again, and click over here.
| | 03:04 |
To make sure we get a completely straight
edge.
| | 03:06 |
And then hold down Shift again, and click
here.
| | 03:09 |
So we can create perfect rectangles by
holding down Shift.
| | 03:13 |
Now, we're going to choose a different
color.
| | 03:16 |
So I want you to go over to the color
panel and choose a pale blue color, now
| | 03:19 |
you can make this bigger if you want a
bigger space to pick from, so we're going to
| | 03:24 |
choose a nice bright blue color.
Now it's chosen that as the stroke
| | 03:30 |
instead of the fill so what we're going to
do is switch those around, swap fill and stroke.
| | 03:37 |
And then just ask for the stroke to be
None.
| | 03:40 |
Okay, so we have a nice blue background.
What we're going to do now is create some
| | 03:44 |
clouds using a Pen tool.
So what the Pen tool really excels at, is
| | 03:48 |
creating curves.
And if I click and drag, you'll notice
| | 03:52 |
that I get these handles coming out from
the point.
| | 03:55 |
And what these handles do is they
determine an angle and an amount of curve.
| | 04:01 |
So if I want a curve to go over this way
and down there, what I do is I drag it up
| | 04:05 |
as if I'm aiming towards that point.
And depending on how far I drag it, it
| | 04:11 |
will determine how big that curve is So
if I want quite a gentle curve, I would
| | 04:16 |
pull it down there.
If I want quite a steep curve, I would
| | 04:21 |
pull it up there.
Now it takes practice to get used to these.
| | 04:25 |
Once you've dragged, you let go.
And then you click on your next point.
| | 04:29 |
And dragging down will also create an
angle for this point.
| | 04:33 |
Okay, now if I was to drag, click again
over here and drag.
| | 04:38 |
You'll notice it creates a third point,
and I can create these wavy shapes, by
| | 04:42 |
clicking and dragging, forwards and
backwards, so it's good to just practice,
| | 04:47 |
drawing some wavy shapes.
Don't try and do anything too precise.
| | 04:54 |
When you're first starting out with
curves.
| | 04:55 |
You'll notice when you click on the last
point, it allows you to click and drag
| | 04:59 |
and adjust that curve on the last point.
Now that's created a wavy shape where the
| | 05:05 |
shapes are going in opposite directions,
but if I wanted to create something like
| | 05:09 |
a cloud instead, I'll show you a trick
for that.
| | 05:13 |
So we're going to delete that shape.
We're going to select white for our fill
| | 05:17 |
color, so let's go over to the color
panel, with the forward swatch selected,
| | 05:22 |
as the fill color.
And we'll click on white.
| | 05:27 |
And we're going to draw some clouds.
So select the pen tool again.
| | 05:30 |
This time click and drag to create our
first curve, round about that angle.
| | 05:35 |
Then we're going to click down here to pull
that curve out.
| | 05:38 |
So we're getting a nice curve between
there and there.
| | 05:41 |
Now you'll notice when I create that
curve.
| | 05:43 |
It's filling the curve but it's not
closing the path.
| | 05:47 |
So how do we adjust this?
Well if we hold down the Alt key or
| | 05:51 |
Option key on the Mac.
It changes to the convert point, Anchor
| | 05:55 |
Point tool.
And that allows me to pull that handle
| | 05:59 |
and break it.
So that we get another curve moving upwards.
| | 06:03 |
And if I let go of that handle and then
click down here, I get curves following
| | 06:07 |
each other, so we're getting a sharp
corner here, and then a curve.
| | 06:14 |
If I continue doing that, so every time I
draw, hold down the Alt key or Option key
| | 06:19 |
use that modifier just to change the
angle, let go of the modifier, click down again.
| | 06:27 |
I can create this lovely cloud shape.
And it's a little pattern that you get
| | 06:31 |
into so you remember to hold down the
modifier, and you'll see the icon change,
| | 06:34 |
so you'll know you're ready to click and
drag.
| | 06:38 |
One you've dragged, let go of the Mouse.
Let go of the Modifier.
| | 06:42 |
And you're ready with the P to draw the
next point.
| | 06:46 |
Let go of the Mouse, hold down the
Modifier.
| | 06:49 |
Switch to Convert Vertex tool, or Concert
Anchor Point tool, as it's called.
| | 06:54 |
Let go, see the Pen tool before you draw
your next point.
| | 06:58 |
And we can go round and round creating
our little cloud shape.
| | 07:03 |
So drawing clouds is a really good
practice for practicing with the Pen tool.
| | 07:10 |
Now when we get to the end here, we're
probably going to get a little bit of an error.
| | 07:14 |
So if I click to close that path, you'll
notice we're not really getting enough
| | 07:17 |
curve here.
