Master the Basics of Adobe Illustrator to Create Awesome Illustrations

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Julian Burford, and I'm an illustrator from Amsterdam. I've been doing this job for almost six years at a production company called the MediaMonks, and since last year, October, I've been doing this as a freelancer, and I've had the privilege to be working for great brands such as McDonald's, M&M's and KLM Arlines. In this class, I'm going to teach you guys how to create awesome looking illustrations, all the way from the first sketches to the final artwork, but all of this done in Adobe Illustrator. I've been working with this program for almost 10 years, and I'm just going to share all my experience, tell you tips and tricks, and at the end of this class, I think you will be a true master in using Adobe Illustrator. Some of the tools you will be mastering are the Blob Brush for sketching, Pen tool and Pathfinder for creating shapes and gradients for coloring, and all of this is going to be teached within this fun project I came up with, creating a retro looking movie poster for one of your favorite movies. 2. Setting up Illustrator and Using Blob Brush: Hello, everyone. My name is Julian Burford. Welcome to my Skillshare lessons. In this first lesson, I'm going to teach you, guys how I sketch in Adobe Illustrator. Before I begin, I want to say I'm using a Wacom Cintiq. Oop. I think this is the best or the easiest way to sketch in Adobe Illustrator, or a Photoshop for that matter. You can use another Wacom if you like, or if you already have experience drawing like in Intuos. You can use that. If you have a lot of difficulty with this first lesson because this is probably the most difficult thing to do on a Wacom regular tablet. Just sketch on a piece of paper. We'll just scan it in later and you can start from the second lesson. So, that won't be a problem. So, we're going to sketch. For this first thing I'm going to show you guys, we're going to open a new file in the stratus. So, we'll go to file, then new. There already settings that pop up. There's one setting I want you to look at specifically. That is under the advanced tab. So, you can click on the arrow. Then, it will show align new objects to pixel grid. Make sure you check it off because make sure it's turned off because if it's turned on, everything will snap onto this grid. Can be very annoying at times because it's going to snap like pixel perfect. For illustrations we are going to do, it's not necessary. It could be handy if you're going to create buttons or icons for on a website, and you want those to be crisp and pixel perfect, but we're not going to do that. So, turn it off. Make sure it's in RGB mode. The site really doesn't matter. Just press OK. Now, we have a clean new file. Always the first thing I always do, this is just, I think this is very handy. It's just go to view and press hide artboards. Press that. Now, we just don't have the borders of the page. Now, we just have whole Illustrator to draw on. So, first thing. We're going to sketch in Adobe Illustrator using the Blur Brush Tool. I personally think this is the best tool for sketching. I'm going to show you why. We're going to double-click it first. There are a few settings. I think mine are already adjusted, but make sure fidelity is set all the way to accurate. So, make sure that arrow is all the way to the left. Then when you go to the brush size option, it should be set to pressure. Then make sure the variation is set all the way to the right. So, the arrow is all the way to the right. So, set to maximum. Then press OK. Now, I'm going to show you what that does. Why we've adjusted these settings this way. I'm pressing on the Break key to downsize and upsize the brush as you can see here, it's just very easy. If I press light on the Wacom, you will see that the line is fairly thin, but I can also press hard on the Wacom. Then the line will be thick. As you can see right here, I started by pressing light on the Wacom. So, you can actually go from thick to thin. You have total control now. So, that's very nice. So, sketching. We can begin. For this project I came up with, we're going to create a retro-looking movie poster. I've already chosen a movie. That movie is called Kingpin. I'm just going to copy paste these screenshots that I already made. Already, I have an idea in my head of what I want to draw. I just basically took some screenshots from the movie, from assets that I'm going to illustrate. A picture of a bowling alley and just some inspiration to help you draw the sketch. It's not a shame to have, it helps, you don't have to do this out of top of your head. You have the images, you can use them as a reference. So, please do so. So, if you picked a movie and you have this idea. Just grab some screenshots from the movie of assets you're going to need. Just paste them in your artboard in Illustrator and we can begin. So, I'm going to downscale this a bit. So, I'm going to pick the blur brush and we're going to start sketching. So, if you want to go quickly to the blur brush, you only have to press this Shift key and the B key together, and you'll have the black brush selected. So, now I'm just going to draw the outline of the poster. To draw on a straight line like this, I just hold the Shift key while I'm moving up down, or left or right. You can even go diagonally when you hold the Shift key. You probably see I'm switching through all my tools very quickly. That's just because I'm using just a keyboard shortcuts for that. If you press A, you'll have this selection tool, the white one, and you can drag over points like this. Now, I can just move these points up or down, or right or left. I just want to pause it to make it a bit longer. So, I'm just going to move it up a little bit like that. 3. Sketching: And I'm going to draw the bowling ball I want the bowling ball to be in the middle of the poster. It's not always very easy to draw a perfect circle, but does it really matter for this first part? Because it's going to be around it at the end anyways. This is just the first rough sketch to make sure for the overall layout of the poster. So, somewhere around here, and that's the nice thing about it, it is straight, you can move everything, you can undo everything, you don't- everything you do is not temporary, it's just, it's not that definite, and I don't know if you've seen the movie kingpin but there is this guy, and he has a rubbery hand. God I forgot what his name is in the movie actually but he's the famous bowling player and he lost his hand and now he has a rubber hand, and I want that rubber hand to hold the bowling ball. So I'm going to select the proper brush tool again. What I just did was just change the color of the bowling ball. Because now I can draw over it in black again without it merging with this object, and I can see more clearly what I'm drawing. So, let's say the hand is holding and I also got a picture of how they hold a bowling ball. Just move them over here, so I can see it. As you can see, it doesn't really have to be very nice already, it is Just a rough sketch. These fingers go into the holes like that and we have the pinkie. Brush the erase tool there. That's E being shift E to be correct and you can just erase again. Shift B is, the block brush tool. And right here, I'm going to chop the hand off as it were because that is where the rubber hand stops. It's like a glove almost and the thumb would be some way all the way underneath like that. Okay. So, now I'm just selecting it with the selection tool. That's this one right here. That's also the V key on your keyboard and I'm just going to scale it now because the hand right now it looks a bit small. So, I'm just going to scale it up and you can rotate it when you grab the corners, you can rotate it a bit. So something like that looks good. As you can see here, i have chopped bit off already because of the erase tool, doesn't matter, i'll just fill it up again. Okay. A bit shadow and he's wearing this ring, the championship bowling ring and that needs to be on there because that's very characteristic about this. So, I'm going to draw the ring here. Just by erasing some of the lines and just draw over. Also, yeah, like this. Now, as you can see, these illustrations are not detailed, you know, you don't have to go in detail now. Just get a feeling of the overall layout of the poster. So, I'm going to make this black again and when I'm satisfied with the position, I'm just going to- what i think the hand can still be a bit bigger