Transcripts
1. Curvy Line Patterns in Illustrator Introduction: Hello and welcome to this class, curvy line patterns
in Adobe Illustrator. My name's Helen Bradley and
I'm a Skillshare top teacher. I have over 270 courses
here on Skillshare and nearly 175,000
student enrollments. In this class, we'll look at some methods for
creating a range of curvy line patterns
in Adobe Illustrator. You'll learn to use
illustrator tools and techniques to create the
curved shapes and learn how to make the shapes
symmetrical so that they can be used to make seamless
repeating patterns. In designing these patterns, we'll ensure that
they can be easily recolored in multiple ways. I'll take you through
making every one of these patterns step by step, and by the end of the class, you'll have the knowledge to
make these designs yourself. You'll also have learned
some handy tips and techniques for working in
Illustrator every day. Without further ado,
let's get started making curvy line patterns
in Adobe Illustrator.
2. Pt 1 Simple wavy line pattern: This wiggly line pattern
is quite simple to make. But it can be the foundation
of a more complex pattern. To create it, I'm going
to create a new file. It doesn't matter what
size your file is. I'm using one that is 1,000
pixels by 1,000 pixels. I have the default
colors set here. You can press this little
icon here to get them. I'm going to the
line segment tool. I'll hold the Shift key
down as I drag out a line. I'm going to increase the stroke weight because
that's going to be the width of the
line in my pattern. Then I'll choose
effect and distort and transform, and then zigzag. Now we're going to
set that to smooth. We're going to set the
ridges per segment to three and then
increase the size. All we're looking for
is half of the design. Ultimately the line is
going to look like this, and then there's going to
be the opposing side here. You're looking to create
as much of a loop here as you think you're
going to need for your design later on. I'm choosing 50 pixels for mine. I'll click "Okay". At the moment we have a line that has an effect
applied to it. We want a line out of this. With it all still selected I'm choosing Object and
Expand Appearance. Now you can see that
we've got a line. Now, I need to cut pieces off this because
I don't need them all. I'm going to the scissors tool. Still have my line selected, I'm going to click here on this anchor point and click
on this anchor point. Now that divides the line. If I go back to the
selection tool here, I can select this
piece and delete it, and this piece and delete it. That just leaves one loop. I'm going to select this loop, rotate it by holding
down the Shift key and rotating it until it's
rotated 90 degrees. I'm going to flip this. I'll choose Object and then
Transform and then Reflect. I'm going to reflect this
across the vertical. I've got the previous set, and I'll click "Copy"
because I want the original and a copy. I'm going to hold
the Shift key down. That's really important as
I move one of these shapes. Now I've lost it, so let
me just do that again. At this point what I'm
looking for is the placement, the separation between
these two shapes here. You can just make that as wide
or as narrow as you like. If you think that
there's any chance at all that you move these
across from the vertical, so if you didn't
use the Shift key, select both shapes and go up here to the align
options and make sure you click on vertical
align top because you need these shapes to
be perfectly aligned. If you don't see the
aligned tools up there, you might see them on
your panel down here. You can also choose
Window and then Align. This is our pattern. Let's go and select these objects and
choose Object, Pattern, Make. I'll click, "Okay". You'll need your
pattern options dialog, I'm just bringing
mine back here. I want this icon to
look like this so that the width and height are
separate from each other. I can adjust them differently. I'm going to increase
the width to make this space in here about the
same as this space here. I'm just going to eyeball this. Then I'm going to make sure that everything is
joining up perfectly. Now I don't like numbers heights that are not whole
numbers of pixels, so I'm just going to make
this the next nearest number, but I will need
to check and make sure that it's joining properly. It does look like it's joining. It would be joining
in these areas. I'm not seeing any gaps at all. If you want to test it, just start increasing
this value and you'll see where the
join is showing up. Let me just turn
off the tile edge, and so if I decrease that
value I'll see where I get the pattern to all line
up and to join up perfectly. I'm done with this. I'm really happy with it
so I'll click "Done". Control or Command
zero to zoom back out. I'll move these shapes
out of the way for now. I'll create a rectangle
that is the size of the art board and obviously just square it up on the art board, and then with the fill selected let's just fill it
with our pattern. Object, Transform, Scale, and we can scale the pattern
but not the shape itself. This is a very simple
but really nice design. It's a good design to add to a pattern collection with the colors that you're using
elsewhere in the pattern. It's a nice little
foundation design. You might even want to
shrink this down quite a bit further than it is here.
