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How to Draw a Fox Using the Shape Builder Tool in Adobe Illustrator

Hi there in this video, we're going to make this sushi looking Fox thing using my favorite tool, the shape builder tool. Look at him, he's all made of little shapes and bits and pieces. Okay, let's put you back together. Fox and let's go learn how to make you an adobe illustrator. Okay, so let's start with a new document for a new you can use you as letter landscape or a four landscape. It doesn't matter. Click on create and we're gonna bring in the little drawing we're gonna copy from. Okay, so let's save this document file save and let's put it on our desktop in our illustrator class files, let's call this one a week Fox. And let's click OK? Let's bring in the image we're gonna redraw. Okay? We're gonna go to file place and we're going to use in our exercise files. There's one called awake Fox dot jpeg. And remember like in the previous tutorial we could just bring it in and put it on its own layer and lock it and turn the transparency down. You can do that all in one fell swoop by j...

ust clicking this template as you bring it in and remember watch this. It's created two layers, one template layer and you can't touch it. Okay. And they've dimmed it down so you can draw on it easily and we're working on layer one. Let's go back to properties. Now, there is no real particular order to start this, but you might as well follow me. Okay, so let's start with, say the polygon tool and if we click once we're gonna make sure it says three sides, we're not too worried about the radius at the moment. Just click Ok and what we can do is black arrow holding shift, drag it out to the right size and rotated around. Okay, we did rotation and scale in an earlier tutorial. Okay, I'm going to get it roughly in there now you'll notice that it tries to snap to the edge of the page and like lots of those purple arrows, that's really handy. Sometimes it's just nice to get it close and use your arrow keys on your keyboard. Okay, just to kind of tap it around with the keyboard to get it kind of close, I'm happy with that. And what I'd like to do is have no fill in a black stroke. So I've got my black stroke. If you don't click on stroke, click black fill color, let's go for no fill color. I'm not sure which part to start with, I'm gonna start with the ears here, so I'm gonna grab and hold down the polygon tool and grab the ellipse tool and I'm going to draw the lips just holding down, shift remember gets a perfect circle if I let go of shift it, you can get a weird shape, it's up to you what you want to do, I'm gonna start with perfect circles, something like that. Black arrow, remember I can't click the center because it has no Phil so I'm going to collect the edge and kind of drag it and you can kind of see I'm gonna use it maybe for that one and it's a bit big so I'm just re sizing it until I get something close to that part using my keyboard to tap it around again. Cool, that'll do I'm going to copy it and paste it and then move it up. So I've got it kind of here as well. Okay, I think I used a slightly smaller one. Here we go, even more than that. Trying to match that circle in there. That will do Cool. Alright, so next thing I'd like to do is start using my shape builder tool so I'm going to select everything. Okay, so my black arrow, select everything on the page and I'm going to move to my shape builder tool. Now. What I wanna do is I don't want to add any of these guys, I want to subtract this chunk up here that I don't need now who remembers what the shortcut is? That's right. It's option on a Mac or on a Pc. Okay, hold it down. You see I get a minus and I can drag across all of that that that click on him, you can see I can kind of minus those chunks off. I want to leave that because it's going to be the kind of white of the knows these guys though. Need they're doing some weird stuff so I'm going to join them all. Remember holding no keys down, we'll add okay, let me add all that to it. I'm going to minus that off. I'm gonna minus that off and yeah, that's kind of the basics for it. Alright, I'm gonna grab my black arrow and what do I want to do now is I want the other ear so I'm just gonna copy it, paste it. Another version. This guy here, I can't quite remember. I don't know, I'm gonna rotate it around a little bit awesome. Cool. I've got another set of ears back here. Maybe not so much rotation. Okay now with everything selected again let's grab the shape builder tool and that. It's perfect. Now I just want to join these together but there now the nose got all kind of disjointed with all these little bits, you might have to zoom in a little bit, Remember? Command plus or control plus and I'm going to join all of that together. So it's one unit. Now it starts looking about how, because you're like what is the drawing underneath in which is mine. You might go to layers and turn this on and off just to get a sense of what it is. The only thing I'm really missing is the circle for the eye. So let's do that, grab the ellipse tool, drag this out. Why am I dragging it up here? No reason I can drag it down here, have it move it around, select all of this junk and I'm gonna grab this shape builder tool and I'm gonna What am I going to do? I want to I want to add all