like this. Just a little bit. Rotate it like so. Okay. So, now I'm just going to, I always like to save everything I've illustrated. So, I'm not going to throw this away, I'm just going to copy the ball and just move it out of the way, so i can still have it. I'm just going to make this black, I'm just going to erase this part here where it overlaps the hand. I'm just going to select the wide selection tool with A, I'm going to select the part that's divide now, I'm just going to press the back space key and it's gone. So, it's very nice. So, right now I think, the hand look still a bit weird over here. Unravels. We'll see and look into that later. No problem. Okay. So, what do we want next? I was thinking like a triangle in the background. I'm just using a star tool. As you can see, this is not triangle, but if you press down on the arrow keys or the down, you will see it. You can select how many points you want and it goes all the way down to three and then you will have a triangle. So, I'm just going to draw the triangle and I want that to be on the back. I'm going to give it a outline. I could have used this actually for the ball as well. I'm thinking right now, but no biggie. Something like this. Make your thing a bit smaller. I'm going to select a Lips tool. Make a shadow here for the ball. I'm going to erase the part I don't need. What I'm doing right now, if you double click on an object, you are going to isolation mode, and that's a very nice mode because everything out will be, you cannot select it and you can just focus on this shape. It will highlight that shape and you can't touch anything else. That's very nice. Okay. So, if I'm going to erase this now, you'll see the outline always stays because of the object. So, what I have to do to erase that part, I have to go to Object first, and then select Expand, and then press Okay. Now the outline is a filled object and now I can erase it. The same thing like we did with the bowling ball. I'm just going to select those pieces or those parts and just press them back and voila, we have it. Still thinking. It's all by tweaking at a certain point, make the hand a little bigger. That part, yeah. Okay. Next, the title of the movie. I was thinking underneath. So, for the title. This is just to get a feeling for the poster. I'm just going to use a font. Doesn't matter which one. I'm just going to type in Kingpin. This is a bit too basic, but let's hear this one. I did expand again like we did with the triangle. Now it's no longer a font, but it's shapes. As you can see, you can already get a bit of a feeling of how the final layout of the poster will be. Make this just a little smaller. Just move it around a bit. I thought it would be funny to use the pin for the Is. So, I'm just going to remove both of the Is. I'm going to sketch a pin shape there. So, we want that to be a pin. That didn't turn up very nice. Use the Erase key. Okay. Paste it. Cool. Then underneath, you always have the credits. I'm just going to do this just to have a bit of idea of where all of it will be. Okay. So, move this down a bit. Actually, you will see a part of the bowling alley here in the triangle, like so. Oh yeah. This is the overall idea, I think. In our next lesson, we are going to draw over this sketch again and just make it more detailed. So, this is just the first sketch lay out, and then the next step is going to sketch this in more detail, also already a little bit in color. I didn't move the Is. So, yeah. I've hoped you've learned something in this lesson and I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Coloring: Hello, everyone. Welcome back. Today, we're going to continue with our sketch and work in a little bit more detail and we're going to color it in. This is the sketch where we ended up with last time. So, I'm going to move down here. I made a little adjustments in the meantime, not big ones but I made the glove a little bit thicker as you can see. Added some fingernails actually, already did some detail and that's about it. So, not much has changed just a little bit. For now, we're going to start with color and for that I'm just going to use flat colors. We're not actually, this is still the sketching phase. So, let's start coloring and we're going to start with the bowling ball. A bowling ball in the movies as you can see here, it's gold so, we're going to pick a gold color. For the colors, that's actually quite important. I use HSB as color mode and you can use RGB but I prefer this and I'll show you why. From move this to slide a strike you can see here at H I can just pick any color and every color from the rainbow basically. Let's say, I would like to have a reddish color so, I just move the arrow to red and then these two sliders I can just adjust to set the saturation basically and the brightness. For the lettering, for the title, I would like to have a red color. I'm just going to move this through to the right. Going to pick the red color, well it's already there. Maybe a little bit more to the orange side. I'm going to reduce the saturation and reduce the brightness a bit like so. Then I'm going to do that, just select these parts and use the color drop tool, the eyedropper. You can select that by pressing I on your keyboard and you just press on that color and it will be the same. So, let's color the bowling ball now, I'm going to make it the gold color. So, just color it in, quick and dirty within the lines of course. So, when I have to color in with more precisely, I just downscale the brush size and I want to increase or don't have to be so detailed anymore. So, as of now, can just increase the brush size and just coloring very fast. I'm going to move this to the back of the drawing. How do you do that? You select the shape you want to move to the back. Actually, in this case it's two shapes is bowling ball and the background. You go to objects, arrange, send to back or you could just press command shifts back bracket key and as you can see it's moved to the back right now. So, I'm going to just color a bit more bright this and now let's color in the hand. We're not working on shadows and lightning just yet. This is just the main color. If you haven't seen the movie by the way watch it it's very funny. It's from the Farrelly brothers the same guys that made Dumb and Dumber. Well, I don't have to tell you that it's a funny movie. So, selected both command shift back bracket in and there it is. I'm going to change to color again, make it more flesh color like so, and then for the background because it's perfect triangle it's actually easier just to use the paint tool for this little part. Just going to press on this corner, press on that corner and make the whole triangle and then move to the back again. Get this may be a bluish color like so, and I'm going to tell you in more detail how the pencil works in the lesson after this one. We're going to work with the paint tool all the time so, this is just a little thing. The floor, from the bowling isle, going to do the same thing just make the shape, select all the objects that need to go to the back, select it and give it a different color. This little part here as well and here, the gutter, what is it called? I believe it's called gutter, right? Get back and here we have it. So, oh wait, the ring, still needs to color in. This will be a reddish color. So, may be just pick this one and now I just selected this outline and just brought it to the front. Okay, so now we have color it in, just very basic. Now, let's work on shadows and highlights, that's our next step. 5. Shadow and Light: So, shadows and highlights. We're going into more detail now. So, very easy, no hard stuff here. We're just going to pick the color. I'm just going to do the highlights and shadows of the hand right now. So, I'm just going to pick the color of the hand. We already have, and that's the nice thing about this HSB color mode. I'm just going to reduce the brightness, so now it's darker, and it's always nice to- I always just adjust the color also a little bit. So, I'm going to select the brush through and now we're just going to make the shadow. In my illustration, the lightning become from the top. Perfect, just basically all the way from above. So, shatters will be here, finger here, in here. Let me add a little bit because it's going into the hole, so it's also darker there, here, like so. The inside of the glove is also darker, like so. We're just going to select these parts and the hand and everything that needs to go to the back and do the command shift that bracket key thing