Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi everyone and welcome to our class where we'll be making a retro style travel post-doc using Adobe Illustrator. My name is Karen, and I've been a freelance graphic designer and illustrator for the past ten years. I run Moon Dog design and illustration here in New Zealand. And I have an advanced diploma or associate degree in graphic design and advertising. For this class, you will need your computer of choice. Mine is a MacBook Pro, and you will definitely need Adobe Illustrator. So don't worry about the version of Adobe Illustrator. It doesn't make much difference. I'm easing see S6 for this class and practically the same program. And apart from Creative Cloud has a few extra features which we won't really be using anyway during this class. So don't worry about your vision. I've also use one of these as I guard, which is a webcam or wife him tablet. But you don't have to have one of those either you can use your mass or just your head. For many years, all I used was the trackpad on my MacBook is a ridiculously small area. So I'm not sure how I managed to get any work done. But the great thing is that you just adapt to whatever you have at hand. By the end of the class, you should have a good understanding of the steps you need to take to create retro looking where a lot of the time you can create your own rules, just make them up as we go along. But I also follow a process which is basically the same for every project that I undertake. The benefits are following a process that your work at the end of the day just looks more polished. It's more well-informed and you just get better results for all your efforts. This is the type of work I've created using the same process that I'll be going through during this class. So by the end of it, hopefully you can create something similar or something even better. So I hit on IVIG, the project and resources area. I've created a guide which just describes the process step by step in a little bit more detail. So this'll be a great resource further down the road. You can just refer to it in your own time. If you're a beginner, I'd recommend just using the resources that I've included for the poster that I created. And you can follow along with the videos and just recreate that same post stuff. I've included the color palette that I used for mind. You can grab that pellet or even create your own. I can't wait to see what you come up with. If you feel like you're not a really good artists or Dora, but don't worry because we will be working from reference photos throughout this class. Okay, so I think that's about it. Let's jump in.
2. Idea Development: So very first thing I usually do is to grab a blank piece of paper and a pencil and just write down all the ideas that I can think of without being influenced by anything I've seen. I like to do this step away from the computer because on computer, I just find that I try and make things look too perfect. And it just keeps everything loose and spontaneous. Okay? So I know that we've got a clear idea of where we're headed will help onto Google and look for inspiration. This is where you find images that communicate the color or the field that you want. And also, I find Pinterest or a really good resource for gathering images together and finding really great RT images. And I'm just saving the ones that I like and putting them into a new board. There's quite a few on there. At the end of this process, I have a new board with all the images that I found. And these have given me a few really good ideas like putting the Aurora in, which I didn't think of in my brainstorm and making it that night, I really liked that idea. So I'm going to take these images that I like and simply click on it, copy the image, and paste it onto a file that I've named. My mood board file. Yeah, and these are just images that I really liked the color. And I think I want to sort of capture a similar feel with my poster. Maybe that k1, k1 looks pretty good. I like the reflections in the water. And we want to get the same sort of reflections behind my penguins. So this is the mood board that I've ended up with. As you can see, there's a variety of different images, but they all have the same sort of feel, similar colors that I'd like to recreate with my poster. And I really liked this central image of the Penguin family. I think that would make a really great hero sort of element. So step three, once you've got your mood boards together, you're going to gather apps and images and UNSW fleshes a great resource for getting royalty-free or, or free to use images. And I'm just going to type in Antarctica Penguin because I'm looking for my here, our image here. That's the first thing I want to sort of nail down. A lot of stuff that was almost what I want, but not really sort of want to penguin family. So maybe I should go in and refine that search a little bit. It's nothing really in here that is a family. Yes. So if you're not finding what you want going in to refine your search. And I'm going in here, putting a family. Still sort of not laughter yet. So I've got some other sites here. And you can Google a list of free photo sites. There's quite a few, probably too many to name here. And that one didn't come out very good. So Pixabay and practica, penguin family and yeah, illustration, there's sort of more what I'm looking for, but we can't copy an illustration. And while I don't like to is not good practice to copy, even though these are free. Go into pixels in emperor penguin. Right there. That's the one. That's sort of what I'm looking for. So we will download that one. And that's my hero image. So I now I'm looking for the background image or images that I'm going to use. And I'm looking for are really good framing. So the iceberg, that one stands out. So down like that. That will have a bit more of a look just to make sure that one looks good to you. Just want some good imposing. So Clippy. So put in the background as per my sum now. Yeah, and I usually spend quite a long time on this process just making sure I got the paste images that I can. Once I think I've got enough, we'll look for the other element in the composition, which is my Southern lights in there, hasn't really come up with much. So let's put the correct name in. Aurora Australis. Yeah, that's what I want. And I'm really interested in getting these greens and the reds in there as well. But I want sort of very Rimini, Yeah, like that. That one is very good. I want that Rimini effect to try and capture that when I do everything up in Illustrator. Yet we'll grab that one. Now this last step might seem a bit unnecessary, but I find that it really helps to stepwise from the computer again and just refocus on the direction of my composition. And just get a really clear idea of what I want it to look like.
