Speed up your pattern making workflow

1. Introduction: Hello. I'm mostly, and I'm going to show you how to use the apple shortcuts app to help make seamless repeating patterns in procreate. Paul explained the process of sameness repeating patterns so you know what you're aiming for. And then I will show you how to use the shortcuts to make the process really simple. So you won't need any fancy graphic design software. Or urinate is your iPad and any drawing app. After that, I'll give you some background information of what we're trying to do with shortcuts. And then I'll show you how to make several useful shortcuts. And finally, we've got a really cool project where we put, we will put all are shortcuts into action and make a funky chili pepper pattern. This course should give you the knowledge on how to automate your own workflow to make repetitive processes less tedious. So I really hope you enjoy the course and I look forward to seeing your patterns at the end of the course. 2. Seamless Pattern Theory: In this section, I will be going through some background information to seamless patterns and to help you understand what we're doing with the shortcuts. So firstly, you start off with your design. And if you drew a design in a square, and then you put it together as a grid. They would look kind of boring because each tile looks exactly the same and there's no variation. And you can see that it's a grid. So the aim is seamless patterns is to fill in the spaces between the tiles so that it looks like it's all one pattern and it's not a series of squares in the grid. So when you want to create, you will see in this pattern, you need to put your tiles together and then fell in a picture in the middle of the scene. So on this page, you'll see I've got two grids tiles together side-by-side. And this is what we'll be doing the shortcut to. And then the center section is where you will be drawing your new design. And it gets cropped out from here. So that when you put it all together as a grid, it would look seamless. So this is the cropped out central section that you get from your short cuts. And you'll be filling in something in the middle, like this star here. So once you filled in your middle sections, that goes for both the middle on the horizontal axis and also the middle on the vertical axis, you will get a seamless pattern looking something like this. So this is just an example to show you why we want to do seamless patterns. After this section, I'll go through some information on the shortcuts and the workings of the shortcut, which will help you understand that for when we come to build it. 3. Shortcuts in Action: I'm going to show you how easy and simple it is to use the shortcuts in your patterns design once you have them set up. Don't worry about the actual drawing of the pattern. I've just done a simple hearts design just to show you how the shortcut works. And then later in the course, we will be going to make a full on cine pattern design, which will look critical. So let's start off by showing you how the shortcuts work. So firstly, I'm in procreate. You bet you don't have to use procreate. Do you use any Turing program? So all you do is draw your design in the middle of the page. I've chosen to do some hearts just because they look quite fun and they're quite simple to draw. So just filling in the color now. So once I've got my design and I'm happy with that, I'm going to share the PNG file. But instead of sharing photos, I'm actually sharing it to the short parts that I have made. So the short part has asked if I want to copy it clipboard or to save IT photos. I've chosen Copy to Clipboard because it's just simpler to do it that way. So I made a new layer and then all I have to do is paste that picture. And so you'll see there that the heart's, instead of being in the middle of the page, they've gone to the edges and there's a gap in the middle that we now need to fill in with our design. So you'll end up with a seamless pattern. Just draw a few more hearts and filling in the color. So the next option is to use our second shortcut, which will split the page into two. So the center will move out downwards and upwards. So it's the vertical shift. So again, you need to make a new layer and paste it into that new layer. So now you'll see there's quite a big gap in the middle of the page. So again, we need to add some more hearts. Just do some nice big hearts. They're trying to interlock the hearts as well, so it really seamless. And just this file, we could share it now. But I think there's a bit of a gap at the edges. So I think we can do the horizontal shift short cut one more time just to make sure the pattern is complete. So I've saved that to clipboard again. And yes, there's some light gaps in the middle, so let's fill these in now. Now we need to see it on the big scale. So I've made another shortcut, which is to produce a grid of four by four tiles. So we will be learning how to do this shortcut later in the course to just share that my big file. So once that's done, opened up photos and there is the big four-by-four tile. And you can see it's nice and seamless and it's got lots of fun hearts on it. So I think you will really find these shortcuts useful. 