creating vector shapes – week2 assignment1 illustrator...

CreatingVectorShapes–Week 2Assignment 1

1 of 11Applications & Industry

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IllustratorDefaults

Before we begin, we are going to make sure that all of us are using the same settings within our

application. For this class, we will always want to make sure that our application is set to the

default settings and that our workspace is set to the “Essentials” layout. We are even going to

make sure that we reset the “Essential” workspace to ensure yours and mine have not been

changed along the way as you’ve been experimenting with the applications.

To do this I want you to ensure that you have Adobe Illustrator closed. If you currently have the

application open on a Macintosh, choose the Illustrator menu and pick Quit. On the PC go to the

File menu and choose Quit.

Now, we are going to restart the machine and tell Illustrator to reset itself to its defaults. To do

this I need you to hold down three keys on your keyboard and while they are held down you will

click the Illustrator icon to launch the application.

On the PC the three keys are The ALT, CTRL and the Shift key. You will find these on the bottom

left hand corner of any windows keyboard. The Control key typically is right under the shift key and

is labelled CTRL. To its right is usually a windows flag key and then the ALT key. If you’re on a PC,

go ahead and find those keys and practice holding them down together with one hand. It won’t do

anything to your computer until you combine it with the opening of the application.

For you Mac users, I want you to look for the Option, Command and Shift keys. The Option key is

on the bottom row of keys and the third in from the left. In addition to saying “Option” it also says

“Alt” in the upper left hand corner of the key. Immediately to the right of the Option key is the

Command key which features the word Command as well as the Apple Command Symbol which

you will often see in some printed tutorials and reference books. You can hold these three keys

down with one hand as well.

Alright – now that we all know where our reset keys are, I know want you to hold down all three

keys and, while they are held down, I want you to use your other hand to move your mouse to the

Adobe Illustrator icon and launch Illustrator.




Some Windows users are going to get a Windows Security message asking for permission to launch

– please continue to keep the keys held down and use your mouse to click the Yes.

As you have your three reset keys held down, Adobe Illustrator will begin

to launch. When you see the splash screen you can release the keys and

wait for Illustrator to finish loading. Illustrator has now reset itself to the

default settings for the application. As we move forward this should

ensure that everything you see on my screen is what you see on your

screen.

One final step to ensure consistency between our applications. I would

like us all to be using the default workspace which is called Essentials.

Please go to the top right hand corner of the application and make sure

that this drop down workspace choose says Essentials. Now click on the

workspace list again and from the drop down list I want you to choose

Reset Essentials.

We are now set to begin working through our tutorials. In future exercises we’ll always ask you to

check that you are on the Essentials menu and to reset it so that it reflects the same layout as our

tutorial screen. Please quit Illustrator.




FilesFromDocShareIn this video, we will cover how to use the simple Shape tools and apply Fills and Strokes.

In Doc Sharing, click on the Category Week 2. From the files list look for a file named

Wk2_Asn1_Assets.zip. Place a checkmark in the toggle box next to the file name and click the

Download Documents button from the Doc Sharing menu. Your file will be downloaded to your

computer.

Using the skills we learning during week 1, unzip the file. It will uncompress to a folder called

Wk2_Asn1_Assets. Inside the folder you will find two items that you will need to complete this

assignment. The first is a file called “AIO_G150_W2_A1_Roadmap.pdf” which

contains specific written steps for completing the assignment. The second file is

called “Student_Shape_exercise.ai”

We will open this file in Adobe Illustrator and use some of the basic drawing tools.




OpeningFilesRemember, we never open files by double‐clicking. You don’t want your computer deciding which

application it wants you to use on a file. We see this is an Adobe Illustrator AI file and so we know

we want to work in Illustrator.

With this in mind, I want you to open Adobe Illustrator. On the PC you can use the Start Menu and

then choose Adobe Illustrator from the Adobe Creative Suite folder under All Programs or, you

might have decided to pin the application to your Taskbar or Start Menu. Regardless, click the

application name to start the application.

On the Macintosh, go to the Applications folder and locate the Adobe Illustrator folder. Then

double‐click the Adobe Illustrator.app icon. If you have placed the program on your Dock you can

single click it to launch from there. You can also use Spotlight to quickly type in the name if the

application, once it appears, click the icon and Illustrator will launch.

From Illustrator choose the File menu and then click Open. Now navigate to your file named

Student_Shape_exercise.ai

Again, as a professional designer you should get in the habit of working from the File_Open menu.

