Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to Misha. Me. I'm an artist designer and
teacher based in India. I love to create art
and illustrations using both traditional
and digital mediums, inspired by the
things around me. And you brings me immense
pleasure to share this course, turning sketches into vector
illustrations with you all. In this course, I'll guide you through my process of making a vector illustration
article sketch using Adobe Illustrator. I'll explain how to
import your sketch, how to use layers, Pin Tool, shape builder tool, create and establish swatches
for our illustration. But learning about colors, I'll be sharing with
you my workflow in all the different tips and techniques that will help you make illustration of
your own sketches. This course will be great for
absolute beginners and for anyone who wants to learn how to make vector
illustrations. So if you have never used Adobe Illustrator
before, No worries. I'll teach you all
these sensory features that will get you up
and running with it. By the end, you will have a basic understanding
of the entire process and develop a workflow that will help you create your own
beautiful illustrations. The skills that
you will learn in this class will
enable you to create artworks that can
be integrated into various other graphic
design projects as well. For the class project, you are welcome to join with any sketch of your own and turn it into
a finished illustration. You can also use the sketches that are provided in
the resources section. Please download them so you
can get started more easily. Creating a project will make this learning experience
via more enjoyable. So once you finish this course, share your original
sketch and you're finished little illustration in the project section.
So let's get started. I'll see you in class.
2. Getting Familiar with Adobe Illustrator: Hello and welcome to the
first lesson of this class. Before we begin, let's
make a project folder. This ensures that all files of our project will be properly organized within
the same location. Now, let's keep the sketch image that we'll be using into
the project folder. I have provided the sketch in the resources
section of the class. You can download and
use it from there. However, I would recommend
you use your own sketches. For this class. I'll be
using Adobe Illustrator CC. It is the industry standard creating vector
artworks and decides. Illustrator is an incredibly
versatile software. It has a wide range of uses. It is used widely
by illustrators, graphic designers
to create logos, icons, illustrations, and more for any size of screen
or printed material. When we open Illustrator, the welcome screen looks
something like this. Yours may look slightly
different depending upon the version of
Illustrator you are using. From the welcome screen, you can open the existing files and also create new files. There are a lot of ways to create a new document
in Illustrator. We're provided with several
templates to start with. You can choose from one
of these presets or create a new document
from scratch. To create a new document, you can either click on
this file button or go to the File menu at the top of the screen and click on New
to create a new document. The new document
dialog box appears. As you can see,
there are lots of pieces and templates
to choose from. For various purposes, mobile, web, print, et cetera. It's important to
know what kind of project you are creating
before you start. Since we will create
a new station, your score to the art and
illustration section. Now, on the right side, you can edit the piece
editors and change the document settings as per your requirement
for the project. First of all, let's
rename our filename. I'll rename it to
vector illustration. You can also change it later on while you save the document. Click points and choose Pixels as our documents
measurement unit, but also to
centimeters or inches. Now, you can customize the width and height
of the document. I'll keep what width
and height alike. 1030 pixels, the ideal size
for squad post in Instagram. Now the orientation
actually means the direction in which the
document is displayed. It's either vertical, that is portrait of horizontal,
that is landscape. Since our width and
height is exactly same. So it doesn't matter if the orientation is
landscape or portrait. Artboards here are
like pages or canvas. Basically, it defines
your work area. Let's keep it to one for now. You can also add more later on, after the document is created. Leave the settings as it is. You sit quiet for
printing purposes. So we don't need shirt now, from the advanced options, this is the RGB, red, green, and blue color would. Now, there's a lot to learn
about the color modes. But as a quick reference, the RGB color mode is
best for digital work, while CMYK is used for print. Let's get the raster effects. Two high 300 pixels
per inch or PPI. We have now set the
options we need. You can always
change the size and all other options even after
the document is created. Let's click on Create
to create the document. And here we are in Illustrator. Now, the first
thing that I always recommend to do is to
save the file from the file menu appear go
to save in this window that appears to the location of the project folder
we created earlier. You can change the
file name here if you haven't named it while
creating the document, make sure that for
the Save As type, Adobe Illustrator
is a chosen format. The Illustrator file
has an extension. Click on Save. Now, whenever you save a file for
the first time, you will see this dialog box. After saving, this dialogue box may seem a little technical. It actually allows you to save an Illustrator document to previous versions
of Illustrator. This we don't need right now. So simply click on
Okay, to save the file. You can see that in
our project folder. Now we have an Illustrator file. Now let's take a tour of the
Illustrator's interface. This big area, He's
the document window, which displays the file
you are working on. This area in the
document window, which shows all the
active open documents, is called the title bar. The white guy in the center of document window
is our art board, where we will create our
illustration and your sphere, you will spend 90% of the time because everything
you will create, it all happens right here. On the top of document window, we have the control panel. It offers quick access to options related to the
objects you select. Above the control panel, we have the menu bar, which consists of some
very important menus. And so menus in the
tools panel on the left, you will find tools that you can use to create and
edit your artwork. The Properties panel in the right of the
document window is context-based under
social settings and controls for the content. You select the properties panel stocked with layers panel. You can click the Layers panel, tap the top to suit
the layers panel. Anything that you
click on the artboard, step one object on top of
another and form layers. In this panel, we can rearrange and manage the content
of the document. To show the properties
panel again, click on the
Properties panel, tap. Now, if you need more space
in the document window, you can click on the
arrow at the top of the top panels to
collapse them to icons. Small display screen. This will give you a
little more space to work. To show the panels. Click the arrow again to
expect back two panels. You can also undock
these panels are simply clicking on the top title bar
and tracking them around. This undocked panel is
called a floating panel. And we can keep it
anywhere in our workspace. Productive beck, click
and drag the pen up. And when a blue
highlight appears, release the mouse button and the panel will be added
back to the group. You can very easily organize panels according to
your requirement. Now if you move the
pedals are around. If the interface
looks completely different than what you
had in the beginning, you can very easily, is it the entire workspace and put
the panels at 34 locations? Could do this, go
to the Window menu and choose workspace option. As you can see here,
Essentials Egypt, which is the default
workspace of Illustrator. If you see something else
chosen in this menu, choose Essentials
first and then choose Reset Essentials to put all of the panels back to
their original locations. There are a lot of
menus, panels, tools, and if this all looks
a little bit too overwhelming or technical
to you, don't worry. The good news is you don't
need to learn everything. We will just focus on
posts and features that we really need to
create our illustration. Now you're familiar with
the illustrators workspace and also know how
to manage panels. Moving ahead,
illustrator also allows us to place objects
within our document. And it can support a
variety of file format, pressurized images,
vector graphics, and other Illustrator files. Let's take a look
at how we can bring our sketch image
into the document. To do this, we'll go to
File menu and choose place. This will be our
police dialog box. When we can find our file
from the project folder, Let's select our sketch
and simply hit plays. We have the image loaded and you can see a tiny thumbnail. Now, we can click anywhere in the document window to place it. Once it's placed, we can make various transformations
to the image. So let's take a look
at how we can do that. From the toolbar on the left, select the selection tool. It is one of the most
important tool in Illustrator and it
has multiple uses. You can select, move, rotate, and scale
of use with it. The keyboard shortcut for
the selection tool is V. As you can see here.