4. Shortcuts - What are they?: Shortcuts as an app made by Apple, which can be used to perform time-saving tasks on your behalf. If you haven't already got the shortcuts app on your phone, you can download it from the Apple app store. If you can see here, this is what the icon looks like. If you search for short cuts, you should see this one. And make sure it's the shortcuts up made by Apple. Once you've downloaded the app. And you can have a look at it, it's really diverse and interesting app. And if you want to get some ideas of what sort of things are shortcuts, shortcuts can do. What you need to do is click on the shortcuts up and then open up the gallery. And here, if you just scroll through, you'll see a whole host of different things that the shortcuts app can do. For example, setting timers or sending yourself and email. And also advanced editing tools such as adding or editing of images. So that's where we will be using the shortcuts up to our advantage. If you click on my short cuts, this is where any shortcut that you have made or imported will go here. So if I click on Create Shortcut, that'll be the stage in which we are creating our new shortcuts. So this is just a basic overview of the app. And once you've got it downloaded, let's start looking at what we can do with our new shortcuts up. 5. Shortcut Pattern Theory: Before we get stuck into making the shortcuts, I would like to go through some steps which will help you understand what the short part is going to be doing. So firstly, the short part needs to get the image and arrange images side-by-side. Duplicate image. And then the shortcut will be hopping out this middle section before the shortcut to know where to crop out the middle image. For it to know what size image to crop out, we need to take some measurements. So for that, we will need the height and the width of the original image. And we will also need the width divided by two. So if you see the width divided by two gives us a central point on the image. And then if you look at the images side-by-side, you will see that x coordinate is the width divided by two. And the height and width of the edge is the size in which will be cropped out from those images. So this should result in your cropped image. And then we would do some steps in order to copy the shortcut for clipboard. So let's now look at making our shortcut. 6. The Horizontal Shift: The first stage in making the shortcut is to make the, is to put the images side-by-side and crop out the central section. I'm going to call this horizontal shift shortcut. So what I need to do is go to my shortcuts up and then click on the plus to create a new shortcut. Once I've clicked on the plus, I need to get some information about my shortcut. So that is where I click on the three dots next to new shortcut. So here we need to give to shortcut a name. And I will call it shift horizontal shortcut. And we don't want to show it in the widget, so turn off that button. But we do want to show in the share sheet. And it's only when we're sharing an image that we want to have this option come up. So if I click on anything and then deselect all and select images. So now that is done, I'll press done. The first thing we need to do is get our images to start off with. So the easiest way to find this function has to start typing. What do you need? So I'm going to start typing get and images. And there's an action that has come up which has get images from input. That's what we need. So it says get the images from shortcuts input. That's correct. So the next stage is we need two versions of that image. So we need to make a list. So I'll start typing less. And there's a button here with Coke which says less. So that is what I need. And it's written down in the list 12. But I don't want to say 12. I actually want to have two versions of my image. So if i cross off one. And I will, along this bar here, there's a button that says images, which is what we want. And then the next one needs to be the same because we need to images. And the next thing we need to do is to get the height and the width from the images. So we'll start off by getting the wet. So I want to get some information from the images. So I need to click on media and scroll down to the section under images, which says get details of images. So if I click that, we need to alter this to get the information that we need. So if I click on detail, I actually want to get the width from not from the list so clear that I need to get. So that timekeeper will. I need to get the images. And because we need the height and the width, the height. So if I click on get details of images again. And this time the vocally on detail. I want the height. And again, click on image and select a magic variable and choose images. So we've got the height and the width. And now what we need to do is to find the center point in the width. So we need to calculate. So if I go up here and start typing, calculate. And we don't want to calculate statistics, we want to just do a simple calculation. So I'll click on Calculate. And we actually won't be this time we want the width, the width divided by two. So now we've got these calculations, but we still need to put our images side-by-side. So I will combine my horizontally. So if I combine in here, it's comes up which combined images. So that looks quite good. But we don't actually want to combine images. We want to combine our two images in. So I'll click Select Magic variables and list. So that means that combines a list of two images horizontally side-by-side. And next thing we need to do is we need to crop that combined image, the central section out of that combined image. So I will type in crop crop image and it's automatically put in cropped combined image, which is correct. When you have your crop combined image set up, you actually need to make some further adjustments. Because we actually need to change that to decide where the cropped image needs to be taken. So if I click on the More option, and we don't want the position to be the center. We want it to be the custom. And the x coordinate, which is the line across where the cropping starts, is, has got to be the calculation of the width divided by two. So if I click on the x-coordinate, it says here, there are some options here. One of them is calculation result. So I'll click on that. And the width needs to be the width of the image, not a number. So if I click on the magic wand and click on it, and I do the same thing for the height. State's budget variable height. And