3. Illustrator Setup: Okay, so I've made a new folder here. Just call your folder whatever you'd like. And I've put the reference images in a folder called reference. So what we can say is jumping into Illustrator and create a new app. And I'm going to call it Antarctica, red cherry. Keep everything really consistent. That's the key. I'll set it up for a print print profile. And the size that I like to work in is i3. But for those of you in the US or other parts of the world, the size translate sort of inter tabloid. And I'm going to sit that at five millimeter blade. Usually that's the most amount of blade that anyone uses. A lot of people use three millimeter blade, but I like to just sit it at the greatest I'd be likely to use. So here's my new file. I've got one Laius I thought. So I'm going to put place my image. And you scroll down to File Place. And I'm going to just put the background image on to that first layer. And I'll just re-size that. 207 or 33 are seven. With the blade and the Nikki hit 0 on the x. A year, I forgot to do the y. So I'll just drag that down and price it roughly where I want it. And then we make a new layer. And I'll put that iceberg in there. Once again resizing to the art board. But she has three 07. And then if you hit 0 on the x and also 0 on the y, it will come down onto your upward. Just saves you having to look for it. Often that gray space. Yeah, I'll just place that roughly again where I want to make a new layer. And this time you're placing your third image, in my case, the hero image or Hero Element. Oh, that penguin family. Hitting 0 on x and y come, brings it down onto your upward. And then we'll just roughly put it where we want to. And that's as much as you really need to worry about the positioning at this stage. I'm going to go in and sit all my images as templates and then create a new layer. I'm gonna name my layers because that's really good practice. It just saves you having to look for things in the future. It's good to have everything in a group or on the same layer. Yeah, I think when I spoke backgrounds, we have layer four and I'm gonna place my mood board into here. Just as a reference to have, I'm making everything up in Illustrator. We've just got a mood board via two look at constant reminder of your mood. So what I'm doing now is just create a square shape. And I'm just going to pull the colors that I want out of my mood board. And the reason I do this, so very handy later on when you come to change the colors. If you use a limited palette? Yes, just makes all the difference. Later on, you're not working with 400 different colors that you pick randomly from a, from a picture. It might seem like a bit of a waste of time at this stage to do that, but believe me, it's so good later on just to have that limited color selection. And you can change these later on. You might find that you need different colors or more colors. As you go through each one of your elements. Nothing that you do now is set in stone. You can, you're the boss. You can make it however you like. And it's all about time-saving later on and making it easy on yourself. So I just align them to make them look good cars on a little bit of a perfectionist. And then we've got a nice color palette to work from. And I should also add, I've put them horizontally here, but I find them actually easier to work with while your drawing, if you put them vertically stacked on top of each other. So now I am pulling out the colors for my penguins just from this image of the penguins. Sometimes this process takes awhile. So just take your time and make sure that you've got colors that work well together that compliment each other. Yeah, as I said, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so usually I take far too long on this stage. Everything you can get right in the beginning stages saves time. Later on. I'm gonna name this layer pellet. And so, so I got the mood board on it. So locked layer make up a new layer. And this one will be our drawing layer. So once we're happy with all our colors, we're just gonna select them all and go up to the color kennel and just click on Add selected colors. And there we find them in our colour panel. Have it. So then I'm going to say this and we are ready to move on to the next stage.