Knowing keyboard shortcuts enable you to work faster, more efficiently, and
with increased precision, thereby saving you time and
improving your productivity. There are a ton of Illustrator
keyboard shortcuts, and I have attached
a document in the resources section
with all the keyboard shortcuts that we
will come across in this class for both
Windows and MacOS. So you can refer to
it whenever required. Now coming back to
the selection tool, you will notice that when we select the image
fit selection tool, settings and options on the properties and
control panels changes. This is because both of these
panels or context-based, which means that it will
change the contents of the panel depending
on what you have selected with nothing selected, it is just all about
the documents. But when we select the image, we have access to
different controls for the selected image. It also solves an
object's dimension and transformations
already applied. If any knocked silicon move, simply left-click on the object, in this case our image, and drag it to the
desired location. I'll move it into the art board. You will notice that when
we select the image, a box appears around it. This is called a bounding
box. For some reason. If you don't see
the bounding box, go to View menu and
choose Show Bounding Box. Along the bounding box, there are these hollow
squares called handles. You can transform objects in different ways by
dragging these handles. Not recite your Scale, click and drag on one
of these handles. What as I tried to resize, I end up distorting the image. This is something
we should avoid. How can we fix this? We can quickly go
to the Edit menu and choose undo option. In this case, undo scale. The shortcut key for undo
is Control or Command Z, like any other replication. Okay, we will try
to scale again, this time as a track. I'll press Shift key
on the keyboard. You will notice that
the dimension changes, maintaining the
same proportions. You can either increase
or decrease the size. Pressing the shift key
constraints the proportions, so we don't end up distorting
the image, resizing. Now you will notice that
when we transform the image, this magenta color lines
automatically appear. It is called a Smart Guides. Smart Guides are on by default, but if they don't appear
in your document, go to View menu and
select Smart Guides. The check mark indicates
that it is active. The keyboard shortcut
for the smart card seize control or command Hue. Smart Guides helps us align
when we create or manipulate objects with respect to
other objects or art books. And it's a really
helpful feature. It tells us when an
object intercepts are aligned in
central perfectly. It also displays XY location, that is the position of
objects in the document. Now, coming back to our image, if you want to resize your
skeleton from center, start dragging one of the
corners of the bounding box. And as you track Shift
and Option or Alt key and drag to make it
bigger or smaller. Release the mouse
button first and then the keys finished about
the size you want. The Option or Alt key. Besides the artwork from the center and the sift key
constraints the proportions. So you don't distort
it as you're resizing. Now to rotate the image. If we take the
selection tool just off of any corner handles, you can see the
cursor icon changes to these dotted arrows. When you see them, click
and drag to rotate it. As you rotate, you will see a gray measurement label
with the rotation angle. This is also a feature
of smartcards. As you track, you can
press the shift key to constrain the
rotation of 45 degrees. Remember, always release
the mouse button first and then release the key. There really are a lot of options for
transforming artwork, and it's something
that we'll do often. Now in Illustrator,
you can also crop your image using the
crop image option, which is available in both
control and properties panel. When you select the image, as we click on the
Crop Image button, this dialog box appears, which tells us that if we crop the image inside Illustrator, it won't change the original
image in the project folder. Simply click on Okay. As you can see, the
background grayed out and we get
this cropping box. You can drag the corners
and H handles of this box to define
the crop boundaries. Here also, we can press Shift to scale the
box proportionally and press Shift
and Option or Alt key to scale from the center. You can adjust the
crop urea as per your requirements and click on Apply in the Properties panel. This would apply the crop changes that we
make to the image. Now with the image in place, let's explore how we can
navigate in the document window. We will learn how to Zoom and how to move or pen in
the document window. When working with more
detailed artwork, sometimes we want to focus and
work on a particular area. You can do that by zooming in or make things appear larger. We can do this in several ways. Let's begin with Zoom tool. The Zoom tool is located
in the tools panel. You can select it from the
Tools panel or you can use the keyboard
shortcut center z0, fit the tool selected, click the area you
want to zoom into one or more times and you will see that
you are zooming in. They allow you to see
more detail artwork, applause for zoom out, fit to selected, press the Alt key on Windows
or Option key on Mac. You will notice that I could've zoom tool changes from plus to minus to plus denotes the zooming and minus
denotes zoom out. Now click a few
times to zoom out. This will make your
artwork appear smaller. You can see more
content at once. You are done released the key. You can also drag holding down
the zoom tool from left to right to zoom in and from
right to left to zoom out. This will give us a smooth zoom. We can also zoom in and out without using the
zoom tool at all. Rather, we can go to View menu and choose
zoom in or zoom out. Or we can use the
keyboard shortcut, Control and plus key for zooming at controlling minus
K for zoom out. As we're zooming in and out, we can see the
current to zoom level in the lower left corner
of the document window. We can also choose a different
zoom level from here. Now suppose you zoomed in and you are working
on a particular area, then you realize you need
to edit on another area. You can do that, but pending are moving within
the document window. To do that, we had the hand tool in the Tools panel on the left. Press and hold on the zoom
tool and select the hand tool. The shortcut key for hand
tool is fit the hand tool selected present dragging
the document window to Penn and move around. You can use the zoom and pan together to access different
parts of the document. Wylie the selection tool mode, if we hold down the Spacebar and drag detective hurts the
hand tool temporarily. And we can pan around. Using the space bar gives us a shortcut so that we don't
have to select the hand tool. So these are the
basics of navigation. Being able to navigate in your documents by
zooming in and out. And Penny will help us to create and edit our
illustration easily. Now to see everything
in our document again, go to View menu and
choose fit all in window. Or you can use the keyboard
shortcut, hold Control Zero. Now moving forward, well,
let's select the image. You can see in the control
and the properties panel that the opacity of our
image is set to a 100%. By default, it means that
the image is opaque. If I make it down to 10%,
it gets transparent. So let's devalue more
transparent the image kids. I keep it to 50 per cent so
that it is partially visible. You can simply enter
any number from 0 to 100 and press Enter. Remember that
changing the opacity does not make any changes
to the original limit. It only changes how the image is displayed inside Illustrator. Now the purpose of
doing this is that when we create outlines
in the next lesson, we can see dark
lines more clearly. Now let's take a look
at the layers panel. It provides us a way to organize and manage
contains in our artwork. It also provides an easy way to select Height and lock objects. We will be using it a lot
throughout our class. So let's understand how layers work in five years or so useful. Here in this workspace, layers panel is talked together
with Properties panel. I can simply click on the
layers panel and excessive. If for some reason you don't see the layers panel
in your workspace. Go to Window menu
and choose layers. Or you can use the
keyboard shortcut F7. Just increase the size of the thumbnail here to
see it more clearly. Do that. Click on the
menu here in the corner. Choose Panel Options and
this Layers Panel Options, dialog appears, medium is
selected for the row size, change it to large,
and click on Okay. This will increase the size. Think of layers as clear, transparent folders that contain content like images,
text, or artworks. Every new document in Illustrator starts
with one single layer. You'll see here named VR1. All content of your
document is on that layer. To see the content on a layer, you can click on this arrow to the left of the
layer thumbnail. I'll drag it a little bit
from you to get more space. We can see that our sketch
image is inside this layer. Now if using the selection tool, we select our sketching
is in the art board, you'll notice that
in blue square appears it is called a
selection indicator. And it tells us that the set
id content is on this layer. Let me click on an empty
area to deselect it. Alternatively, what
we can do is we can cope with this reason over
here in the layers panel. And click to select the image. You can select an
entire layer or individual elements of the
layer using this technique. Now to hide a layer, click the icon in the layers panel to the
left of the layer name. You should see that
the content on the left hand artwork
is now hidden. To show the content again, click on the blank
area where the I converse and it will emit
layer visible again. You can hide individual objects of a layer or an entire layer. Hiding contains temporarily
can help you focus on a certain part of
your illustration without any distractions. Not unlock the layer. Click the blank area to
the right of the icon, give us see a lock icon appears. It means the layer is locked. Now, if I move my cursor
to the art board, you will notice
this pencil icon, which indicates that you can't select anything
on that layer. You can lock an object or
whole layer to unlock. Click on the lock icon again, and the layer will be unlocked. Logging objects on layer prevents you from selecting
and editing them. Incidentally, you
can focus on editing the artwork on a certain layer without worrying
about the locators. Now let's rename our layer. Conclude that either we can double-click the layer
name in the layers panel, or what we can do is double-click away
from the layer name, but still on the layer itself. In this empty area over here. This will open up layers option. We can rename our layer here as this layer has our
reference image that we will work coupon, I will rename it to
reference image. It's a good habit to
properly name your layers. Renaming is especially
useful when the project has multiple
objects and elements. Now as you can see here, is Lear has a color
assigned to it. For this layer, we
have light blue color. If you can choose
any other color from this drop-down menu
and click on, Okay. You can see here that the
layer name has changed. Layers color is
useful when selecting content is present
on the bounding box. And selection indicator. If you select an object and its bounding box is light blue, you will understand that it belongs to the
reference image layer. Now let's learn how to
create a new layer. At the very bottom in the
layers panel on the right, click the Create
New Layer button, and a new layer is added above
our reference image here. It has a default name, layer two, and you can see
a red color assigned to it. We will use this layer
in the next lesson. So now we are quite familiar
with Adobe Illustrator, our sketch images in place. We're ready to move on to the next lesson and
create outlines. But before we move on, I would like to
take a moment and tell you about vector graphics, because this class is all about creating a
vector illustration. If you know about
vector graphics, you can go ahead and
skip to the next lesson. But just in case you don't, here's a quick look at them. I'm not gonna go too deep into the technical details,
but basically, digital or computer graphics fall into two
primary categories, vector graphics and
raster graphics. I have created a file
to explain this better. So let me quickly open it. To open an existing
Illustrator file, go to File menu and click on open browser location
in your File Explorer. I have kept this
file named vector and raster in our
class project folder. I will select the file
and click on open. Our document has
opened in Illustrator. In the title bar, you can see that we have two documents open. You can switch from one
document to another by simply clicking on each
title tap, like so. You could tell Fitz document is active by looking at the title, an active document title will appear bright Institute
of attempt one. Okay, so now in this
document we have two artboards Fit
similar looking images. On the right, we have
the final illustration that we will clear together
in this entire class. The left-hand side here, we have the same illustration
turned into raster image. Although it looks similar, there are various
differences in both of them. So let's take a look
on the left art board, which I have labeled
raster graphics. I have placed an image file which I exported out
from Illustrator. When I was done creating
the illustration, this image output
raster graphics, also called bitmapped graphics. Raster base graphics are
composed of group of pixels aligned on agreed
together to form an image. If I zoom into this image, you can see individual pixels. Raster images are only good
up to their maximum size. Once they start to copy on
that, they get pixelated. Fresh geographics of
resolution dependent. They have a fixed resolution. What it means is that
if we scale them up or down or enlarge them,
they lose quality. Hits me quickly,
zoom out from here. Now coming to the right
hand side output, which I have labeled
fitter topics. If I zoom in, I keep zooming in. You will notice
that even though I have zoomed in 64
thousand per cent, this is the maximum
limit in Illustrator. We still have
crisp, sharp edges. Vector graphics are
made up of points and paths that are
defined mathematically. You don't need to worry too much about these at the moment. In simple terms, it means
that Victor plastics can be scaled up or down in
size without losing quality. Resolution independent. If you go into the View
menu and click on Outline, you can actually see all the underlying parts that
made up the illustration. You can use the keyboard
shortcut Control or Command Y to switch between
preview and outline mode. And it will come very handy as we picked our clients later on. So to summarize, graphics or pixel-based vector
graphics or points, or path-based gestures graphics
or resolution dependent. Vector graphics are for
resolution independent. Familiar file names
such as JPEGs and PNGs, or any photo you take with your phone or, or raster images. File formats like EPS and
SBC or any Illustrator file.ai are all example
of vector graphics. Illustrator can work with both of these types of graphics. Okay, so now we have made it
to the end of this lesson. I know that was a ton of
information to digest at once. But don't worry about it. Don't let it overwhelm you. Go to the lesson or
any certain topic. Again, if you need to
see you in next lesson.
