From the course: Illustrator CC 2017 One-on-One Fundamentals

Combining paths with the Shaper tool - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator CC 2017 One-on-One Fundamentals

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Combining paths with the Shaper tool

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- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how to combine path outlines using the shaper tool, and along the way, we'll draw this childishly simple house. Now, as you know, drawing with the shaper tool is a matter of a handful of simple gestures. When combining path outlines, all you have to do is make sure all the paths are deselected and then scribble over them, or if you don't want to go to that much work, just draw a Z. So you really only need to drag back and forth a matter of three times. And let's see what that looks like. I'll go ahead and switch over to my blank document with the center guides, and then I'll select the shaper tool which again, shares a flyout menu with the pencil tool, and then I'll draw a base rectangle like so. And even though this gesture is a poor excuse for a rectangle, I end up with the desired shape. Next I'll go ahead and click on the shape in order to select it, so the shaper tool doubles as a selection tool inside Illustrator, and then I'll drag it so that it's more-or-less centered. However, I also want to be able to scale the shape, and the simplest way to do that is to bring up the bounding box, which I can do by going to the View menu, and if necessary, choosing Show Bounding Box like so. Alright, now I'll go ahead and drag this corner handle downward, and I'll drag this guy up and to the left until that center point more or less aligns with the vertical guide. All right, now I want to draw a big triangle for the roof, and so I'll draw this big wide guy right here, but notice as soon as I release, I end up with an equilateral triangle, and that's because the shaper tool always produces triangles with three equal sides. If that's not what you want, just go ahead and click on triangle to select it, and then I'll go ahead and drag this guy over here, let's say, as a starting position, and I'll drag the right handle over until that center point once again aligns with the vertical guide, and then I'll release. And notice that this shape is a live polygon, as indicated by the word polygon over here on the far left side of the control panel, meaning that I can change the number of sides by dragging this widget. Of course, that's not what I want, so I'll just go ahead and press Control + Z or Command + Z on the Mac, to undo that change. And then I'll add a chimney by drawing another rectangle like so. Alright, now let's say that I want to combine these shapes together. Well, the first thing you want to make sure is that all of the shapes are deselected. That's very important. And then, you want to draw a zigzag. So if I were to start dragging right here, and zigzag up and down into the roof, then I would combine the chimney with the roof like so. All right, but I want to show you a few other options, so I'll press Control + Z, or Command + Z on the Mac, to undo that change. Notice what happens if you start dragging outside of any shape, and then you zigzag inside the chimney, that will end up subtracting the chimney from the roof, like so. All right, I'll undo that change once again. It could get even worse if you drag through multiple shapes. So, imagine that I start my drag outside the chimney once again, and then I draw a Z into the roof, then I'll subtract both the chimney and the roof from the house itself, and I'm creating this kind of cut line where the roof intersects the larger rectangle. Again, that's not what I want, so I'll press Control + Z, or Command + Z on the Mac to undo that change. Now finally, let's say that I want to combine all three of these shapes, then I would begin dragging inside of one of the intersected areas, such as this region of the chimney that falls outside the roof line, and then I would zigzag into the house like so, and you can scribble back and forth as much as you like, at which point you'll go ahead and fuse all those shapes together. But I want to highlight the fact that you don't have to do that much scribbling if you don't want to. A simple Z is fine, and so I'll undo that change, and then I'll start dragging, let's say this time, inside the house rectangle, and I'll zigzag upward into the chimney like so, and even though this is a very bad-looking Z, it does produce the desired effect. All right, now let's say I want to change the color of my house. I'll go ahead and click inside it in order to select it, and notice that I now have what's called a Shaper Group, as we're seeing over here on the far left side of the Control Panel. I'll go ahead and click on that first fill swatch, and I'll change it to this light shade of green. And then, I'll select the line weight value, and I'll take it up to six points, like so. All right, now I want to add a door. And I want to demonstrate that it doesn't matter what tool you use to create the base path outline, you can still combine it with other paths using the shaper tool. And so this time, I'll go ahead and grab my rectangle tool, and I'll draw a rectangle from the center out by dragging while pressing the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, in order to create this rectangle right here. Which may lead you to wonder, gee whiz, Deke, isn't it just easier to create rectangles with the rectangle tool in the first place? And my answer there would be, generally speaking, yes, if you're using a mouse. But if you're using a tablet such as a Surface Book, you may find it easier to draw, let's say, directly on screen with your finger. All right, now I'm going to drag this guy by its center point a downward a little bit, just so I have a little more room down here below the house, and then I'll go ahead and switch back to my shaper tool. Now, at this point, we've got a problem, which is that the rectangle is selected, and so if I were to drag inside of it, I'll move it. If I were to drag outside of it like so, then I could end up confusing the tool, and in this case, deleting the door shape entirely. Obviously that's not what I want, so I'll press Control + Z, or Command + Z on the Mac, to undo that change, and then I'll just click off the rectangle to deselect it. Now let's say what I want to do is subtract this portion of the door that's falling outside of the house rectangle, then I'd start dragging outside the shape like so, and I don't want to go all the way into the door, because that'll just delete it from the house shape, and so I'll undo that change. What you want to do is limit your zigzag to inside of this portion of the door that falls outside of the house. So notice if I begin my drag right here, so that I can see where the shapes intersect, and then I drag it back up, and then I end my drag outside of the path outline, then I will cut away just that section of the door that falls outside of the house. All right, now I want to change the color of the door independently of the house. If I were to just click in the house to select it, and change the color to, let's say, this light shade of orange, that will change the color of all the shapes, which is not what I want. So again, I'll undo that change. What we want to do is switch to what's known as the face selection mode, and you get to that by clicking a second time on a selected shaper group, and so notice if I now click outside of the door, I'll select this big region of the house out here, at which point, I could change its fill if I like, but I'm happy with the way it's colored, so I'll click inside the door instead, and now notice that I have control over just the fill. You cannot change the line weight or other stroke attributes independently, but you can change the fills as much as you want, and so I'll click on that fill swatch, and I'll change it to that light shade of orange, like so. All right, now we get to the exciting part, which is the construction mode, and you enter it either by double-clicking on one of these sub-halves, or you can click on this down-pointing arrow widget, and then once you enter the construction mode, you can grab any one of your original path outlines, and you can drag it to a different position. I could even grab my door, and as you can see I still have the entire path outline, and then drag it around as well. I don't want to make that change, however, so I'll press Control + Z, or Command + Z on the Mac. The thing to watch out for is this. Notice if you move the chimney all the way out and then try to move it back, then you'll end up messing up the effect. So I'll just go ahead and undo those last couple of modifications, and then I'll move my chimney to about this location here. And then when you're done making your modifications, you can exit the construction mode either by clicking on this up-arrow widget, or you can just press the Escape key. And then to deselect the shaper group, just click outside of it, like so. And that's how you combine path outlines using the shaper tool by either scribbling or drawing simple Zs here inside Illustrator.

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