So what we want to do is select the
| | 07:20 |
Selection tool now.
And with the Selection tool, I can go in
| | 07:24 |
and select these points and make
adjustments to them.
| | 07:28 |
So, I can just tweak them into position,
pulling the handles, till I get them
| | 07:32 |
where I want them.
Now you'll notice the first point has
| | 07:36 |
only one handle.
Because I just clicked, I didn't click
| | 07:39 |
and drag.
So what can I do here?
| | 07:42 |
Well I can select the Convert Anchor
Point tool, just by going up here to the
| | 07:46 |
Pen tool and clicking and holding, and
selecting it.
| | 07:50 |
Now if I can drag, I can drag handles
out.
| | 07:54 |
Now you'll notice if I pull down, it's
going to give me a twist in my path.
| | 07:58 |
>> but if I pull up, that's giving me
the correct curve that I want.
| | 08:03 |
Now I could break the handles if I want
to and create yet another curve.
| | 08:08 |
Once I've done that I need to go back to
the selection tool, select the point and
| | 08:13 |
just tweak that into perfection.
So a little bit of practice.
| | 08:18 |
But what I want you to do is practice
with a Pen tool.
| | 08:21 |
So there's three tools we are using
there.
| | 08:23 |
If you click and hold and hover over this
strip here, you can pull those out.
| | 08:29 |
And I want you to practice with the
pencil.
| | 08:32 |
The Direct Selection tool, and the
Convert Anchor Point tool, to create some
| | 08:37 |
clouds, to go in the background, for our
teddy bear.
| | 08:41 |
Once you've done that, we can drag that
layer underneath this layer, and we're
| | 08:45 |
starting to create the background for our
teddy bear.
| | 08:50 |
So I want you to create another couple of
clouds in the background, using the pen tool.
| | 08:57 |
Okay so I've created another cloud here
and what we're going to do now is have a
| | 09:00 |
look at the pencil tool which is slightly
different.
| | 09:04 |
So we're going to select the pencil tool and
what we're going to do is draw some hills in
| | 09:08 |
the background here and the pencil tool
also plots points on path, the same way
| | 09:12 |
as the pen tool does.
But it works by clicking and dragging.
| | 09:19 |
So if you have a Mouse, this can be a
little bit tricky to click and drag with
| | 09:23 |
the Mouse and get smooth shapes.
If you have a Wacom pen, it can be a lot easier.
| | 09:29 |
So, basically the way it works is if we
click and drag, we create these nice curves.
| | 09:36 |
Without having to plot points.
And you'll see there it's created a nice line.
| | 09:41 |
Now if I am not happy with the line, I
can just redraw.
| | 09:45 |
And as long as I'm close to the line, it
will redraw it and just smooth it out a
| | 09:49 |
little bit for me.
Now you'll notice it hasn't created a
| | 09:53 |
closed shape, though.
So how would we create a closed shape for
| | 09:57 |
the hills?
Let's undo that and just select that path
| | 10:02 |
and delete it.
So I'm going to use the Pencil tool, but the
| | 10:06 |
first thing I'm going to do is create a
rough shape with my Rectangle tool.
| | 10:10 |
This is a little tip that makes using the
Pencil tool for close shapes a little bit easier.
| | 10:15 |
So, if we select a fill color.
So, I'm going to to choose my Fill Swatch
| | 10:19 |
and go over to the Color panel and we'll
just choose a green color.
| | 10:23 |
I'm also going to open up my HSB sliders.
If we go to Show options and that just
| | 10:28 |
makes it a bit easier for me to select
exactly the color that I want.
| | 10:34 |
Once I have the color that I want, what
I'm going to to do is just click.
| | 10:38 |
To draw the rough shape of the background
of the grass.
| | 10:43 |
Okay, now you'll notice that, that places
a rectangle in the background because
| | 10:47 |
we're on that Background layer.
But what I'm going to do now is with that
| | 10:53 |
selected, select the Pencil tool and now
if I click near the edge I can just
| | 10:57 |
create a curved edge for my rectangle.
And you'll see it just adjusts it and
| | 11:04 |
creates a nice curved edge.