3. Creating Outlines: Welcome to the second
lesson of this class. In the previous lesson, we learnt about various
features of Illustrator. In this lesson, we will learn
about points and paths, how to make simple shapes, how to use the pen
tool and learn to create outlines
of our illustration. Remember the new layer we
created in the previous lesson? We will create our
outline on that layer. So let's get to
the layers panel. I locked the
reference image layer so that we don't move
it to accidentally, to rename the layer
we created earlier, simply double-click
on the layer name and I will rename it
to rough outlines. In the previous lesson,
I mentioned that vector graphics are made
up of points and paths. So let's take a closer look at them before we begin
creating our outlines. I have created a document
to explain this better. So let me quickly open it. I'll zoom it in a little bit. Okay? So any vector graphics, that is vector shapes
or vector objects are made up of line
segments called paths. A path is made up of at least
two anchor points which are present at the start and end of the line segment connecting
those anchor points. You can see them here on
the ends of the line. Paths can be straight or curved. Here we have a street
bought in a path like this anchor point control the length and direction of the pot. Now let's look at a code, but you should see these lines come from
the anchor points. These are called direction
handles and they can be used to cover path and control
the shape of that curve. Bots can have two different
kinds of anchor points, corner points, and smooth bonds. A corner point can connect any two straight
or curved paths. As you can see here, a bot abruptly changes direction
at a corner point. Smooth points, on
the other hand, always connects two code paths. At a smooth pond, part segments are connected as a
continuous curve. You can draw a path using any combination of corner
and smooth points. And we will do that in a while. Moving on. Paths can be
open or they can be closed. This path is called
an open path because the anchor points on the ends of the path are not connected, it has distinct endpoints. The last type of path, we will look at our shapes. A shape like a circle or a
square here is a closed path, since the starting and ending points of the
path are the same. In other words, all
the anchor points are connected one to
another in the ship. So here we had a basic idea of what
paths are composed of. Let's make some simple shapes. Now to understand it better. Let's zoom out from here,
from the view menu. Select Fit, Artboard in window. Or you can use the shortcut key Control or Command plus T2. I met a separate art board over here with some shapes on it. And we will learn
how to make them. Illustrator gives us lots of trunk tools to make
simple lines and shapes. And they can be found here on the left in the tools panel. Let's take a look
at a few of them. Click and hold the
Rectangle Tool in the Tools Panel to see
the available tools. While most of these are used to drop blue spots or shapes, There's also the line
segment tool here, which is meant to create
straight open paths. Set the line segment tool. Or you can use the keyboard
shortcut, Backslash, neutral, draw a line coming to your art board and
zoom in a little bit. Position the pointer where you want the line to begin, please. And drag in the direction where
you want the line to end. Release the mouse button. When you are done,
you can move in just about any direction
to create a straight path. Now after you create
a path or a shape, you can change its appearance. You can assign a fill
stroke or both to it. Let's make some changes
to this part we created. Select the path using
the selection tool. The current fill
and stroke color appears in the tools
panel, the control panel, and the properties panel, or fill color applied
inside an object or a path. Whereas a stroke is a visible outline of
an object or path. Now with the path selected, go to the Properties panel. In the appearance section. Click on the icon next to fill. Click on swatches if it's not selected so that you can
see a bunch of colors. Here. We can see that active
fill color is set to none. Leave it as it is. We don't need a fill
color right now. Click on any empty area and
this window will disappear. Now below the field, we have the stroke option. If you click on
the return stroke, we get lots of different options in the window that appears. We can change the stroke weight, that is the thickness
of the path from here, click on the arrows to increase
or decrease the value. We can also change
the stroke width from the control panel and
the properties panel. I'll keep it to
something like 5. Now to change the
color of the stroke, click on the icon next to stroke and choose any color from
the available swatches. I'll select this blue color. Now is draw our first sip. A rectangle in the Tools Panel. Click and hold the
line segment tool and select the rectangle tool. The keyboard shortcut for
the rectangle tool is m. Now in the art board, press and drag diagonally to create a rectangle
of the desired size. As you draw, smartcards will show measurements like
width and height. Release the mouse button
to create a rectangle. As we can see, the rectangle we made has blue stroke
color applied to it. Since it's a closed
path or shape, we can have a fill
color for each area. Let's select it using
the selection tool. As I tried to click
on the middle of this rectangle icon, select it. But when I move
the selection tool to the Outline Stroke and click, I can easily select it. This is because the
inner Philly area of the shape is set to none. If I move it outside
the art board, you can see that it's hollow. Let's give it a fill color. Click on the icon next to
fill and select a color. I'll select this yellow color. Now if I click in the
middle, it gets selected. If you have trouble
selecting a path or an object with any stroke
color and no fill. Simply click and drag using the selection tool to
create a selection area. And any object or path inside
the area will get selected. Let's move it to the left. We can also make various
transformation to the object using the
transform handles, as we saw in the
previous lesson, I will decrease the
height a little bit by clicking and
dragging at the handle. To transform more precisely, you can go to the Transform section in the Properties panel and type specific values
for width and height. Now to make a square, select the Rectangle Tool. Hold down the Shift
key while you drag diagonally to get a square
of the desired size. Or alternatively, you can make
a copy of this rectangle. Select the rectangle, go
to Edit menu, choose Copy. And again from edit menu spaced. Or you can use the
keyboard shortcuts. Now, let's decides the rectangle to move the cursor to
one of the handles. Then the cursor changes, click and drag to recipient. As you track, watch for this diagonal magenta guide indicates that it's
a perfect square. When you see it, release the mouse button to
make the square. Now, notice the small digits in each corner of the
SIP when we selected. These are called corner widgets. Since this is quiet,
is made up of three parts and corner points, we get this corner widgets. Dragging any of these corner widgets towards the center of the circle will let you
create rounded corners. You can also select a
specific corner widgets. Simply click on one corner
widget to select it, you will notice that
the icon changes. Press Shift and select another. Now drag towards the center
to make the corners rounded. Okay, now let's make some
shapes with curved path. Click and hold the
rectangle tool and select the ellipse tool. Shortcut key for
the ellipse tool is L. Click and drag diagonally
to create an ellipse, to create a circle
using the ellipse tool, hold down the Shift key while dragging the Transform section
of the properties panel, we can see that the
width and height are same and we have created
a perfect circle. You will notice that
the corner widgets are missing in this sips. This is because It's made up of code paths have
smooth corners. Now that we have
some experience with creating lines and simple
shapes in Illustrator, it's time to explore
the pen tool. I've made another art
board with some section. We will explore the pin tool by drawing and tracing
some of these sips. I provided this template in the resources section of the class Pin Tool
package template. You can download it from here, place it in your art
board, and follow along. So the most powerful
drawing tool found in Illustrator
is the Pen tool. Select the Pen Tool in the
Tools panel on the left. You can use the
keyboard shortcut. All the tools that we saw in the previous section are used to create paths
in different ways. Using the pin tool, we can
create all kinds of path and precisely edit anchor
points to make straight paths, goat paths and any possible. Now, if you take a look
at the pink will pointer, it has an asterisk next to it, which means you are about
to create a new path. The simplest path you can draw with Pin Tool
is a straight line. Before we draw, I'll
set the fill color to none and stroke
weight to ten points. I will also turn off
the smart guides so the paths won't snap. Smart Guides won't show, which could be a
distraction as you learn. Now position the pen
tool where you want the straight line
segment to begin and click to define the
first anchor point. Then move the pointer and
you'll see this rubber band or preview of what the path will look like if you were to click, move the pointer
over where you want the segment two and
click and release. And you have just created
an open straight line to shop drawing based the enter key or switch to the selection tool. Next we have disclosed part Starship made up
of straight paths. So let's make it click to
define the first anchor point. Move the pointer and click again to set the
second anchor point. Continue clicking to set anchor points for additional
straight segments. Keep clicking and
releasing on each point. If you make a mistake, you can always choose undo and simply redraw the
last anchor point. Don't worry it the path doesn't follow the template exactly. You can easily edit the path to draw later on using other tools. Now to close the path, position the pen tool or
the first anchor point. Then it is positioned
correctly over the first. A small circle appears next
to the Pen tool pointer. Click to close the
path and stop drawing. Switch to selection tool, to exit pen tool. When we select a path or shape
with the selection tool, a bounding box around
the entire object Along us to make
any transformation. But what if we want
to make changes on a specific path or
an anchor point? Illustrator provides us with other selection tool called
the direct selection tool, also known as the white arrow. You can find the Direct
Selection Tool in the Tools Panel just
beside the selection tool. Or you can use the
keyboard shortcut E. The direct selection
tool allows us to select, Move or modifies
specific anchor points or path segments in
a path or a shape. With the direct selection tool, we can simply click on a path segment or anchor
point to select it. Or we can click and drag to make a selection area over a path or anchor point to
easily select it. Notice that the unselected
anchor point is a whole squad. And selected Anchor Point
is a filled square. With the anchor points selected. We can drag it to
another position and change the length or angle up the pot to select
more than one anchor point. Click and anchor
point to select it. And then shift click to select
multiple anchor points. Drag the anchor points to the desired location to change
the shape of your object. I will quickly undo it and
keep the star shape as it was. As you can see, direct selection
tool is very useful in adjusting and
refining the position of anchor points and
paths in a ship. After we have created them, we will learn more about the tool as we
draw curved paths. Moving on, we can also use the pen tool to
create code paths. So let's select the Pen tool and position it where you
want the curve to begin. Click and hold down
the mouse button, the first anchor point appears. Now, drag to extend
the direction handles. Drag it up roughly here, tangent to the path, and then release
the mouse button. We have created a smooth
anchor point with handles which are for editing
the curve of the pot. Now move the pointer over here, then press and drag
to create a curve. Drag until the path
before the anchor point. It looks like the template. And then release tried to act the
anchor points of places where curve
changes direction. Also add as few
points as possible. And we can always use the handles to get
the curvature right. On the next position, click and drag.
