Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] I love my work. Creating illustrations
and designs that never existed in this world
is really exciting, but on the other hand, exporting 55 of them in
four different sizes, maybe not so much. Hi, my name is Esther Nariyoshi. I'm a US based Illustrator and Designer and also a top
teacher here on Skillshare. I'm here with you today to
show you a few ways to boost your productivity in
Adobe Illustrator by using the actions panel. Creating actions is
an efficient way to automate your tasks
in Adobe Illustrator. You can skip the boring part and focus on the
fun side of things. We will take a deep dive into the process of creating
actions that help you save time on
frequently used tasks in your creative process. Together, we will identify
the goal in each use case, translate that into Adobe
Illustrator actions, test them and troubleshoot. By the end of the class, you will have the skill
you need to create your own customized actions
for your creative workflow. This class is designed
for creatives who are familiar with the
essential tools in Adobe Illustrator already, but if you're starting out, you're welcome to check out my beginner friendly
classes on Skillshare. Without further ado, let's get started. [MUSIC]
2. Understanding the Actions Panel: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to look around
our actions panel and gain some basic
understanding of how it works before we dive in deeper. Go ahead and create a basic
Adobe Illustrator file. Once you have it open, come over to Window
and look for Actions. It looks more or less like this. By default, there are some actions under the
default actions folder. Over here, I have
a few pieces of illustrations that we can
use to test the actions. I'm going to select one of them. For example, I'm going to
change the opacity to 60. Then you can just
come to the bottom and click on this Play
Current selection. As you see, it changed our illustrations
opacity to 60 percent. This is pretty straightforward. Now let's look at
another example. Over here it says
Opacity 40 screen. If we expand this action, you can see we have
two main steps. It changes the opacity
to 40 percent and also changes the
blending mode to screen. For example, if we have this particular seashells selected, and we have the action selected. When we play the
current selection, it will execute the two changes. It might not seem like a lot, but if you're working at a large scale
illustration where there are a lot of repetitive actions, it's worth making your
own custom actions for. Now, let's move on
to our brush stroke. As you can see, we have tons of anchor points. It is way too complicated
than what I want it to be. I'm going to go ahead
and simplify it. As you can see a few lines down, we have the simplify action right in the default
actions folder. When we expanded, it will see the details of the
simplify action. These are the parameters
that came with it. If we toggle this
little window off, it will just run the default. For example, when I hit Play, you will run through
the perimeters and give me a visual result, which is more or less
what I'm looking for. However, if you want more
control in the process, you can turn to Window back on, which just means that
Illustrator will ask you, what exactly are
you looking for? You can have access
to the sliders and tell Illustrator how simplified you want
your curves to be. By the way, don't forget
to turn on the preview. This will allow you
to view the results live, which is helpful. Then you can change the
angle threshold as well. You can play with it. Once you're happy about it, go ahead and click on "Okay". Here is our new result. If you have taken any number of my Adobe Illustrator
classes before, you know this is coming. It's called Delete
Unused Panel Items. This is so helpful to do at the very beginning
of a brand new file. Because when you hit Play, it did clutters your workspace. Voila, Here you go. I hope you now have a basic understanding
of where to find the actions panel and how
it works on a basic level. We're going to dive in deeper on some practical examples
in following lessons. For now, my homework
for you is to find your own actions panel on your machine and
dock it to the side, so that we can pull
it out more easily when we create our
own custom actions. Before we jump into action, I want to show you how to import an action into your
Adobe Illustrator. You can grab the action's file from the classroom
resource area. You want to download it to
your computer on the desktop. Then once you have it
locally to your computer, you can take your
actions panel out by going to Window
and click on Actions. Once you have that, you can click on the Hamburger
menu and come over to Load Actions and locate your
actions, which is.aia file. Then you can click on
"Open" to import it. The class project
is super simple. I want you to take a closer look at your
own creative process and identify some commonly or
frequently used functions, and create one action for it. It could be something that is very similar to what we have demonstrated in
class or it could be something that is
completely different. Whatever that can optimize
your own creative workflow, I would love to see it.