of that together and that kind of worked cool. All right on off on that bottom layer. It's looking good. Now we just need the neck zoom out a little bit and grab an ellipse tool. Try and draw a circle big enough for that outside bit and holding shift that feels about right and all right, that's way too big. Hold it down, member grabbing the edge, not the center of the circle. So I got him and there's one stripe, two stripes. So I'm going to copy and paste him and I'll use that one. He's roughly the right size paste another one. Actually, I don't need to paste another one. There's only two there. Okay, I don't need that guy. Alright, so I am now going to select all, grab my shape builder tool and I'm going to say I don't want you. I don't want you actually I do want you. There's little lips there. Why did I delete that one? I do need it. Okay, so there was a circle that I was missing. You probably saw it while you were doing it went No, there it is. There. We do need three circles. Now one of the things is gonna happen here if I zoom in. Okay. And Scarlett here with my space. But you see it doesn't kind of line up here to make the shape builder work kind of nicely, you need to overlap everything so I'm zoomed in. It's just easier when you've zoomed in. Okay now I'm gonna grab the edge and you try and get it to snap in there. It's reasonably forgiving. Doesn't have to be absolutely scientifically perfect but reasonably close. A couple of pixels. Now I'm gonna select it all. I'm gonna grab my shape builder tool and I'm going to say I don't want that. I don't want any of that. I don't want that. I don't need that. Don't need that. I'm gonna come in here. What I might do now is turn off the template because I kind of know those two are want Those two. I want if you're finding a little bit tough, don't worry, it is a little bit tough trying to work out. You end up believing the wrong bits, like there's a chunk through here and and and you guys together black arrows like the background. Yeah, we're pretty close. Okay, there's some weird strokes going on that are different sizes. There's a thin one there and a thick one. They're gonna select them all and saying properties and I'm going to give them all the same stroke width of this .25 points. Okay, just a really thin one to get us going All right. That is looking good. If you find you've got like kind of junk in the nose, like there's a little trim bit, just zoom in, use your shape builder tool to try and tidy it up. You might even use the black arrow. Just click bits and delete it. Okay, now I want to do is go and color it. Now I'm going to put in a nice big, great background. I don't know why everything looks better on it. Dark gray background. I'm just drawing up nice big rectangle. I'm going to fill it without dark gray. Okay. And I'm gonna have no stroke on it. I'm going to click a range, sent it to the back and now I'm going to fill this with color. Okay. And there's a couple of ways of filling it. I can just click the edges. Okay? And go and fill it. Or I could use the shape builder technique like we did in the last video. It's up to you. Um and yeah, I'm gonna go pick colors. Foxy colors. Okay, I'm gonna mix my own. I'm gonna click on the mixer. Okay. Where I've got my, got my object selected, I've clicked on Phil I've clicked on Mixer and I'm going to click down here to try and find a foxy color. Okay, That's not going to be my kind of lead color. I'll pick this one from film. I'm gonna use the premixed color and just make it a bit darker by grabbing the k lifting it up a little bit, come, I'm going to use this kind of back of the head bit by doing the same sort of thing. Okay, I'm gonna use that but lighten it up. Okay, Okay. Even lighter. Cool this but here is gonna be just it should be white. Maybe maybe I'm gonna use just like an off white. It looks cool. Same with you and off white. Alright I'm gonna select it all as well. Okay now if I select all of it, okay I'm gonna end up with the background selected as well and that's fine because I want to go to stroke and I want to say none of us got a stroke, thank you very much. And that is our cool little Fox thing. Um All done with the shape builder tool. Get some nice kind of swishes and swirls and it's kind of flowy. Okay, those are words, I'm just making up but you get the idea right, it's kind of nice sushi thing. So now it is time for the end and the time for the class project. So what I've done is I've done another sketch that you can use that I want you to go through and use the same techniques from the fox. But we're going to use our new document, use file place and you're going to bring in this one called swan. Yes, that's meant to be a swan. Okay. Andrew it kind of looks like a swan kind of a chunky swan, You're allowed to. It doesn't have to be perfect like this. I guess what I want to see is a bitter swan. Nice colors. Um Yeah, it's totally up to you. You can draw it perfectly if you like. Okay. But using the same tools as we did, using the shape builder tool and the fox. Okay. I'd like you to go off and do this one and again, I'd like to see your projects. All right, that is it for this video. Let's get on to the next one. Actually, no, you're going to get off and start doing your homework. Draw this one. Make them better. Alright. See you the next video though.