You will find that the further you drag
from the anchor point, the peak of the curve is
release the mouse button. Continue to click and
drag and then release on each point to create a
series of smooth curves. Don't worry if the path doesn't follow the
template exactly. We can always edit using
the direct selection tool. Now to close the path, position the Pen tool over the first anchor
point we created. When a small circle icon
appears next to the Pen tool, click and drag to
close the path. The circle icon
indicates that we are making a closed path
that is a shape. Now using the direct
selection tool, we can reposition
the anchor points. We can drag the
direction handles to adjust the length and direction to shape the curve
according to the template. Next, we have this shape, which is a combination of
straight and curved paths. Let's create it
using the pen tool. Simply click and release
on the center of the street segment to create
the first anchor point, move to the second position, click again and release to
create a second anchor point, we have a straight
segment in place. Now the next part of the
path needs to be curved. So we need a direction handle to control this
part of the path. Now, if you take
the pen tool and position it correctly
over the anchor point, you will notice a
change in the icon. A Convert Point icon appears
next to the Pen Tool. When the icon appears, the anchor point and drag to
pull out a direction handle, which will help us to
create the code path ahead. Now, positioned the pin where you want the
next anchor point. Then click and drag
until the path before it looks right,
and then release. Here by mistake, I
have partitioned the anchor point a little
off from the template. As we have seen earlier. We can easily fix this later on using the direct
selection tool. But we can also edit the
paths while creating them. If he pays and hold the Control or Command key
while in Pin Tool Mode, you will notice that the icon
changes to a white doodle. It means we can temporarily switch to type selection tool. Fit the type selection
tool active, I will click on the anchor
point and the position it also exist the curve
using the direction handles, simply release the
Control or Command key. And we have our pen tool back. Now, the next part
segment is curved. But if you move
the pointer around the preview path that
pin tool is showing, it is a smooth curve. But we need the path to completely change
direction at this anchor. In such a case, we
can split direction handles so that they go in different
directions and create. The corner. If you press and hold Alt on Windows
Option on Mac, violin Pin Tool Mode, you can switch to the
convert anchor point tool. Move the pointer over the end of this handle and drag the direction
handle to split it. You should track in
the general direction of where the path is going. To set the slope
of the next curve. I'll keep it here along the
template path direction. The longer you make
this direction handle, the more cuff the next part
of the path will have, release the mouse
and then the key. This process converts
the smooth point to a corner point by splitting
the direction handles. On the next position, click and drag and jellies. Move to the next point, click and drag and release. Now here also we need to
split the direction handle. So by pressing the
Alt or Option key, switch to convert anchor
point tool temporarily, spiff the direction handle and change the
direction of the path. Move to the next position, click and drag Angeles. Now the next part segment
needs to be straight. So to do that, we have
to remove the direction handle so it doesn't go off
the path after the anchor. Position, the Pen tool
over the anchor point. And when a Convert Point icon appears next to the Pen tool, click back on the
anchor point to remove the handle on this
side of the ankle. Now to close the path, move the pointer over the
first anchor point We do. When a small circle
appears next to it, click and release, and
this will close the path. We have competed
creating the path. Now, pressing down the
Control or Command key, switch to Direct Selection
Tool and make adjustments, if any, to the path
segments and anchor points. And use the direction handles
to get the right curve. Drawing with the pen tool is going to take practice
to feel comfortable knowing where to place the
anchor points were to drag the direction handles and
how far to drag them out. We'll just take practice. Don't worry about
that. Keep practicing. And eventually you will get to the point where you will
become very proficient. When you are done,
click anywhere else to de-select the path and get
out of the creation mode. Now let's zoom out and see all the parts that we
made using the pen tool. If I select on the path, you can see that all
the state paths have corner points and code paths have smooth points and
direction handles. Also, we have code paths
corrected by corner points. In the Pin Tool
practice template, I have dispute the anchor
points position and also the direction
handles so that it will be easier for you to trace the path fits a basic
understanding of the Pen tool. Now let's create the outline
of our illustration. We can close and
open document using this cross button next
to the document name. Or we can go to the File
menu and choose Close. Back to our method
illustration file. Let's begin creating outlines. First of all, make sure we
are on the right layer. Set the pen tool,
press the G key on keyboard to set fill and
stroke color to default. That is white for the fill
and black for the stroke. From the properties panel, I'll set the fill color to none and leave the
stroke to black. Also from the stroke, options, increase the weight
to five points. Make sure that the smart
guides are turned off. Let's zoom in and start
with the illustration. As you have already learned how to use the pen tool
in this lesson, I won't be explaining
the entire process and bore you by repeating it. The basic procedure
remains the same. I will use the pen tool
to create the outlines, mostly code paths, starting with the longer paths
and working my way down. I will add as few
anchor points as possible and place them where the curve
changes direction. We can easily modify or paths later if they differ somewhat from the
reference template. As you can see, I'm drawing overlapping strokes
is okay to do so. This will prevent
caps which strokes overlap and helps us in creating closed shapes to adjust and refine the position of
anchor points and paths, we will use the
direct selection tool to rearrange the Cove in
accordance with the template, we will drain the
direction handles to change its length
and direction. Using the convert
anchor point tool, we will speak the direction
handles and if necessary, change the path
direction to ensure that you understand the alkaline creation process properly. I haven't speed up
the video here, but there will be no voice-over. So you can either watch
me draw the outlines or you can jump to the part where I have finished
making the outlines. Finally, our outline
is completed. I'll see you in the next lesson.
