Transcripts
1. Welcome!: Hi everyone. I'm Geetanjali,
an artist, illustrator, Thangka painter and
surface pattern designer based in the beautiful
coastal state of India, Goa. Welcome to the first class of the
Creative Workflow series under "How to Take a Creative
Approach to Patterns". And honestly, this is the
reason I joined Skillshare, so I could share my own
workflows with you all. In this class, I
will be sharing one of my favourite
workflows for creating seamless repeat
patterns using two of the most popular programs that is Procreate and
Adobe Illustrator. Procreate is undoubtedly
a top preference for a lot of artists because
it is super user friendly and has
drawing gestures that make sketching, drawing and
illustrating really easy. But it definitely has some limitations when it comes to designing
repeat patterns, especially with multiple
repeats and layouts. Adobe Illustrator,
on the other hand, offers pattern option tool
feature which lets you design seamless patterns in more
than six different repeats with a real time preview
of the final pattern. In this class, we are going to combine these two
powerful programs and use their USPs to create a raster pattern in
Adobe Illustrator. Yes, I know Adobe Illustrator
is a vector based program, but today I'm going to share the unusual way of using
the pattern option tool in Illustrator and create
a tossed raster pattern using the motifs
created on procreate. This class is suitable for intermediate and
advanced skill levels. If you are new, check out my fundamentals classes and it will be easier for
you to follow along. I'm really excited to begin this class. So without any further
ado, Let's get started.
2. Class Overview and Project: Hi everyone. Welcome
to my class. In this class, I will take
you through the step by step process of creating a seamless tossed pattern
in raster format, Using Procreate and Illustrator. We will create our motifs in Procreate and compose the final pattern
in Adobe Illustrator. This works best for
tossed patterns. Here are some of
the patterns that I have created using
this workflow. We will start with
setting up the canvas in procreate and sketching
out the motifs. Exporting the
motifs to computer, and preparing them
for the next step. Creating a seamless pattern in Illustrator using the
pattern option tool. Adjusting the final tile
size and swatch size. Saving and exporting the
pattern tile and swatch. Saving the pattern swatch and tile as a layered PSD file. And a few things to
consider while using this workflow. For
this class project, You have to create some
beautiful motifs in procreate using any
theme of your choice. Once the motifs are done, export them to your computer and prepare them
for the next step. Create a tossed pattern using the pattern option tool
in Adobe Illustrator. Export your pattern as JPEG or PNG and test the pattern for
any imperfections or error. When you're ready, begin
uploading your process work and the final pattern to the
student's project, Gallery. I can't wait to see
what you create. Let's get started with
our first lesson.
3. Setting Up the Canvas in Procreate: Let's start by setting up
our canvas in procreate. When you are choosing a canvas for surface pattern design, the three main things
that you have to consider are the size, resolution, and color profile. Open, procreate, and
to create a new file, click on the plus icon on top and you will see a few
presets to choose from. Now click on the plus icon to open Custom Canvas settings. Tap here To edit the name of the canvas.
For the dimensions unit, you can choose from millimeters, centimeters, inches, and pixels. For surface pattern design, inches or pixels are
most commonly used. Just make sure to keep it same for both Procreate
and Illustrator file. This is one of the most
important things to consider in this workflow since the motifs are going to be used
in their original size and we won't be tracing or
converting them into vectors. I prefer using inch as the
document unit and I normally create my patterns at 24
x 24 inch, at 300 DPI. I will keep that same dimensions for this procreate file as well. This will decide the number
of layers depending on the ipad version you're using and the storage
of your device. Tap on the color profile. And choose the
color profile from RGB or CMYK as you prefer. But again, keep it same for
the Illustrator file as well. I'll be using sRGB profile
for now. Click Create. If you have limited
storage on your device, you can create multiple
smaller documents for creating different
sets of motifs. For example, create
a document size with 12 by 12 inch at 300 DPI. This will also give you
more number of layers. You can draw few motifs on this document and the
rest on another document. It is completely optional
and anything above 3,000 pixels or 10 inches
is good enough. In the next lesson, we will sketch out motifs in Procreate.