3. Practical Actions for Surface Design: [MUSIC] I hope you had a chance to play with the actions panel
for a little bit. In this lesson, we're
going to walk through three practical examples in the context of surface
pattern design. Over here is a repeating
pattern that I've designed. Before I finalize my designs, I usually do three tests. The first one is called
the squint test. Basically, it just means
that I shrink my design into a super small scale
so that I can get a general sense of
spacing between motifs. Let me pull up my actions panel. In the actions that I've provided which you can
download in the resource area, there is a squint test. I'm just going to
select my pattern and click on "Squint Test"
and then hit "Play". As you can see, it
automatically shrinks my design without shrinking
the frame per say, so that I can really step
back and look at my design to see if there's any awkward
spacing that I need to adjust. Because this is something
that I do very often, so I made an action for it. If you expand the action under the squint test,
it's really simple. Basically, I just
tell the frame to shrink the content
to 20 percent. I'm going to undo to show you what that recording
process looks like. First I want to
select my pattern and come over to Actions panel. Hit the "Plus Sign" to
create a new action. Then you can call it, let me just say Squint test 2. You can select your folder. I'm just going to leave it as it is and then hit "Record". Since it's already selected, right-click and transform
and then scale. It has already defaulted
to 20 percent, which is what I've
done in the past. You can change the
percentage to your liking. Maybe you want to do
50 percent instead. It is very important to make sure the transform
objects is unchecked, because if you check this, check mark right here, it's going to shrink
the frame as well, which defeats the purpose
of the squint test, because you want to see
a wider range of things. I'm going to uncheck
and click "Okay". This is my new test. I'm going to hit "Stop
Recording" and then hit "Play". Every time I click on "Play", it will shrink 50 percent. You can keep shrinking if
that makes sense to you. Whatever scale that is
appropriate for your own work. Here's the squint test. I'm going to drag it to the trash can because
we don't need it. The second thing I want to
check before I finalize my design is to check
on my contrast. The method itself is
not original to me. I've learned from an
artist called Jarom Vogel. Basically this step turns
my illustration into black and white so that
I can check my contrast. Here's my original design. I'm going to show you
how the test works. Then we're going to record
an action according to it. First I want to create a black square in
front of my design, covering all the motifs. Then I'm going to
click "Play" for the contrast test action. As you can see, in no time, this magic black square turns my illustration into
black and white. Deprecation of this
action is much wider than just surface
pattern design. You can use it to check the contrast for
your lettering work, graphic design work,
or illustrations. Now let's make this
action together. First I'm going to
delete the square and make a new black square
without any transparency. With the square is
still being selected, I will create a new action. I'm going to say contrast
test 2 and start recording. The process is super easy. You want to go to your
transparency panel. If you can't find it, go to Window and look
for transparency. Then under the
Transparency panel, you want to change the
blending mode to saturation. Then you're done. Go ahead and click
on "Stop Recording". Let's test this out. I'm going to create
a new black square. That's the part that you have
to do prior to the action. Then you can select your
action and click on "Play". Boom, here is our contrast test. The third test that I do
is called the rotate test. Basically, when you grab
your surface pattern design, or your illustration,
or lettering work, you can rotate it 90 or 45-degree to
check on the spacing. This is very similar to the squint test
because it gives you a different perspective than the one that you
are familiar with. This is going to
be your homework. [MUSIC] Go ahead and record yourself a brand new test that lead your art work rotate
45-degree within the frame. I will see you in
the next lesson.