4. Refining the Outlines: We created shelf outlines of horror illustration
in the prior class. We will tidy up and refine
the outlines in this class. So let's start two-thirds of our plans layer
in the Layers panel. Then click the mini
hamburger menu in the top right corner
to access the menu. Select Duplicate rough
outlines from this menu. And we will get a copy of
our rough outlines layer. After that, double-click on the layer name and rename
it to refined outlines. I will also hide and lock
the rough outlines layer, creating a duplicate copies
so that you can make changes without harming
the original file is always a smart idea. Before we start
cleaning the outlines, let's learn about the
tool we'll be using. I have created a document to demonstrate how to use
the Shape Builder tool. So let's open it quickly from
our class project folder. As you can see, we
have two art boards here with different
paths and shapes. Let's go to the first Atwood
and fit that word in window. I'm going to zoom in
and scroll up a little. On the left side, we have three separate squash shapes
overlapping each other, and a duplicate of the
same steps on the right. Let's select all the squares on the right side using
the selection tool. It's important that you select all the shapes before activating
the shape builder tool. Now from the Tools Panel, go right over here and select
the shape builder tool. Or you can use the
keyboard shortcut Shift plus m. The shape
builder tool is an interactive tool for
creating complex shapes by merging and erasing simpler
shapes quickly and easily. By default, the tool
is in merge mode, where it allows you to
combine paths or shapes. The pointer has a
plus sign next to it. In this mode, as I move the cursor over
the selected shapes, you can see that it intuitively highlights different regions
of the shape in Greek. Now to merge the shapes, Let's click and drag
across all the regions. As we track, you can
see that the red alkyne indicates what our final
shape would look like. Release the mouse button to
Mars the shapes together, giving us one final shape. Moving on, we can also
use Shape Builder tool to extract any reason of
multiple overlap shapes. Here we have a pair of individual circles
overlapping each other. As you can see, using
the selection tool, I'll select these two
overlapping circles on the right side and then
switch to Shape Builder tool. As we move the cursor
or the selector shapes, we can see there are
three different reasons. I want to extract the
shape in the middle. To do that, simply click once. When the shape is highlighted, deletes the mouse button when
you see the red outlines. And that's it. Now by
using the selection tool, if I move this shapes, you can see that we have very
easily extracted the ship. Now let's zoom out
from here and move to the second artboard to see more features of the
shape builder tool. I'm going to zoom
in a little here, will learn about the mode
of shape builder tool. Now, here again, we have some individuals quite shapes
overlapping each other. First of all, we will drag
across the squares on the right side with the
selection tool to select them. Then select the Shape Builder
tool on the tools panel. Now by default, the
shape builder tool is in merge mode and it has a plus
icon next to the pointer. But if you press the
Option or Alt key, you will see a minus
sign in the pointer, which means we have
entered the erase mode. You can see all the regions as you move the pointer
over the shape. Now to remove certain
regions of the shape, click or drag with Option
or Alt key held down. And whatever is highlighted
will be removed. I will remove the top and
the bottom part here, release the mouse button
and then the key. We are now left
with a single sip. Moving on. Finally, let's take a look at how we can
use the eraser mode of the Shape Builder tool to delete edges and
clean up outlines. Here we have some
individual straight paths overlapping each other. As you can see, they
are not connected. Let's select the path here and then select the
Shape Builder tool. Press the Option or Alt key
to switch to image mode. As you hover over the strokes with the Option or
Alt key held down, you will see the
strokes don't read. This means that when we click or drag on it, it
will get deleted. Let's click on this path carefully to delete
unwanted edges. I release the mouse
button and then the key, we're left with individual paths without any unwanted edges. This option would be
really useful for us in cleaning the outlines
of our illustration. As you can remember,
we made lots of overlapping paths while
creating the outlines. In the last lesson,
we have explored different features
of the Shape Builder tool in this section. Now, with a basic understanding of the Shape Builder Tool, Let's get back to our
illustration document and start cleaning
up the outlines. So first of all, make sure
you are on the right layer. Collapse the panels to icon so that we get
more space to work. I will zoom in a little bit
to make it easier to see. Now using the selection tool, I will say these two
overlapping parts. And then using the
shape builder tool, holding down the
Alt or Option key, simply click on the
unwanted path to remove it. I will do this with all the
overlapping parts here. Select Path, Selection Tool, select Shape Builder Tool, hold down the Alt
or Option key to use the ETAs mode of
the Shape Builder tool. As the pointer changes, click or drag on the red
highlighted area to erase it, release the mouse button
and then the key. Typically steps
with all the paths here to clean the outlines. Make sure that you select
only a few parts at a time on which you need to
apply the shape builder tool. If you select all
the parts at once, it would create
performance issues. I haven't time-lapse this. So you can go through
the entire process of cleaning the outlines. But if you understand
the process and get bored watching
McLean the outlines, you can skip forward to the
next section of this lesson. You can see the difference here between rough and
refined outlines layer. It's already looking good with
a little bit of cleaning. Let's explore some more tools to further refine our outlines. In this section, we are going to learn how to use the width tool. Let me open the document from the class project folder that I created to expand
the width tool. Zoom in and scroll up a bit. We have a straight path
here. Let's select it. Now from the Tools panel, select the width tool, or you can use the keyboard
shortcut Shift plus W. The width tool enables us to create a variable with strokes. See if the variable
width as a profile that can be applied to
other strokes consistently. Any stroke or alkaline that
you have in Illustrator, whether it's something
you have drawn with the pen tool or any shape tool, you can adjust the width or
thickness of the stroke. The width tool has a tiny part
symbol next to the cursor. But when we hover
over this path, a plus sign appears. You can also see a
small point appears on the path following my
movements here on the stroke. This is called a width point. And basically it's helping me with where I
place the points. Now if you left-click and
just drag outward or inward, you can adjust the
width of the stroke at that location on the
path in real time. I will add two more width point on this path and
adjust the width. You can very easily make changes to an
existing width point. As you move your cursor over
an existing width point, you can see these handles appear and also the
cursor icon changes. Now to change the position
of the width point, simply click and
drag the point along the path to adjust the
stroke width at any point, click and drag on these handles. Now if you have created lots
of unnecessary respond, you can delete them simply
by clicking once to select and then hitting
the delete key to remove. We can drag the
points at the ends of the stroke if we want
to make pointed ends. Now let's keep the stroke
aside for a moment. We will get back to it and I will scroll down a little bit. Here we have some strokes with variable Width profiles
already applied. Let's select all
of these strokes and go to the Properties panel. In the properties panel, you will get this
foot profile section. Click on the arrow to
get the dropdown menu and select uniform
profile from the list. This will remove any profile applied and make the
strokes uniform. We will reapply width profile on all of these strokes
and learn how to do it to apply a variable
width profile to any stroke. First of all, select the stroke. Now you can access the
risk profile option from the control panel or you can
go to the Properties panel. Click on the Stroke to
get Stroke options. At the bottom of this panel, you will find the
width profile section from the drop-down menu, I will select this
width profile one, and it will be applied
to our selector stroke. There are many ways to do any specific thing
in Illustrator. You can apply width
profile using the control panel or from the Properties panel,
whichever you like. I'll apply all the
different profiles available on these strokes. Apart from using the
preset profiles available, you can actually create and save your own profiles
if you want to. Let me scroll up to the stroke. We made changes and we're
also from the window menu. I will enable the stroke panel. We will have the
floating Stroke panel in our document window
for easy access. It's the same panel that we get in the control or
properties panel. Here, click on this
Options button on the upper right
corner and select Show Options to get
all the options. As I've said earlier, Illustrator provides
us different ways to do a certain thing. Now let's select the
stroke we have here. We already made changes to its width using the width tool. So now we can save it as
a variable width profile. Go put a width profile
section in the Stroke panel. Click on the arrow to
get the drop-down menu. At the very bottom. Over here, you will find these two profiles
button. Click on it. A dialog box will appear where
we can name our profile. I will rename it
to something like custom profile one and click on. Okay. Now as you can see, we have got our width profile
in the drop-down list here, and we can use it on any stroke. Let me quickly create a
path using the pen tool. I'll increase the weight so
that we can see it clearly. I'll create another coat pot. We can select the
paths and apply the width profile very easily
from the Stroke panel. Like that. You can use the
flip along button down here, just beside the risk profile to change the direction of
the stroke width for pile. It's useful sometimes. Okay, now I'll make another width profile with very subtle variation in width, which we will use on
our illustration. Let me move this stroke
a little bit and create a new path
using the pen tool. In greet your sweat
a little bit. Now, using the width tool, I will slightly adjust the width around the
center of the stroke. Just a little variation in thickness and edit
to width profile. I will rename it to
custom profile to make duplicate copies of these
talks here by holding down the Alt key and dragging and
apply the new width profile, custom profile to on
both the strokes. As you can see, the endpoints of these strokes are stupid. But we can round them off. Surplus stroke, go to the Stroke panel and
go to the cap section. Or CAP is the end of
an open path here, but cap is selected by default. Choose round cap. This will make the
endpoints rounded and give a bit of hand-drawn
soft edge field. You can apply with profile
two strokes of a safe also I Omega square here
using the rectangle tool. And apply the width
profile we made to it. You can see how that
changes the stroke. We can also make the corners rounded to get rid of
any pointy corners. Go to the corner option
in the Stroke panel and teens the meter
join to round join. This will give us
rounded corners. We have now learned how
to use the width tool. We have also created
a width profile that we can apply to any stroke. Now that we have the new
tools at our disposal, Let's do turn to our vector
illustration project and clean up the outlines. So now in our vector
illustration file, I'll zoom in a
little bit and move the stroke panel a
little to the side. Now, using the selection tool, I'll click and drag to
select all of the outlines. In the Strokes panel. I will increase the weight
to about eight points. I will also change
the cap to round cap and corner two
rounded corners. This will make the
stroke edges rounded and remove any pointy corners
from the width profile. I will choose the custom profile
to that we made earlier. Profile will introduce
some nice variability to our strokes and help them look more hand-drawn
and natural. With this omega amount
of our work is done. Now, we will just make some adjustments and
tweaks here and there. Let's select the eyes
here and zoom in. I'll select this tiny circles inside and give
them a white fill. And we'll remove the strokes by selecting None from the strokes. In these two bigger circles, I will select black
for the field. And keep the strokes to none. I'll select these plus
circles and the circle in the center of the flower
and decrease the weight. I'll increase the
weight of some parts, adjust the position of the
anchor points at some places. I'll keep doing this until every part has the
appropriate fit. I want a nice variation
of thick and thin lines. I'll also call it
some curvature using the direct selection
tool when necessary. And use the round
corner widget to make all the corners
round and smooth. Here again, I haven't
speed up the video. The basic process,
it means the same. So you can either watch me find the outlines or you can simply skip to the part where I have completed the outline
refining process. After many small
adjustments and tweaks, we have finally
defined our outlines. The differences in strokes before and after
changing stroke width. Making tweaks are visible here. I'll hide our reference image
layer from the Layers menu so we can see our final
refined outlines clearly. In this lesson, we learned
about the set builder tool, the width tool,
n-tier applications. We also learned about the
strokes variable width profile. See you in the next lesson where we will learn how to add colors.