4. Sketching out the Motifs: For this class, I
have sketched out some vintage tattoo flash motifs on my sketchbook to
use as reference. You can choose any other theme like florals, novelty, geometric, etcetera. To give that
hand painted feel. I'll be using custom
watercolor brushes that I had bought earlier
from Creative Market. I will put the link in resources and you can check them out. At this point, I would suggest keep the number of
motifs limited, like not more than eight to ten till you get familiar
with this workflow. Once the sketches are done, finalize the drawings with colors and style of your choice. We are not going
to vectorize it, so feel free to use
different brushes, textures, and you can also play around
with the transparency, blending modes,
and clipping mask. Lastly, you can also
add a few tiny motives which can be used to fill up the negative spaces
in the pattern. In the next lesson, we
will export and prepare our motifs to create the
final pattern in Illustrator.
5. Preparing the Motifs for Pattern: Once the motifs are ready, arrange them at a distance
from each other so that the bounding box of one motif doesn't overlap on
the other motifs. Now turn off the
background layer and save the motifs as PNG file with
a transparent background. I will airdrop
it to my Mac book, for the next step. You can email or transfer the
files to your computer, as for your preference. Open Illustrator and
Create a new file with the same settings as 24
by 24 inch document size, 300 DPI resolution,
and RGB color profile. Now place the sketches or PNG file from your
computer on the artboard. The next step is separating individual motifs as
individual objects. There are two ways of doing it. The simplest way is
to make copies of the artwork and cropping individual motif to
create a new file. To do that, simply
hold Alt on PC or option key on Mac and drag
the image to make a copy. Now choose crop option
from the properties panel and adjust the corners to
select the new bounding box. Keep it as close to
the edge as possible, but make sure the motif
doesn't get cut off. Click Apply to update the
artwork and repeat the same till All the motives are cropped
as individual artworks. It might take a few minutes if you have larger
number of motifs. One thing to notice here is that cropping the image will
automatically embed the image. There is another way of
separating individual motifs, and that is using Photoshop. If you have Creative Cloud
subscription to Photoshop also, you can try it out. This way you can save all your motifs as
individual files in a more professional way. To do that either you can open the
image directly in Photoshop, OR select the image in Illustrator, and now click on
Edit in Photoshop. Once the image
opens in Photoshop, select each motif with the
help of any selection tool. Now simply cut and paste each
motive by pressing command or control X and command or
control V on your keyboard. It will automatically
paste it on a new layer. You can name each
layer and adjust the layer thumbnail to get a better preview of
the final motif. If you are comfortable
using this method, you can skip the step of adjusting the motif
placement in appropriate, since here you can use selection tools to
separate individual motif. Once all the motifs are
placed on individual layers, turn off the background layer. Now go to file, choose
export layers to Files. Now you will see a dialog box where you will have
various export options. First, choose the
folder location where you would like to save the files and enter
name of the folder. I will write motifs. Select the file name prefix to edit the names of
your exported layers. Select the visible layers only, when you have multiple layers and you want selected layers to be exported, keep only those layers visible. Now you can choose
various file formats from the drop down menu like Bitmap, Jpeg, PDF, PNG, etcetera. In this case, we will be
choosing PNG as we want to save our motifs with
transparent background and without compression. Another thing you will notice
here is the PNG options, PNG 8 and 24. The difference is that PNG 8 can
display eight bit colors, and PNG 24 supports
24 bit colors. In a nutshell, PNG 8 has smaller range of color
information it can display. I prefer to use PNG 24. Make sure to keep the
transparency box checked and trim layers or else you will have extra negative space
around the motifs. Choose run and it will take
a few minutes to export. Once the export is
successfully completed, each motif will be saved
as an individual file. Save the PSD and
close this window. Now, place all the motifs on the artboard and select all, And choose Embed. One thing to remember here is that
when we crop the image, it is automatically embedded. But in this case, we have to
do it manually by selecting either one file at a time or
by selecting all at once. I personally prefer using
this method as it is a more organized way of saving
the motifs in a folder. Also, we get the
exact dimension of each motif. When we crop, we might have uneven
negative space around and some part might
get cut off by mistake. I also use the same motifs for different patterns created
at different times. As you can see in these
two woodland patterns, it was easier because I
had the motifs saved as individual files. In case you don't have access
to Adobe Photoshop, cropping the images
works just fine. Lastly, move around
all the motifs, Flip, rotate, and adjust
the sizes if needed. In the next lesson,
we will create a seamless repeat pattern in Illustrator using these motifs.