So that's a little trick that I learned.
| | 11:09 |
I find it frustrating that creating
closed shapes was awkward with the Pencil tool.
| | 11:15 |
So I use this technique.
Just to create a closed shape.
| | 11:19 |
Draw a closed shape first and then just
use the Pencil tool to adjust it.
| | 11:24 |
Now you can create closed shapes with the
Pencil tool.
| | 11:27 |
If we deselect that path.
So, temporarily hold down the Cmd key or
| | 11:32 |
Ctrl key on Windows, click to Deselect.
What we can do, if we're going to draw a
| | 11:38 |
sun, let's draw a layer behind so Alt
click on the New Layer button.
| | 11:43 |
And we'll call this sun.
Okay we're going to click OK.
| | 11:48 |
And we'll draw it above the clouds to
begin with.
| | 11:51 |
And then put it below the clouds
afterward.
| | 11:54 |
So with that selected, lets choose a
color.
| | 11:57 |
So lets go to our colors and choose a
yellow color.
| | 12:00 |
So we're just going to adjust the hue a
little bit.
| | 12:04 |
Bring down the saturation a little bit.
And then I'm going to draw, try and draw, a
| | 12:09 |
circle, okay?
So I'm going to click to draw my circle.
| | 12:15 |
And then as I get round to the top bit
again, if I hold down a Modifier key Alt
| | 12:19 |
and let go.
That's going to fill that circle for me
| | 12:23 |
and then if I choose yellow as my fill
color we've created a circle.
| | 12:28 |
Now again, I can adjust that just by
clicking close to the edge of it and get
| | 12:33 |
it exactly how I want it.
Sometimes it's nice to have an
| | 12:37 |
non-perfect circle if you're creating
kind of primitive artwork like this.
| | 12:42 |
Now of course you could create the zig
zags on the edge if you want to.
| | 12:46 |
Go around creating a zig zag pattern.
If you want to create that kind of sun shape.
| | 12:54 |
And of course it will update.
Now just notice there its drawn a
| | 12:58 |
different shape.
Now that's because.
| | 13:02 |
I need to close the path.
So if we go around again, creating the
| | 13:06 |
zigzag, and then hold down the alt key at
the end, we will adjust it and close the shape.
| | 13:16 |
So a couple of little tips for closing
the pencil tool.
| | 13:18 |
We then go to our layers panel.
And we can drag our sun in between the
| | 13:24 |
sky and the clouds.
And we can do that by clicking on this
| | 13:29 |
little selection cube, and just moving it
down, so that it's on this layer with the
| | 13:34 |
sky layer.
And then it sits behind the clouds nicely.
| | 13:39 |
So that's a few tips for using the Pen
tool and the Pencil tool in Illustrator,
| | 13:44 |
to draw precise curves and freehand
curves.
| | 13:49 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Tweaking, Exporting, and Saving ArtworkReshaping paths| 00:00 |
In this movie, we're going to have a look at
how you can reshape paths.
| | 00:05 |
You'll notice here I have a path shape
that has a gradient fill and I've
| | 00:08 |
actually applied a brushstroke to this.
Notice up here in my Brush Definition
| | 00:13 |
panel, I can actually load brushstrokes.
And I do that in a similar way that we
| | 00:18 |
did with swatches by going to the Drop
Down menu and choosing from the Brush
| | 00:22 |
Library, and the one that I chose was
from Borders > Borders Novelty.
| | 00:28 |
And you'll see in here, there's a
selection of Novelty brushes that you can
| | 00:32 |
apply to your brushstrokes, and you'll
notice here if I choose this one, I now
| | 00:36 |
have laurel leaves applied to my
brushstrokes.
| | 00:41 |
But this is the one that I actually used,
the Grass one.
| | 00:43 |
I'm going to close that, I don't want you
to go through those steps at the moment,
| | 00:47 |
but if you just undo, so we're back to
the brushstroke if you have followed me.
| | 00:52 |
Now the way you would normally reshape a
path would be using the Direct Selection
| | 00:56 |
tool and you can select points and adjust
the curves.
| | 01:00 |
And move the handles around, move the
points around to adjust the shape of the path.
| | 01:05 |
But you get into problems if you try
moving these points around.
| | 01:09 |
You start to get these kinks in the path.
And I can show you that a little bit more
| | 01:14 |
clearly down here on this path here.