4. Giving Your Illustrations Character: In this lesson, we're
going to go over some fun actions to give your illustrations
more character. The actions we're
going over next is going to give us more
fine-tuned control. Let's get to it. Over here
I have a couple graphics. It's before and after. The only difference
is that I've added very gentle mask over the after graphic to highlight
some of the colors. As you can see, it
brings a lot of color energy into this
otherwise pretty flat graphic. This process can be easily
condensed into one action. Let me just give you
a quick example. I'm going to draw over
this original graphic. This is going to be
my highlight mask and I have an action over here
is called accentuate color, so I'm just going
to go ahead and play so you can see the result. This is pretty much it. If you look under the
accentuate color action, there are only two steps. One is to stylize it, to add a feather to the original circle and then I change the transparency
to color dodge. So let's give it a try. I'm going to go ahead
and delete this after graphic and make our before
graphic a bit bigger. By the way, you know by
now that you can download all the workflow actions in
the class resource area. I'm just going to
walk you through the steps how I
created these actions. So go ahead and create a
circle in front of it. The color doesn't
matter too much at this point so I'll
go with this blue. Hit the plus sign to
create a new action. You can say color Test
1 and hit record. The first step I'm going
to do is to click on "Effect" and "Stylize"
to add feather. As you can see, I have a pop-up window that allows
me to change the radius of the feather and you can turn on the preview to see
the live result. So you can make the feather
bigger, for example, 200 pixels, the transition
looks a lot softer. So I'm just going to
go ahead and click on "Okay" and then pull up
my transparency panel and change my blending mode to color dodge and then I'm
going to stop playing. This is pretty much the
result that I'm looking for. However, if you look closely under the color test that
we just went through, it did not record the first step which is
the stylize and feather. This is because feathering
like many other menu items is considered
non-recordable actions according to Adobe Illustrator. But fortunately, that's
not the end of the story. I'm going to show
you a workaround. So have your color test
selected because whatever item that you are going
to add manually is going to be inserted
under the highlight. So I want to have the color test selected and in
your actions panel, come over and click on this
little hamburger menu on the upper right hand corner and click on "Insert Menu Item." Over here there is a field for you to type whatever function
that wasn't recorded. In our case, I'm
going to type feather and click on "OK."
As you can see, it has located the
feather for me. It's under Effect, Stylize
and Feather and also at the same time it has added one item at the very
bottom of my color test. So I'm going to go ahead
and click on "Cancel." If I do click on "OK", it's going to add this
item one more time, something like this so we will have to delete the last one. In our original action
feather happens first, so I'm going to grab
this item and drag above the transparency change and
then I will do another test. This time I'm going to
use a different color. Let's see this one and then go ahead and click
on "Color Test" and play. He asked me if I want to
change the radius I'm just going to click on
"OK." There you go, that's how I
highlight my colors. I'm going to show you a
variation of this action. In the workflow actions folder
click on "Add Sunlight." When I have a super
big circle of whatever color when I hit "Play" is going to change
it back to yellow. Add feather and change the transparency or the
blending mode to screen. This one allows me to add
sunlight to whatever object. What I'm going to do next
is to trim off the edges. I want to select
both object and use the shape builder tool
which is Shift M on your keyboard while holding "Option" key on Mac or "Alt" key on PC and then click the access. It will get rid of
the extra shape. Now I have a very gentle
highlight on my illustration. Basically, this variation
just have two extra steps. At the beginning
of the recording, I changed the color to one of those swatches color
and then feather, and then change the
transparency to screen and then change the opacity
to a lower degree. That's the entirety of
this particular action. My homework for you is to create a similar action that adds
shading to your illustration. I will see you in
the next lesson.
