Wave Pattern in Adobe Illustrator - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. Graphic Design for Lunch Wave Pattern Introduction: Hello. I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this episode of Graphic Design for Lunch, make a wave pattern in Adobe Illustrator. Graphic design for Lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're going to create a wave pattern and it looks like it should be simple. But there's a few tricks to making this pattern and I think that you want to learn hips along the way, as well as ending up with a really cool pattern at the end of it. Now I'm going to show you how to do this in all versions of Illustrator, so even if you're using Illustrator CS5 and earlier, you're going to learn how to do this. As you're watching the videos, you're going to see a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class, do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs up and secondly, write in just a few words why you're enjoying the class. These recommendations help other students to say that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave a comment or a question, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. If you're ready now, let's get started making a wave pattern in Illustrator. 2. Pt 1 - Draw the Wave Shape: For our wave, we're going to choose "File" and then "New" and I'm going to create a document 800 pixels by 800 pixels in size. I'm going to the Pencil Tool, which is at toolbar position with the new Shaper Tool. If I double-click on the Pencil Tool, I can set my options. I'm setting Fidelity to this higher value here, not all the way to Smooth, but just nearly there. In older versions of Illustrator, Fidelity around about the middle and smoothness around about 60 percent. You just got two sliders now we've only got one. I'll click "OK". Now we're going to draw some waves and you're just going to draw these freehand, I'm doing it with the mouse. You're going to want to draw more than one wave and you need to turn the inner critic off because they're going to look terrible, but they're going to look fine once you let go of the Pencil Tool. I'm just going to draw some waves. You want to draw more than one, because the first one's probably not going to be the one you want to use, but you want to give yourself some variety. This one looks really good. I'm really pleased with that. Going to the Scissors Tool here, which shares the toolbar position with the Eraser Tool, then cut this one off, and I'm going to cut this one off about here. You want to cut enough off that you get rid of excess, but you also want to be able to create an entire wave form, this is going to join up in a minute with itself. So I'm just going to select and delete this, and select and delete this, and what these two are going to do is join up. I'm going to Alt drag a duplicate out of the way. Let's look at this. I think this is about how I'm going to position them. If you want to adjust this before you create your shape, you can do so. So I'm just going to zoom in here for, let me just check here. I've got a couple of anchor points. I actually want to get rid of one of them. So I'm going to the Delete Anchor Point Tool. I'm going to get rid of this one, because I think it's not helping me. I'm going to select this one, I'm just going to reshape it slightly. Now let's go back out and test this again. Alt, drag a duplicate. Make sure that they're aligned to the top. Then we can have a more critical look of what we've got, and I think this is a better result. So it's going to take this one and just move it into position because ultimately, I want to join this in this place. Now, if you ever think that you've knocked these out of alignment, you want to go and check your alignment before you progress any further. Now we're going to the Scissors Tool, and what I want to do is to join these two shapes together. I'm going to take a piece out of the front of this shape. So I'm just going to zoom in here to pick up this shape here so I can see where it ends, and then I need to click on "Select" this shape, and I need to cut it at that exact same point, well, as close as I can get to it. So I'm just going to make sure that I'm only cutting this top line. Then select this path and press "Delete". So I've got to join and it's not perfect, but you wouldn't expect it to be perfect at this stage. Let's go to the join place and let's see if we can make it a little bit better. I'm going to select over this anchor point here, and I want to read off from the toolbar here, its x and y values, cause I want to put this anchor point in exactly the same place. I'm going to take its x value, just copy it with Control or Command-C. I'm going to click on this one. Make sure I have the anchor points selected and paste the value in with Control or Command-V. Going back here, and I'm going to select and copy its y value. Go back to this one and paste in the y value. Now these two anchor points are in the exact same position. What I want to do is I want to adjust this one here because I'm working on this line, let me just explain. This one here is this space over here, so you don't want to be editing this one because you've already isolated this one and said, "This is the one we want to change." Well, all the changes we make and all the cuts we make have to be to this shape. This one's just sitting here as a reference, it's just giving us an idea as to what we need to attach to in future. So when I zoom in here and when I want to make a change to these anchor points here, the only one I want to change is this one up here. I'm just going to swing this anchor point around to smooth this line. It's a bit smooth through this transition. If I think there's a problem up here, then I can smooth this out. But I'm thinking this is looking pretty good. Come back out. I can't see a transition point. I can't see that there's anything here that I need to worry about. This is a really nice wave shape. But all the work I've done so far has been to