If we go back to the regular Selection
| | 01:18 |
tool and just select this, you'll notice
that it has a width profile assigned to
| | 01:23 |
it, and the width profile is extending
the width of that stroke on one side of it.
| | 01:31 |
If we click on the Variable Width Profile
menu and change it to this one, you'll
| | 01:35 |
notice it's now extending it on either
side of the path.
| | 01:40 |
So, how can we reshape this?
Well, if we select the Selection tool,
| | 01:44 |
and I was just to select one point and
try and move it around to reshape the path.
| | 01:50 |
Notice it just moves that point, none of
the other points moved with it.
| | 01:53 |
So, it's very difficult.
So I end up thinking, okay well I'll
| | 01:56 |
select several points and move them
around.
| | 01:59 |
So, I drag a marquee around, move the
points, but I still get these little
| | 02:03 |
kinks in the path.
So, instead of using that, what I can do
| | 02:07 |
is go back to the Selection tool.
Now you need to make sure that the entire
| | 02:12 |
path is selected.
Best way to do that is click away from it
| | 02:15 |
to deselect it, and then select it again,
and with all the points selected, and
| | 02:19 |
let's zoom in as well, so Cmd + + or Ctrl
+ + on PC, to zoom in.
| | 02:25 |
With all the points selected you can use
the Reshape tool.
| | 02:29 |
If you can't see the Reshape tool it's
usually hidden by the Scale tool.
| | 02:33 |
And it's actually underneath the Scale
tool.
| | 02:36 |
If you Click and Hold any button with
this little triangle at the bottom.
| | 02:40 |
You can Click and Hold and select the
other tools that are underneath.
| | 02:44 |
So, there we have the reshaped tool.
And with the reshape tool selected, I can
| | 02:47 |
click on that last point and move it
enough to, t reshapes the whole path
| | 02:51 |
really smoothly and nicely for me.
I could pull it down, I could pull it up
| | 02:58 |
or across to reshape that path.
And I can even select intermediate points
| | 03:03 |
if I want to make it slightly more
exaggerated.
| | 03:07 |
I can select individual points, start
moving them around, and getting a really
| | 03:11 |
different result from my path than I had
before.
| | 03:15 |
So, have a play around with the reshape
tool, It allows you to reshape paths a
| | 03:19 |
little bit more intuitively and smoothly
than you can do using the selection tool here.
| | 03:26 |
So, I'm going to stretch it out again so we
can see that variable width profile working.
| | 03:31 |
And the next thing we're going to have a
look at is the width tool and this is the
| | 03:35 |
Width tool here.
And it's in the same category as some of
| | 03:40 |
these tools, which are also reshaping
tools that we'll have a look at a little
| | 03:45 |
bit later.
But the width tool, what the width tool
| | 03:49 |
is great for its adjusting the width of
my path.
| | 03:53 |
Now we've used a variable width profile
to automatically make it bigger in the
| | 03:56 |
middle and narrower at the ends.
But what I can do is I can actually go in
| | 04:00 |
and adjust that, so I could make it even
wider here just by clicking and dragging.
| | 04:05 |
And you'll notice it allows me to pull
the width of that path apart at the point.
| | 04:10 |
I could then maybe come in here and say,
okay, I want it to be slightly wider here
| | 04:14 |
as well.
I notice that it interpolates smoothly
| | 04:18 |
between those two points, and I can add
as many points as I want.
| | 04:22 |
They don't have to be where an anchor
point exists.
| | 04:25 |
So, I could add one here, make it
narrower and add another one over here
| | 04:28 |
and make it narrower.
I can move them around, so I can click
| | 04:32 |
and drag them around once they've been
created.
| | 04:35 |
And it will all update, in order to make
that transition between wide and narrow
| | 04:41 |
as smooth as possible.
Now I can also decide that I only want to
| | 04:47 |
extend the width on one side, and if I
click on one of these, holding down the
| | 04:52 |
Alt will allow me to extend it only on
one side.
| | 04:58 |
So, I can Click and Drag on one side or
the other to create a quite bizarre shape.
| | 05:04 |
Let's pull that one in a little bit, that
one out a little bit, and this one out,
| | 05:06 |
and that one in.
So, you see you can create these amazing
| | 05:11 |
custom widths for your strokes.
