Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: Are you looking to level up
your Adobe Illustrator game? Do you want to work faster, more efficiently, and in a
broader range of styles? Then this class is for you. We are d, k, and g studios, the design and illustration
team of Dan Culkin, Nathan Goldman, and we've been working together for
over 15 years now. We've had the chance to work
with some amazing clients, including making postage
stamps for USPS, working with musicians and
festivals like Eric Clapton and outside lands and movie
properties like Star Wars. Our work requires that we
bring both the high level of efficiency and creativity
to everything that we do. The faster that we can work, and the more ideas that we
can bring to the table, the more we've
been able to build our portfolio and
grow our business. In this class, we're
going to show you how we use Adobe Illustrator and our ten most recent and
favorite top tips and tricks. In this class, we're going to cover lots of
different techniques, such as non-destructive ways
of creating your artwork. So you have much more
editing ability, ways of working
and new styles in Illustrator to expand
your range of offerings. Sharing progress with
colleagues or clients. New ways of working
with texts like gradient fills and
work and shapes. Tools for maximizing efficiency, like keeping all aspects of your project highly
editable and much more. Along the way, you'll get to see a little bit
behind the curtain of D Kanji and see our
actual working files. One of the biggest themes
of this class is gonna be working in
non-destructive ways. So by that we mean
keeping files as live and editable as possible. And that allows us to
prepare for any changes that a client might ask for or that we might want to
make along the way. So whether you're a
beginner or a seasoned pro, these tips and tricks
are sure to help you improve your efficiency and
get even more creative. We hope to see you in class. You'll get to see
some of our projects and working files along the way. That was good. That
was very relaxed. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
2. Class Orientation: In this class we're
going to share in demonstrates some of our favorite tools
and techniques within Adobe Illustrator. This is a follow-up to our
original ten tips class. But in this newest class
where showing some of our most recent
techniques as well as the latest tools that are now
included in Illustrator. The ten tips and tricks
we'll be covering are using the Pathfinder tool
in non-destructive ways. Faster pen tool techniques. The New Share for
Review feature, everything about art boards and how to use them
more efficiently. Adding an organic stipple
effect native to Illustrator, the repeat tools, new texts, tools, working
with 3D materials, the new intertwined tool, and working with color swatches. In this class, all
you're going to need as an up-to-date version
of Adobe Illustrator, which you can download
as a free trial. If you plan on sketching, you'll just need
a piece of paper, pencil, or a digital tablet. In this class, we're
going to show you how we use these tools in
the real-world with actual projects
we've been working on for your project,
for this class, we encourage you to
try some or all of the ten tips and
share your progress, your experience, and the final creations that
you make with them. Our hope is that we can
also learn from you. So feel free to share any of
your own tips or techniques, the project gallery or the
discussion boards as well. And with that, let's
jump in and get started.
3. Powering Up the Pathfinder Tool: In this lesson, we're
going to talk about the capabilities of Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a really
interesting tool, especially when it
comes to building geometric shapes
upon each other, but there's a couple
of hidden features that we recently discovered
that is super helpful. With Pathfinder, usually, the way we would
build something, it's pretty destructive. We create a shape and then we make more shapes
within that shape, and then you basically end with a final product that's
basically irreversible. We're going to show
you a different way to deal with it that's a
little bit more adjustable. Right here, Right have
our Rocketeer series, which is like this
spacescape theme. Planets, stars, rockets, and all these things were
created using basic geometry. An example of that
would be every planet, it starts off with a circle. If I wanted to create something else to add to this series, let's say a moon, I would probably start off with a circle and try to intersect
it with another circle. Just to show you what that would look like in the
basic construction, I'd create a circle. Then if I wanted to duplicate
the exact same thing, I'd hold down Option and Shift, and then I'd select
both those shapes, and I'd use the Pathfinder mode to subtract the shape
in front of it, and that would
basically make a moon. The problem with
this method is that now I have one shape based
off that interaction. If I wanted to do something
else where it would be a little bit more
adjustable in the end, I can actually take both these shapes and
hold down the Option or Alt key before selecting
this subtract button. What happens here is that it
makes the same interaction, but with the white arrow tool, that shape, that intersection
is still adjustable. This is super helpful
if you want to have a little bit more freedom
in your illustration style. You can see as I scroll
over the image behind it, it is truly using a
transparent knockout. It's really interesting
that you can actually create the shape you're looking for and
adjust it from there. Let's say I wanted
to make it more of a crescent moon or change
the shape completely. I could even adjust the shape that's actually knocking it out. You could do this with lots of different things
within Pathfinder, this Option key option. I'm just going to show
you an example of this outside the art box. Let's say we do the same
exact thing and want to do the typical making a leaf Venn diagram
shape in the center. We'd usually push this
intersect button. Again, we're getting this
look of a single shape, the end, and we're
stuck with it. But if we hold down the
option key beforehand, then we get the same shape. But then again, it's adjustable. You can see as I play around with one of these shapes
using the white arrow tool, I can tweak this based
off of my liking. Then once you have it to
a place that you do like, that's when you can press this expand button and
you finalize the shape. This is a great way to have much more editability
in your style, and using geometric
shapes within Pathfinder, you can actually just use the option key to give
you a lot more freedom.