5. Optimizing Your Export Workflow: In this lesson, we're
going to talk about how to optimize your workflow, so that you can select only relevant actions for
your desired results. In this lesson, we won't cover the mechanics of
recording an action, because you have
already mastered that from previous lessons. Instead, we'll be focusing on workflow portion
of the actions. Over here, I have a folder
called Blog Graphic Workflow, which you can also download
from our class resource area. Just a quick refresher. If you want to load your action, you can pull out
your Actions panel, and click on the "Hamburger Menu" and select "Load Actions". This will allow you
to import actions. Over here I have three
separate actions. The first one, resize my
graphic to 200 pixels wide. The second action allows me to resize my graphic
to letter size. When I mention graphic,
I mean selections. It could be multiple groups. It could be one
individual graphic. Whatever that is under
your active selection, will be considered
for these actions. Then my third action is to
export my current selection. I'm going to show
you a quick example of how I use my actions. On my artboard, I have a page of sticky notes that I plan to insert it as my graphic
for one of my blog posts. Also, on top of that, I have a couple illustrations
just for the fun of it. We have already
mentioned that actions only consider my
active selection. So I'm going to first create two different versions
of my sticky notes. I'm going to go ahead and grab the notes portion
of the graphic, and then hold my Shift
key on my keyboard to select one of the
graphic on top right here. For the first round of export, I only want the export
to be 200 pixels wide. I'm going to go ahead and uncheck the Resize
to Letter Size. Then I'm going to
click on my folder. When I hit "Play", it's going to go through the actions that have check
marks in front of it. In this case, it's going
to resize my selection to 200 pixels wide and give me
Export Selection options. Let's go ahead and test
it by hitting "Play". If we look at the artboard, we can see the
selection has already been resized to a smaller size, and I also have the option
to tweak my selections. I want to set the
scale to times one, because that will just
respect my original scale, which is 200 pixels,
at this point. You can even add another scale, say you want it to
be 400 pixels wide, in this case, it
will be times two. Then you can go ahead and export your asset. Then it's done. I'm going to hit
"Command Z" a couple of times to go back to
my original graphic. This time, I'm going to export a slightly different
version of my notepads. I will select my Notepad page, hold my Shift key while selecting the second
illustration. Notice that the first
illustration is not selected. Let me just collapse my folder, so you can see better. This time when I hit
the "Play" button it's going to go
through the same steps, but instead, it will render
my current selection. Let's take a look. As you
can see in the preview, it's a different
version of my notepads. I'm going to click on "Cancel" and "Undo"
a couple of times. Sometimes I also
like to give my blog readers printable
version of my graphics. In this case, I'm going to
select a different workflow, which is resize to letter
size and then export. In this case, I have unchecked the Resize
to 200 pixels wide. Then I'm going to select the
entire graphic right here, and click on my folder. You see the check
mark on the Resize to Letter Size and
Export Selection. Then when I hit "Play", it's going to give me
the new export window. In this case, this is already
resized to letter sized. Then I want to select
my format to PDF. Then you can export your asset
to your desired location. I'm going to hit "Cancel" for now and then "Undo" a couple of times to restore our
original graphic. That's basically how you can use the Actions panel to
create your own workflow. Ever since I understand
how Actions panel work, my illustrator files
looks so much cleaner. My homework for you is to
think about your own workflow, and how you utilize Adobe Illustrator for
your creative work. Whether if it's for
illustration or branding, or blogging, or graphic
design, in general, think about a series of tasks that you do
on a daily basis, and then try to create your
actions and put them in a folder and see how you can optimize your
workflow from there.