3. Pt 2 Simple wavy line pattern enhanced with gradient shapes: In the previous video, we created this
wavy line pattern. That was a fairly
simple pattern to make. We're going to see how we can
build on this basic shape and create something that is
a little bit more detailed. This is the pattern element
that I had previously, but before I do
anything with it, I'm just going to
the transform tool which you can also get to by choosing window and then
transform and in this panel, what I want to do is
to adjust the height because it is not
a whole number. I'm going to make sure that
this icon looks like this, so that I can adjust the height
and not affect the width. I'm just making that a
whole number actually, let's take it up to 460. The width of the
shape at this stage, the combined elements
are 247 by 460. I'm going to take a
duplicate of this. Just hold down the
"Alt" or "Option" key as I drag a duplicate away. I'm going to expand this
into a filled shape. I'm going to choose
"Object" and then "Expand" and then
click "Object", ungroup until ungroup
is no longer an option. I just have two filled shapes that instead of what
I had over here, which was two lines. I'm going to make
a rectangle that is the same height
as these objects. Let me just select
a fill to use, so we'll choose a
different color here. The height of these
objects was 460, so I want my shape to be 460. I also want it to be
wide enough to cover these two elements
and I'm thinking 362, something like that,
it's going to be fine. Let's just move it
across the top of these two elements,
select everything. I have the lines or
the field shapes and the box and then
I'm just going to click here on
vertical aligned top. I want these to be
aligned perfectly. You're also going to
find a line tools potentially on your toolbar here and they're also accessible through
Window and "Align". Having aligned all of these, I'm going to the
shape builder tool, so I'm going to
click here it shares a toolbar position with
the live paint tool. With the shape builder tool, I want to make this shape
as separate shapes. Even though it looks like
it's separate right now, it's not actually separate. You do that by just clicking and dragging briefly
inside this shape. Now I want to join these two, so I'm going to click and
drag across the two of them. That's joined them into a piece there and click and
drag over here. Having done that, I now
have three shapes and so I can remove the two at the
side that I don't want. This shape here is going to fit perfectly in the middle
of these shapes. Don't want it to be there yet, but it would fit. With it selected, what I'm
going to do is to create some elements that go inside here that are directly scaled. I'll choose "Object"
and then "Path", and then "Offset Path
" With my offset path, it's typically set to 10, which is a offset
that is larger than the shape we wanted to
bring it in to be smaller. I'm just going to
start decreasing the value here and what
I'm looking for is when this turns into a
point or near enough to a point and here at an
offset of minus 18, I'm getting nice
pointy elements, so that's all I need. I'll click, "Okay". Now that has created
another shape and it is exactly the same color
as the previous shape, but it's also layered
on top of it. Let's just have a look in the last palette so
you can see if you've not used this tool before,
exactly what's happening. Here was the original shape
and this is the new one here. Let me just change its color. You can see that it's
smaller than the original. Let's just with it selected, go into that again,
"Object path", "Offset path" The value is sticky and we just
want to click "Okay", so let's go and make
this a different color. You can see that we're layering shapes on top of each other and every single one of
these is smaller than the other by the
exact same amount. "Object Path", "Offset Path". Let's do another one and let's
change its color as well [NOISE] Now I can put this back inside
this element over here, and I can make a
pattern out of it. I'll select over it and
choose object pattern make. I'm going to set
this to brick by column and it's
got a half offset. I'm going to make sure that this icon looks
like this so that I can adjust the width and height independently of each other, then start decreasing the width. What I want to do is jam
these pieces together [NOISE] I'm going to zoom in so I can see what's happening because I don't want
it take it too far, but I want to take
it far enough. I'm going to decrease this until things start to break up and you can see
it's breaking up here. I'm just going to increase it. That's looking pretty good here. Let's go to this
value as you can see, it's not a whole number, so I'm going to make
it a whole number. Just going to make
it 460 say 459, 458 if any of those work better. I can vary that slightly. I think that might be
a better result and let's just see how
this is all looking. I'm just going to zoom back
out and check on my pattern. I'm going to set it to more repeats so I can
see things more clearly. Zooming in and out, I'm not seeing any fractures in the pattern of white areas on a pattern and