4. Better Pen Tool Techniques: Let's talk a little bit
about the Pen tool. The Pen tool can be an intimidating thing
within Illustrator because you don't rely as much on geometric shapes to
create your imagery. It's just one of those things where you just have to
learn it as you go. And the end result of using the pen tool is a
much more organic, hand-drawn look than, let's say, using the Pathfinder tool
to create an imagery. So what we have up
here on screen is an art print that we
created that's using the pen tool pretty much
for all of its creation. And it has a much
more organic vibe. You can see within
this flower that basically all these shapes have some sort of stuff,
Temperature involved. And typically how I would use the pen tool would be going in. And let's say if I want to
draw this purple shape, I'd kinda draw it like this. Where I, as I'm drawing, I'm creating curves in the
process of making the shape. So this is kind of a
quick and dirty way to get something started. But you can see there's some disadvantages of how
this is going to work. In the end, I have a bit more of a wobbly or cruder illustration. But if we start off with straight lines and then use the pen tool features within it, we actually have a
bit more flexibility. So I'm going to show you
how to recreate that. But instead of using
any curves at all, we're just going to
use straight lines. So I'm just going to make
something like this. And obviously it's not the same shape that
we're creating here, but within the actual pen tool, you can actually hold down the button and go into
Anchor Point tool. And this is where things get
a little more interesting. The anchor point tool, I think instinctively we
want to go to these nodes and that's where we
would add some rounding. But we're actually going
to go more mid segment on the path itself. So I'm going to take
anchor point tool and select the path. And what happens here
is we're getting some curvature where the handles are starting off as equal length on either side and it
gives us really clean, smooth look that way. So I'm gonna give every single straight line a little
bit of curvature here. Then I have something a little
more organic in the end. It's a much more
smoother way to create something and start out with straight lines in
the very beginning. Now we can take this
even further if you want to create
something that looks a little more organic in the
sense that it's not as sharp, It's not so geometric looking. We'd use the
rounding corner tool and the running corner tool. You basically would
take these nodes and you see this little
dot that pops up. And that's where
you would adjust the corners and kinda get
this perfect rounding. And it is a very
perfect geometry that you start off with. This absolute rounding is basically creating a
perfect circle at the tips. And what ends up happening with that look is you kinda get a bit more of a geometric shape and it looks less like
it was hand-drawn. Well, we'd like to do is to take this a little bit further, is go into the corners tool. And instead of having
the absolute selected, we go to relative rounding. And that's creating a bit more of like a pointier
ellipse shape. And that's a little
bit more true to life when it comes to
drawing something by hand, let's say with just
a pen on paper. And it allows us to kind of get a little bit more
of that sharper look. And so that's basically how we create all of these
organic shapes. But in the end, they all started off
with a straight line, but using the actual
anchor point tool within the pen tool, we have a lot more flexibility
5. Presenting with ‘Share for Review’: Share for Review is a new tool in Illustrator
That's really handy for sharing progress or getting feedback
from clients. Previously there was the
invite to edit tool, which was great
for collaborating. But now with Share for Review, it's much better for quick
and easy client feedback. So you can access it
here in the File menu or this new blue button
up in the corner. And if you click there, it'll automatically
fill in a link name. You have some options of if only invited people
can edit or anyone, I'm gonna leave anyone
for now so my client can share that link
with other people in their organization if needed. And then you click Create Link. Now that our link is generated, I'm going to copy it to my clipboard and open
it in a web browser. And in this case, this is a good example of
the fact that you don't need to have an Adobe account
or login to use this. So it's great for setting
the clients that might not use Adobe products. So what it'll do is
if you're the client, you have a few options of how to comment on
something like this. You can put a pin and
make your comment. And when you click Submit, it's going to prompt your client who doesn't have a login to either login or to
continue as a guest. So if they are just
using this as a guest, they can enter their
name and click Continue. And just like that now there are comments we'll start populating in this web browser which they could access from any device. In addition to the pin, There's also this
draw a shape options. So for example, they could
draw around an area. Maybe here they'll comment, remove this accent
color, and post submit. Now that we're starting
to get some comments in the web version
here I'm gonna go back over to Illustrator. And as you can see, this comments palette in Illustrator has
automatically appeared. You can also access that from window comments
if it's not open. But you can see our guests login client is
now starting to comment on the file and we can actually click on their comments
to bring us to the parts in our document where they either drew or
made their comments. And just like Google
Docs, for example, this will also notify you via e-mail that your
client has commented. And then once you're in here, you can just start
working on this. So for example, they said to
remove this accent color. So I can go ahead and
remove that from the file. And if I have a response, I can type that to the
client or I can simply click here to mark that as resolved. So as you can see,
this is super-fast. I didn't have to look at an email or a PDF
from the client. It's all right here
in Illustrator. So Share for Review is a really handy tool for
tackling revisions like this.