Now this one's not very great but, if you
| | 05:17 |
want to, you can go in there again with
your Width Profile tool.
| | 05:21 |
And just get rid of some of these, just
select them and hit backspace to delete
| | 05:25 |
them, if it's making your path a little
ugly.
| | 05:29 |
And then when you're happy with it, say
I'm happy with this, I can actually save
| | 05:32 |
this as a new width profile.
So, I can go in here and say, Add to
| | 05:38 |
Profiles, and I'll call this weird,
wiggly width, click OK.
| | 05:45 |
And now if I go into and select, say my
Pencil tool and just draw a line and then
| | 05:51 |
apply that profile to it, so let's just
make it thicker.
| | 05:58 |
So, you can see it's got continuous
weight.
| | 06:01 |
And then go in here, and apply my wiggly
width profile to it.
| | 06:05 |
And you'll see I've got much more hand
drawn look by using the variable with
| | 06:10 |
profile I've just created and applying it
to that.
| | 06:14 |
Now you may need to go in there and make
adjustments to it.
| | 06:17 |
Again using the Width tool.
You can go in there and take out any
| | 06:21 |
anchor points or width profile points
that are creating problems, but a really
| | 06:26 |
great tool to play around with.
Now, as I said, there are other tools
| | 06:31 |
under here, and I want to have a look at
a few of these, so if you Click and Hold
| | 06:34 |
on that tool.
And hover over this strip here, you can
| | 06:38 |
pull that bar out so that we can have a
look at some of these tools.
| | 06:42 |
Now, what I want you to do is first of
all select the Selection tool and select
| | 06:46 |
this word Reshape.
And what I want you to do is select then
| | 06:50 |
this tool, the Warp tool and Click and
Drag on this word.
| | 06:55 |
Now, you'll notice it's telling me that
in order to use the reshape tools, you
| | 06:59 |
actually need to convert the art work to
outlines, so I can't actually use this on
| | 07:03 |
live text.
I'm going to show you a tool later that
| | 07:08 |
you can use on live text.
But for now, click on OK.
| | 07:11 |
And if that ever happens to you, what you
need to do is select text.
| | 07:15 |
You can make a copy of it if you want to,
if you want to save the original text but
| | 07:19 |
then go to Type > Create Outlines.
And that actually creates vector outlines
| | 07:25 |
of my text.
And I can now use the Warp tool to push
| | 07:28 |
and pull parts of my text around.
It's a fantastic tool, it just allows you
| | 07:33 |
to create a much more organic look for
your text.
| | 07:37 |
Just by clicking and dragging areas and
moving them around as if they're liquid.
| | 07:42 |
Now you can double-click the tool and
adjust the options, If you think it's a
| | 07:45 |
little bit too sensitive, you can bring
the pressure down, or the intensity.
| | 07:50 |
If you're using a Wacom pen, you can use
the pressure of the pen to control the intensity.
| | 07:55 |
You can also adjust the Width and Height
and Angle in here.
| | 07:59 |
And also options for the warp.
But I can also reshape that tool by
| | 08:04 |
holding down the Alt and Clicking and
Dragging interactively here.
| | 08:09 |
So, I could pull all of those letters up
in a (UNKNOWN) just by using the Warp tool.
| | 08:15 |
And there are all sorts of other tools in
there.
| | 08:17 |
We have a Pucker tool, which will pull
shapes together, we have a Bloat tool,
| | 08:21 |
which will bloat shapes and make them
fatter.
| | 08:26 |
Okay, again, with the default settings,
they're a little strong, so I tend to go
| | 08:30 |
in there and bring it down to maybe about
2% if I don't have my Wacom pen.
| | 08:36 |
Because, if you don't have the Wacom pen,
you can't really control the sensitivity
| | 08:40 |
as much.
So, have a play with these, they all do
| | 08:43 |
different things.
You'll be able to work them out really easily.
| | 08:45 |
There we have the Twirl tool, which can
twirl shapes around.
| | 08:49 |
And if you use that on something like
this grid here.
| | 08:52 |
We can create some really nice, organic
looking effects.
| | 08:56 |
Now if you want to actually distort your
text, but keep it editable, there is one
| | 09:00 |
other option.
Which is to use this tool here the Make
| | 09:05 |
Envelope tool.
I like to call it the Warp tool, it's a
| | 09:09 |
bit easier to understand.
And if you click on this drop-down menu,
| | 09:13 |
you can choose whether you want to warp
with a Mesh, over a Preset warp.
| | 09:18 |
If I say Make with Mesh, it will actually
place a mesh over my text, that I can
| | 09:22 |
pick up and drag and move around.