4. Hero: Also, finally, we're onto the Crocker drawing padded things. So I'm gonna make sure that all those layers are locked. And I'm gonna turn off everything except for my penguins template. And move that to where I want it roughly in the middle of the drawing. And then I'm going to grab the pen tool. And what you wanna do, zoom right in so you get a nice view of what you're doing. And then we're just gonna go in, put in nq points and create some victors. Try and be as accurate as possible. You're placing that anchor point and holding those little handles to where you wanna go. You placing anchor points sort of right before the curve starts to change. That's the best way I can describe it. And if you're working with your drawing tablet, this will be a little bit easier. But for many years, I just worked with the track pad doing this. And I still have that score got muscle memory, which is great. Because I can take my computer wherever without taking my drawing tablet. Yes, so we just carefully go along the outlines of this. Doesn't really matter what color you choose at this stage. Just make sure it's outline rather than fill. And you want your stroke to be pretty small. This one here is 0.25, I think the smallest that you can do. And we just carefully outlining the ages of the shape. There's two shapes together like the Penguin in the little chick. I'd just like to do the whole lot together. And you'll see why in a minute. And if you're not happy with any of your pictures, you can just go in with that little white select at all or direct selection. And move them around until you're happy with where things are. Graduate pin tool again. And just do that with the old elements. That you are wanting to draw all my penguins. I'm just going to outline in the same way. Now the reason I use the pen tool and not the blog brush is at Pinto is much more accurate. When you're doing shapes. You can adjust the settings of the blob brush, but I find that just doesn't get that correct image. You've got much more control with the pin tool, especially when doing these retro style posters. If you're doing something that's stylized in, that's a different story. Really take your time with this to get it to get an accurate. By the end of it, you'll be seeing victors all around you. So I'm going to fill those and just check that I liked the look of it. If there's something that you don't like the look of. I found this nifty little tool called the snow tool, which for many years I had no idea it existed. But as you can see, that's a great tool just for taking out any, any harsh edges. So I'm pretty happy with that. I'm going to go get a new layer. I'll just make a copy by holding down option and make it copy there on that layer. And I'm going to grab the pencil to all go back to my drawing layer. And I'm going to just define all the different tones and the shapes inside this penguin here. Sometimes it can be quite hard to differentiate some tones from others. So I find a really good trick is to just close one eye and I can see them a little bit better. That's a problem with the pencil tool is if you lifted off the page, it's gonna create a new line rather than continuing the one you've just put down. So you have to go into those and just press command and j to join the two anchor points together and create a continuous shape. And the reason why I use the pencil tool and not the painting tool for this is I just find it a little bit quicker, especially for those of you using a drawing tablet. It's just a lot quicker and easier than the Pen tool for this, but it is not that accurate sometimes. So I don't like to use it for my main outlines. So we're just going to go into the Pathfinder and divide. Make sure first that oil lines that you've just drawn are all selected. I press Shift Command and G to ungroup. And I just kept everything selected, grabbed the drop at all, and choose a color for one of the parts of the illustration. So in this case I'm just choosing the color for the penguins chest and body. Then I press Shift and click on that part that I want the color in. So I de-select it. And we will move on to the next part. So one by one, I just continue that process into we've got a color in each of the parts. If you're creating man-made structure like a plane or a ship, I find the Pen tool a lot more useful to do these inside shapes or component shapes. Because the pencil tool doesn't do very straight lines unless you're a really good with it. I find I can't really draw a straight line at the base two times. And you might find sometimes that a gradient would work better. So I'm going to try and create a gradient here. In my retro work, I don't like to use a lot of gradients because I find that they can look very computerize. Which isn't the look that I want to go for. A lot of the original travel posters were painted with poster paint. So the colors were generally quite flat. So if you are going to use gradients, just remember to use them sparingly. And what I'm doing now is just creating that speckled sort of effect that we're seeing on the feathers. So I am going to grab the blog brush tool and just create a couple of the faith or feather speckles. That way saying, I'll grab these three. Can go up to your brush panel or your Stroke panel, and you make him a new scattered brush. And this just allows you to do all of these tiny shapes in way less time. Saying what you can do also, I don't really use this very much, but underneath the colour panel, you've got news three little squares with the Circle and Rectangle inside. And the one on the far right is to draw inside. If you click on that day, select, Choose your brush tool and draw strokes. It will confine all of those strokes inside that shape. I never really used this very much, but it's a pretty cool TO just always remember before we finish up to expand the appearance. Otherwise things can go a bit wonky when you're resizing. So I'm just going in and choosing different opacity levels. And hopefully this will give the effect that I want. And just connect R3 and Kate using the pencil TO, to define all the different colors and shapes. Tremor. So we are numerous. Rubber or Herbert, Herbert capability or Berber capability. Why not? Ask? So by the time you've drawn or your shapes and put separate colors in them and edit your gradients. And any cool effects that you are putting in, you should have something that looks raised them all. And we'll move on to the other parts of the composition.
