From the course: Illustrator for Fashion Design: Advanced Drawing Flats

Tools you need to know - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator for Fashion Design: Advanced Drawing Flats

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Tools you need to know

- [Narrator] If you are new to Illustrator, new to fashion design, or learned how to draw flats in version CS6 or earlier, I recommend that you go back and watch Illustrator for Fashion Design: Drawing Flats to get up to speed. Let's start to review some of the tools and keyboard shortcuts I'll be using in this course. You can find this file in the Assets folder. So, there's some shortcut keys that are important that I use regularly, and those are Copy, Paste in Front, Paste in Back, and Duplicate. There's also a list of tool shortcuts that are important to know. These are the tools that we'll be using regularly throughout this video. The Selection Tool, Direct Selection Tool, Pen Tool, Anchor Point Tool, Rotate, Reflect, Scale Tool, Hand Tool, Shape Builder Tool, Zoom Tool, Default, Swap Fill and Stroke, and Remove Fill and Stroke. So let's talk about how I like to use some of these tools. We'll start with Rotate. First select the object. Double click on Rotate, type in an angle, and click Copy. And that rotates the object on its own center. To duplicate this, Command + D. The next way that I like to use Rotate is to select the object, and this time I want to have it rotate around a point other than its center. To do that, I'm going to click on R for rotate, and then Option or Alt click where I'd like the new center point to be. This opens the Rotate panel. I'll type in an angle and click Copy. And then again, I can duplicate to continue around the circle. The third way I like to use Rotate is for plaquettes. I'll select the plaquette and drag it over to the sleeve so that the bottom point aligns with the cuff. I'll click R for rotate, and then click my mouse where I want the pivot point to be. Now I can click anywhere on the page, and rotate the plaquette into place. Now let's talk about Reflect and Join. I suppose I shouldn't have this already reflected. Alright, so to Reflect, we're always going to be reflecting over center line. Let's zoom in about. So I've placed a guide here. When we Reflect for fashion, we're always going to be Reflecting over a center guideline. So I've put one on the page. Going to take my black arrow, select this, click on O to Reflect, Option or Alt click on the center guide, select Vertical and Copy. We're going to be doing that repeatedly. Now with the black arrow, I can select both pieces, right click, Join, right click, Join. Then we move on to the Anchor Point tool, and curve the neckline, and curve the hemline. Pathfinder. There are three main pathfinders that we're going to be using. We'll start with Pathfinder Unite. To use Pathfinder Unite, you're going to select all of the objects. Going to go to Pathfinder and click on the very first one, and it unites all of those shapes together into one shape. The second pathfinder we'll be using is Exclude. I'm going to select all the shapes, go over to Pathfinder again and Exclude is the last icon on the right. Click and it punches holes. The third pathfinder we're going to use is Divide. Select both objects, the object that you want to divide, and the line that you're using to divide it with. We need to Expand Pathfinder, and Divide is the first one on the bottom row. Once you divide, it's a good habit to immediately right click, Ungroup. This'll save future problems, and now that it's divided, I can select elements and fill them with different colors. There we go. And it filled with gray. Sometimes that happens. I've run into this problem before. What I find works best to solve it is to go up to Window, open Swatches, if they're not already open on your page, and pick a color swatch from there. It seems to restore the colors, and now if I were to go back here and pick a different color swatch, it should show as a color and not gray. I'm not sure why Illustrator does that, but that's the work around. And the last took that I want to show you is the Shape Builder tool. There are three different ways we're going to use the Shape Builder tool. And this does the same things as Pathfinder, but it's a little more interactive. The Shape Builder tool can be found over here in the tool bar. The shortcut key is Shift + Down. We'll need to start with the black arrow, and select all of the objects we want to unite together. Then we can grab the Shape Builder tool. When you hover over a space, it gets this little kind of gray grid pattern on it. If I now click and drag across shapes, it unites them together. So I can unite these three shapes together just like that. Shape Builder Divide. Again, we need to start by selecting all of the pieces, and now if I got to my Shape Builder tool and hover, you can see that it highlights both of these sections. If I click on one section, it divides it from the other piece. So now you see I have two separate sections that can be filled with different colors, or broken apart into two pieces. The final one is Shape Builder Delete, and this one works like Exclude. I need to select both pieces with my black arrow. Then I can go to the Shape Builder tool, and this time, I need to hold the Alt or Option key when I click, and it actually deletes or pops out that piece. So now there's a hole in this flat. And there you have it. Those are the tools you'll need to be able to use in order to be successful watching this course. Now, let's get started.

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