It gives you greater control over where you content is edited. Try and forget that double‐clicking

exists as an option for file opening.




Navigating the AI File

Once you open the file you will see the following contents:

Let’s quickly look over here at the Layers menu. Since we are all working in the default

view of the Essentials menu, let’s expand the panels that are currently docked to the

right side of the application frame by clicking the arrow at the top right corner of the

minimized panels dock. The layer’s panel is at the bottom of the docked set to the

right of the application area.




Your exercise file has 3 layers. The bottom layer is called “Shapes” and it contains the image of

elements that we are going to ask you to draw. This layer can be seen by you while you are

working on the file, but it does not print or export. We did this so that you can use each shape as a

guide. We want you to draw your shape right on top of the image! It will give you a path to follow

– kind of like a paint by numbers assignment. Once you finish the assignment and save the work

though, the only shapes we will see will be your newly drawn shapes. This layer is locked and if you

select it and try to draw on it you will get an error message.

Above the “Shapes” layer is the “Directions” layer. This is simply the text that tells you what tools

and point sizes to use on each shape. This layer is also locked. You cannot draw on it.

Now we get to the top the top layer – the “Student Drawing” layer. This is the layer that you will be

working on. To make sure it is active, go to the Layers panel and click the layer. Notice how the

layer is now highlighted? This means it is the active layer. You are now ready to start creating your

shapes.

The written roadmap will walk you through each of the shapes, but I would like to take just a few

minutes to demonstrate the basic tools for you in this video. I would suggest that you just watch

what I do for the next 5 minutes. Once the video is done, you can use the roadmap and the tool

and try creating your shapes. If you run into a problem, feel free to come back to this video to

reference some of the ways we introduced the tools. Shape Tools

All the primary Shape tools are located within the Tools panel. Some tools are grouped together

because they have similar functionality. These are often referred to as nested or “Hidden” tools.

As we discussed in the lecture, anytime you see a small arrow in the lower right hand corner of a

toolbar icon you know there are additional tools stacked below it.




By clicking and holding a nested tool icon, it will open the menu to showcase all the Tools: the

Rectangle tool, Rounded Rectangle tool, Ellipse tool, Polygon tool, Star tool, and Flare tool.

Select the appropriate tool, and then click and drag the object onto the art board, dragging it

into the appropriate sized object. Or, if you need to create objects at a specific size, simply click

onto the art board and a dialog box will open allowing you to specify the appropriate height and

width of the Shape.

When you choose the Rounded Rectangle tool and place a single click onto the stage, you'll see

that you have the additional option of choosing the size for the Rounded Corners. You can also

change the Corner Radius visually by tapping the Up and Down arrow keys as you click & drag

to draw the shape.

The Star tool dialog allows you to indicate the appropriate number of sides for the star, or you

can click onto the Up and Down arrow keys while drawing the shape to change the number of

sides for the star. FillsIn order to change the colors for these objects, you can assign the colors within the Control

Panel. Since we are all working in the default workspace, the Control Panel is docked at the

top of the application. It is context sensitive and changes its options based on the objects and

tools in use.

This first box allows you to apply the Fill color for a Shape, which you can change by clicking it to pop up the Swatches panel. You can then choose your color. This second box changes the color of the Stroke, which is the line around the Shape. When you make changes to the Stroke and Fill when no objects are selected, you are setting your default Fill and Stroke values for all new objects. You can always select an existing object as well and change these color values for each shape.




Lines & Strokes

There are a number of tools associated with Lines here. Clicking and holding this icon provides

us with the Line Segment tool, Arc tool, Spiral tool, Rectangular Grid tool, and Polar Grid tool.

The Line Segment tool is great for drawing lines and you can change the color of the Stroke on

the line here on the Control Panel. If you would like to change the thickness of the Stroke, open

the Stroke panel under Window > Stroke. The weight of the Stroke is the thickness of the line.

You can chose a Stroke size from the drop‐down list or enter a precise value directly in the

entry box. These are options to change the appearance of the stroke line and selecting this

option will allow you create a dotted line Stroke. Adobe provides easy access to the entire

Strokes panel right from the Control Panel. Notice how we have some basic settings for the

Stroke like its weight and color? Sometimes you need the full set of adjustments available to

you through the panel. To make your workflow more efficient, you will often see the name of a

panel written in orange right on the Control Panel. If you click that word look at what happens – the entire panel magically pops out from the Control Panel allowing you to quickly access those additional settings. Click on the panel name again and it will disappear.