everything is looking really nicely lined up. This is a pattern, so I'm going to click done. But I'm also going to
make a duplicate of this. I'm just going to
drag and drop it onto the plus sign and I'm going
to double-click on it again. Because inside the
pattern make tool, if I turn on the tile edge, I can do something
with these shapes and what I'm interested in
is this shape here. What I'm going to
do with that is I'm going to fill
it with a gradient. I'm going to click here on
this little libraries option. I'm going to gradients and I'm going to fruits and vegetables because I can find some
colors here that might go reasonably well with
what I have here. Let me just try the
blueberry color. I'm going to the
gradient tool here. I'm going to select a radial gradient and then
the gradient tool over here, gradients are really
confusing because you've got different tools for them. This one allows me to
place my radial gradients. I'm just going to drag
my radial gradient into a position that's going
to suit me to place it. Now if I need to move it, just look for this
little white bar and then you can just move
it into position. You can adjust the colors in it. Right now I'm happy with that. So that is a gradient inside an element,
inside my pattern. I could select this element as well and put a gradient in that. So let's just do that. Let's go and see if we can find an interesting
gradient for that. Again, I'm going to
make it a radial. Again, I'm just going to drag [NOISE] the colors in for
this radial gradient. You could add more variety
into this pattern, but I'm just showing you
what you can do and you can experiment with those
colors yourself. I'll click "Done". Let's go back to our
original document. Let's select this filled
shape and let's have a look and say what our
new patterns look like. So this was the original
one that we created. This is the one that has the
varying colors created using that offset path and then
we have this one that's got those gradient fills in it and of course
this can be altered. You can just click on the
Recolor Artwork dialogue, click on Advanced Options, and then you get access to
the colors in the gradient. If you want to be
able to adjust black, make sure you add
a color in there. If you want to be
able to adjust, this looks like a gray, you will need to add
a color in for that. Go to "Edit" and then
you can adjust it. Here you can see the
harmony colors are linked. If I drag on this, I'm going to change all of
these colors all at once. If I want to change just
an individual color, I'll unlink the harmony
colors and then I'll go and isolate the color I want to change and make changes to it. Wanted to make sure I had
the right color there. I know what I'm doing and then I could change
the color of that. Anytime you get a
color collection that you like click, "Okay", and of course this makes a new pattern in your
patterns dialogue. So the swatches dialogue, this was the one that
we were working on. This is the newly
colored version of it. So just that very simple shape
has allowed us to create a really quite complex
pattern pretty easily.
4. Pt 3 Chain linked lines pattern: This pattern and the
multi-colored version can both be made from
the exact same shapes. We're going to create
this pattern now. Click on "New File" and create a document that's 1,000
pixels by 1,000 pixels, but yours can be any
size that you like. I'm going to the Line tool, I have my default
color set here. I'm going to hold the
"Shift" key as I drag out a perfectly horizontal line. I'm going to increase
the width of it to probably about 12 points. Then I'm going to make it into a wavy line by choosing effect, distort and transform,
and then zig-zag. I'm going to set the ridges
per segment to five. I'm going to set it to smooth. I'm going to increase
the size until I get a nice wavy line for my size
document and my size line, about 35 is going to be perfect. But you do want five
ridges per segment, although the actual size of the effect doesn't
really matter. I'll click "Okay". At the moment, I
have a line that has an effect applied to it. While it's still selected, I'm going to choose
object and then expand appearance because now
I get a wavy line. I'm going to show my
rulers by choosing view and then rulers and go
down to show rulers. We're just going to drag
a ruler or a guide of that ruler line and
position it just below the bottom of
these loops here. I'm going to the
Direct Selection tool that's pretty important
this one here. I'm going to select over
just this anchor point here. It should be blue
and all the others should be white or hollow. I'm going to the Width tool
which you can find with these other liquefy tools
here on the toolbar. With the Width tool, I'm
just going to drag down towards the line I'm going
to use the line as a guide. As I drag down, I'm just reading off the
width value that I get in that tool tip because
I want to get that same value again in a
minute for the next one. I'm just looking for
a value that I can remember and that I
can aim for next time. I'm going to choose this one. It's 39.921. Now your values are
obviously going to be different to that.