this one. This one has not altered at all, so I'm going to select it and delete it. Now I'm going to Alt drag a duplicate away because this time, these two should fit perfectly together. Just check their alignment. There's my wave shape. So you want to test it at this point. So now I have my wave shape and I'm ready to go ahead and to create the paste that I'm going to use for my pattern, and I'm also going to color it. 3. Pt 2 - Make and Color a Wave: Now we've got our basic wave shape, we need to make it into a piece that can be our pattern. So I'm going to select on the Pen Tool, and I want to show you what not to do first of all. What I'm going to do is I'm going to build up a piece that goes beneath this shape. This is what I don't want you to do is don't start with this anchor point here because it's too hard to pick up this one here. You don't get any smart guides that help you with the positioning of that anchor point. I'm just going to undo this, and now I'm going to go and start here. I'm going to click here. Now I'm going to hold the Shift key as I drag down. Hold the Shift key as I go across here, but as I move, you'll see that I'll pick up with the smart guide where that other anchor point is, so I wanted to say that click and then click. Now I've got a shape below my wave that's perfectly square, so all the bottom part of this is nice and square and it's going to form my pattern really easily. I'm just going to flip over my fill and stroke so I have a filled shape. Now if I were to create a pattern from this, I'm just going to get a big black blob because there is no color gradation. So we're going to fill this with a gradient. I'm going to the Swatches panel, I'm going to click the Flyout menu, choose ''Open Swatch Library'', "Gradients", and I'm going to click on "Water". There are some water gradients here that we can borrow, and there's a couple of really nice ones. So lets just grab our shape and let's just try these gradients. I like this one here, so I'm going to use it. But the problem with it is if I drag my shape out of the way and just line these up, you can see that the gradient is forming a visible join and we don't want that to be the case. So with that shape selected, we're going to the gradient editor and we're going to flip this gradient around to minus 90, which puts the lighter color at the top, the darker color at the bottom. Now, when I join these two together, you'll see I'll get a seamless transition. That's what we're going to do there. We now have the pattern piece colored and ready to go. Now at this point, if you're using Illustrator CS5 or CS4, then you're going to need to assemble a pattern manually. I'm going to show you how to do that, but not in the next video, but the one after. So skip a video if you're using Illustrator CS5 or CS4. If you're using Illustrator CS6 or CC, the next video is where we're going to put this pattern piece together. 4. Pt 3 - Make the Pattern in CS6 and CC: So now if you're using Illustrator CS6 or CC, select your shape, choose object, pattern, make. If you don't have this tool, you're not using those versions of Illustrator, so go ahead to the next video. Click "Okay". In the pattern options dialogue, you want to deselect this so you don't want it to be locked, you want it to be unlocked. You're going to start winding in the width because you need to bring these shapes closer together. So I'm going to just press the Shift down arrow key until I get close and then just the down arrow key until they join up. Then I'm going to bring the height down. So I'm going to decrease that value until I get something that looks like this. The problem with this is that the patterns are overlapping the wrong way. So if we click here on bottom in front, then the pattern's going to overlap the correct way and we're going to be able to see our wave form. I'm going to choose from the tile type list, I'm going to choose brick by row and I'm going to set the brick offset to one-half. That just offsets the shapes from each other, at which point I'm thinking that my waves are way too far apart. So I'm going to start reducing the height until I get something that I like better. I'm going to select the zoom tool. I'm going to zoom in here because I just want to make sure that everything is joined together nicely. So I'm not seeing any seams at this point, if I see seams, that's going to be disastrous. Not really happy with that up there, little bit concerned that I have a seam and it's on the width. So I've got a width of 159 for my pattern piece. If I take it to 158, the seam goes but I get a slight problem here with my shapes. I'm going to make it 158.5, and this time I get a smooth shape here, but I've lost that visible seam, so you might need to be adjusting these. You might need to adjust it to 0.25 of a pixel, just be aware that you need to get rid of those seams. If you see them now, you're going to be in trouble later on. So once you've got that, just click "Done". Control or Command zero to zoom back out, move my piece out of the way, go and make a rectangle the size of the art board, which is 800 by 800 pixels. Click "Okay". I need to align it to the art board. So I'm going to set my show options to align to art board and I'm going to align it to the top and center of the art board. With fill selected and targeted, I'm going to fill it with my new pattern. I've got typical Adobe Illustrator fracture lines everywhere. Object, transform, scale. Turn on preview, disable transform objects and start adjusting this. Now, if my fracture lines disappear or move around, then they're not in the pattern piece. They're caused by Illustrator being unable to render the pattern correctly. So I just want to find a value that's going to give you a pattern piece without lines or choose edit, preferences, general, and disable anti-aliased artwork. On a Mac that's Illustrator, preferences, general and that same tool. So there is our wave pattern created in Illustrator CS6 and CC. I'm going to go and do this in earlier