6. Creating a Live Stipple Effect: In this tip, we're going
to talk a little bit about native born textures
within Illustrator, so no need to use Photoshop. All this stuff can
be created within actual Adobe
Illustrator program. And it has a much more sandier, organic vibe way outside the realm of just
using vector shapes. So what we have opened here
is an example of that style. This is a festival map that we created for Harley-Davidson. And you can see that
we're kind of getting this stipple noise grain kind
of vibe with some of our, some of our elements. One in particular would be
our clouds for examples, they kinda fade
and transparency, but in a much more binary look with a kind of a
sandy or texture. And the way that's created
is using opacity masks, but using an opacity
mask with the addition of the effects gallery
within Illustrator. So you can kinda see
with this cloud, it truly is a vector shape, but as I roll it
over to the imagery, it does have a
transparency to it so that anything that is seen through, you can actually see
through to the background. So this actual cloud itself is a pretty
easy construction. It's basically clipping mask
of ellipses and circles, kind of all inside a box. So you can kinda see
that right here. The full shapes are inside
this clipping mask. So you can kind of adjust
and tweak from here. And I'm going to keep it live
like this kinda gives us a little bit more flexibility
with illustration the end. And the texture we created
is this box right here. This all started off with a gradient and I'm going to show you how
to create it now. It uses a couple of different steps within
the effects gallery. I'm gonna go ahead and create a very similar shape and give
it a fill of a gradient. I'm going to change
its angle so that it goes from white at the
bottom to black at the top. Then with that selected, we're gonna go into
the effects gallery here under effects. And this is where you have
all these different options. So we're gonna go into texture, this folder right
here and click Grain. And as I zoom in, you can
see what it does with that gradient and kinda gives it that noisy kind of Sandy look. The default setting that comes with it is pretty much
how we want to keep it. You can see, you can change
intensity or contrast. But the magic number
for us is basically 50% intensity and zero
for the contrast. And it gives it a
really smooth look. So that's one step. You can use this as your
opacity mask if you'd like, but we'd like to get something a little bit more interesting,
little more chunky. This texture that we're going for would be called
something like a mezzotint. And that's kind of on the realm of going into
the half tone vibe. So I'm actually going to add an effect on top of this effect. So by selecting
this shape again, we're gonna go into
Effect, Effect Gallery. And we're going to zoom in so we can see
what we're doing. And we're gonna go to poster edges that's under
the Artistic folder. And this kinda gives it a little bit more
of a chunky appeal. We're getting some more
gray tones in there. So there's gonna be
one more step after the app to remove those grays. But you're seeing that the edge thickness is
basically at zero, edge intensity is at zero. And the polarization aspect
of this is all the way to the top of all these areas
are basically at the fullest away from each
other in terms of spectrum. So now we have this look
and there's one more step. We're actually
going to add three different techniques
on top of this. So we're going to go into Effect Gallery One more time. It's the last time, I swear. So we're gonna go into
sketch and add torn edges. And you can see something
really interesting happens. We kinda get this kind of wobbly mezzotint, wormy texture. And the way this is created is usually using all these
different settings. We're getting image
balance to ten. The magic numbers
are basically 1015. And then I kinda like to bring the contrast up a
little bit to 15 as well. So 101515. And that is how you
create this look. So in order to get your Cloud to use this
texture, this is where I'm at. Opacity masks come in hand. So I'm actually
going to take this and habit over my cloud. I'm going to select both
items simultaneously. And within transparency, I'm
going to click Make Mask. And then what's happening
is that texture is basically overlaying on
top of your vector shape. Now what's kinda cool
about this is that all this stuff is
still adjustable. So if you click on your clipping mask or shape that you're trying
to add texture to. And you click into
this box right here, you can actually have access to that texture we just created. And you can even
adjust the gradient itself so that we're getting a little bit more
variety within the cloud. Then if you want to