again. Oh I forgot this here again, and then we have the shadow already. That wasn't that hard. So, now we're going to select the color of the hand again and make it more bright. So, we're just going to increase the brightness to make this. So, let's saturate it. Now we're going to work on the highlights, like so and I think actually because of the light, the source is coming from the top, a lot of the top of the hand will be highlighted. So, I think actually almost this entire part here is going to be highlighted like so. The thing is it doesn't has to be perfect. The nice thing is you can always go back if it doesn't look right. So, I'm just going to color this all in. Yeah, rise a bit here, actually yeah, that's better. That's just me pressing the erase tool and just doing that. Let's move this to the back again like so. Oops, I forgot these two. Okay. So, let's look at it. Well, it does look. It's not that far off but it also looks, it does look completely right. I think this over here is a little bit more, like so. It's just tweaking at this point. We're just going to use it again a little bit. I went too far. Yeah, let's leave it like this for now. I think that's looks okay. Now, for the bowling ball, there's going to be a lot of shadows and highlights on the bowling ball and also reflection because of the floor and the ball itself is actually also reflecting. So, that's just going to be a bit more difficult. So, first off we're going to do the shadows. I'm going to pick the color of the ball again. I'm going to change the color a bit to the red because of the floor, and just going to create the shadow, like so. Maybe a bit more, okay. Move it to the back. Don't forget the other shapes, like so. Then we need the highlight. So, we're just going to the color again. I think a highlight over here would be nice, just like this spot, make it a bit brighter and maybe a rim light all the way, maybe a bit from here, all the way around to make it look more shiny, like so. Then select out the shapes that need to go to the back again, this one, this one, and this one. Well, that looks okay already. Now, I'm going to do a little bit of the reflection. I'm just going to pick the same color and just think something like this. This is actually reflecting on the ball shape, not very easy to make I think. Actually, I think it's like this, now I think about it. I also want a bit of the reflection of the bowling alley inside of the ball, that you can actually see that the ball is heading towards the pins. So, yeah, okay. Make it a bit darker, it doesn't have to be at the exact same color of course. What went wrong? We'll do it again. Yeah, it's okay. Select the shapes, move it to the back. See, well that looks actually pretty good already. So, as you can see, I'm not doing a lot of, it's not very detailed yet. I mean, it's still in sketch mode but you can really get a feeling now of where the shadows are going to be, where the highlights are going to be, and what we're going to be drawing in the final illustration. So, I'm just going to just very quick, I'm going to try and see how the bowling alley will reflect on the ball. I think it would be something like this. Wait, I'm doing it wrong? Like this. Got it right here and the pins right here. Zoom in a little bit so I can do it more accurate. Drawing a perfect pin isn't that easy I've seen. Okay, just going to copy. Why isn't it doing that? Copy it using the alt key and moving it. This is just very rough. Actually, it's one, two, three, four. I'm missing two pins. Seven, seven rows. There we go. Move this a bit closer. Yeah, I think that's- and everything needs to be bigger, I think, so I'm just going to select everything I've just drawn and just group it with command G, scale it up like so. I'm just going to erase everything with the erase tool that's sticking out of the ball like so and going to move it back with the colors to the background like so. So, yeah this is it. This is the sketching phase and the next step in the next lesson, that's actually, now it's going to get interesting. We're going to draw over the sketch using the pen tool and then we're really going to illustrate the real thing. So, seeing forward to the next lesson and I'll see you there. 6. Learn How to Use the Pen Tool: Well. Hello everyone. Welcome back. In our last lessons we have made the sketch for our poster. And from now on things are going to get more difficult and interesting. We're actually going to create the real thing, the illustration. So, I'm just going to show you where we left off last time, that's the sketch on the left here. In the meantime I actually made some little adjustments that I wanted to show you before we move on. I changed the colors a bit, added a bit more detail to the bowling ball, a bit more reflection, and fiddled around with the font a little bit, and that's it. So, yeah. We are going to- now sketching is finished, we're going to do the real thing and we're going to trace our illustration, and that's basically just draw over it. And we're going to do that with the Pen tool. But before we do that, we're going to select the illustration we've made of the sketch, and we're going to copy it, and we're going to group it by pressing Command G on your keyboard, and we're going to Transparency and we're just going to lower the transparency to somewhere around 70 so it's more blended into the background and we can draw over it more easily. We're going to lock the selection. And you can do that by pressing Command 2 on your keyboard or you can go to Object Lock well it's already locked, so you can go there now, but, Lock and that will say Selection and you can press there. So, we're going to use the Pen tool, and the Pen tool is one of those tools you're probably going to be using the most in Adobe Illustrator. Well it's one of the most important tools. And getting used to using the Pen tool, it's just a matter of practice, almost. Yeah, practice makes perfect with this tool. The first few tries, you have to know how the pen reacts, where you have to place the anchor points to get the perfect curve you want, and you will get more handy with it the more times you use it. So, I'm just going to give you a basic rundown of what you can do with the Pen tool. First off, you can just click anywhere to create a straight line. So, as you can see here, I'm just making some random shape and I'm just clicking and you will have straight lines and hard corners and you can close a shape when you go to the first anchor point you've made and you see this little circle next to the Pen tool icon, and now it's a shape. So, I can just move and drag it and do anything whatever that I want. Other thing you can do with the Pen tool is just, when you hold the Shift key, you can make perfect straight lines in a horizontal line, vertical, or diagonal. So I can also go in a 45-degree angle, like so. And yeah. You can create shapes like that as well. Now, if let's say, you don't like the shape you've created and you wanted to move some of these points, then you can select the white Selection Tool by also by pressing A on your keyboard and you can just click on one of these points and just move them around. So, you can change everything you've made, or you can even delete one of these points. So let's say, I don't want this point and I'll just press Backspace and just connect it again. So, like so. Then the more difficult part and that's actually the part where I'm talking about getting used to where you have to place the anchor points is drawing curves with the Pen Tool. So, to draw curves, you don't only click, but, you drag. So, I'm going to click here, I'm going to drag, like so. And as you can see, the curve is always different depending on how, where you place it, how long you're going to drag these handles, the handles are these things that are sticking out when you draw a curve, and this way you can draw curves. And if I wanted to go back to the hard corner, just click again and we can have, all right, 40 or 90 degree angle. And same thing here, you can select the white Selection Tool again and you can also alter these, drag these points, and change the angle of the handles as well. So, yeah, that's just the basic rundown and we're going to use this tool to trace your illustration. So, we're basically going to draw over your illustration. And just a little tip, if you're not used to drawing with the Pen Tool, grab a Peugeot logo somewhere from the internet and try and trace this a first couple of times. This is a very good logo to learn it with because it has straight lines, it has very curvy lines, basically, it has almost every kind of curve you could create in a Pen Tool. So, that's just a little tip, it really helps. So, okay. Let's start. Begin tracing. 