the final part of the thought cards is to share the information back into procreate or any other drawing app that you are using. So for this, we need to use the scripting function. So click there. And we need to choose from a menu. So where it says here 2s for men menu, it says problem with optional here. We actually, in the prompt bet, we need to write what the menu needs to say. So I'm going to say, what do you want to do with the image? So there will be a pop-up box was comes up with this question. And now we need to give two answers. I'm going to say the first one will be Copy to Clipboard, and the second one will be saved to photos. So we've got our question and answers. But at the moment, the answers don't actually do anything. So we need to add that in. So if we go back to the search and we typed in copy, copy to clipboard, it has come up with an action there, which is the one we need. And so he says copy menu result to clipboard. We don't actually bought menu result. So clear that and click on it again and select magic variable. And we need our crops image. Copy to Clipboard. So now that's done. We need to move this up to Copy to Clipboard. So it's linked up to the answer. And now we need the saved photos, so I'll start typing and let's come up with safety photo album, which is correct. And again, we need to clear that and select our magic variable, which is our cropped image. Again. Saved it to recents, which is your recent photos. So if I click and hold to move this and I move it below the answer safety photos. And now we have completed the shortcut. We now need to test it. So if I press done, you will see your shortcut is saved here. 7. Testing the Shortcut: Now that we have created our horizontal shift short cut, we need to test it and make sure it works. So I'm going to open procreate and selects a new square canvas. And we need to draw an image in the middle of the page. So it doesn't really matter what the image is. Just going to draw a smiley face. And now we need to run our shortcut. So click on the spanner button and then click Share. And you need a PNG file. And instead of sharing it, saving it to images, you need to scroll down and look for the shortcut saved. So that would be if horizontal shortcut. And this is the prompt that we were given that we wrote which says, what do you want to do with the image? And we've got two options. I'm going to copy to clipboard, so click there. And now the moment of truth, we needed to create a new layer and click on the spanner tool again. And this time Add and paste. And there we have, our image has been split into two. And it will leave us the space to fit out the center section. Now, if you want to split the canvas vertically, we will create a new shortcut to do that. That would be in the next section. 8. The Vertical Shift: Now that we've made the horizontal shifts, so there's a really easy way to convert that to the vertical shift. So you don't need to rewrite the whole shortcut. All you need to do is make a copy of it and make some small alterations. So if I click and hold on the horizontal shift shortcut, and that gives me some options here on the right. And I'm going to duplicate it. And then I will click on the three dots of my newly duplicated shortcut. And I'm going to rename it. And I'm going to call it shifts vertical shortcut. We don't need to change anything here. So now we just need to, wherever it says, well, we need to change it to the height because we're actually cropping it in the other direction. So firstly, fall under the math section. You need to change width to height. So if you click on wet and clear that. And we need the height which is here. And you need to divide that by two. And then we also need to combine the list one image on top of the other instead of side-by-side. So we need to combine the list vertically. So I click on the word horizontally and change it to vertically. And then in the crop section, if I click on the Show more option, the x coordinate should actually be the 0 and the y coordinate should be the calculation result. Because instead of going across, you want to go up, halfway up the image. Because we've measured the height divided by two. So and, and if I click on the y-coordinate, there's an option here that says calculation result. So I need to click on that. And then where the x is, I need to clear that and leave it at 0. And then the width and the height, they are the same. Everything else is the same for the whole shortcut. So we just have made these minor adjustments. And now let's test it. 9. Testing the Shortcut: So now that we've also done short, I'm going to open up, procreate again. Smiley faces which have been split. Tests. If the vertical shortcuts on the vertical axis, I'm discouraged to us. So we can check that it that in here and find my shortcut, shift vertical shortcut, Copy to Clipboard action. And we will see that it has split the squiggle. Sent two more patterns. Let's get on with chili pepper pattern. Design shortcuts. 10. Making the Chilli Pepper Pattern: I'm now going to show you how to make a really cool chili pepper design. So you want to open up, procreate, press the plus on the top right corner to select a new campus and choose a square canvas. It doesn't really matter about the size, it just has to be square. So now I'm going to pick my brush. I've chosen ink bleed. And if you look at the under the brush studio, I'm actually making sure that the opacity of my brushes on full. So if you click on tape and move the opacity up to full. So, and the next thing we need to do is choose a nice red color for chili peppers. And let's get drawing. So chili peppers are quite fun to draw because they're very funny shapes. They start off wider and then they taper out and the sort of curl in lots of different directions. They can be tall and thin or shorten, but it's a good thing to practice storing. And