6. Creating the Pattern in Illustrator: This is the most fun part
of creating a pattern. Playing around with
the tile type, layout, and spacing with a real time preview
of the final pattern. This is why I prefer
using pattern option tool over any other program for creating seamless
repeat patterns. To get started, select
all the motifs. Now go to object and choose
pattern select Make. You must embed the images to enter the pattern option
tool editing mode, or else you will get a message that the pattern cannot
contain linked objects. Please embed and try again. So make sure you embed
all the images first. Now enter a pattern name. Choose the tile type
from the drop down menu. In case of brick
by row or column, choose the offset value. And now adjust the
width and height to add or reduce spacing
between the tiles. Bring them close to
round number and depending on the choice
of your tile type, the pattern swatch
will be decided. You can view them by clicking
on the two boxes at bottom, that is show tile edge
and show swatch bound. Keep the dim opacity around 50% so it is easier
to find which motifs we can move around and also
keep them inside the tile. If you find any motifs
missing on the other edge, you can select all and make a group and it will
fix that issue. I have explained the
pattern option tool and its features in my
fundamental classes. Please refer to them if
you have any confusion. Once you have a
rough layout ready, move and rearrange the motifs and create a well
balanced pattern. You can duplicate,
reflect, rotate, and scale the motifs in
the editing mode as well. Use the smaller motifs to
fill up any negative space. Once the pattern is ready, click Done to save it
in the Swatches panel. In the next lesson,
we will learn how to adjust the pattern
tile and switch size.
7. Adjusting the Pattern Tile and Swatch Size: As I have mentioned in
my previous classes, you can save or export your final pattern
as a tile or swatch. Let's check the
size of our tile. First, double click on the pattern swatch in
the swatches panel in the pattern
option tool window. Check the width
and height values. This is our final tile size. If you want to save
your pattern tile, close this window and now draw a rectangle with
the same dimension. Fill it with the pattern Swatch. Now go to Object,
choose Artboard, and click on Fit
to Selected Art. Depending on the tile
type that you select, For example, in this
case we chose brick by column or half drop with
an offset value of half, When we move and copy our
pattern tile in that repeat, it will give a perfect
seamless repeat. To resize the pattern tile, simply select the artwork
and in the properties panel, adjust the width
or height value, keeping the proportions locked. Check for the overprint preview to see how it will look when it's printed and if the
resolution is good enough. Now to save or export
your pattern as a swatch, which will always repeat in
a grid, block or full drop, double click on the pattern
swatch in the swatches panel. And now make sure the Swatch
bound box is in view mode. Select the rectangle tool or
press M on your keyboard. Now simply drag and draw
along the Swatch bound. It doesn't have
to match exactly. Now cancel and
close this window. Choose the rectangle tool or
press M on your keyboard. And click once in the
rectangle tool window, it will automatically enter the values of the
last rectangle size, adjust the dimensions to
the closest round numbers, and fill the rectangle
with the pattern swatch. Go to object, choose artboard, and select Fit to selected Art. This is the final
pattern swatch which will repeat seamlessly
when repeated as a grid. Another way to save or export the pattern swatch is using
the clipping mask method. Drag the pattern swatch to
the artboard and ungroup. once. Select the entire artwork, And now turn on the
outline preview mode. by pressing command or
control y on your keyboard, it is easier to spot the
bounding box this way. Select the rectangle and go to arrange and choose
bring to front. Turn off the Outline
preview mode by pressing the same keyboard Shortcut, command or control y. Select everything and
create a clipping mask by pressing command or control+
7 on your keyboard. Lastly, go to Object, choose Art board, and
select Fit to Selected Art. This also gives the
perfect pattern swatch. With this method, you
don't even need to remember or calculate the
tile or swatch bound size. To resize swatch, simply select the artwork and
in the properties panel, adjust the width or height value while keeping the
proportions locked. Check for the
overprint preview to see how it will look
when it's printed. One more thing to
understand here is that when we drag the pattern swatch
from the swatches panel, the rectangle that we get is for the swatch bounding
box and not the tile. To find the tile using this
method, it is very easy. Double click on
the swatches panel and check for the tile size. Now repeat the same steps after bringing the
bounding box to front, edit this rectangle size to the tile size that we checked in the pattern
option tool window. Select everything and
create a clipping mask. This is the final tile size. Go to object, choose Artboard, and choose Sit to selected Art, depending on the tile type. When we repeat this tile, it will create a
seamless repeat pattern. Once you have the
tile or Swatch ready, you can add a background
color by drawing another rectangle with
the same dimension, or bigger than the rectangle. Align it to the center of artboard and now
send it to back. I will be using a seamless
watercolor paper texture with the same size
for the background. Place the file and embed, send it to back and
align to the center. In the next class,
we will learn how to export and test our
pattern tile and swatch.