5. Adding Colors: Hello and welcome to the lesson. We completed creating the
outlines in the last lesson. In this lesson,
we will learn how to use colors in
our illustration. I have created a document
to explain colors. I will open it right away. I will open the document from the class project folder
using the File menu. As you can see, we
have a circle under base colors with black
as the fill color, which represents the
color of our outlines. However, we require more colors. We need to create color palette. So let's pick some colors
for our illustration. Color in your self is
such a broad topic. This so much to learn about
color and color theory, and it can be difficult
to get started. However, this should
not prevent you from using colors and
creating color palettes. I won't be teaching you about color theory in this lesson. That would require
its own class, which I make clear
it eventually. But I will show
you my approach on deciding and choosing colors
for the illustration. There are plenty of classes, skillshare library
about color theory. You can go through
some of them and learn more about
colors if you want to. Anyways, we can make the color
choosing process slightly easier if we try to associate some story
without illustration. So in this case, maybe this little girl went out
to play with a butterfly. Maybe it's a sunny
day in venture. Respect outside. For a bright sunny day, I'm thinking about using a bright yellow color
for the background. There's this wonderful
website, coolers, dot-com. I hope that's how to say it. We can use it to generate
our own color palettes. Or we can explore and choose
from existing palettes. Let's click on Explore trending palettes and
find some colors. So I was looking for a yellow
color for the background. As I click on the Search bar, I get lots of options. I'll choose yellow from
the color section. And it provides us with plenty
of yellow color palettes. This palette over here has some nice complementary
color scheme of yellow. For some reason, I always loved the
complimentary color scheme. Complimentary color
scheme is like two color on the opposite
end of the color wheel. As I hover over these colors, I can see the hex
codes of the colors. And if I click on
it, it gets copied. Now in Illustrator, I'll make a duplicate of
this circle shape. While the shape is selected, click here on the fill color to get the color picker window. In here, I will push the hex color code
and click on, Okay. And very easily we have that exact color
applied to our shape. We will use this for the
background of our illustration. Back to coolers website. Let's keep another color
from this palette. I'll copy this blue color
inside Illustrator. I'll make a duplicate
of this circle, as we did earlier, and paste the color code in color
picker to change the color. We'll use this blue
color for the hair. There will be a good contrast of warm and cool colors between
the background and the hair, and they will
compliment each other. Okay, the next
major component of the illustration is the
face of our character. So let's find some
color for the skin. Here in the search bar, I will remove the yellow
and search for skin. And as I hit enter, we get lots of skin
color palettes. It's difficult to choose from when we have
lots of options. For this particular pellet
caught my attention. It has yellow and blue
and also skin color, which will go well with
our colors as we have. Also choose yellow and
blue. So let's copy it. And I'll make a duplicate of the shape and push the color. I'll also keep these
other two colors from the palette for the
jacket and the paint. Our palette is
turning out goods so far with farm and cool colors. There's fine to More Colors. One worm and other cool
for the vest and shoes. I remove the skin
tag and search for a warm orange color
from the thirties. Yells, I like this palette. It has some good warm
and cool colors. I'll copy the orange color from here and paste it
into a new shape. Back again in the left side. I'll also copy this
blue-green color and paste it in the fill
color of the circle. Okay, so now our color
palette is almost done. We have some nice, firm and cool colors complementing
each other. Now, let's learn how to
save the colors we have created here as swatches
so that we can use them. Okay, So to get the
swatches panel, first of all, I'll select
one of the shapes here. Now in Properties panel, if I click on the fill, we can see the swatches panel. Another way is to get to the Window menu and
select swatches. The swatches panel will show
up as a floating panel. You can see lots of different
colors and patterns here, but all this looks so tiny. So from the menu here in
the upper right corner, I will select large
thumbnail view and click and drag here
to resize the panel. Now we can see
everything clearly. Swatches panel contains
color and color groups, gradients and patterns. If I click on this
button here that says, so Swatch kinds menu, you can see the types of
swatches this panel contains. It provides an easy way to
manage colors of any document. You can choose from p existing swatches and
libraries or create your own. Saving our own color
swatches can help us work faster and achieve more consistent color
across the artwork. So let's create
our own swatches. But before that, let me
clean this panel and remove the default swatches from the source watch Cohen's
menu button here, select so color groups, instead of Show All Swatches, this fill hide
gradients and patterns. Now, let's select
these color groups by clicking on the folder icon. Press Shift to select
the other one. And then click on the
Delete swatch button in the lower right corner. Click on Yes to delete
the selected Swatches. Our swatches panel is all clear. Now let's create our swatches. Select the back circle
saved in the art board. Go over to the swatches panel and click the
little folder icon. A new color group
window will pop up. Here. We can rename
our color group. I'll rename this to outline. Make sure selected
artwork is checked and Convert Process to
Global is selected. I'll tell you more about the
global colors in a minute. Finally, click Okay, and the swatch will be added
in the swatches panel. Let's add other colors as well. I'll select all of these colors
using the selection tool. Click on the folder icon, rename the color group in the
window and click on Okay, add it into the swatches panel. Similarly, I will add
this yellow color of the background to
the swatches as well. If you double-click on
one of the swatches, you will get the swatch options. Here. You can see that
globally checked, you can identify
global color swatches by the white triangle at
the corner of the swatch. A global color is automatically updated throughout your
artwork when you edit it. I will enable the
Preview option, and we'll drag these RGB
sliders to change the color. You can see that the
color changes everywhere in the object and
also in the swatch. When an object has
global color applied. Editing the swatch
will have an effect on all objects using your
Scholar and recolor them. I'll cancel this for now. Okay, so now our base
color swatches, ready? Let's apply this color
to our illustration. I'll switch to our vector
illustration document and go to the Layers panel. Let's create a new layer and
rename it to background. I will click and drag it down below defined
outlines layer. Now from the Tools panel, Let's get the rectangle tool. I'll choose a yellow color from the swatches as our field color. And in the properties panel, I'll keep the strokes to none. Now simply click and drag across the entire art board to fill the reason
with a background. In the layers panel, I will
lock the background layer. Now let's select the defined outlines layer and
make a duplicate of it by clicking on the menu here in the
upper right corner, and then select Duplicate. You find outlines. I'll rename this duplicate layer
to base colors, and we'll drag and move it below the refined
outlines here. I will also lock and hide
the refined outlines layer. Now there are multiple ways to color your illustrations
in Illustrator. But for me, the
most convenient way is using the Live
Paint Bucket Tool. It's not present here
in my toolbar here. So I will click on
the three dots at the bottom here to
edit the toolbar. We will get a list of all
the tools of the toolbar. They are distributed
into categories like select, Draw type, etc. Tools that you see grayed out are already within the toolbar. After a little bit of scrolling down in the paint category, I see the live paint bucket
tool is not grayed out. That means is not present in
the active toolbar we have. So let's click and drag
this into the toolbar. You will see a space
will appear for you. Release the mouse
key and we will get the tool in the toolbar. Or you can save yourself
the trouble and simply click the
keyboard shortcut key. The Live Paint Bucket
Tool is really awesome. It provides us an intuitive way to fill colors in our outlines. It's like filling
in a coloring book. After selecting the
tool as I bring it into the art board,
nothing happens. We need to select
our outlines first. Hold on the Control
or Command key while using the live
paint bucket tool. Switch into selection
tool, temporarily, click and drag to select all the lines released the
Control or Command key. Now, when we hover over our illustration, it
gets highlighted. And we get this text
beside our tool icon. Click to make a live paint
group. So let's click. We get this warning dialog
that certain properties may be launched in the conversion
to a live paint group. Click on Okay. We
have successfully converted our outlines
into Live Paint group, and now we can
color them easily. You will notice that
we have launched a Width profiles on our strokes. It's all uniform now. There's nothing to worry about. Our outlines are all safe in
the refined outlines layer. Now let's select our outlines
or the Live Paint group. In the layers panel, I will hide the background
layer for now. And in the properties panel, I'll make the stroke
color to none so that we can see our
filled shapes clearly. Now using the Live
Paint Bucket Tool, let's fill some colors. I'll select the tool from
the toolbar and then select this blue color
from the swatches panel. Now, as we hover
over our outlines, you can see the different
shapes of the live paint group. We just need to click once when the red highlight appears. To fill the shape with
the selected color. I'll feel the hair shapes
with this blue color. Now, it's just a matter
of choosing colors from the swatches panel and filling it in the specific areas
of the illustration. Like that, we have
our base color filled in the entire
illustration. This looks a little weird now. So let me quickly unhide
our refined outlines layer so that we can see it with
the strokes. It looks good. Now, what, I want to make
some changes in the colors. First of all, this black
strokes are too much prominent. I want something subtle. I'll double-click on the black color swatch to get the swatch options as we have already
made our swatches global. So if we make any
changes in the swatches, it will be applied everywhere
that color has been used. Since the color mode, HSB, that is hue, saturation
and brightness. And also check the
preview option so that we can see the
changes in real time. I will increase the brightness a little, add some saturation, and keep the hue some
cool colors like violet, overall dark color,
but not black. I will unhide the background
layer to check how it looks. I'll make some tiny
adjustments to my colors so that they
work well with each other. While there is a lot to be learned about how to use colors, I would like to share some
helpful tips about colors. Before we move to
the next lesson. Pick less colors in
your color palette. Too many hues can be
difficult to manage. The probability of having
harmony with your color is so much more when there
are less colors involved, make sure your colors
aren't highly saturated. You'd use the saturation. It will be much
easier on the eyes. It's fine to have some
colors pop up as bright. Colors should not blend. This should be enough
contrast between them. Okay, the final thing
that I'm going to do is expand the
Live Paint group. I select our Live Paint group. And in the control panel you
can see an expanded button. You can also get it in the properties panel
under Quick Actions. Click on it to convert the lipid groups into normal
shapes that are editable. You can see that these
are still grouped. Now we just need
to ungroup these. I'll click on
ungroup button here, and this will ungroup all
the shapes separately. There are no hard
and fast rules. Use color as a tool. Don't stress about colors. Instead. Have fun with it. Play with it and use it
to learn more about it. See you in the next lesson.