when they're put together, they can look really nice. So I'm just drawing the outlines for Chinese here. And then when I want to put color in, I can drag the top right hand corner color picker across the screen into my circle to listen. Just during some chillies in different directions, different sizes and shapes. Now filling in the color. This one. I pressed undo if two fingers because this one is a line must not be fully complete. So I'm destroying around the line again and filling it in this time. So that's our chili peppers shape. And then now we need to add the green tops. So change the color to a nice dark green. Today. I try and make the same sizes to represent the size of the chili. A couple more. So now we just want to add some highlights so to truly stand out from the page and look shiny. So I've changed the color to white and just draw some some highlights on the top corners of the chilly. In the same direct imagining that the light is coming from the left-hand side. So that's a nice shine. I think I'm happy with that. So now what I need to do is make the background color see-through. So untick the Background layer. Because if you share it with the background, it will also copy the background. So we just want the background layer. Once I'm happy with my drawing and I've removed the background, I will click on the Action menu and share like we did before. And choose my shortcut and run the shortcut, coffee it to clipboard. And then I can add it and paste it. And you can see here I've still got the first lead ticks, so I just need to undertake that. So now my pattern has been split. I've put the turned on the background there again to search, easier to draw. And I'm now going to draw some more in the center section. Joints and nice different sizes and shapes, but try to make them liason interlocking. I'm happy with that. And I just need to remove the background layer again. And then I can do the same thing to share my image and to PNG and then run the shortcut again. And then I just need to paste it. So you can see here there's quite a big gap in the middle, so I just need to fill that in with my chili peppers. This time I'm drawing, keeping the background layer off, but you can choose whether you want to keep it on or off. It doesn't really matter which just whatever's easiest. And now you can see there that there looks like there's a bit of a gap around the edge. So I'm actually going to share again and do the horizontal shift one more time. So just so I can fit in the middle section. And then we'll make a new layer and paste that in and get rid of the old layer. They usually leave the old layers. And just in case I wanted to go back to the previous version, if I'm happy with it, if I've changed too much. So picky my color again, and I just need a couple more in the middle to finish off the pattern. So once it's done, I would like to see how the pattern worked out on the big scale. So I need to have a shortcut that makes a grid of cities together. So I've just choosing a nice bright background color. And then I will run a shortcut. And I will show you how to do this shortcut in the next section. So I need to run my new shortcut, which which is called Preview tiling beak. And I'll show you how to do this, which puts all the tiles together on. It puts four by four tiles to make 16 total tiles in a grid. So you can see what the picture looks like. So I'll just type in Plato's and they've been my image. And here we have a really nice 2D pattern. 11. Seeing how your pattern looks: In this section, we will be making a grid of tile 16 times so that we can see what it looks like on a bigger scale and see if we need to make any adjustments that are pattern. So we go to my short cuts out again and click the plus sign to create a new shortcut. Click on the three dots next to short cut. And we need to give it a name. So I will call it big time. Again, like we did with the other shortcuts in the share sheet. And it only needs to be images, so we select all and click images. So now we need to choose what our shortcut starts, which is the images. So if we click on media and we get images from input. So that will take the image from share sheet. When we share it from procreate. So now we need to make a list of 16 images. So I'm typing in the search to get the script with the coal. And wherever it's got written 12. We need to cross that out because in our list we have 16 images. So I can either click on the magic word or you can see here it says images. So if I click on images, I actually need to do this 16 times. So I just keep clicking. I've got 16 images now. So we've made our list, but we need to put the images together, integrate. So we search for the combine integrate option. So if I could combine images. So it's automatically filled in our list, which is what we need is our nest of 16 images. But it said it's foodie as horizontally. So that would be lining up all the images in one line, which is not what we want to, we want to ask grid. So we click on horizontally and change it to integrate. And then the final thing is we want, once this grid has been made, we want to know where to put it. So we want to save photo. So I start typing save. And it says Save to photo album. Save combined images. And that is it for our big tile. So I'll just tested opening up procreate. I'll just test it with their Smiley, smiley face pattern. And I click on the Share button and press PNG. And then I need to look for big tile. And that will run my shortcut. And then so if I open it up in photos, there is my pattern and it has worked. I mean, obviously it would look nice of you spend more time drawing the pattern, but know that shortcut definitely works. Just like say this course is now complete. I hope you have fun making some really nice patterns and please do post your projects. In the project section. I'd love to see what do you make.