And create all sorts of amazing shapes by
| | 09:27 |
using the Direct Selection tool in that,
I can pick up areas of the text and warp
| | 09:32 |
them using these little control points.
But instead of that, a much easier way is
| | 09:39 |
to use some of the presets in there.
So if we choose Make with Warp, it opens
| | 09:45 |
up this dialog box where we can
automatically apply preset warps like
| | 09:51 |
Arcs, Lower Arcs, Bulges and even Flag
shapes or Fish shapes, okay.
| | 09:58 |
Lots of different shapes that you can
apply.
| | 10:00 |
And the nice thing about this is you
could apply something like a Flag shape.
| | 10:05 |
You can use these settings to decide how
much it bends, how much it distorts on
| | 10:09 |
the horizontal and vertical axis.
And then when you click OK, you still
| | 10:14 |
have access to those points.
So, if you want to perfect it, just go in
| | 10:18 |
there and tweak it you can can do, cuz it
creates a mesh over your object.
| | 10:24 |
Now the other nice thing about this is
the text remains fully editable.
| | 10:28 |
So, if I select the Text tool, and I go
in there and just select that text.
| | 10:34 |
It's quite hard to select sometimes, so
if you have difficulty selecting it with
| | 10:38 |
the Type tool, just select the Direct
Selection tool and double-click it and it
| | 10:42 |
should make it editable.
Now it may take you into Isolation mode
| | 10:47 |
when it does that.
That's okay, it gives us a chance to
| | 10:51 |
select the text and we could change that
word to flag, and now Exit Isolation mode
| | 10:56 |
and you'll see that the text remains
fully editable.
| | 11:01 |
But I've managed to add a nice live
distortion to it.
| | 11:05 |
So there we go, a few ways of reshaping
paths, once you've drawn them using Illustrator.
| | 11:12 |
So, have a mad play with that and see
what you can come up with.
| | 11:15 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Saving and exporting artwork| 00:02 |
When the times comes to save your artwork
there are a few different options to consider.
| | 00:06 |
Depending on what you're creating your
artwork for obviously, I quite often
| | 00:11 |
create my artwork for animation.
So if we have a look at this one here
| | 00:15 |
swatches end, you'll notice that I'm
saved this character on lots of different layers.
| | 00:22 |
And that's so that I can animate her eyes
and her eyebrows and her head and her
| | 00:26 |
mouth all individually.
So I can get her walking and talking and animating.
| | 00:33 |
So I tend to want to keep the layers
intact so I save it as an Illustrator file.
| | 00:39 |
And then, I take it into Adobe After
Effects, where I can animate those layers.
| | 00:44 |
I can, if I want to, output it as a
Photoshop file by going to Export, and
| | 00:49 |
going down to Photoshop.
And I can even choose to export Art
| | 00:55 |
boards as individual layers.
If I choose Export, it will give me a
| | 00:58 |
choice of whether I want to use RGB or
CMYK.
| | 01:00 |
If I'm going to be animating it for the
screen I probably want RGB.
| | 01:04 |
I would probably choose 72 PPI, but if I
maybe wanted to zoom in.
| | 01:14 |
We're zoom out on it I need it to be a
bit bigger I can choose a higher
| | 01:16 |
resolution there.
Now if I choose Flatten image it will
| | 01:20 |
just output a single image but if I
choose right layers it will actually
| | 01:23 |
create Photoshop layers from my layers in
Illustrator.
| | 01:28 |
Of course, you will lose the individual
objects inside the layers but the layers
| | 01:33 |
themselves will be kept, and I click on
Ok.
| | 01:36 |
And that way I can have a Photoshop file
version of my Illustrator file.
| | 01:41 |
Now the benefit of that is it will take
less time to render in After Effects than
| | 01:45 |
a continuously rasterizing Illustrator
file would.
| | 01:51 |
Now you have got some other options for
animation.
| | 01:53 |
You can release layers to sequences, or
as a building animation, and that will
| | 01:58 |
release the layers so that when you then
play that back in Flash.
| | 02:05 |
It will play back as if the layers are
building on top of each other automatically.
| | 02:08 |
So that's particularly for Flash,
released layers or for sequence or for a
| | 02:13 |
building animation.
And if you've done that you would go to
| | 02:18 |
File > Export.
And in here you would choose Flash SWF File.
| | 02:25 |
And it would also give you options when
you output about how you want to output
| | 02:29 |
that SWF file.