6. Adding Lights & Shadows: Hello everyone. In
the previous lesson, we learned about colors, color swatches, and added base colors to our illustration. In this lesson, we
will learn how to create color swatches
for lights and shadows. So let's get started. Let's go to our color
swatches document. Here. You can see I have made
a copy of our base colors. I choose these six colors, circles from the base colors, excluding the outline
and background-color. I'll make two copies of
the selected colors. One for the light section and eNodeB for the satisfaction. I will now bring up
the color panel. By selecting color
from the window menu. I choose a circle from
the live section. And you can see is
RGB values as well as its hex color code
in the colors panel. Click on the icon in
the top right corner of the color panel to
get panel options, you will see that RGB
color mode is selected. I'll select HSB mode
here because it will be easier for us to change
colors using the HSB sliders. Now, for a lighter tint
of this blue color, I'll click and drag the
brightness slider to the right. I will also increase
the saturation and slightly change the hue. For the next color, I
will do the same thing. I'll select it slightly
increase the brightness, make it more vibrant by
increasing saturation, make a very subtle
change in the hue. Our next color is already
sufficiently bribed. In order to make it lighter, I will load the saturation here. I change the hue even though
it's very likely saturated. Now that the brightness is at its maximum for this
coral orange color, I will leave the brightness
slider as it is. I lower the saturation
and alter the hue. Make sure not to
drastically alter the hue. Choose a nearby color, it will look
aesthetically pleasing. I carry out the same procedure for each color in
the live section. I will start by increasing
the brightness. If it is already bright enough, I will not make any
further adjustments. I will next move
on to saturation, which I will increase or decrease depending
on the brightness. And then finally, I will
adjust the hue a little. There is no predefined
formula to choose colors. It all depends upon what works for you and what you
think looks good. And you can always make
changes after making the necessary adjustments to all the colors in the
light section here, I'll select them all. Then go to the swatches panel and create a new color group. I'm going to rename it lights. After I've created the group, I will drag it above
the base colors group. Now it's time for the colors
in the shadows section. I'll select this
blue color again. But this time I will decrease the brightness because
shadows are naturally darker. However, be careful not to make your colors look dull.
Keep them vibrant. I will increase the saturation slightly by leaving
the hue alone. For the next color. Again,
I will do the same thing. Decrease in brightness,
increase in saturation, and slight shift in the hue. I'll repeat this procedure for each color here in
the sagittal section. In order to keep it darker
than the base color, I will decrease the
brightness value. I'll then adjust the saturation, making sure it looks
vibrant and Nortel. And finally, subtle
changes in the hue. After I'm finished making the
adjustment to the colors, I'll select all of
them and add them to our swatches panel by
creating a color group. Rename it to shadows, and keep the color group underneath the
base colors group. We have finished creating
the color swatches for the lights and
shadows section. Now let's use them
in our illustration. Let's return to our
illustration document. I'll move these
swatches panel aside. Let's make a new layer
in the layers panel. Engineer me to
lights and shadows. I will lock and hide
the base colors layer. Then I will hide the
background layer and unhide the
reference image layer. Now, let's zoom in
a little closer. To give us more
room, I will shift the swatches panel
and reduce its size. Okay. Now make sure you are in the lights and shadows layer. Select the Pen tool and set the fill and stroke
color to none. Imagine a light source here, somewhere in this area. It will eliminate
parts of our character and also cast shadows
in various places. Let's begin by drawing
shadow shapes. I'll follow our reference image and drop shadow
shapes on the face. When we have to
draw near the edge, I will keep the paths
he didn't beneath our outlines since I don't want shapes peeking
out from the edges. When I'm finished, I will close the path to
form the shape. Now, using the selection tool, select it and assign
the darker shade of their skin color from
the Shadows color group. I'll use the direct
selection tool to make any necessary
changes to the shape. Next, I will add the
shadow shapes around the neck area and assign
the skin shape to it. Now rather than going on to the properties panel every time, we can use the keyboard shortcut to change the fill
color to none. Now using the pen tool, I'll make the shadow shapes in all the areas where we
have applied skin color. Then alter the shapes using the direct selection
tool if necessary. And I'll add a darker
skin shape to it from the Shadows color
group in the swatches. Data mining where
to place shadows, maybe difficult at first. The only way to
find out is to look at various objects
all around you. You must train your
eyes to absorb the light and dark
areas on an object. To see how our illustration
is progressing, I will unhide the
base color layer in the layers panel and everything appears to
be in good shape to me. Let's make some
more shadow shapes. To create the shapes,
I will continue to use the pen tool with
no fill or stroke. Then I will adjust the shape with the
direct selection tool, dragging the corner points
to create rounded corners. And finally, select
the darker shade of the base color for that area. I'll repeat these
steps to create all of the ships
roughly following the reference image
and using some of my own intuition to ensure that you can
comprehend the process. I haven't speed up
the video here. You can either watch me
making the shadow shapes or you can skip forward to the
next section of this lesson. We have now finished
creating our shadow shapes. Let's go to the Layer menu. And I will toggle the visibility of our lights and
shadows layer to see how the shadows looks so
far as you can easily see, adding shadows give our character a sense of
depth and dimension. And it also appears good. However, only half of the
work has been completed. Let us now draw
our light shapes, areas that are eliminated. Alright, let's start with the highlighted
areas of the hair. I'll use the pen tool
to draw the shapes, being sure to keep
the edges rounded. Draw light seeps
in the areas where our imaginary light source
will strike the character. You don't have to be
very technical about it. And I'll apply a lighter
tint of the base color from the light's color
group we created earlier. As you can see, I'm
making smaller, thinner sheets for
the light areas to add just a hint of light, but not taking up
too much space. The basic procedure
remains the same. I won't bore you
by repeating it. You can choose to watch me
create the light ship on jump to the part where
the Creation completes. Now that the light shapes
have been created, let's return to the Layers panel and reveal the
base colors layer. Zoom out a little bit and unhide the background layer to see
how everything fits together. As you can see, there is a significant difference
without the lights and shadows, our illustration appears flat. However, adding shapes for
lights and shadows give it dimension and depth and it
looks pleasing to the eye. This lesson has come to an end. We learned how to create color swatches for
light and shadow areas, as well as how to draw shapes and fill them with
appropriate colors. See you in the next lesson, where we will add some final
details in our illustration.
7. Adding Details: Alright, at this point, we're nearly finished
with our illustration. In this lesson, we will add and remove a few minor
details around. Let's zoom in slightly. The two circles on the cheeks have outlines
as you can see here. I will remove them to
make them less obvious. I will unlock it by going
to the outlines layer. Then I will select the
alkynes of these two circles. I can delete them now by pressing the Delete
key on my keyboard. But I would prefer to hide them. To hide the selected objects. Go to the Object menu,
hide, selection. Or you can use the
keyboard shortcut Control or Command H
to hide the outlines. The shadow shape now
overlaps this circle here. So let's go ahead and unlock
the base colors layer. Then select both of the circles, cut and paste them in the
lights and shadows layer. Next you can see that we had some buttons and button holes
in our reference image. So let's clear this. To make the circular
button shape, I will use the Ellipse tool. Since our field
color was also read, it's not visible here properly. I will choose a darker color
using the eyedropper tool. You can use the Eyedropper
tool to select a color from an object or image and
apply it to other objects. I'll just create a few copies
now and appropriately them. I'll copy one of the
buttons and transform it with the selection tool
to meet the button holes. I'll make it a little
narrower and make two more copies of it,
and it's completed. Let's now create a white
border around our character, similar to urge ticker cut line. To do it, Let's
make a duplicate of our base color layer and give
it the name sticker Kotlin. I will leave the
sticker Kotlin layer unlocked by locking in
hiding the other layers. Now, using the selection tool, select everything
on the art board. Now go to the Window menu and look for the Pathfinder option. Click on it or use the
keyboard shortcut. The Pathfinder options panel
appears in the workspace. The Pathfinder panel
offers a variety of effects for combining objects
to create new shapes. Similar to the builder tool. We won't go through all of
the effects present here, just the Unite effect. The first effect
under Shape Modes is unite with
everything selected. Click on Unite.