versions of Illustrator in the next video, and then we're going to wrap up the project. Then in the final bonus video, I'm going to go and do this wave thing again because it can be a little bit tricky. If you want another look at how it's done, I'm going to do that in the last bonus video for you. 5. Pt 4 - Make the Pattern CS5 and earlier: Now, if you're working in Illustrator CS5 or CS4, this is how we're going to create the pattern because we're going to have to do it manually. I'm going to Alt drag two more copies of this original pattern pays out of the way. I'm going to align them up, so I'm just going to nudge them into position. I've got a slight problem here in that they're not lining up perfectly. If I nudge them over a full pixel, it's probably just a little bit too much. If I just check up here, you'll see I've got a slight dent here. A full pixel is too much and taking it the other way, is not quite enough. What I need to do, is to subtract half a pixel from this shape's x value. Here's its x value, and I need to remove half a pixel from this. I'm going to change the 0.2 to 0.7 and just alter this number, and we've got a half a pixel movement, and that's looking pretty good. I'm happy with that. You may need to adjust these half or even a quarter of a pixel just to get them nicely lined up. See how this looks a little bit too much. Again, I'm going to take it out here and then subtract half a pixel from its x-value. If you take it oversight overlap slightly, then you can just add half a pixel. Its whatever's easier to you. Actually I'm going to add half a pixel. I think that was too much, so I need to take a little bit off. That's looking pretty good. Control or Command 0. This is what my wave form is going to look like, I'm going to select over all of those and choose object group. I'm going to drag away four more copies. So Alt drag, Alt drag, Alt drag, Alt drag, and I've done this in a zigzag for a really good reason. These middle pieces, I want to just tack over on this side, and I want to go for each alternative one here. I'm going to select these three here, and I'm going to line them up so their left edges all align with the art board. With these two shapes, we need to position them so they're offset from these, and there's a simple mathematical way to do it. What we're going to do is, we're going to select over this top group, and we're going to read its width. Its width is 522.273. I'm going to copy that to the clipboard by just selecting it and pressing Control or Command. Say, now I'm going to open a calculator. I'm going to paste that value in here, and I'm going to divide it by six because I've got three shapes here, and I want to find out what the midpoint of one of these is. If I divide by six, I'm going to get the value and I'm going to copy that value. Now, I'm going back to these two shapes here, the groups of shapes, and I'm going to set their x-value to whatever it is that just came out of that calculator. I'm going to select it, paste it, and press Enter. These shapes are now perfectly arranged in terms of their horizontal alignment for my pattern. But the vertical alignment, is not correct yet, so I'm going to select either all of them. What I want to do, is to vertically distribute their center. But if I click that now, look what happens, I don't necessarily want that to be the case. I'm going to press Control or Command Z. I'm going to my alignment panel, and in the show options, I want to align to selection not to art board. Now when I go and distribute their centers, they're just going to be rearranged within the organization that they already have. This is an error I'm looking at to see how my pattern looks. If you think your pattern is too wide apart, then just grab this bottom collection of shapes and move it up. Just making sure that it is perfectly aligned at zero on the x-axis because it has to be along the edge of the art board. Now select everything and go and do this distribute again. Because when you select to distribute the centers, Illustrator keeps this one and this one in place and just rearrange as all of the others in the middle. So you can make them more squeezed up or more further apart by how far you move down one of these shapes, this one or move this one up, and that will affect the whole arrangement. Again, I'm just going to check this, it's out here. I'm going to select either all of these shapes and adjust their vertical distribute center. Now before I lay this, I'm going to double check that all of these are nicely aligned because what we need to do next, is to create our pattern. I've got a slight problem here, it looks like these two shapes, are not aligned with each other. I'm going to select these two sets of shapes, I'm going to align to a key object, I'm going to click on this one to make it the key object, and now I'm just going to click here on the alignment. I think it was out. To create our pattern, we need to go and create a no fill no strike rectangle that is the size of our pattern space. I'm going to select the Rectangle Tool, I'm going to make this no fill and no stroke, I'm going to now crate a rectangle that starts here and goes across to here, which is the next time that I see this pattern pace. I'm going to go down until I find it again here and then across here. So this is going to be my rectangle. This will create my pattern. I'm going to zoom in and make sure that these are nicely positioned. Let's make sure that they're perfectly snapping into these places. That looks pretty good to me. I need to move my no fill, no stroke rectangle behind everything else which I'm going to do now in the layers palette. Just pick it up and drop it at the very back. Select everything, and drag and drop it into the swatches panel. Control or Command 0 to zoom back out. Now, I've probably created more shapes than I needed, but there's nothing more frustrating than going and lining everything and getting it all right, and realizing you don't have enough shapes. Let's try to on the side