7. Tracing Your sketch: So, let's begin by tracing our sketch now. So, I'm going to select pen tool. First thing, we're going to make sure fill is set to nothing. So black. Then, for the stroke color, we would like to choose a very bright color. So, I'm just going to go for a plane right now. This will help you see more clearly what you're drawing. So, choose a bright color. So, yeah. That's just a matter of tracing your illustration, I'm going to increase the stroke size a bit, so you can see what I'm doing. So, I'm going to make the color more pink as well. So, I'm just going to trace illustration in this finger. So, right now, I'm already going back to the original first point because I want each finger to be a separate shape, instead of this whole hand being one shape. We want that, because we're going to color it in using gradients later on, and you need each finger to have a difference. Each finger needs to have its own shape, in order to create the gradients we want. So, as you can see here also, I'm also just drawing that one finger. I'm just going to move on to the next finger here. I'm also going to close that shape. Always make sure you close all of the shapes. The last finger here is also going to draw it, like so. Then now, I'm going to return it all the way over here, and finish the shape like so. Actually, we want this finger also to be separate. So, I'm just going to draw like we did here, just draw this. Make sure the line is overlapping the other lines, because later on, you will understand why. That would be in the next lesson. It will look a bit messy, but don't worry about that. Right now, I just pressed the command U. Then you will have these grids, and it will snap two points. Because right now, I want to continue a shape that is exactly starting at that position, and that tool can help you with that. You press command U on the keyboard. It's the same as View Smart Guides. Now, I'm turning it off again. As you can see, this shape isn't really how I wanted it to be. So, I can now select a wide selection tool by pressing A, and I can move these anchor points around and these handles. So, we have the shape we need, like this. Now, for this prosthetic part of the rubber hand, I'm just going to use the ellipse tool, because it's perfect circle. Just going to create an ellipse, grab the selection tool with V, I'm just going to move it around, place it over the sketch, turn it, resize it. So, it's what you want, we have what we need, like so. I'm going to move on to bowling ball. When you hold the Alt key, when you're drawing ellipses with ellipse tool, you can just drag, and it will start from the corner. But if you hold the Alt key, you will draw the circle from the center. I really like that. I prefer that mode. But this is what I really think is best, and when you hold the Shift key, it will always be a perfect circle. All right. I'm just going to go to the center, hold Alt and Shift, both at the same time and draw perfect circle for the bowling ball. I'm going to move on to the reflection inside the bowling ball. Now, because of the reflection is perfect symmetrical, I'm only going to draw one half. Because it's perfectly symmetrical, I can just draw one half of the illustration, and I'm just going to copy and paste it later and flip it. So, we have the whole thing. I'm just going to draw the shapes at halfway point. Make sure you're going all the way down there, like so. You touch the edge of the screen and flip sometimes. I can't copy or paste that line because it's almost identical to the one below it. I'm just going to change that anchor point until I have the shape I want, like so. I'm going to draw this piece right here. As you can see, I'm just drawing the lines right now. I'm not even enclosing shapes. That's because we're going to divide every shade you see, and we draw. That's the next step. But you always need one shape that needs to be close, I'm going to close this one, like so. This is something you will understand, why we're you doing this you will understand in the next lesson, it will all clear why it doesn't matter what I'm doing right now. This shape is not in the illustration, but it doesn't matter. It's all about this curve right here that I want. So, draw the half of this triangle thing, like so. For the bowling pin, because the bowling pin is such a specific shape, and you want it to look perfect, you don't want the awkward-looking bowling pin, I cheated a little bit already. I took a picture from a bowling pin, or I just googled the picture of a bowling pin, and I just traced it over. So, I just drew over the actual photo, and there's no shame in that. I mean a bowling pin is a bowling pin, and will always look the same. So, there we have the bowling pin. Now, because I only have drawn one half, I'm going to select oh, I don't like to select all this. I'm going to lock that for a second. All right. Pressing the command two key. Now, I'm going to select every shape I made here. I'm going to copy it by holding the Alt key, drag in the shape. Now, I have two of these, and now, I can just right click on this, select transform, reflect, make sure it's set to vertical, because you want to flip this way. Okay. Now, we have the other half basically. So, we're just going to make sure this is perfectly connected with the other half, and for this reason, you sometimes really have to zoom in within an Illustrator because the snapping tool isn't all that great, I have to say. So, yeah. That's the tracing part. I still have to do the ring here, but you get the idea. So, it looks like a mess. As you can see, I mean, all these shapes going on and there's not really anything. Yeah. It's just a mess. So, in the next lesson, I will show you how we're going to clean this up, and every shape will be perfect and neat as you want. So, yeah. See you in the next lesson. 8. Cleaning Up - Divide and Unite Shapes: So, we're still tracing at this point. As you can see, I've done a little bit more tracing than we ended in the last few video. I also gave every section of the illustration a different stroke color just to help me see and what part is the ball, all the blue lines are part of the ball. The orange outlines are part of the reflection on the bowling ball. The hand is red, these things are blue. So, that really helps. I'm just going to continue drawing a little bit more shapes here. The shadows and the highlights on the hand, going to use a different color again. Now, you can see it's a mess. But like I said, don't worry. We're just going to create these lines right here. It doesn't matter if it gets messy because that's going to be fixed, it's all about the shapes we need. Like some and we need this shadow over here. Sometimes, it can get a bit too messy and then it's better sometimes to do it in sections. Just trying the first part spending everything and then move on to the next part. But I think you will manage. Let's shade right here, that's it. So, what are we going to do now because this is just a disaster if you look at it. We're going to clean this up now. So, I'm going to select everything we've just run, all the tracing shapes, I'm going to copy paste it over here. I'm just going to grab the original sketches, we'll place next to it so we have a good reference. What we're going to do now and I'm going to do this in sections because if I'm going to select everything, I'm going to use the divider tool, what we're going to use. It's going to be very difficult to find the shapes again. So first off, I think it's best if we just select every blue line for the ball and do that part first. So, we're going to select everything you want to divide and we're going to Pathfinder and we're going to click on "divide" that's bottom. Then we're going to ungroup because when you click on the fight it always groups automatically. So, are we going to command shift G. That's the same as ungroup. Now, we're going to throw away the shapes we don't need anymore and we're going to merge the shapes that we want to be joined. So for instance, this shape needs to go. Then I'm going to peek a little bit of my illustration right here to see what shade needs to go as well. That's this one can also go, these needs to be merged because that's the shiny part. These two needs to be, I needed those, these needs to be merged. So, sometimes you can fool yourself. These two