This will combine all the selected objects
into a single larger shape. I will now set the
stroke color to white and the fill color to none
in the Properties panel. I will also increase
the stroke weight to roughly 15 points. Now, let's go ahead and click on the stroke button to bring
up the stroke panel. Choose Align Stroke to outside. This will align the stroke
outside our Stroke Path. Any sharp edges, I
will keep the cap to round cap and
corner to round join. With that. Let's return
to the layers panel. I will move ticker
Kotlin layer below the base color layer and
unhide all other layers. You can see how simply
we made a white border. It isolates the character from the background and gives it
a sticker like appearance. Now let's create a
cast shadow shape beneath our character, so it doesn't appear to
be floating in space. The shadow that an
object cards on another surface by obstructing the light is known
as cache shadow. To make that, Let's unlock the background layer and I will create an elliptical shape underneath the character
with the ellipse tool. Let's use the eyedropper tool to pick this orange color here. I'll make some minor
adjustments to its shape. In order for it to become less intense and mix better
with the background. I will also reduce its
opacity to 50 per cent. And you str1. Now using the eyedropper tool, I'll pick this
vibrant orange color for the butterfly wings. There is one last minor
detail to be added. I will zoom in a little and
use the Ellipse Tool to draw a white eye for our
butterfly. So that's it. We have successfully
completed our illustration. And it was a
fantastic experience that marks the conclusion
of this lesson. In the following lesson, we will learn how to export it.
8. Final Output: Now that our illustration
has been successfully made, it's time to export the
final result as an image. First, let's export our
illustration at JPEG, or JPEG, which is the most commonly used
format for still images. To export, select
File menu, Export, Export As set the location where you want to save your file
in the File Explorer, I'll keep mine in the
class project folder. Here, you can change
the file name, pick JPEG from the Save
As Type drop-down. Make sure they use art boards. Checkbox is selected. This will only export the
content of the art board. Anything outside of the art
board will not be exported. Then click on Export. This typic options window with its numerous options
will appear. Here. We will stick with
RGB color model and set the image quality
to a maximum of ten, and set the resolution
to 300 ppi high. Leave the rest of the settings
alone and click Okay. In the project folder, you will find our high-quality
JPEG image output. Now, we will export our illustration with a
transparent background. Could do that. I will hide the reference image and
rough outlines layer. In the background layer, I will also have the yellow background. Once again, go to the File menu, Export and then Export
as set of file location. And if necessary,
rename your file. Choose PNG from the
Save As type drop-down because it provides transparent
background possibilities. Select, Use Artboards
and then click Export. In the PNG options window. Keep the resolution at high. Also for the background
color, select transparent. You can alternatively select a white or black
background color from the drop-down
menu if you want, we will keep it transparent
and press Okay. Or PNG image, which
transparent background will be saved in our
class project folder. The PNG file we just exported can be used in additional
Illustrator projects. Let me quickly open a
project I made earlier. The Hindi language text you see here roughly translates to, let us all fly away
like butterflies. You can use our
illustration here. So let's pass it to. I'll select and
place the PNG image. The illustration
can also be brought directly from our vector
illustration document. I will hide this
placed image and then go to the vector
illustration document. I'll unlock every
layer that makes up the illustrations key components
from the layers panel. I will now create a
selection area to select everything using
the selection tool. Let's copy the selection. I'll create a new layer in this document and paste
the contents within. Additionally, I will group
everything together so that we can move and resize
everything as a single piece. Now let's move it to the side. While I try to reduce each
sides, it appears strange. What is happening here
is that strokes are not skilled along with
objects by default, in Illustrator does everything
else is scaled down, but the stroke width
remains the same. We can easily fix this, but let's flesh and do this. Now from the Object menu, select Transform
followed by scale. In the scale options window, simply check scale strokes and effects and click on, Okay. If we now reduce the site, the strokes will
likewise reduced. We can now export an output of this file when working on
several projects at once, illustrator makes it incredibly simple to move things from
one document to another. That concludes this lesson. You will learn about the class project in the following lesson.
9. Class Project: Hello and welcome to the
final lesson of this class. By now, you should be familiar with the entire
illustration process. In this lesson, I
will show you how to prepare and share
your class project. Creating a class project would be extremely beneficial to you because it will offer you the opportunity to apply what you have learned
in the class, as well as to share your
work with your classmates. For the class project, we will create a document that includes your sketchy meds outline and finished vector illustration,
something like this. So let's begin. I'll open the file menu
and choose Save As. I'm going to rename our
file to class project in the Save As dialog box
and click on save. Our document will be
saved as a separate file. If you want, you can create an entirely new document
for the class project. I will now choose the art
board tool from the toolbar. Or you may use the keyboard
shortcut, Shift plus o. The artboard tool allows us
to create a new artboard, edit existing ones, duplicate, and resize them according
to our requirements. You can add a new
artboard by going to the control panel,
the properties panel. With the Artboard tool selected. Click the New button in the Artboard section and
in our document window, a second artboard will be added. I'm going to zoom out a little, resize the outward
by clicking and dragging on this handle
with the Artboard tool. It's similar to transforming
with the selection tool. I hope roughly increase
the width here, but you may enter
a precise value in the width and height options
in the properties panel. If you want your output
to be a specific size, you will notice a change
in the tools icon. If I move my cursor
inside the art board, I can now shift the artboard by clicking and dragging it
a little to the right. We can exit the
Artboard Tool mode by simply switching
to Selection tool. Now, I'll select fit all in
window from the view menu. There's no good our output
ready for the class project. I'll not the background
layer from the layers panel. Making use of the Rectangle
Tool and smartcards, I will draw a rectangle, the size of the art board
and color it yellow. I would like to organize
our output in Trish exons, sketch, outline,
and illustration. With the rectangle selected, I'll go to the Properties panel. In the transformed section, I will divide the
width value by three. This will reduce our
rectangle's width by 1. Third, illustrator
provides us with some basic mathematical
functionality for changing values
in numeric fields. Simply enter the symbol of your function after the original value
in a numeric field, followed by the desired number, and press the Enter key. I'll duplicate this
rectangle and keep it at the right end
of the art board. I'll go ahead and
reduce the opacity of the first rectangle
to 50 per cent. As a result, we have divided our art board into
three equal sections. Now, I will use the
direct selection tool to select the anchor
points at the top of this rectangle and move them to the left using the arrow
keys on the keyboard. Then I will select the
bottom anchor points and move them to the right. Furthermore, in this
rectangle, hourly position, the top anchor point to the left and bottom anchor
point to the right. To fill any gaps. After that, I select
a log plot the ships. I will now unhide
all the layers in the Layers panel except
the reference image layer. I will unlock it and create a copy of our sketch
image in the art board. I'll make it completely opaque by increasing
the opacity to 100% edited using the
crop image option to get rid of the
whitespace around it. Click on Apply to confirm the crop modifications or resize it and keep it in the white
area of the artboard. After that, I'll make the layers visible
in the layers panel, but leave them locked. I'll just unlock the
defined outlines layer using the selection tool. I'll make a selection area in the art board that
contains our illustration. Because only the outline
layer is unlocked. All of the outlines
will be selected. I'll make a copy of
this electric outlines besides them and keep them in the center
of the art board. Now, I'll unlock all of
the layers that contain major elements of
our illustration and select everything
in the art world. As before, I'll duplicate the selected objects, the scale, and resize them and position them appropriately on
the second artboard. Fit this, we have completed
our class project. Export, an image file of it. Now, click on File, Export, Export As keep the file
name class project, and select JPEG from the
Save As type drop-down. Makes sure to select the
use art boards checkbox. After that, change the
output type from all range, and then type in the field
below to export content of the second artboard where we created
our class project. Click on Export. In the JPEG options window, I'll keep the previous
settings and click Okay, we can find our exploited image in the class project folder. Now, in order to upload it, go to the projects and
resources section of the class. Click on Create Project, and then click on
the Upload Image button under cover image. Select your image in the file
explorer and click on open. As soon as it has
finished uploading. Click the Submit button
and give your project a name and then
describe it in detail. When you are finished,
click the Publish button. It's no secret that feedback is an important component
of effective learning. So by setting your illustration
in the project gallery, your classmates will provide you with insight for feedback. And I will try my best to address your concerns
and assist you. Thank you.
10. Final Thoughts & Thank You : Congratulations on making
it through this course. Thank you so much for
being a part of this. I hope you have learned and
enjoyed writing the lessons. Make sure to post
your illustration in the class project
section so that I can check them and give
necessary feedback. I would love to
see what you come up with using what
you have learned. And of course, if you have
any questions or solutions, please let me know in the
discussion section of the class and I will do my best to answer and help you out. If you enjoyed this course, please share it
with your friends. Feel free to check
out my other courses to market your profile. And if you'd like to be notified
when I have a new class, please be sure to follow me. You can also follow me on Instagram, facebook,
and YouTube. I hope to see you again
soon. Until then. Happy learning. Thanks
a lot. Good bye.
Ashish Mishra, Artist, Designer & Educator
