From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

824 Drawing a triangular cartoon eye

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

824 Drawing a triangular cartoon eye

how to create this triangular eye, which perfectly fits inside this triangular region occupied by, I suppose, this guys nose, as well as whatever part of his body this is, and we also have this circular pupil with a cartoon highlight, and this, by the way, is a pie, as you'll see, a P-I-E, that you can create with Illustrator's ellipse tool. which you can get by pressing the p key, and it's very important that your smart guides are turned on here inside the View menu. At which point go ahead and click with a pen tool right here at the tip of his nose in order to create a first anchor point, and then move your cursor over to this spot, maybe it's the corner of his ear, I don't know, and click again. And now it's tempting to go ahead and click up here at the top because we are, by the way, in case you're wondering what we're doing, we're trying to create a triangle that's as big as the top of his head. However, if you do click right there you're going to join the path to the existing blend. Which is not what we want. So go ahead and press control z or command z on the Mac in order to undo that change. And it appears that things are hopelessly messed up. So I had to press control z or command z again. At which point I only have one anchor point. So I need to create a second one right there. And now I'll create a point right about there. So shy of the top, and finally I'll click on the first endpoint in order to close the path outline. And notice in my cause it's automatically filled with that very light shade of gray here inside the swatches panel, which is exactly what I want, and so I'll now press the a key in order to switch to the white arrow tool. And I'll go ahead and select this top anchor point and I'll drag it upward until it snaps into alignment like so. All right, now we need to shift all sides of this path outline inward, and you can do exactly that by going up to the Object menu, choosing Path, and choosing Offset Path. And the great thing about working this way instead of applying the scale tool, is you put your path exactly where you want it. All right, so notice if I set this offset value to 10 points and turn on the Preview checkbox, that expands it outward 10 points in all directions. If I want to take it inward instead, then I would change this offset value to negative, like so. I want it to move in even farther. So I'll set this value to -25, and because the preview checkbox is turned on I can see what I'm doing. At which point I'll click OK. Now that ends up making a duplicate of the path outline, never really understood why. I don't want that, so I'll press the v key to select my black arrow tool, and I'll click on this big path to select it, and then I'll press the backspace key, or the delete key on the Mac, to get rid of it. All right now, I want to nudge this guy two points upward and two points to the right. And just to make sure you get it right, press control k or command k on a Mac for Keyboard Increment, and make sure that increment is set to one point, as by default. And click OK. And now I'll press the up arrow key twice in a row and then I'll press a right arrow key twice as well in order to nudge that guy two points up and two points to the right. All right, now we need to create the pupil by selecting the ellipse tool from the shape tool flyout menu. And then you want to move your cursor over this top anchor point and press the alt key, or the option key on the Mac and click. And because you clicked you're going to bring up the ellipse dialog box. Because you pressed the alt or option key you're going to create the ellipse from the center outward, which is exactly what we want. We also want an ellipse that's 25 points wide and 25 points tall. So in other words, it's going to be a circle. At which point, click OK to create that shape. All right, now it wants to be filled with black Notice it? If you drag it down you are going to cut a pie out of your circle. And then if you drag this guy you're going to close up the pie a little. Now, I have some very specific values in mind. So I'll click on the word shape up here in the control panel, and notice these two options right here, pie start angle and pie end angle, I'm going to go ahead and select this guy for starters and change it to 330. And then I'll tab to the next value and change it to 300 degrees. And then I'll press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to dismiss that panel. All right, now I want to mask the pupil inside the triangular eye. So I'll press the v key to switch back to the black arrow tool. I don't want all this folderol on screen anymore. It's just going to get in the way. So I'll go back to the View menu and choose Hide Bounding Box to get rid of it. All right, now you want to cut this little pie to the clipboard by pressing control x, or command x on a Mac. Next I need to get to an icon in a toolbox that I can't currently see. And so I'll expand the toolbox to two columns like so. And then I'll click on a triangle in order to select it. And now notice these guys down here. We want to switch to draw inside, which is going to show us some dashed corners, as we're seeing here, and then you want to go up to the Edit menu and choose Paste in Place, which is going to paste the pupil into the triangle. Now you can go ahead and switch back to the draw normal mode. In fact, you should do that, at which point I'll go ahead and restore the single column toolbox. All right, now I'm going to zoom out by pressing control zero or command zero on a Mac. And at this point we want to go ahead and duplicate this blue head into the other arrow positions. Now because it's such a different shape we're going to have to get rid of those areas by clicking on the purple one, for example, and then shift clicking on all of the others, and pressing the backspace key or the delete key on the Mac in order to get rid of 'em. Now just generally marquee this region right here so that you're selecting all of the objects associated with the blue face, and then shift click on that orange diamond in order to turn it off. All right, now we need to rotate this guy around this six-pointed star. And so I'll grab my rotate tool, which you can get by pressing the r key. And then I'll alt or option click at the center of that star to bring up the Rotate dialog box. We're looking for an angle value of 60 degrees. At which point, if you have the preview checkbox turned on you can see it actually happening on screen. And then, click the Copy button in order to create a copy of that head. Now, I'd love to be able to change the fill on the fly, in our case to color six; however, we've got all kinds of different objects going on, so that would mess things up. And so I'm just going to repeat my rotation and duplication by pressing control d or command d on the Mac several times in a row until I have a bunch of faces like so. Now you want to press the v key to switch to your black arrow tool. And then just click on this shape in order to select it. And now change it to color six. And now change it to color six. Then you want to select this face over here. Then you want to select this face over here. We have officially run out of colors, We have officially run out of colors, and so we're going to cycle back around to color one. and so we're going to cycle back around to color one. And another way to work, by the way, And another way to work, by the way, if you don't want to keep going back and forth, if you don't want to keep going back and forth, is to drag and drop swatches. is to drag and drop swatches. So I can grab color two and drag it So I can grab color two and drag it and drop it into this guy. and drop it into this guy. I could grab color three, drag it and drop it into this one. I could grab color three, drag it and drop it into this one. And then grab color four and drag it And then grab color four and drag it and drop it into this fellow right here. and drop it into this fellow right here. And now I'll go ahead and click off And now I'll go ahead and click off the paths to deselect them. the paths to deselect them. All right, now at this point All right, now at this point this tile is ready for tesselation. this tile is ready for tesselation. And so all you have to do is remember these values And so all you have to do is remember these values right here and apply them to an upright hex pattern. right here and apply them to an upright hex pattern. However, I still want to do some more work However, I still want to do some more work in the form of adding these windows to the bottoms in the form of adding these windows to the bottoms and the sides of each one of the faces. and the sides of each one of the faces. And we are going to do exactly that next week. And we are going to do exactly that next week.

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