can join, you need to go to the wireframe mode once in a while. This one can go, this one can join. So, that's the ball. For now, let's just now we can leave it there actually it's looks fine. The shiny part, we are not going that can stay as well. The hand. So, let's select every red part now. What we can actually do, I am going to lock this part as well. Now, I can just select one of these red lights and say, "Select same stroke color." So, now everything in red is being selected. Everything with a red stroke. I'm going to do the same thing again, so I'm going to press on divide, ungroup and actually to help me see a bit better what's going on here. I'm going to copy this. I'm going to Command C, Command C is going to merge this now. I'm going to command V so we have the thing we had and we're going to move it up. So, now I still know where I have to place the hand when I'm done, but we have a more of a accurate view of what we're doing here. So, this part needs to be merged. We want the fingers to be a separate shape because they all need the wrong gradient and coloring, so we're going to merge every finger separately like so. This can now be merged like this. Now, this finger isn't it's own shape so we're just going to fix that problem right now. So, we're just going to create a new shape here. Make sure the line is always crossing the shape you want to divide then press "Apply it again" and now it's fixed. So, yeah, I know this looks strange now, but it will look like hand at the end. Now, I'm just going to select this, group it and move it back to its original position. I'm Just going to shift up arrow two times so I exactly know where it was. To leave the other shape, actually I'm going to leave that shape there. I'm going to leave it perfectly on top. Now, for the shadows. I'm going to select every green thing. Going to select the thing we made actually just then, we're not finished yet. I'm going to copy paste this again. Move it back. Now, this looks a bit difficult but I hope you understand what I'm doing. So, right now, we can select everything here, divide again, I'm going to do the same thing again. So, this is a shadow. This is your shadow. This is a highlight. These two can go because that is going to be the color on this one. So, I'm just going to delete that one. This one as well. This one too. This one too. Show me here. This one can go. Merge, delete. Sometimes is just you have to look very closely that you don't make any mistakes. This part, lets see, does it look correct? Yes, it does. This can go. So, basically these are the other shapes we need. I'm just going to give these different colors as well green again, move this on top, like so. I'm going to crack the ring. Same thing divide, select shapes you want to combine, press on the Unite button. That is a ring. That's the rainbow. Move it back. Now, I see that I forgot to do the fingernails, so we're going to copy paste this part again together with the fingernails. Move it up, divide, hope this can go. Fingernails are there. Move them back in place, I'm going to delete the this one here because we don't need any more. Okay. Now, last part reflection, actually need to shape up the entire bowling ball again. So, I'm going to select every blue shape, copy paste it all arrow down arrow up, combine and select everything in orange and move down over here. I'm going to do the same thing again because the shapes are floating and don't need to be sliced or anything. I'm going to lock this. These are okay. So, that's all the shapes. This can go. This can go. This one can go. This one can go. Actually, no, that one can stay. Combine these two. This can be combined. This one can be combined. The gutter. See everything is being organized. You can actually see what we have drawn. Gone through. Select everything again, and neatly place it back, the original position and there we go. So, the background right here is actually a part that I already get into sketching face because it wasn't that hard. That needs to be there just like this. So, I'm going to do the practice. So, basically, now we're looking, actually you're looking at the illustration already in a way. So, every shape, everything that we need to draw has been drawn and now it's just a question of coloring everything in and that's going to be our next set of videos. I think it will be two or three videos, where I will be explaining how we're going to draw this or color this in and yeah, looking forward to it. So, see in the next lesson. 9. Basic Coloring: Well, hello everyone. Welcome back. We're going to color in our Traced illustration now. So, right now we only have all these shapes with stroke colors, but it doesn't look like anything right now. So, we're going to change that right now. So, yeah, have your illustration somewhere in the middle of the canvas and have your sketch somewhere nearby, because right now we're going to select the shapes we've created and we're going to color pick the corresponding color from the sketch we've made. So, what I'm just going to do now is just select everything, basically, and remove the stroke color. So, I'm going to stroke, I'm going to say, we don't want stroke colors anymore, we don't need them. Then we're going to fill, and then we're going to give that just one of these colors. It doesn't really matter, let's pick one of them, and now everything is in the same color. The only problem now is we can't really see the illustration. So, we have to move with the cursor with the Selection Tool over the objects and then we can actually see what part of the illustration is highlighted. So, right now I'm also going to move the reflection out of the way, because, I will explain that later, but anyway, let's start coloring the illustration. So, I'm going to just pick the selections I want to have. So, right now, this part should be this color. So, I'm just going to pick that part, press I on the keyboard, so we have the Eyedropper Tool, that's also right over here, and now we are going to click on that color, and now we have that color. When you hold the Shift key, you can select multiple shapes and do the same thing again to select the color. So, this is the shadow, this part is the darker color of the hand, these two. This is the green. So, now it's just a matter of selecting the shapes, picking colors that we need, very easy. So, this is going through to every part. Somehow these shapes are not in the right order, I've to move them to the back for now. Black is that color that shapes the ball. So, you have to move this reflection out of the way as well in the sketch, because otherwise I can't select that color. Now I can. The ring. I'm not really satisfied how the ring looks right now, so maybe I'm just going to draw that part all over again. Sometimes you have to draw stuff over. Are we missing anything? I don't think so. No, so let's move on to the reflection. This is the reflection I made, the sketch because it has transpiration I'm just going to ungroup it so we can see the colors. Change the color of it. So yeah, this is a very easy step in the process, just color picking the illustration. Nothing to it. Select these two shapes. Oh, did I forgot the whole shape? I did. These two gather on line. Now, when I want to select all these parts, I can just go to the Wireframe Mode by pressing Command Y, and I can just drag with my Selection Tool over the shapes and I'll just have all of them selected at once. I can do the same when I want to select all these stripes, just going to drag over, drag over, drag over, drag over, like so. Now I can say, "Hey, you have that color." So, yeah. This is the color and this is like the ceiling. Yeah, it's okay. It's not that these are the definite colors, it's just the basic overall coloring and we're going to tweak every color of it anyway. So, I'm going to give this a transparency. Yeah. So, as you can see, it's starting to look like an illustration right now. So, we don't need the sketch anymore. Yeah. So, in our next lesson, we're going to work on the details and add gradients to our coloring. So, a little bit more difficult and it's going to be maybe a bit more difficult to follow as well because I'm doing more stuff at the time. This was just color picking the illustration, but in the next lesson I will be doing more stuff at the same time. So, yeah. See you in the next lesson. 