of caution when I'm creating my patterns manually to make sure I've got plenty of elements to work with. I'm creating a rectangle the size of the art board. I'm going to align everything to the art board and center it on the art board. Going to target its fill and go and fill it with my new pattern. I've got lines everywhere, but I'm pretty sure that these are just going to be illustrators fracture lines. So turn transform off, turn preview on, and just adjust the size, and just make sure that these lines are moving around and they're not stationary. If they're stationary, there are problems in the pattern itself, but these are just to illustrate a fracture lines. If you can't get rid of them and you do want to get rid of them, then you can choose Edit, Preference is general and just turn off anti-aliasing artwork. That will give you nice clean artwork. You can also do that by choosing Illustrator Preferences General if you're on a Mac. There is our Pattern paste created in Illustrator Size 5, Size 4 and earlier versions. Now, in the next video, we're going to wrap up the class with your project. In the final bonus video, I'm going to go back and recreate this wave form for you. I know this is a little bit difficult, and so I'm going to do it again just so that you can get a second look at how it's done. 6. Project and Wrapup: Your project for this class is going to be to go ahead and create your own wave pattern. Create it and fill a shape with it and then post the shape as your class project. I hope that you've enjoyed this class and that you've learned heaps about creating patterns like this in Illustrator, where you're joining shapes together to get something nice and even. As you're watching these videos, you will have seen a prompt that lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you enjoyed the class, do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs up, and secondly, write in just a few words why you're enjoying the class. These recommendations help other students to say that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave a comment or a question, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions, and look at and respond to all of your class projects. My name's Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Graphic Design for Lunch, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon. 7. Bonus Video - Another Wave Created: Welcome to the bonus video. In this bonus video, I'm just going to remake one of these waves just so you can get a second look at doing it. So I've already drawn out my lines, I'm going to my scissors tool, I'm going to use this wave because it's a little bit flatter. I'm liking the look of that. Then cut away this one and cut away this one, really generous with my cuts here, I'm going to the selection tool and select the bits that I don't want and just get rid of them. Now I'm going to alt or option drag a duplicate of this shape away and just join them up so I can see how they're going to work together. Again, just lining them up making sure I'm aligning to the selection, making sure that their tops are aligned because that's how I'm sure that they're going to be on the same plane later on. Let's just move this one out and see where we get a nice transition. Well, that's a nice tight transition, nice tight waves here. Let's have a look and see what we're going to do. I'm going to work on the forward shape this time. So what I want to do is to cut it at this point. I'm going to zoom in so I can see it nice and closely. Select this top line because it's the one I want to cut, go to the scissors tool and I want to cut it just level with this bottom line. So I'm just going to cut it there and then I'm going to go back out, let's select the pace that we want to get rid off and just press Delete. Now we need to join these together. But because I cut this forward line last time, this is the point that I have to adjust, this one here. This back line, leaving it entirely as it is because it has to stay correct because it's actually this line here. So if we want the pattern to line up, we have to be working continually on this shape now now that we've cut it into a piece. So let's just zoom in and let's find a spot for these anchor points. I'm going to click on this anchor point, read its X value. Go to this one, because this is the one I want to adjust and paste in the X value. Go to this one, and find its Y value. Go to this one, select it and paste in the Y value from the previous one. Now, I want to zoom out just a little bit. Go to my direct selection tool, and I'm just going to check and see how these handles look. In fact, I'm going to zoom out a little bit further as well. Now, I can't touch this one, if I touch this one I'm just wrecking the whole process. So the only one I can touch is this one up here and I just want to make it look a little bit more like a tangent so that the lines are just going to line up a little bit better. That looks just great. Let's have a look at the shape. The shape is perfect, this is awesome. So I'm going to select over this piece because this is a piece that I didn't touch. This is the one that I just worked on really a lot. This is the one I didn't touch at all, I'm going to delete it. Now I've got a different shape this time, the shape that I'm going to have for my patent piece is going to be completely different, that's just fine. I've also got my anchor points that I'm going to join up away outside here, so I don't have to worry about which one I'm going to select first. These are just going to vary from wave to wave. You're going to have different results each time. So just select that, invert the shape, go and fill it with my gradient, swing the gradient round to minus 90, double-check it to make sure it works and then go ahead and create my pattern, whether we're creating it in Illustrator say it's five or say it's four, which is doing it manually or here in Illustrator say it's eight, or say a six where we're going to use the pattern make tool.