5. Sidekick: Okay, so now we've got our main element or drawn up. We're going to focus on the next part of the compensation, which remains the iceberg. And I like to say it as sort of like a sidekick to your hero element. It's got a support. Then frame them but not be better than them or not take the AoA. I'm not going to be too detailed with this one. And just get the basic light and shade. And we'll just do exactly the same thing as we did for the penguins. Just outline the main shape first and then going to define those different tones. And go into each of those inner shapes we make and add detail as we go. I decided that I didn't like the colors. So I've gone and grabs the colors from the image over here and just filled H of those shapes. And that's looking a lot better to me. If you find that you don't like HE colors. Just go back to that stick of pulling colors with the eye dropper from your ordinary bullet. You you you. And to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to to, to to, to to do this is to do with it. Why do you need, in order for you to know why you need to move on or off the earth in this case. Okay. Sorry, after all that, I am going to work now on creating the reflection in the water. Which is pretty crucial ticket, right? Because it's obvious if you don't get this right. So I've just grouped the whole iceberg together and I go up to object, transform, reflect. And I do a horizontal reflect, and then I make a copy. And it's given me a copy right on top of that, Allen. And I'm just going to drag that down into roughly the right spot. And you can make your poster as detailed or as simple as you like. I just prefer to work with a bit of detail, which does take a lot of time. So I'm just gonna put a free distort on here. So it sort of looks like it's being pulled away or distorted by the water. I've just adjusted the opacity. And I'm referring to the reflection in the picture that I've got my reference image. Just to make sure that this looks okay. And I'm gonna get rid of those gaps there. Just by going in and altering the little anchor points with the direct selection tool. And that should help me cover it finds gaps. So once I've got that in place and everything is working, okay, I'm going to make the water and can say their affliction looks pretty good. And then go on to create the foregrounds. The learn, learn, learn. Mm-hm.
6. Background: Casey, Now that we've got all our main elements, I want to capture this background. And I should also point out I've got eight elements. The hero when the penguins on a separate line and auspicious on a separate line. And my drawing, liars old CLIA. So I just want to outline the shapes. In the Aurora. Disobeyed the main part of my background. Okay. Yeah.
7. Finetuning: So now I hope that you're really proud of what you've been able to draw all the elements you've made. But now it's time to just have a little bit of a play around and move things around and re-scale. Just to make it more friendly to the eye. You really want your hero element to stand out. Here. I've tried to flip the iceberg around, but I'm trying to really just get that cave or shadow area and you could spot so it's not jarring to the eye. And I've moved the horizon down a little bit. But when you do move things around, you need to keep in mind all your fixed that you've made. Like I have to redo this reflection. Yes. So your poster, just have a good play around. Resize, rescale, move things until you're happy. And it's really looking good. It helps sometimes to get a second opinion on this. Because often you'll be so-called up creating it that you might see something that's quite obvious to somebody else. For this one, I decided I wasn't happy with the feathers and that speckled effect, so I've just taken them off and created a new brush, one that's a bit rounder. And I've redone all of those little affects. The faders. Once again, changing the opacity just to give the illusion of depth. So if there's something you're not happy with in your pasta, don't be afraid to go back in and change it. If you doing it for a client, of course, you need to keep in mind the time that you spinning.