And you could get more information about
| | 02:34 |
what's required either in the Flash help
or the Illustrator help when saving animations.
| | 02:41 |
Now, if you're saving just still images
of flat image, say, for the web.
| | 02:45 |
Let's have a look at this one over here,
my superhero.
| | 02:48 |
I definitely need to save the layers.
Now, I may want to keep the layers in
| | 02:52 |
case I need to come in here and make
changes.
| | 02:54 |
It's maybe for, you know, a website where
I'm featuring a different software
| | 02:58 |
application every week, or something like
that.
| | 03:01 |
So I might want to maintain the layers
themselves, so I save it as an
| | 03:05 |
Illustrator file.
But I can export it for the web, so I can
| | 03:09 |
say Save For Web and make sure it is
optimized for the web.
| | 03:14 |
Now, you can also set up slices for
compression, so if for example you want
| | 03:17 |
to compress the background slightly more
than the main character.
| | 03:22 |
You can set up slices in Illustrator,
using the Slice tool to do that.
| | 03:28 |
Once you've done it, you would do Save
For Web, same as you do with just a
| | 03:31 |
regular image.
And what it'll do is it'll give you a
| | 03:35 |
preview of how your image is going to look.
In fact, you can also slice your image,
| | 03:39 |
in this dialog box.
So that's also available in here and you
| | 03:44 |
can also view your slices but I've just
got one image, I haven't sliced it at all.
| | 03:50 |
So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to
choose JPEG, you can choose between GIF,
| | 03:54 |
JPEG, PNG.
I'm going to choose Maximum as my quality
| | 03:58 |
setting and there are all sorts of
settings in here.
| | 04:02 |
If you choose PNG for example, you can
set transparency in the background if
| | 04:06 |
that's important to you.
If you choose GIF image, you can actually
| | 04:12 |
adjust the color table using the settings
down here.
| | 04:15 |
But we're going to choose JPEG.
If I want to adjust the size, I can just
| | 04:19 |
type in a size.
Maybe 400 pixels there, and as I click
| | 04:23 |
away from that, it will automatically
work out what the size should be.
| | 04:28 |
And it will give me a preview so it's
showing me my original and my optimized
| | 04:32 |
image side by side here.
And I can even see a two up to compare
| | 04:36 |
them and make sure there's no real
noticeable difference.
| | 04:39 |
So it's brought it down to 59.4k.
I could go even lower if I want to bring
| | 04:44 |
it down to medium quality.
And if there's no discernible difference
| | 04:49 |
then I could go with that.
I'm actually going to put it onto Maximum
| | 04:53 |
again because that's an acceptable amount
of compression.
| | 04:57 |
I actually think High is actually
acceptable so I'mg king to go with that
| | 05:01 |
and then I click Save and it just saves
it as a JPEG, not effecting my original image.
| | 05:09 |
Now if you want to output something for
print, you would probably go to the Save menu.
| | 05:14 |
So you would go Save As.
And Save As gives you access to
| | 05:18 |
Illustrator files, but also EPS files.
So you may want to output an EPS file.
| | 05:25 |
Or you may want to output a PDF quite
likely if you are going to print this
| | 05:29 |
that you may want to save it as a PDF.
You may also want to scale it up here I
| | 05:35 |
am putting to print, lets go to PDF and
lets click Save and it brings up the Save
| | 05:40 |
PDF dialog box were you can choose high
quality print as the output option.
| | 05:47 |
And then you have settings for
oppression, marks and bleed if you want
| | 05:51 |
to put printers marks on it so it can be
cropped and trimmed correcting.
| | 05:57 |
You have Output settings if you want to
use Color Conversion, maybe want to
| | 06:01 |
convert it to the destination color
profile.
| | 06:05 |
And then there are Advanced settings for
Fonts, Security, and finally a summary of
| | 06:09 |
your settings so that you can quickly go
through and check that your settings are
| | 06:13 |
correct and even save the summary.
So that's a little bit about how you can
| | 06:20 |
output different file types using both
Save and Export from Adobe Illustrator.
| | 06:27 |
If you need any more information about
those output formats, the Adobe
| | 06:30 |
Illustrator online help is a great
resource for all the information that
| | 06:34 |
you'll need.
I hope you've enjoyed these tutorials,
| | 06:38 |
and I hope to see some of your drawings
online very soon.
| | 06:42 |
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