That's just fine. I'm going to
deselect everything, select over this point
back to the Width tool. Now look for that 39 value. There it is. Then the
last anchor point. Drag down from that
anchor point again, looking for that same value. I don't need my
guide any longer. In the last panel, I'm just
going to drag my guide onto the trash can guides in
Illustrator adjust lines, they're just normal objects. Now, this line needs to
be turned into a shape, so I'm going to
select it and choose object and expand appearance. Now it's going to
be a filled object rather than a line that
has a width applied to it. Now, the problem with
this right now is that it's not
perfectly symmetrical. We'd need something that is perfectly symmetrical
from end to end. I'm going to choose object
transform and then reflect. We're going to reflect over the vertical and we're
going to make a copy. Now we have two here. Going to change the color
of this topmost one, because then it's going to be really obvious what's
happening here. You can see that we
can see the black one underneath the pink one. If we switch the order of these, you can see, we
can see pink here. These shapes are not identical, but if we select
over both of them and click the "Unite" button here in the Pathfinder palette, you can also get to that by choosing Window and
then Pathfinder. This Unite option
is going to jam those two together to
make a single shape. Now if we test
that the same way, object transform, reflect
over the vertical, make a copy, change the
color of this top version, we shouldn't see any
black underneath. If we move them so that
pink is under the black, I'm not seeing any pink
under the black here. Essentially, we've got a shape that is exactly the
same when it's flipped. Don't need that second one right now so I'm just
getting rid of it. I'm going to grab this
shape and I'm going to rotate it holding
the "Shift" key. I'm rotating it a
perfect 90 degrees. Now I am going to
reflect it again. Selected object
transform reflect. We're reflecting
over the vertical. We do want a copy,
I'll click "Copy", and I do want this to
be a different color, so I'm going to choose
my different color. Now I'm going to move this across to make the
basics of my pattern. I'm holding the "Shift"
key as I do that. If you think that these are
not perfectly lined up, then select over them. From the align options
here in the align palette, you can get to it
by choosing window and align, or up here, you're going to choose
vertically align top because they have to
be aligned perfectly. The next thing we're
going to do is to make them loop together. I've got pink as my fill color. I'm going to select over both
of these to select them. I'm going to the
Shape Builder tool, which you'll find sharing a toolbar position with the
live Paint Bucket tool. What we're going to do here
is that you should be able to see that there are
little shapes here. The lines are being broken
up into little shapes. What the Shape Builder
tool allows us to do is to join them up
in different ways. What I'm going to do is look at this first part of the pink
and there's one shape, two shapes, three shapes. I'm going to join
those together. I hold down the left
mouse button as I'm over the first shape and
continuing to hold, I'm just drawing over
those three shapes. As soon as I get into
the third shape, I'm going to let go
the mouse button. You could see that these
are now joined together. Going to look at the next
time I see this loop coming down in this
direction and this is it here, looping down. I'm going to click and drag
to join those three together. This is where I see it
again, click and drag. Now I'm going to just
move out of the way. I'm going to select
black as my fill color. I'm going to do the same thing, but this time I'm going to
choose the other pieces. Let's select over everything. Let's go back to the
Shape Builder tool. Last time we looked at this piece and joined
everything together, this is the piece
I'm looking at now. Where the black swings
round and we want to eat to go over
the top of the pink. I'm going to click and drag. There's three pieces there. Next time I see this
loop is down here. This is where I
need to join them. Click and drag. Then the last time I see
it is in this area here, click and drag to join
these three together. If you go over the top and join something that you're
not supposed to just press "Control or
Command Z" to undo it and then try it
again because you do need to get this right. Let's see what's happening
now with the pink. It's going over the
black under the black. That's a perfect set of loops. The thing is that we
didn't need all of this. Well, we need to create
it so that we've got the elements that
are working correctly, but we don't need all of
these for our pattern. I'm going to select over the top two here and press "Delete". Select over the bottom
two, press "Delete". This is an actual fact, what we need for our pattern. I'm going to select over it
and choose object and then pattern and click "Okay". I'm going to set this
to brick by column and I've set my
offset to one-half. You can say that these
pieces are going to be offset from each other. I'm going to select this option, so it's got a line through
it and I'm just going to increase or decrease my width
so that it's a whole value. I don't want it to be
a fractional value. Then I'm going to
the height and I'm going to start decreasing
it because what we have to do is join
these pieces together. When you think
you've got it right, just go in with
the Zoom tool and just double-check that
it's looking correct. I'm going to do 283, 284, 285. I'm just looking
for the point at which the pattern is correct. If I've got it right, I'm just going to
check the next time it joins up and just make
sure that that's correct. If I'm happy with that, I'll just click "Done". Grab these pieces and just move them out of the
way for the moment, let's go and create
a rectangle that's the size of my art board and let's fill it
with the pattern. You can see here we've got
this lovely loopy pattern. Let's delete that
and let's go and make the second pattern here. I'm going to go and grab
my little elements here. I'm going to make a
duplicate of this. I'm going to do them differently to the way I did previously. I'm going to choose Edit Copy and then Edit Paste in Place. The reason for this is I want
to see the movement next. Let's go to Object
Transform and then Move. I've got just the last object
that I made selected here. Let's zero out everything. What I want to do is
move this 45 degrees. I'm going to start
changing the value here. I'm going to make
this 100 and 100. It's not moving far enough, so let's go 200 and 200, provided we're moving the same amount horizontally
and vertically, we're getting
45-degree movements. I'm looking at the spacing
between these two. I think it's pretty good, so I'm just going
to click "Okay". I'm going to re-color
this object. I'm just choosing
different colors for this. I'm going to choose a
dark gray and an orange. Right now, it doesn't
matter too much what colors you choose provided the colors
are different, because when they're
different colors, we can edit them more
easily later on. Object Pattern Make. Now we want just a simple
grid pattern this time, again, looking at
this option to make sure that it's got
a slash through it. Then just adjusting the width. We get the look that we want. In this case, I'm going to need to
make sure that I've got some really good
spacing here so that this spacing and this spacing
are looking the same. We can finesse it again in a minute if it
doesn't look right. Now, we'll go to the
height and we're going to start decreasing the height. Then let's zoom in
and make sure that we've got the joints
looking good. You can see here this
joint is not right, let's see if we can
make that a bit better. This is looking
really good to me so I'll just click "Done". Control zeros so I can zoom
back out to see everything. Let's move these
shapes out of the way. Let's create again a rectangle
the size of the artboard. Square it up on the artboard, and let's fill it with
the second pattern. Now we can size that pattern by choosing Object Transform Scale, going to de-select
Transform Objects. I'm going to choose a slightly different
size for my pattern. I'll click "Okay". At this point, if I
don't like the colors, I can click on the
Recolor Artwork tool, go into Advanced Options. Make sure that I
click here to add a color for the
black and for the gray so that they can be edited. Anything that
doesn't have a color beside it make sure you add a color and make
sure that these are arrows so they can be edited. Now we can go here into the edit area and we can start making changes
to our colors. They're going to be
a couple of colors in the middle here too. You might just want to
see what's going on here, let's unlink these
harmony colors. This is not a color
that's in the artwork. This is. That's not, so I'm just going to remove it. I just want to get down to the four colors that are
actually in use in this artwork. From here, you can make the
changes that you want so that you get the pattern
look that you want. When you're done,
just click "Okay". Of course, like every
pattern in Illustrator, you've still got your
original design, but you've also got
your recolored version.
5. Pt 4 chain linked lines pattern with background: In the last video, we made this pattern
and we recolored it. What I want to look at next is how we can improve
on this pattern, and we can do that two ways. Firstly, we're going to break
up the pattern a little bit and then we're going
to add a background to it. So I'm going to make sure that I don't have
anything selected. I'm going into the
Swatches palette. I'm going to grab one of
these patterns that I made last time and drag
it onto the plus symbol. I've got a second version of it. I'm going to double-click on the second version
because that allows me access back into
the pattern make tool. I'm just going to zoom out so that I can see things
a little more clearly. I'm also going to
increase the number of elements I'm seeing
to nine by nine. It will help me too if I
turn off my art board so I'm going to View and I'm
going to Hide Artboards. At this point, what I want to do is I want to set this to brick by column. That's going to allow me to get this more interesting look to my pattern because
this element here is now not being
repeated over here. It's not being repeated
until we get over here. We could even change that by for example using a quarter offset. This element here
is not going to be seen until all
the way across here. Again, we've got this more robust design where the repeats are a
whole lot further apart. We don't need to make any
changes to any of this because the values
are exactly correct, or they're correct for
what they were previously. If you think you haven't
got your width correct, then you could come in
here and just adjust it, but be aware that you're
not going to be able to change this spacing because that's being created in the initial
paces that we did. What we are going to be able
to do is to change this, or this spacing obviously. I'm going to click Done. That is a more robust pattern. Let's just click on this
shape that we had previously. This is the new pattern. We'll see that this piece
here is not going to repeat. Let me just draw
a line across it. It's here and it's not
repeated until over here. This is a much more
complex pattern than the one we had previously. I'm going to bring my art
boards back with View and then Show
Artboards because that might make life a
little bit easier. Control, or Command 0 so we can see what we're looking at. My guide is here, just going to remove that. So the other thing
that we can do with this pattern is to add
a background to it. So let me again just make a
duplicate of the patterns. I'm just going to drag
it onto the plus symbol and then I'll double-click on
the duplicate I just made. What I'm interested in here is the width and
height of the tile. I've got the tile showing. You can turn it on, or off here but I do want to
know how big it is. I want to know how
big it is because that's going to be the size of the rectangle I need to create to put a background
on this pattern. I'm going to click on
the rectangle tool and I'm going to click
here and I'm going to make a shape that is 410 by 284 because that's
my pattern size. If your pattern
size is different, then you're going
to make a rectangle that is the size
of your pattern. You just read it off
this dialogue here. I'll click Okay. Now, this is looking a real mess because what's happened is
it's filled with my pattern. The other thing is at this card as you click on this icon here, you're not going to be
able to get a solid color. What you're going to do is
click on the gradient because you will get a gradient and then once you've
got a gradient, you can click here and
you'll get a solid color. That's a bit silly, but that's the way it works. Let's double-click on this, and let's go and get
a color to work with. Now, right now, I can't
see anything because my rectangle is on
top of everything. It's still selected so I'm
going to choose Object, Arrange, and Send to Back. Now it's to the
back of everything. But I still can't see a lot
of elements in my pattern. That's fine. I'm going
to the selection tool. I'm going to make sure I drag on this shape and start moving it. Now, I can move it off the edge of the pattern area of
the pattern tile area. What I'm looking for is the
position that I can move it into where all the
pattern elements appear. Let me just let go of it here. You can see that I'm not seeing this part
of the pattern, or this part so I obviously
haven't moved at far enough. This part of the pattern
looks just fine, but the purple and
red areas not good. Don't change the size of the
rectangle, just move it. Now I'm looking and
saying that I've got all the sweep and all this
sweeps out everything. It's just perfect. I'm going to click Done. Let's go back to this shape. Let's go back to the
Swatches panel and the last pattern is the
one that I just created. Now I don't like the color of the background, but
that's just fine. We know what to do with that. We just go into the Recolor
Artwork tool and we go into Edit and we go and pick up the color that is
our background color. Right now, our
colors are locked, so I'm going to unlink
them and I can now go and change this background color
to whatever I want it to be. I can also change the
other colors if I want to, so that they can
be better against this new background
that I've created. When I'm happy, I'll
just click Okay. We've got historically
all the patterns that we've made along the way. We've got the original
single color version, the two color version, and a different
rendering of that and then the more
advanced version that had that quarter offset
so that we've got a lot more distance
before we see the repeat. The same pattern,
but this time with its own background and here's a different colored
version of that. So there's a lot of
mileage to be had from this particular
pattern design. Of course, these shapes
are very valuable to you. Anytime you want to create an interlocking
pattern like this, you can just go and
grab those shapes. I'll make sure to save that
file before you finish off. Of course you'll want to save it because you're going to lose these patterns if
you don't save it.
6. Pt 5 Bubbly wavy line pattern: Creating this bubbly, wavy line pattern is
very easy once we've got a shape that's
symmetrical and the symmetrical bit is
the tricky bit. Let's create a new file. It can be any size
that you like, mine is 1,000 pixels
by 1,000 pixels. I'm going to drag out
a horizontal line here and increase
the stroke weight. Then I'm going to choose Object Path and then
Add Anchor Points. Initially the path only had two anchor points,
one at either end. Now it's got one in the middle. I'm going to repeat that object
path, add anchor points. You can see that we're adding
additional anchor points. I'm going to do that once more, object path and then
add anchor points because I want
enough anchor points to be able to work on this line. I'm going to drag over one
of these anchor points, go to the width tool, which shares a
toolbar position with all these other liquefy tools. I'm just going to drag down
on this anchor point and read off the value that
I see in the tool tip. I'm going to do one
here that is 49.09. I'm just making a
note of that value. I'm going to choose this one and go and do the exact same thing. Again, aiming for around
that 49.09 value. I'm going to do the
same on this end here. Now, this is just a line that's had some width effects
applied to it. I'm going to select over it and choose Object,
Expand Appearance. That creates a shape from this. Right now, all I want
is this middle shape, but I needed to pull out these other shapes because
you can see how things get a little bit weird at the end of the line when you actually
adjust the middle, so it doesn't actually
stay a straight line. I've just made more than
I need at this point. I'm going to select
the rectangle tool. Let's just choose
a different color so you can see what I'm doing. I'm just going to drag over
this shape at the end. You can see that I'm placing it over the entire end of the line, but just leaving it so that
I can see the down band. You can see that this
shape's going up and it's down and it starts to turn up. We need enough of
that upturn to be able to join things
together later on. I'm going to select over
both of these shapes, go to the Pathfinder. You can get to that by choosing Window and then Pathfinder. I'm just going to
choose Minus Front. Now I'm going to do the same
thing on this other end. Again, the rectangle tool, I'm going to choose
another color to work with just so you can see
what's going on here. Again, I wanted to
cut off this end, but just as it starts
turning upwards. Again, Minus Front. This is going to be what
I'm going to try and make a symmetrical
element out of. I'll choose Object
Transform and then Reflect, reflect over the
vertical, click "Copy". I'll recolor the
selected version, which is the top one. I've got two on top
of each other right now and you can see that they're
not lining up perfectly. I didn't expect that they would, what I'm going to do is
just move them across until they're as close
as they can possibly be. Select over both of
them and unite them. This shape should
be symmetrical. Let's just test that
Object Transform, Reflect. Reflect over the vertical
click "Copy" to make a copy. Change the color of it. We should be able to see none of the layer behind when we've got either of
these layers selected. Here we've got the
darker version on top. We can't see the light version. When I switch them
around the other way, I can't see the dark version
behind the light version. Things are looking really
good at this point. I'm just going to trash
one of these shapes. I don't need both of them. This element is going to be sufficient to make my pattern. At this stage, I might just
make it a little bit darker, so it's going to be a
little bit easier to see. I'll choose Object and
then Pattern, Make. We're going to set
this to brick by row so that we
offset these shapes. You can see that you've got one shape here and
this one is down here. Now, you could use a quarter
offset if you wanted to, and then you would have
more of these going across before you got to that were
directly above each other. Just make your choice as to
what you want to see there. This icon should have
a line through it, so the width and height can
be adjusted differently. I'm going to increase
the height a little bit certainly making sure
that it is a whole number, not a fractional number. Now I'm going to
look at the width. I'm just going to click
on "Show Tile Edge" so I can see where my edges are. Let's just zoom in here because this is an edge that
we want to clean up. We're just going to
decrease the width. We jam these shapes together. Now, they're going to break
up before they join up. Just be aware of that, it's going to look worse before
it starts looking better. You want the point
at which you get this seamless join
between the two shapes. At this stage, I'm going to
zoom out because it's going to be easier for me to
see what's going on. I'm going to deselect Show Tile Edge so I
can't see the tile edge. I'm also going to increase
the number of copies on the screen just so I can see
how everything looks here. It's looking really good. This is a really nice pattern. It's well executed. I'm going to click "Done". While I'm here, I'll go
to the swatches panel, click on this pattern and drop it onto the plus sign and then double-click on it again
because what I want to do is make a different
version of it. This time, I'm going to just
set it to a half offset. You'll see that the
join is just perfect, so you don't need to make any
change to these settings, but you may want to
change the spacing. In this case, I think I
want my spacing to be less because this is giving us a totally different
look to our pattern. I'm happy with that.
I'll click "Done". Let's just put this
piece over to one side. Let's go and create a rectangle that's 1,000 pixels
by 1,000 pixels, in other words, the
size of my art board. I'll square it up
on the art board and let's test these designs. Here is the first one. Here's the second one. Of course, you can
easily change the color of this by going to
the re-color artwork. Click "Advanced Options", go and click on
"Edit" and then you can create a different
colorway for this. When you see something
you like, click "Okay". That gives you the
original pattern color and this new one.
7. Pt 6 Bubbly wavy line pattern in multiple colors: In the previous video, we got to making this
pattern and this pattern. We're going to have a look
now at how we could make alternate lines in this
pattern, a different color. Let's go back to the original shape that
we're working with. I'm going to drag a duplicate
away by holding down the Alt key option on a
Mac as I drag it away, and I'm going to give
it a different color. Now there's a good chance that these two shapes are
not going to line up perfectly together and that can be a problem
with the pattern. Get a couple of choices here, you can work around trying to make them
to line up together, or you can get them as
close as you possibly can and then deal with
the spacing later on. This is a really good example of when we could deal with
the spacing later on, because we're only working
with two colors anyway. What I'm going to do
is try and get this to line up as well as I can. I could choose View and Outline to see if I can get
them to line up really well. But you can see that
they're just not quite lining up perfectly, but I'm getting them as
close as I possibly can. Let's go back to
GPU peer-review. I'm going to select over
both shapes and let's see if we can make a
pattern from this. Again, we'll need to
bring in the width a lot so that the shapes
overlap each other. Remembering that
it's going to get worse before it gets better. That's a really good
alignment there. Let's change the height
so that we're going to close up the space
between these shapes. Now, I think that
looks reasonably good. We won't know until we actually see the pattern on
a white background. Let's just click Done. Let's go back to our art board. Click on our shape, and click on the pattern. We'll Zoom in to see if
we've got any white areas. Now this pattern is looking
really, really good, except I do have a
slight white area there. Assuming that you've got a
white area of some sort some, or small, let's just
double-click on the pattern and let's
make some changes to it. The change I'm going
to make is to make a box behind the pattern. If I make a box behind the
pattern of pink, or green, then it's going to cover
up that gap and you're not going to see the patch. It's going to be a
really easy patch because we're only
working with two colors. It's not a solution I
typically like to use, but in this instance, it's
going to work just fine. I want to see my tile edge because I don't want
to see where I'm working and I need a
rectangle that is this size. Now I'm going to the
Rectangle Tool 187 by 71. Of course, this rectangle,
as soon as I draw, it's going to be filled
with the pattern, so it's going to
look really stupid. Let's just click on the
gradient and then the pink color so that we get a
pink color for this slides. We're going to move it behind
everything with object, arrange and send to back. Then we're going to move the rectangle until we see
the pattern come back. We're just going to look at this and position it where we
can see the entire pattern. If everything's good now
we'll just click Done. We'll go back to our
rectangle filled with our pattern because
this is the pattern. Now if I zoom in, I'm not going to see
those white areas. There is absolutely no
white in this pattern. It's been filled up
anywhere where it was with that pink filled shape. Now I could've used
green for the shape. It doesn't really matter
which color you use. Of course, this pattern
can then be edited in terms of color using the
Re-color Artwork tool. Going to edit here. Let's unlink these colors
so that I can move them independently of each
other and we can change the colors to
blues and greens, or whatever color
combination we want. Click Okay, and you're getting another color pattern in
the pattern swatches. Now it is also possible to have this design with white
lines through it. Let's go and make a duplicate of the design we
were working with. Let's double-click on it. We opened it up in
the pattern's dialog. Just going to have a look at the pieces that
go to make it up. I do want to edit
this blue background because ultimately I
want it to be white, or some other colors so that we get bands of
color through this. Let's go and click on it, and let's not fill
it with white, let's fill it with a slightly different color so that will get the effect that we're
looking for in just a minute. Now we'll go to one of these other pieces in this pattern and we're
going to move it. I'm just going to move it down. I'll zoom in because I've built some space into my pattern, but I don't have this
extra color on both sides. I'm going to start increasing
the height of a pattern. Now you can see that in increasing the height
of my pattern, I'm building in
the bands of color either side of these elements, and that's what I'm looking for. But I have fallen foul
with this background. The background element is
not in the right place. Let me just zoom
out a little bit. Let me go and pick
up this rectangle. Then let's move it because it's not working where
it is right now. Just moving it around until it actually covers up these areas. Now, let's turn
off the tile edge. Let's click away
from that shape and just make sure that we've got
the measurements correct. I think it's probably
a little bit too much. I think that's a better value. I'll click Done and then
let's go back to our pattern. Now I'm seeing some
distortion here, but it's only on the screen. It's not actually
distortion in the pattern. We've got the original
elements that we created here, and then we've got
one that actually has some built-in third
color in the pattern. Now this third color
is inside the pattern. If we go into the Recolor
Artwork dialogue, we've got three colors
that we can work with. We could take this color
to white if we wanted. Let me just unlink the colors. We can take it to white,
but we could also build it in as a third color
into the pattern. There's lots of possibilities
with this new design. When you're happy with what
you've got, click, Okay, and of course this
is going to be another pattern in
your swatches palette.
8. Curvy Line Patterns in Illustrator Project and Wrapup: We've now completed the video training portion of this course, so it's over to you. Your project for this class
is to create one or more of these curvy line patterns
in Adobe Illustrator. Post an image of your
completed design as your class project. I hope that you've enjoyed this course and that
you've learned lots about creating symmetrical curve
shapes and turning them into seamless repeating
patterns in Illustrator. If you did enjoy this
course and when you see a prompt asking if you would recommend this class to others, please would you do
two things for me. Firstly, answer yes, that you do recommend
the class and secondly, write even in just a few words
why you enjoyed the class. Your recommendation
will help others to say that this is a course that
they might like to take. If you see the follow
link on the screen, click it and you'll
be alerted when new classes are released. If you'd like to
leave me a comment or a question, please do so. I read and respond to all of your questions and
comments and I look at and review all your class
projects. I'm 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 our other class here
on Skillshare soon.
Helen Bradley, Graphic Design for Lunch™