8. Exporting and Testing the Pattern: Once you have the pattern
tile and swatch ready, it is important to
test it to check for any imperfections
or white line error. To do that, we will first export it as a Jpeg or PNG file. Go to file, choose Export As, Now select PNG and make sure to choose the
Select Artboard option. If your background
rectangle is bigger than the artboard. In the next window, select the resolution,
antialiasing and background color, If you have not chosen before or if you want to keep
it white or transparent. Now click on Eeport.
To test the pattern, Go to File and choose Place. Select the pattern
file you just saved, and place it on the art board. Click Embed and Drag to save
it in the swatches panel. Draw a rectangle and fill
it with the new Swatch. You can use the
scale transformation to view a scaled down preview. Zoom in, and check if the pattern repeats
perfectly and if there is any
imperfections or white line. If the pattern alignment is not right or the pattern
doesn't repeat correctly, you might need to check
the Swatch bound size, open the pattern editing mode, and remember for grid repeat, the Swatch bound dimension is same as the tile size which is the width and height value.
For the other tile types, It varies depending on the
offset values and tile type. Make sure to keep
the height and width values as round numbers
for easy calculation. You can use the clipping
mask method to get a perfect swatch each time regardless of the
style size values. In case you're getting a
white line in the pattern, check whether it's a part of the pattern or just
a preview error. To do that, simply
zoom in on the line. It will disappear if
it's a preview error. But if it still exists, check if the pattern swatch and the background rectangle are center aligned with
your artboard. Always do that for each
rectangle separately. If you select both
the rectangles together and align it to center, it will align to the center of the selected objects
instead of the artboard. You can also make the background rectangle slightly bigger than the artboard in case of a solid fill background
to avoid this issue. Finally, check for
the overprint preview and make sure the resolution is good enough for
the pattern when you want to export
it as a bigger size. Once everything seems fine, go ahead with the
existing file or export the updated file as
PNG or JPEG format. In the next lesson, we
will discuss how to save the pattern tile and switch
as a layered PSD file.
9. Saving the Pattern as a Layered psd File: When we save the tile
or pattern swatch using the first method, That is by drawing a rectangle
with the tile or swatch bound dimension and filling it with the pattern
from swatches panel, it will be saved on one layer. In this case, the pattern
remains editable, but the motifs are not
editable on their own. On the other hand, when we use the clipping mask method by extracting the pattern
from swatches panel, we cannot edit the
pattern itself. But we can edit individual
motif by entering the isolation mode. To save the pattern tile or swatch as an editable layered PSD file, We will always use the
extraction method. At this point, I would suggest to make a copy of the file. I will name it as Pattern Swatch and remove all the extra
layers and artwork. Except for the pattern swatch, there are two ways
you can do it. First one is to use the swatch created
using clipping mask. This is useful when you have
resized your pattern swatch. For example, I will resize my
swatch to a smaller scale. Open the layers panel, and you will see all the
artwork is on one layer. When we click on
this small arrow, we can see the
clipping mask layer followed by different groups
with more sub layers. Second way is to simply extract the pattern swatch from
the swatches panel. This will include
a bounding box, which will be the default size that is in the pattern
option tool window. Here you will see in
the layers panel, all the artwork is in one group. When we click on the sub layers, you can see the bounding box
layer below all the groups. I will show both the
options side by side. The process is pretty
same for both. First, ungroup, everything till the ungroup option
is grayed out. Once the artwork is ungrouped, you will notice
all the sub layers are now released
from the groups. Our next step is to fill the
clipping mask rectangle or the bounding box with a fill color so it is easy
to spot the artboard later. At this point you will notice since I had resized
the pattern swatch, the rectangle size
is different for both. Next step is to convert all these sub layers
into individual layers. For the clipping mask option, click on the Clip
Group Layer and go to Layers Panel menu and
choose Release To Layers. Now click on the first
sublayer while holding Shift Click on the bottommost
sublayer to select all of them. Simply drag them
out from underneath the parent layer or
above the parent layer. We have all the different
motifs on different layers. You can rename them if
you want and delete the blank layers
that was earlier the parent layer and
the clip group layer. What we are trying to do
here is getting rid of the sub layers because when
we export the file as PSD, only visible layers
will be saved as individual layers,
not the sub layers. Once this is done, you can
keep the rectangle with fill color on top or bottom
as a background layer. For the second option, click on the parent layer and
choose Release to Layers from the Layers panel drop down menu. Here you can skip the other part because the motifs are
already on different layers. When we export it,
all the layers will be saved in a group. Choose the clipping mask method, only when you have resized the pattern or else simply
use the extraction method. Now go to file, choose Export as select PSD from
the drop down menu. Here, if you select
the artboard option, the motifs that are on the edge will get cut. I will leave that. This is also the
reason why we kept our rectangle with
the solid fill as it is the artboard dimension. Click in the Photoshop
export options, choose the color model, keep it same for both. Choose the resolution. Now select write layers. If we choose flat image, it will merge the layers to one. Select maximum editability
and keep it art optimized. Click Okay, and now we will check the PSD files
in Photoshop. Open both the files.
In the layers panel, You will see for the
clipping mask option, we have different motifs
on different layers. For the second one,
all the layers are grouped. To edit the artboard size, select the rectangle using a selection tool and choose crop or press
C on your keyboard, it will automatically
select the bounding box. Now make sure to uncheck the delete cropped pixel since we don't want our motifs to
get cut off at the edges. Click Apply. Here is the final
editable layered PSD file. for the pattern. To check the
image size and resolution, go to Image, Choose Image Size. Here you can see the
details like file size, dimension, resolution
and preview. It might seem a little complex, but it is only needed when
you want a layered PSD file. I wanted to explain that even though we are using an
unconventional method, we are still keeping everything organized and as per
the industry standards. In the next lesson, we will discuss about a few things that we need to consider while
using this workflow.
10. A Few Things to Consider: First of all, even though we are creating the entire
pattern in Illustrator, it is still a raster pattern. The AI file is only for our reference and should not be misunderstood as an
editable vector file. While creating the motifs in Procreate, you can
choose any texture brush, blending mode, or clipping mask. Since there is no need
to vectorize them, If you have too many small
elements for filling up spaces like simple
dots or shapes, Instead of cropping them or
saving them individually, you can add them
later in procreate. Once your pattern swatch
or tile is ready, export it to your ipad, Open it in procreate. Now on a new layer, you can add all
these small details. It will be quicker that way. With this workflow, you're not restricted to a certain type of repeat or layout and you don't need to worry
about the calculations. Just be mindful of the
scale of the pattern. As the more complex tile type and offset values you choose, the pattern swatch
becomes smaller and so the motifs. With
pattern option tool, you get a real time preview
of the entire pattern, which is really helpful. Make sure to keep
the dim opacity to 50% or less to find out which motifs can be moved around and keep them
within the tile edge. You can save and export
your pattern tile or Swatch in multiple file formats
including high res Jpeg, PNG, layered PSD file, PDF or even tiff format. With the same set of motifs, You can create an entire
pattern collection by choosing different set of motifs and changing the tile
type and layout in illustrator using the
pattern option tool. I have shared this workflow for motifs created using procreate, but you can follow
the same process for hand painted
motifs as well. Once the motifs are
cleaned up and saved with transparent background in
procreate or Adobe Photoshop, repeat the same steps
in Illustrator.
11. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for
joining me in this class. I hope you enjoyed it and
learned something new. This is just one of
the workflows that I use to create surface
pattern designs. I'll be sharing
many more workflows in the upcoming classes. You can follow me on Skillshare to get updates on
my new classes. If you have any
questions or doubts, please feel free to drop them in the discussion page and I'll
be more than happy to help. If you like my class. Do leave a review and share
it with your friends. Every artist creates
patterns differently. There is no right or wrong way. However, you need to
know what you are doing and how to deliver
it professionally. Keep creating beautiful art and share them in the
student's project gallery. I would love to see them. You can also share
them on social media. And don't forget to
tag me at Geetanjali.b so I can like and comment on
your designs. Once again, thank you so much
for joining me. I hope to see you
in my next class. Till then, happy creating.
Geetanjali Behera, Surface Pattern Designer | Illustrator