10. Using Gradients: Well, Hello everyone? So, now that we have colored in our illustration or at least the basic coloring, I'm going to move aside from the illustration just a little bit for now and show you how the gradient tool works. Actually, I can show you on this illustration as well. So, you have two types of gradients, and we're going to the gradient step right now that's right over here, and you have radial gradients and a linear gradient. I'm going to show you how linear gradient works first. So, let's say I want a gradient in this part. When you select that shape, the color of that shape will show automatically in the gradients tab as well over here. But it doesn't have a gradient, so what we're going to do is we're just going to move that color and just drag it onto this bar over here. Now we have that color in the gradient. Now, let's say I want to add a new color. You can do that by pressing and holding the ALT key on your keyboard and just dragging from one of these arrows, then you will add a new color. So, as you can see, I can just add as many as I want. You can remove them again by pressing on them and moving down, so just throwing them away actually. So, I'm just going to remove these. Let's say I want to change the color of this part of the gradient. I can double-click on it. Then this new color window will pop up, so through HSB for now, and then I can just change the color for it. As you can see the color, the gradient is already in effect, so, yeah, you can see what it does. Now, this little thing that you can grab right here, you can basically say how long the gradient is taking effect. So, basically, when I move this to the right, you will have more of this pink color than the blue, and then when I move it to the left you will have more of the blue color, and we'll move into the pink color later. So, you can move that around as well. Now, all these things that I'm controlling right here, you can also control inside here. So, when you have the gradient tool selected with the G key, this thing will pop up. You can control these same settings as here as well. But not only that, you can also change the position of the gradient. So, right now, the gradient is perfectly horizontal, but let's say I want the gradient to be from the tip of this finger to let's say that over there. I can just drag from that point to that point, and now the gradient will be in that direction. Now, there is also a quick way to flip the gradient. So, let's say I just want the blue to be on the other side and the paint to be on this side. I can press this button right here, reverse gradient, and now it's flipped. So, yeah, this is very easy. It's not that difficult tool. Oh! One more thing, also, you can also change the opacity of the gradient. So, let's say I want this pink color to go from 100 percent opacity to zero percent. That's also possible. So, now you have a very smooth transition from this brighter color that we've chosen to the color that is on the background as you can see. So, it's just fading in basically. Then we also have the radial gradient. The radial gradients is perfect for, well, radial like shapes. So, for instance, this ball will need a radial gradient. So, we're going to select it, and we're going to move that coloring inside the gradient bar again. Let's say I want the blue color and I want it to be a bit more darker in the middle, like so, just change the color of it, and I'm going to say I want this to be a radial gradient. So, I'm just going to press that button. Now, as you can see, this gradient is circular instead of the linear gradient, that's just straight gradient. So, as you can see, I can also move these points around again and just change the gradient that way. Now, when you press on the G key now, so the gradient selection here, you have a different kind of tool that will pop up. This is actually the equivalent of the linear one but then for the radial gradient. Here, you can change the colors again, and when you see this black dot on the outside of the circle, you can change the shape of the gradient so you can make it more like an ellipse shape or an oval shape. You can also change the size by dragging this and you can change the direction of the gradient. So, let's say I want it to be a shiny part on the ball and I want that light to be from the top left. I'm just going to grab this dot next to the middle, and I can drag that point up there. As you can see, just remove the shape now, you can see that the light is almost coming from that direction. So, yeah, as you can see the gradient tools are very versatile. You can do a lot of different things with it. Yeah, just fool around a little bit. So, let's say for instance, for this shape, I want also a radial gradient. Just going to color pick the gradient that we already created. As you can see, the gradient is, well, it's just randomly placed in the middle, but we don't want that. We want to the gradient to be on the edge. So, I'm just going to move this shape up and resize it. So, this curve is exactly at the same spot as the bottom of that circle, like so. I can change these levels again that way. So, yeah, I just wanted to give you a basic rundown of how the gradient tool works because in the next lesson, I will be doing a lot of gradients in detail on my illustration in a more rapid and fast way. So, I just wanted to show you what I will be doing and I don't have to explain it while I'm doing it. So, yeah, see you in the next lesson. 11. Adding Detail (Speedup): Well, hello everyone. In this lesson, there's not many to be taught at this point. Well, of course, I'm going to teach you guys some new stuff, but what I'm doing right now in this video is actually everything you've already learned. So, applying new details, applying gradients to the illustration, and yes, slowly working my way up to the final artwork. Because this video is actually 30 minutes long, yeah, that would be a bit long spreaded out over, yeah, three lessons that would be on Skillshare. So, I crafted into ten, just speeded the process, and yeah, just have a look at it. Try to see what I'm doing, it's basically all the stuff that you've really learned by now. So, yeah. At this point, it's important that you were going to add detail to your illustration, add gradients, add new shapes, and apply everything you've learned so far. So, yeah. The next video would probably be the same like this, because it's still a lot of work. The video after that would be back to normal where you can see me speak, and I'm going to tell you guys how to, or we are going to work on the movie title screen, that's going underneath the illustration, and we're going to do the last little effects, and tips, and tricks, to make the illustration look retro looking, and yeah. So, see you then. Until then, just watch these videos and see how I work, yeah, how I do this. So, yeah. See you then. 12. Adding Detail Part 2 (Speedup) (with Commentary): So, in this video, another speeded-up video. This is 40 minutes cramped into 10, so it's even a bit faster. Still adding detail. As you can see here, I'm refining the shape of the hand, I wasn't happy with it. Changing some of these shapes by just moving the anchor points with the White Selection Tool. Now, I'm adding the gradients, just sampled in your gradients. I'm not doing anything you haven't learned, at this point. Just applying everything I've taught you guys so far. So, just recoloring some of these, made the hand a bit more pink because I thought the hand was a bit too much in the same color spectrum as the bowling ball, so I wanted to change that to make it pop. So, the hand would be just popping out of the illustration a bit more. Refining the shadow. Actually, I didn't like the green color so I changed it back to red. The finger nails look a bit weird, because it's a glove, the finger nails don't have real fingernails. They're just like beveled into the hand. I'm actually going to create that bevel effect in a couple of minutes. Actually, I didn't like the hole, so I think they were distracting, so I changed it to one big hole. Actually, you don't even see the prosthetic part of the movie in the entire movie but, yeah, just tried to make up something. Created a casting shadow into that part, right there. As you can see, still tweaking all of the gradients here. It's not always perfect within the first try. So, yeah, as you can see, I'm now working on the finger nails to make them, giving them those embossed look. So, I'm just using strokes here. So, no fill colors. As you can see, I'm now trying to create the embossed effect by adding in different stroke with a lighter color. So, the light is coming from the top, because it's embossed, the bottom line needs to be a brighter color. So, and