adjust the shape itself, you can click right
back into this box. And let's say with
our white arrow tool, you'll want to change the
shape of the cloud itself. This kinda gives you a
lot more freedom in terms of getting it to look
unique each time. So you don't have to
do the whole thing where you're just duplicating a cloud over and over again. You can use this kind
of body of a cloud and create several clouds
within your illustration. I'd recommend keeping this textured outside
of your art box. So then you can add it to
any illustration that you create as you go
through this process of making your illustration
7. Using Artboards More Efficiently: The ability to have
multiple art boards in your Illustrator file
is really handy, but at the same time it can be frustrating if you're dealing with trying to organize or reorder or name lots of
different art boards. So I want to show you some
of the techniques we use to kinda keep our art
boards in control. So as an example, this is a project that we
did for StubHub with lots of different illustrations
representing the different types of events that they
sell tickets to. And I know that when
we submit these files, these images to the client, we're going to
want to name them, send them a specific
sizes, things like that. Right now it's divided up
into approved illustrations and illustrations that
we're currently revising. The first step is in window to open up the artboards panel. And you can see a list of
all the artboards here. One thing right off
the bat that's pretty handy is you can double-click on any of these artboard
numbers and it will automatically take you
directly to that art board. I can also start naming them here because I know I'm
an export these files. I could export jpegs, PNGs, whatever, just using
these default names. But then I'm going
to have to go in and rename all those files later. So to save myself
that I'm going to start naming these
art boards now. So for example,
I'm going to call this one StubHub wide receiver. And the nice thing about
naming them is that you can kinda confirm here that now when you're going
to Edit Artboards, you can see this one does have that name and number
associated with it. When we go to
export these files, one quick way to do that is this Export for Screens option. We used to use Save
for Web similar, but Export for Screens is
the latest and greatest. And as you can see here, all the art boards we can select which ones we want to
include in our export. This one number ten, RD is reflecting the new
name that we gave it. You can see there's
lots of other options in this Export for Screens pallets such as which
images you want to include. These all have bleed, so we'll probably export a set with bleed
and one without. You can change the scale of these as well as
the file format. So pretty powerful
options just quickly export your art boards and all different file
types and sizes. A few other things that
we can point out here. One thing that I used to always struggle with was if I did want to start rearranging
these artboards manually, I would kind of
drag and drop them so I could move an art board around just to
change the visual layout. But this is art board eight and it's still
art board Number eight, even if I move it
later in the series. So sometimes what I would do is copy and paste in art board and then basically like delete the contents from one
and paste from another. But that's all
pretty convoluted. So the better way to do that, which I use now is to use
this art boards palette. And there's an up
and down arrow here. And this is actually moving the art board within
the document orders. So if you were to
export this as a PDF, for example, this is the order
that would be reflected. You can also just drag and
drop within this panel. So if I drag that
up to number one, now, if I double-check it, edit artboards, I can see
that this is art board number one with our wide
receiver name on it. A couple other things to
take a look at here is if you are getting
kinda disorganized with lots of art boards. Down in the bottom
left of this panel is this rearrange all
art boards button. And that's helpful
because you can decide on a number
of columns that you want spacing between
the artboards. And then if you want to move the artwork with the art boards, which I think typically you would want to keep that checked. Click. Okay, and now that
rearranges everything into a nice grid that's a
little bit easier to work with. Then the last thing
I'll mention is up in this hamburger menu
in the upper right, there's a few options here including Delete
Empty Artboards. So we can click
that, that'll get rid of any blank
ones in your file. So a few quick and easy ways to keep track of your artboards. Named them, export them, and just keep them
more organized.
8. Building Quickly with Repeat: In this tip, we're
going to talk about the repeat tool
within Illustrator. The repeat tool is
super useful when it comes to creating
new shapes just by creating a single
shape and let's say rotating it or
creating a grid. But the ideal solution
would just be to create a single shape and then repeating it using this tool. An example of this would be, let's say, a simple
flower shape. And I have a file
open that we created for a gig poster
for Pete Seeger. And you could see that
a lot is going on, but it's essentially a lot of different flower
illustrations. And you can see a couple down here that I'm going
to use as my example. I'm pulled one outset of our
art board to replicate here. Now, when it comes to
illustrating a flower, I would say our instinct is to start off with
a single shape. Let's say I want
to create a pedal. And we're going to use the rotation tool to let say it rotate this shape
over and over again. So you can see like if
I did something like this and I copied and pasted, I would kind of get this five. And this is kind of like kind
of a way to make a flower, but it's not exactly the
best way to make a flower. And I'm using stringent
like math here, that's not allowing
for any flexibility. It's basically just using like 45 degrees, 90
degrees, whatever. But let's say I wanted
to create something a little bit more
unique where I'm creating five specific petals going around the circumference. That's where the repeat
tool comes in handy. So what I'm gonna do is actually start off
with a simple shape. It's going to just be a square and I'm going to turn it
sideways so it's a diamond. I'm going to go into
my Shape Modes within Pathfinder and actually
unite the shape. And this is going to
allow me to squeeze it and turn it into
a true diamond. And I'm trying to create
basically this shape right here. So I'm going to give it
some rounding at the top. And I'm going to give some
rounding to the sides. And I feel like that's
a good starting point. So everything's live here. And this is where I go
into Object, repeat. So if you go into object, scroll down to repeat
and go to radial. This will allow you to turn it into a flower
almost immediately. Now what's interesting
about this is that there's a couple areas where
you can adjust. I can make the circumference
a little bit wider. I can remove petals
if I want to. I can even change the amount of petals
that are shown here. So you can see we're basically have a lot
more flexibility. And if I'm trying to
create this look, let's say I want to have only five petals and I'm trying to bring
the circumference in. You can see I have a lot
more adjustability here. What's really cool
is if you actually right-click on this and you
go to isolate selected, repeat, it, finds the
original image that you created and you can actually make micro adjustments
from there. Let's say I don't really like
the rounding that happened. Or I can make it a little
bit more narrow looking. But it basically gives you as much flexibility
as possible. And what's also interesting too, is that this could be like the basis of the beginning
of a series of flowers. Let's say I want to move this over and create another one. I can go in and
basically make it, make adjustments from there. So let's say I want
to change this, the petals for this guy. I can do the whole isolate, repeat again and change this one just to be a
little bit more unique. Maybe change its color. And once I click out, I can also adjust the
repeat functionality of it. So I can also add more
petals if I want to. And you could see that the
options are pretty limitless. So this becomes really
in handy when it's creating a shape that requires it to repeat
around itself. And flowers is a really
good example of that.
9. Text Tools: Filling and Shaping Text: In this lesson, we're
going to look at a few texts tools
in Illustrator. This first one has to do with
alignment in Illustrator. And one thing that can
be tricky is based on this bounding box that's
around certain texts shapes. It can be hard to align text perfectly with
other texts or shapes. So for this example, I'm using a cover page of the document we
use with clients. And I'm going to
select everything. Click again on this red stroke because I want that to
be what we aligned to. And if I click a
line, you can see it didn't actually align
everything correctly. Even though things are
aligned to the left. It was this bounding box of the large text and not the
actual edge of the text. So to fix that in
our Align menu, there's a couple of features added up in this
hamburger drop-down. This one here, a line to glyph
bounds, select point text. And now let's try that again. So I'm going to select
all of my texts, highlight my key
shape, click Align. And now as you can see, it's ignoring that bounding box. It's literally just taking the edge of all my glyphs and
aligning those to the left. So now we have perfect
alignment with that text. One other texts thing I wanted
to take a look at was how you can warp and Phil text. So for that, we're
going to take a look at this poster we did with
Mondo for the movie big. And you can see up at
the top here we warped this custom title treatment into this kind of bow tie
shaped container. Now at the time we just
did this all by hand in a pretty manual,
time-consuming way. But there is a good
way to kind of get a head start with that. So I have that bow tie shape over on the side of
my art board here. And I have some live
text and I'm going to keep this live for now in case
I want to edit it as I go. So I'm gonna kinda put
that near this shape. I'm going to make sure
that I send the text to the back and then I'm
going to select both. And the reason for that
is we're gonna go over to Object Envelope Distort. And we're going to say
make with top object. So in this case, our top
object is that bowtie shaped. And as you can see it now fit
the text into that shape. It's a little wonky at this point because it's kind of like forcing the text into some
pretty extreme angles. But it's a way easier solution than what you would have
had to do in the past, which is using mash or some other Envelope
Distort method to kind of push and pull things. Now it just snaps into
place right away. Now if we do want to
make changes to this, we can go back to
our object menu, go into Envelope Distort, and I can click here
and say edit contents. And now I'm back to being
able to edit my text. So for example, I could change that to
a different weight. And another thing I wanted
to point out was how you can now fill live text
with gradients. Used to not be able to
do this in Illustrator. You would have to
expand or outline your text first and then
apply the gradient. But in this case, what you're going to need
is your appearance palette. Because if you just tried
to apply a gradient directly from the
toolbar, it won't work. But what we're gonna do in our appearance panel down here, you have the option to
add a stroke or a fill. So I'm going to
click Add New Fill. And now here is where we
can apply a gradient. And this is really
helpful because we could basically create exactly what we had going on in this file, which is a gradient fading from light to dark,
top to bottom. So I can make those adjustments in the gradient panel here. And the cool thing about
this is you can also use opacity in this gradient. So if we want it to show
through to the background, we have that option as well. Then one other thing
I'll point out is that gradients can also
be used for strokes. So if you select
the stroke here, you can fill that with
a gradient as well. So you really have
a lot of options with how to manipulate text. Lastly, if we did
decide we wanted to change our
container shape again, we can go back to that object
menu Envelope Distort, and this time it's
toggled to edit envelope. Now we're back to that shape and we can adjust that as well. So some pretty handy
text features to keep everything lives and
editable in Illustrator
10. Building Realistic 3D from Scratch: Adobe Illustrator has
come a really long way when it comes to 3D realism, the 3D tools within Illustrator nowadays are super
hyper-realistic. I'm going to play around with a couple of those tools now. One being the Extrude
and Bevel tool, It's one of the more common ways to make something look 3D. But I'm gonna do it
and really simple way. I'm going to start off with
just a square to show you the capabilities
of this tool and actually how robust
it really is. So I have a simple vector
square started up here. And to get your 3D tools open, you can go into effect 3D and materials and click on any
of these selections here. Extrude and Bevel is what we're going to be playing around with. So by clicking that
you can see it. It gave it a kind
of a default angle, gave it a little bit of
depth, some light source. I'm going to give it a bit
more of an interesting angle. I'm going to play around
with some of these presets here and go to isometric
top for example. We'd like to draw
things sometimes in an isometric styles. So this is a great way
to create something more complex in
that actual angle. And you can see that you have also options in the
world of beveling. So the default selection
is to have bevel off, but I'm actually
going to turn it on. And you can see
that it turned on a kind of a tapered look
to this actual square. And you have all these
presets inside it. So right now the classic is just to add a bit
more of that angle, but I'm gonna give it an
actual stair-step look. And even within this, you have adjustments
that you can make. So I'm going to add
some repeated steps. And you can see that I'm
kinda turning this square into an ancient ruin that looks a lot like a
pyramid, for example. I'm going to play around
with the height and maybe give more steps to this whole thing and get it to a place where
it feels a little bit more like my intention to make it look like a pyramid. Again, I'm still just
playing with a square, but I'm adding so many
more features to it. And it doesn't stop with
just the object itself. You can actually
add in materials. So this is basically like making it look like
a certain texture. The default is just
basically a plain color, but you can see in all
materials and graphics, there's all these presets
that you can choose from. I'm going to try
to find one that looks a little bit more
like a rocky texture. And I think maybe this one right here
might be a good choice. You could see it already adds
a lot more realism to it. Now as I scroll in, you can see that even have adjustments that you
can make from here, you can change its resolution. You can change how
many repeats you get within that pattern so it can
make it a little more fine. Can even change, let's say
like the color of this, the default is this brown, but let's say I want
to turn it back to this gold color
that we're going for. So that seems like a better choice and it's
still using a textured mind. Then lastly, let's talk a little about the lighting
that's involved. Now with the 3D tools, you can see that there's
some standards here. You can do like a top-right
lighting, top-left. There's diffuse, which is basically just right
in the center. I'm going to start
off with top, right. And then kind of play around
with the light source here. This little button right here is that you basically can grab it and change your light
source as you see fit. So I'm going to find an angle that feels a little
bit more interesting. That to me feels better than
what the defaults were. Then as I scroll down, you can see that we also have options in the shadows area. This also is typically just
unclicked as a default, but if you click that shadow, you can see that adds a base shadow to
this actual element. And within height,
you can actually give the shadow a
little bit more length. And now it's really looking like a
three-dimensional pyramid. Now, this is not where
you need to stop. Like this whole thing can
actually be even more rendered. This is actually just
the preview rendering to see what this looks
like fully rendered. This top button at the top right is the Renderer
with ray tracing. When you click on that, basically allow for it to
process for a little bit. And then you can see that all of this added detail
comes into effect. So the shadow itself actually disperses as it goes
towards the edge. You get a lot more realism on the shape itself and even the shadows and textures within it are a little more realistic. And again, this is
just using a square. So let's say that you
wanted to go back to that preview and change
the shape of the square. Everything completely
is adjustable. You can even give it some
rounding if you wanted to. Get to a point where it looked completely
different form where we started and then go
back to ray tracing. And you've got a
completely different look. So the 3D tools
with an Illustrator are just crazy
realistic these days. And we can start off with just a really simple
shape to get started, but definitely dig in and see all the
options that you have.
11. Using the Intertwine Tool: One of the most talked
about new tools in Illustrator is the
intertwined tool, which is super handy if you've ever tried making something like Olympic rings where
part of the shape you want to have in front
and part is in back. It can be difficult to use that. Do something like that
using other tools. Because it often requires
a destructive approach where you're using Pathfinder
to break things apart. But with intertwine, it's
really easy to do live. Custom overlaps in that way. So let's take a look at
this monogram example. I'm going to select
both objects, choose Object, intertwine, make. And in this latest
version of Illustrator, we have three ways of
working with this tool. We can either hover over these different areas and click in order to
change the overlap. You can see in some cases, it doesn't pick the
exact right area where we want the
overlaps to be. So in that case, I might use this Lasso
tool so we can get a little bit more specific
with our selection. And then the other third option is to hold down shift and that changes that lasso to
a rectangular marquee. You can drag that. And I like to drag it fairly large so that then
if you do want to come in with your white arrow and adjust the
shapes you can see. The larger you
make that Marquis, the less you have to worry
about reaching the edge of your intertwined selection area. So that's an example
with two colors, which is pretty straightforward. But let's look at if
we wanted to just do a one-color monogram
using strokes, I'm first going
to make sure that both letters are
filled with black. And then using the
appearance panel up here, I'm going to add a white stroke. And the reason I'm doing that in the appearance panel is
because we have the option to move this stroke in front
of or behind the text. I'm doing that so I
can move it behind. I maintain the width
of the appearance of the text and the stroke
I can adjust behind it. So I'll keep that as a
one-point stroke for now. And then let's go back to
Object, intertwined make. And now we can do
what we did before. You can see in some cases the automatic selection doesn't quite give you what you want. So here's another area
where all select there. And then the cool thing
about this is that this text is still all lives. So I can go in and in this
case with a variable font, I can update the width or the weights. Same
thing with the G. So there you have some easy ways to work with the
intertwined tool in completely live
settings so you can update how the letters overlap, their color, their
stroke, and even the font
12. Working Smarter with Color Swatches: Let's talk a little bit about color within Adobe Illustrator, more specifically,
color swatches. We've mentioned this a
bunch on other classes. But I just want to start by saying definitely
use global colors. It's a great way to
start a project. I'm going to show you how
to create one just really quickly because we're going
to use that in our example. So go ahead and just make
your swatch that your using. I'm going to use purple
as an example here. I'm going to add it to my swatch palette as a global color. A quick way to do
that is just have it selected and click "New Swatch". You're going to have the
global check mark created. It's going to add
it to your swatch. You'll know it's
global because at the bottom right corner is
a little white triangle. This is something that you
can adjust in the future. So if you wanted to
change its color, you can just change it by
double-clicking that swatch. So the reason I'm
mentioning this, I just want to show how
versatile color swatches are, if they are global. So this is an example
of all the ways colors can technically be
used within Illustrator. More commonly known, you have the fills, you have strokes. You can use color
within a gradient. I haven't used in
actual live texts. So this is actually completely versatile
in the sense that I can change in the future, but it's using that swatch. I even have a linked
texture within this file. So this texture is just
a grayscale image, basically a JPEG
that's gray scale. I have its fill
set to the screen. Now, for the sake of argument, I want to change this
green within this file. I'm using the
global color green. So I basically have to do is double-click that
"Swatch" within, my swatch panel to make
any adjustment I want. So typically how we
would normally do this, our instinct is to
go to select "Same Fill Color "or select
"Same Stroke Color". Make adjustments that way. But this is a much more efficient way to
deal with things. So you just double-click
on "Your Swatch". As long as you have preview on, you can see that I
can make adjustments. All of those elements
that's using that color are changing on the
fly. So pretty cool. Let's say you're dealing
with a client that requires Pantones, for example. The print files that
we would send off to actually produce
a beer label. You're trying to make your
file as clean as possible. You can see we have
two different labels that are using the
same color scheme. One thing that I'm
noticing prior to sending this off is that, the darkest green I
have in this file is not exactly the same as the
darkest green in this file. I want to unify them. Since I'm using global
colors throughout, you can see that I have a
swatch designated here, that's using this darkest
green on the file on the left. I have a swatch that's using this darker green on the right. I want to change all my colors to be that dark green
and unify them. One easy way to do
that is to grab both those swatches and
make your first selection, the swatch that you want
everything to be merged into. So I'm going to go
ahead and click on this "Forest Green" that I would like everything
to be merged into. Hold down Shift or command depending on
where your swatches is. As long as you
select the first one that you want to
merge into first. Then go into the hamburger icon in the top right of
your swatch panel. I'm going to merge swatches. Now, what that did
was it basically took both those swatches
and turn them into one. You can see on the left
here that file that was using that darkest
color is now unified. So now I've really reduced down the amount
of colors in my file. But as a final step, I also need to convert these
CMYK swatches to Pantones. Typically we would either
do it one of two ways. We would get our
Pantone book out and start looking for
the right Pantone. Try to match it to the screen. Which sometimes depending
on the lighting in your room, can be cumbersome. You can also pull up, let's say, your Open Swatch Library
and go into color books. Open up CMYK coded, for example, and try to match things based
off just eyeballing them. This too is an issue. I'm going to try to find a green that's similar
to this lime green. You click on one of them and
you compare and contrast. May be that's a little bit more labor
than you're looking for. There's actually a
shortcut to all of this. So what I'm going to do
is go and click "Out" and delete some of these
things I just created. I'm going to take
the three swatches I'm trying to find Pantones for. [NOISE] I'm going to
duplicate them on top of each other by holding
down "Option" and "Shift" and get them
right next to each other. With those three
duplications selected, I'm going to go into edit. Edit colors, and
recolor artwork. This panel will show up. So this basically will choose
what those colors are, based off of any
selection of your choice. So you can go into
color library and click on a specific "Color
Book", for example. So we're trying to
find actual Pantones. I'm going to go into color book, Pantone, CMYK coded. What it does is it basically
finds the nearest neighbor. Basically within that book, what it thinks is
the closest match. If you click outside
of that box, you can see now we have
our CMYK selection. You can see that it
pops up as this. Or you have the
nearest neighbor, which is this Pantone that
was specifically chosen, that's pretty close to basically what you find
out a Pantone book. You could do micro
adjustments from there. So what I would typically do at this point is use this
as a basis and be like, I think that it's
pretty close to this Pantone that was
selected within Illustrator. I'm going to check
my work and see if it looks right in the book. This is definitely a much
more easier and quicker way to find Pantone colors
within Illustrator
13. Class Conclusion: Congrats, you made it through. You now know ten new tips and tricks within Adobe Illustrator. We covered non-destructive
ways of building arts, how to work faster
and more efficiently, and ways of working in
new creative styles. We hope this class
inspired you to use Illustrator in
a whole new way. We're excited to see
what you come up with. So please share how you use one or more of the tips
in the project gallery. And if you have your own
techniques to share, The more the merrier, we'd love to learn from you as well. If there's one thing we hope you take away from this class, it's that there are ways
to work faster and more efficiently at almost
every stage of a project. Well, we hope you
enjoyed the class and we'd love it if
you left a review. You can also learn more from us in some of our other classes, ranging from rock poster design to productivity for designers. So thanks again and hope to
see you in another class.
14. Want to Learn More?: If you enjoyed this
class and you're looking to take your Skillshare
instructions to the next level. We're now offering Skillshare
one on one sessions, where you can book a direct
private video call with us to answer any remaining
questions you have or cover other specific
subject matter. We're currently
offering three types of sessions starting at $99 The first one being
a portfolio review. The second offering is a
business consultation. And the third is an art
instructional session. That's a deep dive into
Adobe Illustrator. You can find a link
below to book a session. Or you can also learn more
in our Skillshare profile. We look forward to
connecting with you. It's gonna be Awesome 0.
DKNG Studios, Design + Illustration