8. Retro-fying: Okay, so in between videos, I've just gone in and changed the angle of that Aurora. So it looks a little bit data. And now we're up to the part where we add a little bit of a rich utrification. So to make something retro, fonts and especially the colors play a huge part, is the difference between something being a good poster and something really standing out as retro. So I'm gonna go back into Pinterest and we're going to find a few posters that I liked the look of the text. And I just go in and I take a screenshot or a partial screen shot of the actual text. And I like to use this tool that's on font Squirrel, which is the font identifier. And you just upload that screenshot that you took. And it will come up with fonts that look similar. At the moment. I'm just sort of looking for free fonts that I can use. Because especially if you're doing this just for yourself, you don't want to shell out a heap of money on font licenses. And there's a lot of really good free fonts out there. If you really want that polished sorta look, if you're doing it for a client and it might be a good idea to get a pike Vaughn and pay for a license. But for learning purposes, Free Fonts should be fine. But sometimes it takes a little while to find the exact sort of look you're after. So what I'm gonna do is go into font Squirrel and just have a look at the retro style fonts. And there's quite a few free ones on here that aren't too bad. I'd like to look at the ICA font there. So I'm going to download that. And that's taken me to font spring. And Norman, it's free, which is great. So can grab that one. And you just want to check either the license, the type of license that it is. Always make sure you have a look at that. So download that font. And once it is downloaded, you will need to just shut down illustrator. You find where your thoughts are downloaded, unzipped them, and then go into your applications and open up Font Book. Forgot to file, add fonts. You should be able to navigate to where your font is in the downloads. And sometimes it will come up with an error message. So that's up to you whether or not you want to go ahead. Sometimes some of these free fonts can be a little bit glitchy. So I went south fonts, added to our font book. That's when we can re-open illustrate a endo working file and we get to play with the text. This step can take quite a long time. That's how I sort of liked to narrow down the fonts beforehand. Because if you just go through your system trying different fonts, that can take a really long time. Yes. So that's the ICC if lump that I've downloaded. And you can say that it's looking quite retro. I'm thinking of water around, it will work better. So I'm just making a border with the two shapes and the Pathfinder tool. And pumping it under there. After having a look at it, just moves the penguins so that they look a little bit beta. The next part of things is choosing some retro colors. So I've gone back into Pinterest and grabbed a couple of images that have colors that I like. And I'm just going to re-do my color palette to match those. Keeping in mind which colors I'm gonna need for h of my elements in my composition. So that we have some penguin colors. Recolor the Osberg as well. Because I just think that at this stage they don't look quite retro enough. All my colors. And of course, save it. Save your progress as you go. Right? So I am going in and one-by-one, I'm changing the colors in that Osberg to match my new pellet. And to do this, you can grab the entire thing and Ungroup. And just one-by-one. Select H pot. And then you go up to select same color fill. And it will grab every part of that iceberg with the same color. And you can quickly change all of those colors. You can go into re-color artwork that I've used this before, and I find that you don't quite have as much control over what color's going to what area. So that's why I like to do it this way. Also using gradients. That's why I don't use a heap of gradients cuz I do take quite a long time to go in and change the colors afterwards. And I've kept back ground pretty much the same. Because I don't think needs much changing at this stage. But you'll probably need to just play around because sometimes you have to do it before you can tell whether it's going to work on up. So now I'm moving either the colors for the penguins and I'm going to change those penguins. Two more. Right? Retro. Look. Just going through again and using Select Same color. Take grad paces, sweat the same color in them and change them quickly. Okay, so I've added a couple of changes for final. I've put in the Southern Cross in starry sky. And I've also added a few paces of flourishing ice. I like to always make a copy with final in front of it and with only the outward gliders. So none of the mood board or template images will tell it. And you can see I've got everything divided into layers. I haven't named Philae is though, at the end of the day, just do what's easy for you when you're working on it. It's great to name IS, But I haven't done that for this one. So exporting, I like to export as an RGB for screen resolution 72 PE PI for use on the web. And for print, you need to do CMYK usually and a high resolution 300 ppi. And that's it. We are done.
9. Final Thoughts: And you're done. You've created I retro style traveled pi star using Adobe Illustrator and brush up on your pin tool skills and you'll get some skills and learn some tips and tricks. Hopefully, I've explained my prices really well and thoroughly. But if there's anything you really confused about, please feel free to you for a message and I'll, I'll clear it up for as many digital programs. I've found that the adobe programs have multiple ways of getting to your desired outcome. So my advice is just to experiment as much as you can. And that way you gotta settle on a method that is right. I do things in a particular way because it suits me and you'll find that yourself as well. The more that you experiment. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with. So please make sure to share your project in the project area. And that will help get you feedback from me and other students. It's always really great to see you where and how it can be a little bit daunting sometimes, but but it is always a great way to improve. Yeah, just to share your knowledge with other people. We all learn from each other. So thank you so much for taking this class has been my skills class and has been quite a long arduous experience to make. I'd love to know what you thought about it. So please, if you have time, give me some feedback, go bad. If you have any ideas for any future classes that you might like to see for me, let me know and I'll keep that in mind. So thanks once again for taking this class and I look forward to seeing you next time.
Keren Elizabeth, Illustrator + Designer