6. Creating Consistent Visual Systems: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to take a look
at our creative process in creating this letter
using our actions panel. Now I'm going to
resize my letter A to the side and then
lock it as a reference. Next up, we'll build the
same letter from scratch. I'm going to press "P" on my
keyboard for the pen tool. Then I will just
roughly plop down my anchor points for the
skeleton of the letter A. Then use pen tool for
the crossbar as well. I will use the direct
selection tool, which is A on your keyboard
to grab this right edge on the A to just
drag it a tad wider. We will have space to use the
wavy line to cut the shape. I use wavy lines a lot
for my illustrations. I have action for it, which is also under the
workflow actions folder. If you want to know how to
create this particular action, you can watch the bonus
lesson of this class. But for now, I'm going to
create a straight line by using the line segment tool and I will color the outline dark black, so that you can see
the contrast better. When I play the way
we line action, it's going to give me
a dialogue asking for the size and you can also change the
density of the wave, you can change the
style of the points. I like it to be smooth. Once you're happy
with the result, you can click "Okay". Now I will grab both object and choose
my shape builder tool, which is shift M
on your keyboard. This will allow me to visually
control what to keep. I want to hold my
Option key to trim off. I'm going to get rid
of whatever that is not needed and then use the selection tool to select the line itself
and then delete. Obviously the wavy line action can be used for straight lines, but it can also create a very interesting effect
for polygons as well. For example, if
we have a polygon right here and I'm
going to color it differently so you can see better and maybe make the
stroke a bit thicker there. We have a hexagon over here and when we use the wavy
line action for it, it will give us very
interesting shapes. This one allow us to add a
bit of randomness to it. This will make our
lines more organic. If we zoom in to our
example right here, you will see this very
interesting texture. This is basically creating
a wavy circle and then offset the path to equal
distance until the center. Let's see how we can simplify
this process using actions. We're going to get started
by creating a circle. I'm using L for the
ellipse tool and hold the "Shift" key to
create a perfect circle. I will go back to the
wavy lines action for creating waves
for my circle. I'm just going to make
the size a little bit more exaggerated
and then click "Okay". I'm going to change
the layers color to orange so that you can see the contrast
better when I zoom in. The next step, I'm
going to create basically concentric shapes that goes increasingly smaller. What I will do is to
use the offset path. It is under the Object, Path, and Offset Path. When you use the function, you can define how much smaller you want
the offset to be. For example, when you
turn on the preview, you can see the live result. This is minus 10 pixels and if you want the gap
to be a little wider, you can do maybe 20. That's the offset path. Under the Workflow Actions, I have an action that's
called Offset Path, which is basically creating
a smaller concentric shape. I'm going to show you
how this one works. When you have the
shape selected, you can hit the play
button and then just keep going until
you're ready to stop. This action allows us to quickly create a series of
concentric shapes. This is super helpful if you
are creating a series of illustrations or lettering art that shares similar
look and feel, but not necessarily
sharing the exact graphic. Obviously this is a
very symmetrical shape, but this action is not restricted to a very
particular look. For example, if
you were to create something that is
entirely custom, for example, things like
this and then you can use the same action Offset Paths
to create concentric shape. By using the actions panel, you're able to create one consistent visual system within a very short
amount of time. My homework for you
is to [MUSIC] create one action that grows your
shape from inside out. [MUSIC]
7. Leveling Up in the Actions Panel: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to organize
our actions, how to export them, how to maximize
your productivity by using the button mode, and we will also learn how to control the speed
of your actions. Basically, this is for all the overachievers
out there who wants to get even better at using
Adobe Illustrator actions. As you learn and experiment
how Actions panel work, it might not be a bad
idea to come back to your actions
folder periodically, just to give your folder a
little organizational love. For example, in my
workflow actions folder, I have three tests that
we have shown earlier. These are particularly for
my surface pattern designs. I'm going to create a folder
just for these tests. I can click on the folder
icon at the bottom, and to name my folder
surface design, and click on "Okay". As you can see, I have a
new folder that is empty. What I'm going to do is to
hold my Shift key to select all three tests
and then drag them under my new folder to
keep them organized. If you remember when we first
started creating actions, we have some options that may
not make sense back then. You can click on the hamburger menu and
click on "Action Options", you can revisit some
of the options. You can obviously rename it, and to change folder and assign a function key that allow you to quickly
access the action. Also the last drop-down menu
has different color options. Say that I pick this yellow