voila, yeah, turning on the volume for something, most probably listening to music. Lots of in and out zooming. It's always, it's just a little take IF. I always want to see how the illustration looks from a distance. Made it bit more darker right there. So, now adding the wrinkles on the hand just by simply creating these shapes with a field gradient. Just trying different stuff, Radial gradient this time, change the opacity a bit. Oh, yeah. I'm moving on to the ring. As you can see, I'm creating the ring from top view first. This is really handy when you have a very specific object that you can create it from the top view and then later on you can use the Transform Tool to give it perspective. So, you will see it in a couple of moments what I mean by that. So, now I'm just looking at the photograph of the ring and trying to replicate the ring using that triangle to make the placement perfect. Okay, so now, I'm using the Transform Tool, as you can see I'm rotating it. Then, I'm slanting right there. As you can see, now it's in perspective. So, yeah, that's a very easy way to do that. I just copied the outer layer, just moved it down and then connected those points, now it has a thickness. Adding a gradient to it. Giving everything a little bit of emboss look like here. So, thickness to it. Yeah, right now I'm just using that ellipse as a guide and making a normal circle on top of it so it sticks out a bit. So, it doesn't look like that flat anymore, giving it some nice reflections. There we have the top of the ring. Adding a gradient also inside of the shape as you can see. So, yeah. Nothing new here, you know of these tricks I've told you, gradients, creating shapes, you dividing them and just did it right there, dividing and combining new shapes. Now, I'm making a mask right there. I'll mask work that will be in the next next lesson, I will show you how to use masks as well. 13. Using the Blend Tool & Masks: Well, hello everyone. Welcome back. We're almost finished. We've added a lot of detail in our last two lessons, and we're going to work on the last few details now, make some adjustments to the movie title. As you can see, I've already added the credits underneath. That's just boring to look at, so I can tell you how I did it. I had the original Kingpin poster next to my illustration, and I just picked the font and went through all the credits, make sure there were correct and pasted in these two logos, and that's it. So, yeah, let's work on the last details. I want the word or the font be out of planks. So, I'm going to do that by making strokes, and first off, I'm just going to pick the star too, and I'm going to make sure it has three points. You can also click on your artwork, and you can say, well, how many points do you want your star to be? So, for instance, these stars exist out of four. I can show you right now. Now, you have star with four points. You can also, when you hold the Command key, you can say how long you want these points to be. So, you can also have less pointy or very pointy. What we want to make a triangle and that's also possible with star tool, just say three points. Then you make a new shape, hold the Shift key and Alt. As you can see, you have a triangle. So, I'm going to make the triangle, give it a strong color, darker one than the floor. I'm going to move this into the artwork, center it, and give it perspective of the floor. Something like this. Yes, that looks good. Now, what I'm going to do, this is going to be very funny trick. I'm going to copy this shape, and then on top again, and we're going to scale this to where I want the middle plank to be. So, something like this, and as you can see, this is like the middle plank, and now we have just no planks on the side. But, we're going to fix that by selecting these two shapes, and then we're going to this tool right here. It's called the Blend tool. We're going to click on that or double-click actually. Then we're going to set spacing to specify the steps, and we're going to say how many planks we basically want. So, in this case, well, I'm just going to guess, six. Then, we're going to press Okay, and then you will have this strange tool as you can see, and you're going to click on the two objects you've created. So, I'm going to click on this one first, that one. I'm going to click on that one. As you can see, now, these rows of planks have been created. So, yeah, it's very nice. I'm going to change the amount of planks actually. I think it's a bit too much. What's also very nice, you can also go into Isolation mode by double-clicking on the object, and just transform one of these. The Blend tool will take care of the rest, it will adjust accordingly. As you can see, you can even move it this way, and actually, this is a really strange shape, but we'll always calculate the in-betweens, something like this. Actually, I want to change the steps to four, it's better. So, right now, all these lines are sticking out of my canvas, and we don't want that, so I'm going to copy the shape. I want to mask this shaping, and I'm going to lay that shape on top, like so. The shape on top, will always be the mask. So, in this case, I'm going to select these two shapes. I'm going to press Command+7, and that's the mask option. As you can see, everything is now inside that shape. So, I'm going to move this back again. Actually, these lines have to go over the reflection of the ball, so I'm going to move this up a few steps. Yeah. Like so. Now, I also want to fade out this reflection. As you can see, this reflection is very hard and doesn't really look good. So, for this, we're going to use a different type of mask, and it's called an opacity mask. This type of mask is a little bit more difficult to create, but I'm going to try and explain this anyway. First off, we're going to copy this shape. So, we're going to cut this shape and merge this. So, we have the exact shape we need. Then, we're going to Gradient, and we're going to give it a black and white gradient. A radial grain, we don't want that. Make it linear, in this case. Okay. Now, it's going to be difficult for me to explain what's going to happen right now. But, everything in black is going to be in a zero percent opacity, and everything in white will be 100 percent opacity. So, it's best just for me to show you what happens. I'm going to Transparency. I'm going to move this object templates to the right because I need to select the object behind it as well. Because we need these two items selected. So, you're going to select the black and white gradient shape, and the shape you want the mask to be on, and then you go to Transparency and click on Make Mask. Now, what this does, it now created an opacity mask, and as you can see, it's already fading out here. We can change the mask by pressing on this thumbnail icon that represents it. So, we're going to press on that, and we can now move and play around with the mask. So, as you can see, everything when the gradient moves through black, you don't see the reflection anymore because it's fading it out completely. Then, if I move the whites down, you will see that will be visible. So, I have actually everything in black won't be visible and everything in white will be. So, I'm just going to move this around a bit till I'm satisfied. That looks good. Now, because I'm in the mask mode, as you will, you will always have to click on the thumbnail of your illustration again, to continue working, otherwise you're stuck in this mask, so yeah. Let's move on to the title screen or to the movie title. Actually, I'm quite happy with it, so I'm just going to add a bit more detail to the bowling pin. I'm going to add a bit of detail here. I want this part to be cut out, so I'm going to select these two shapes. Go to Divide again, press it, and delete shapes we don't need. So, now, we have this, and I want a triangle again. I wanted to match the cone. Sometimes, Illustrator won't snap the way you want. That's the only thing that sometimes annoys me about it, but you have to zoom in very closely, and you can do it more manually. Found it be two triangles, so I'm just going to scale this perfectly to the middle, copy it, merge these two shapes. I'm just going to move these around a bit till I'm satisfied. I can move this point here to the left so 1,2,3. Yeah, that looks good. Okay. I emerged the shape. So, now, I'm going to place these in the illustration, place them over the original pin, and delete that one, and we have it. Now, also, I would like to have the Kingpin logo to have a stroked outline, so a