Let’s go back to the various Line tools. Keep in mind that some of these Line tools, like the

Spiral tool provides options like the Shapes when you click and continue to hold the mouse in.

You can use the Up and Down arrow to change the length of the spiral.

The Pen Tool

The Pen tool is one of the most important tools to use for illustration within Illustrator. It is also

the tool that takes the most amount of practice to master. The Pen tool is unique as it allows




you to bend the lines as you draw them.

Once you select the Pen tool, click onto the Art Board. Then after you click your second line,

continue to hold in the mouse. When you do this, you can see that you have control over the

bend and shape of the line.

DrawingtheHeart

Drawing a heart with the Pen tool takes a little more finesse, so don't worry if this seems a little

difficult at first. Start by selecting the Pen tool and clicking onto the Art Board and hold your

mouse down. This will allow you to drag the handle up a little ‐ it helps to hold in the Shift Key

while you drag up so that your Handle snaps in perfect vertical alignment. This will help set up

the line properly for our first bump in the heart. Then, click over to the left a little and hold in

the Shift key again as you drag down and release the mouse once you have a good arc. Then

below our first point, click again and drag down. You can see that this creates half of our heart,

which looks quite good already. Then draw a line for this last point over to the right. This is

harder to curve at first. Just use the Shift Key and drag upward a little.

Then we can use a new tool called Convert Anchor Point tool.

Here, you can drag this bottom point's handle upward, and this will give us the proper curve in

this line. Then we can switch back to the Pen tool, and using the same technique we used on the

first heart bump, we can click and drag this handle upward, then click over and using the Shift

key, we can create a matching bump. Of course, now this changes our first bump, so we need to

use the Convert Anchor Point tool again and then you can drag this lower handle all the way

above the heart to create the matching bump. If you need to, use the Direct Selection tool to

make additional adjustments.




CreatingtheWave

You can also create simple shapes like a Wave with the Pen tool. If you want a thicker Stroke with

the Pen tool, we can change the stroke size right here on the control panel. Notice how I'm

holding in the Shift key to help me align the waveforms perfectly. We can continue making these

shapes with minor adjustments along the way. If you want to fill in the color of this wave, with

the wave selected, find the Fill box on the Tool Bar, double‐click it, and choose an appropriate

blue color within the Color Picker. Now you have a completed Wave. BrushTools

The Paintbrush and Pencil tools allow you to freehand draw onto the Art Board. These are

useful to create a more organic style of illustration within Illustrator. You can draw your shapes

and you still have the same control over the Stroke style and the object's Fill, which you can

change at any time.

The Blob brush is a handy tool for creating organic shapes. It is kind of like using a paintbrush.

As you draw, each overlapping Stroke is combined with the other to make a single vector

object. In your sample exercise you will use the Blob brush and the Pencil tool to create a

pumpkin. Let me show you how I quickly do that.

Since the Blob brush can let me quickly paint‐up a shape, I can just select the brush and

choose an orange fill. Now let’s just quickly paint up a rough shape of a pumpkin.

Now that I have an orange filled shape I can go to my Control Panel and perhaps choose to

give him a black Stroke. Since this is a solid shape, I will want to create some additional solid

shapes for his eyes and mouth to sit on top of the shape. If I used the Blob brush it would just

add my Strokes to the existing object – that’s not what we want. So let’s use the Brush tool

and just paint in a quick pair of eyes and a mouth.




Choose the Brush tool and let’s pick a fill of white and a Stroke of 1 with the color black. Now

let’s draw the eyes and mouth. And there you go…you created a very organic shape using

vector Brush tools.

Now it’s time for you to try using the tools. Return to your Illustrator Student Shape Exercise

file and try your hand at creating the shapes on the roadmap.

Once you have completed the drawing, make sure you save this file. Under the File menu, choose

Save As…. Make sure that the format is an AI file. Name the file as indicated in the class

assignment.

You should also save this image for the web by creating a JPEG image to share with others.

From the File menu, choose Save for Web…

In the Save for Web… dialog box, choose the Presets dropdown menu and select JPEG‐High.

The dialog box will populate with the settings for this pre‐set. Now go to the bottom of the

dialog box and choose Save…

Save your file into the appropriate location.

Take some time to practice all these techniques as the more you practice, the easier these

will become.

Creating Vector Shapes- Week 2 Assignment 1