and click on "Okay". Actually, I'm going
to go ahead and change all my three
tests into yellow, Actions Options, and yellow, basically allow you to color
code all your actions. When I click on the
hamburger menu again, I can go to the Button Mode, which will show me all
the actions as buttons. As you can see, I have my surface pattern design
actions color coded as yellow. For example, if I were to
perform the squint test, I can just click on the button once and
it will do the trick. Whenever you want
to switch back, you can click on the hamburger menu and
uncheck the Button Mode. Some of you have taken my advanced techniques in Adobe
Illustrator class before, where I demonstrated one action that I use to
audition my colors. I've also included that action
into our class resource. Under the workflow folder, you will see the Color
Audition option. I want to show you how you
can use this action well. By default, Illustrator
will play straight through. This is not very helpful because it's just
simply too fast. I'm going to restore it to normal blending mode and come
back to my Actions panel. What we want to
do is to click on the hamburger menu and
select "Playback Options", this will allow us to choose how fast we want our
actions to go through. I'm going to choose pause for one second and click on "Okay". What this action
does is to cycle through all the
blending mode under the Transparency panel so that we can audition the colors. I'm going to get
my Actions panel out again and hit "Play". Now remember, with
the new setting, we will have one second
in-between steps. I'm going to go ahead
and hit "Play". This will allow me to make
a decision on the fly. For example, I really
like this blending mode, so what I did is to
click on "Stop Playing", and then I can go to my Transparency panel and
check out the blending mode. Over here, it says Color Burn. I cycle through the
blending modes a lot, so I figured it would be a great idea to create
one action for it. This example is to
show you how you can control the
speed of the action. Whenever you want to
share your actions, you can click on one of
the folders and come over to the hamburger
menu and Save Actions. This will allow you
to save your actions as Adobe Illustrator
actions file. [MUSIC]
8. BONUS: Creating a Wavy Line Action: In this lesson, I will
show you how to create an action that gives you
a wavy line like this. Before we jump into recording, I'm going to show you how
does the action work. Say that you have a
straight line right here. When you hit play on
this particular action, it's going to ask you what
size of the wave you want, and whether you want it to
be a zigzag or smooth style. Then when you hit okay, it's going to expand
this line into a path. Let's get started. First, I want to create
one straight line, it doesn't have to be
horizontal or vertical, it can be at any angle. Then I'm going to hit plus
to create a new action. Say I want to type groovy lines, hit record and then I want
to go over to effect, distort & transform
and then zigzag. You can play with the
sliders and then check whether you want
it to be smooth or corner and then hit okay. However, this is currently
still one effect, instead of a path. If it is a path, the anchor points, or the Bezier curves will
follow the path of our waves. But right now, we can
only see a straight line. That means that we need to go to the object and
expand appearance, and this will turn the
effect into a path. But if we look at
our actions panel, none of the actions
were recorded. Thankfully, we have
covered this before, so you know that it's
a nonrecordable item. All we need to do is to click on our Hamburger menu
and insert menu item. If you remember, our first
effect is called zigzag, and then you can go
ahead and click find, and it shows you the effect, distort and transform zigzag. That is what we're looking for. Go ahead and click okay. Then we want to insert
another menu item, which is expand appearance and click on Find exactly what we're
looking for and hit okay, so that is our action. Let's test it. I'm going
to go ahead and create a different line and click on my groovy lines
action and hit play. It will still give
me the options to choose and then it will
expand appearance. That's how you
create groovy lines.
9. Final Thoughts & a Life Hack: Congratulations, you have
made it through the class. Now you have a
solid understanding of how the actions panel works. Let's do a quick review. We took a tour inside the
default actions folder and practiced how to apply the actions that came
with Adobe Illustrator. We walked through the
steps of creating actions that help you improve
your surface designs. We have also covered
a few ways of adding character to your illustrations, and turning that process
into one custom action. In the following lesson, we have learned how
to export assets more efficiently by creating
our own action. Last but not least, we have used a lettering example to demonstrate how you can use actions to create a more
consistent visual system. Next up, it's your turn to bring your own
project into action. Go ahead and take a good look at your current creative workflow
inside Adobe Illustrator. Identify commonly
used functions or tools that's relevant to
your current process. Create one or more actions. Of course, take some screenshots
and show us what you're working on by uploading that into the student
project gallery. We have learned a lot
about automation today. But did you know
that you can use your Adobe Illustrator
actions panel with your smart
speakers at home? Just like this. Alexa, clean my home today using
Adobe Illustrator actions. [MUSIC]
Esther Nariyoshi, Published Illustrator based in the US