yellow color. So, I'm just going to copy this, make it yellow, move it one step to the back, and now I can just move this around, fiddle around with it a little bit. Give this a stroke as well, so it's a bit more thick. I'm going to choose a line stroke to the outside and just going to pick a size. So, now, it's almost like a perspective. Maybe I just wanted to be perfect in center. Yeah, this looks better, I think. So, yeah, we're finished with the illustration actually. So, in our last lesson, we're going to cheat a little bit. We're moving to Photoshop for the final steps, and in Photoshop, we're going to change the colors a little bit using curves. To make it look more retro, we're going to add some noise and some textures. Yeah, so that will be the last lesson. See you then. 14. Using Curves and Adding texture (Photoshop): Well, this is our last lesson and for this last lesson we're actually going to cheat a bit. So, I lied we're going to move to Photoshop. While we're finished with the illustration, we're not going to illustrate anymore that's done. But in Photoshop, we're going to do a little bit of change in color using curves, and we're going to add some texture to make it look a bit retro and old-fashioned looking. So, I'm going to copy and paste the illustration in Photoshop. I think about it I don't want the background, I only want the foreground. Okay. So, we're going to use curves to change the colors a bit. We're going to do that by pressing this icon right here, and it will show this list and we're going to click on curves. Now we have the curves settings right here. First off I'm going to press Alt and between the curves layer and the vector Smart Object. That way I can say, "Hey, I only want the curves to be applied on this vector shape and not on the background". So, with curves, this is just a something I really like to change the look of your illustration very easily to something more retro looking. I'm trying to figure out what would be possible tool. Yeah. Just make it bigger for you guys. So, what I'm always doing, first, you have these, when you press an RGB, you have thse four different channels. So, if RGB: Red, green, and blue and we're going to alter all of these. We're going to start with RGB. What I always do is just place one point here and place another anchor here. So, we have one, two, three, four. You best left to see that this right anchor point right here will take care of the highlights in the illustration. This anchor point will take care of the shadows in illustration. This point all the way to the left will take care of pure blacks or actually the darker, the really dark colors and these will take care of the whites in illustration. We can move this around. So, this is the shadow anchor if you will, and if we move this down the shadows will be darker. If I move this up shadows will be more bright. Same here with the highlights can move it down to make it darker, move it up to make it more bright. So, for RGB, I'm actually quite happy with how it looks, I'm just going to leave it like this. Then we're going to move to red. I'm going to place anchors at those same positions. I'm going to do the same thing. So, if I'm going to move this up, the shadows will be more in a red color, the darker colors, as you can see here it's changing. So, this is just almost a matter of feel. Just move up and down until you think, hey, this looks better or this looks great. So, just going to move this up a little bit maybe even the very dark colors wants them to be more red like so or not. Highlights, put this down a bit. Make it a bit more dirtier. Now we're going to move to green, do the same thing. So, I want less green and shadows, maybe more green, in highlights. Move this up and down. This is very nice to move it up, I think. It's a matter of testing and see what's best. Going to move the blue again. Again, we're going to move to blue. Okay. So, now we have adjusted all these and sometimes I just go over them one more time, because everything has changed now, some of the anchors will react differently. So, if you go back to red, you can actually get a different effect again. So, I think we're good, actually. So, yeah, that's curves and as you can see I'm just going to show you the difference. Here, this is when it's turned off and this is the same illustration when it's turned on so. As you can see a very neat effect to really give it a boost if you will. So, I don't like the colors on the words kingpin now so, I want to mask that out. So, in the curves layer there's this white box, you can click on that. I'm just going to select the text here that we don't want to have the curves on and we just going to mask that out by making it black. Same as the masks in Illustrator. So, make it black and as you can see the colors are back to the original. So, actually, I think stretching this a bit to pink, so, I'm actually going to red again and. Little less pink color. Yeah, that's better. Okay. Now, I'm going to create a new layer, and give it a bit of a old paper color. So, a bit yellowish like this. I'm going to fill that layer by pressing alt and backspace. So now, the entire layer is in that color. I'm going to the layer effect, I'm going to press multiply. So, now, the color is actually over going through the illustration, and this is a bit too much, but I can change the opacity for that. I'm just going to alter that a bit, like so. Not too much, actually, somewhere in the middle. Yeah. Now, we're going to add some texture and some noise to make it look more realistic and less Adobe Illustrator-y, if you will, because this really looks like a vector illustration, and we can get rid of that a bit. So, this is always a nice trick, what I always use to add noise. I'm going to create a new layer. I'm going to make this layer perfectly gray and with perfect, I mean 50 percent black. So, I can actually fill that in here. So, make sure this is set all the way to the left and make sure B here is 50. I'm going to fill this layer with that color. Going to Filter, Noise, Add Noise, I'm going to add an amount of one and Monochromatic. So, that's just black and white noise actually. Going to press OK, and then I'm going to the Blend Mode of the layer. I'm going to set it to Soft Light, and it's probably not visible in the video, I think. But now, the illustration has a very fine looking noise, not too much. Now, to have a more texture-y look to it I have a brush set that I really like. It's called Subtle Grunge brushes and you can just install these into Photoshop, and I'm going to use these to add a bit more texture to it. I will attach this file of these brushes into the SkillShare page as well so you can download it. It's from the website wefunction.com. Okay. So, I'm going just to select one of these brushes. I'm going to pick this red color, just randomly. Oh, I'm working in the wrong layer. New layer, of course, I'm going to add this noise right there. Just a little bit, not too much. So, I hope this is visible in the video. I'm not sure. Going to change the opacity of it a bit. Okay. Now, I'm going to do the same thing and use a very light color, so the white. Going to add noise here as well, just tap here and there. Okay. There we have it. So, next thing, I'm going to copy everything. So, we can do that by selecting all layers, just command A or selecting everything, and then command shift C, and then command V, and then basically, everything is flattened and into a new layer. This is not always necessary, and I don't think it is for this illustration when I'm when I'm looking at it right now, but I'm going to show you anyway. Sometimes, it's very nice to sharpen the illustration just a bit. So, for that, I go to Filter, Sharpen, then go to Smart Sharpen, and then I always have my settings set to amount 30 percent, radius 0.3 pixels radius, and then OK. That makes it not too sharp because a lot of the illustrations I see on the internet are to sharpened, but this is just very, very little. But actually, I don't like this in this illustration, so I'm just going to remove it. So, yeah, there we have it, our final illustration. We're finished and yeah, I hope you've learned something, and I'm actually looking forward to your illustrations, what you came up with. Feel free to post them on the SkillShare page, and don't forget to leave a kind comment or a good review if you liked it. So, yeah, thanks for watching and well, maybe I will see you in a totally new lesson or a new SkillShare class. Yeah, thanks for watching. 15. More Creative Classes on Skillshare: