Lessons

Lesson Info

Shape Creation

this lesson that we're gonna show you is all about drawing shapes in Illustrator And we're gonna show you how to do circles, squares, the polygon tool, the star tool show you all the shortcuts, the tips, the tricks, the little hidden features and we'll get into the line tools, the spiral on the polar grid tool And we actually begin to create a lot of interesting things using illustrator. So I've got my documents set up here. What I'd like to do is go in and work with my drawing tools and an illustrator here. I have got a lot of nested drawing tools in my tool bar. And if I click and hold on any one of these tools here, I'm going to get a fly out menu of my particular tools. Now, your toolbar may look a little bit different than this, And the reason why is because the newest versions they have gone in and they have kind of cleaned up the toolbar and they have put less tools in the tool bar and they have nested the rest of them here at the bottom with this little dot, dot dot. If I click...

on this edit toolbar here. There will be tools that are not in the toolbar, and those that are not in the toolbar will actually show Oppa's black here. They're all gray simply because I have loaded all of them into the toolbar. But if you're missing tool from the toolbar, click on that dot and you can go then and click on these tools to add them to it. Now, if I go and I click on those triple dots on, I go to all my tools and I click on my little cheese grater up here in the upper right hand corner. If I go ahead and click on the advanced setting, this is going to put all the tools in my tool bar for me to use, which is quite nice. If I just choose the basic here, you're gonna end up with a much smaller toolbar. And so some of these tools would be like, Okay, where's all my lines? I can't find them. Click on that dot and you can see here these air where the tools are. I just go into the cheese grater, and I'm gonna set this to advanced here. So I've got all my tools ready to go because I'm gonna be working with shapes and lines. I don't like going into my tool bar every time clicking and waiting to be able to get to that tool. So I'm gonna click and hold on. I'm gonna pull my cursor over to the right hand side and highlight this little vertical bar with the arrow and then let go. This is what it's called a tear off. So I get a independent floating panel with all of the tools that I need right there easily accessible without having to go to my toolbar. I'm gonna do this for both my drawing shapes and my line tools so that I have access to these right there. Now you'll notice that these tools some of these tools have shortcuts. The rectangle tool shortcut for that is M The Ellipse tool is l not all of these have shortcuts simply because these were going to be the most used tools that we have. And then, of course, the line tool that's going to be your back slash and those tools, the ones we use the most. As we start off, I'm going to start off with the basic drawing tools here with a rectangle tool. Pretty simple. Take the rectangle tool. You click and drag, and you draw yourself a rectangle. It doesn't get much easier than that. Now you'll notice. When you're drawing any shape, you'll get a tool hint in the lower right hand corner, telling you what size this is. Don't try to go ahead and size the shape with this little tool. Hint in the corner because trying to get it just right doesn't work. You can either draw the shape and then set the size afterwards. Or, if you want to get the shape the particular size, simply take the tool. Don't draw, but just take the tool and simply click in your document, and that's going to call up your dialog box, and you can type in whatever size is that you want. I use the tab key to go from one field to another and then click OK by hitting return, and that's going to give you the size that you want of your shape. So if you want a specific size, don't draw that shape. Simply click with that shape tool on your desktop and then be able to put in the parameters and get that shape. Now, if you're done with that shape while it's still selected, you can use your delete key Thio. Delete them. If you want to remove your other shapes, we're going to use our selection tool, and I can select those shapes and delete them as well. So rectangle tool. Pretty simple. Click and drag gives you a rectangle. What happens if you wanna square while you're drawing? Well, if you go ahead and you introduce the shift key in while you're drawing, this is going to constrain it to be a perfect square. And this is true with the shift key. When you're drawing any shape shift will always constrain. You'll notice that we get this magenta line going from corner to corner as well. So if we don't hold down our shift key and we see that magenta line, we know that we're getting a perfect circle. Are sorry. A perfect square. You gotta learn my shapes here. I could get this without holding down the shift key, but I gotta be very careful that I kind of snapped to that sweet zone. It's just easier to hold down the shift key and then I can pull any way that I want Thio, and that's going to give me a perfect square. The trick to this is don't let go of the shift key until you let go of the mouse. Let go of the mouse first and then let go of the shift key. If you let go of the shift key first, you're gonna lose your constraints. So keep the shift key held on, Let go of the mouse And we've got a perfect square Pretty easy. We're gonna jump over the rounded rectangle here because shortly you're gonna find out why we don't really need this because we can take any rectangle around the corner. So drawing a rounded rectangle really isn't necessary. The Ellipse tool, of course, very much like the rectangle tool we can hold down our shift key to go ahead and constrain this. We can make any oval that we want wide or narrow hold down the shift key to get a perfect circle. You'll see, we get those magenta lines being drawn in the middle there when we know we're constraining it perfectly. And of course, we let go of our mouse first and then our shift key to get a perfect circle going to delete that. And if I want to draw a perfect circle and a very specific size, I'm not gonna draw the circle. I'm gonna take the circle or the Ellipse tool click on the desktop and this is going to call up my dialog box. I can add my values in and click OK and get that the exact size that I want. Pretty simple stuff. Now you'll notice what I'm using, what I'm drawing with the Ellipse or the rectangle tool. I'm always drawing from the corner wherever I click and drag from. That's where my point of origination is. The reason why I mention this is because that's not true on all the tools. When I'm drawing with a polygon of the star tool, they do not draw from an edge they actually draw from the center. So I'm gonna grab my polygon tool here and I'm gonna draw and you can see these draw from the center of the object. Now, when I draw with my polygon tool here, I can pull this larger and smaller and when I go ahead and I hold down my shift key shift does something a little bit different. Shift constrains to make sure that one of the side stays flat. Because if you've ever driven a drawing a polygon or a star and try to get one of those sides flat or level, it's really hard to do that. But hold down your shift key, and it's really hard not to go ahead and make that level, so shift is going to constrain in that way. Now, along with all the other tools that we've showed you so far, how do I go in and change the number of sides? Well again, if I want to go ahead and make this a specific size or certain attributes, I'm not going to draw the shape. I'm simply going to use that shape tool and click on my document, and it keeps putting my dialog box up on the upper left hand corner here. The radius here and this is the reason why I mentioned that these shapes the polygon in the star to will draw from the middle. When you go in and you set up the size of your polygon or your star, your radius is going to be half the width. So if I would like a polygon that is three inches wide, I am going to go ahead and set the radius to be 1.5, because it's measuring from the middle to the edge because it draws from the middle. This is where I can also change the number of sides. Now you notice there is no preview in these dialogue boxes, which is kind of annoying. So you don't really know what you're going to get until you see it. So if I go in and say, Okay, I'd like to have five sides here and I think this is the right side and click OK, It's like, Oh, that's way too big. I can scale this down afterwards, but the radius of this is going to be 1.5 inches from here all the way to the farthest point right there. And there's my five sides now with this, it's like, Oh, you know, I wanted to have less sides, and it's like, Okay, you can always delete that and do it again and then change the number of sides. By the way, some people have complained that there is no triangle tool and illustrator Well, no, there isn't. But when you set a polygon to three sides, you get a triangle. And I've had several people that have used Illustrator for a long time that never knew there was the triangle tool and they always made their own triangles. It's like, Yeah, polygon, that's three sided. Polygon is a triangle. I kind of chuckled with that a little bit, but that's what it is now. Whenever we draw with our polygon, our last drawn shape is our new default. So now every time I draw, if the last one I drew was a triangle, everyone that I draw from here on out is going to be a triangle. Until I decide that I can simply click on the document, change the attributes here and now that's gonna be my new default. Every time that I draw so pretty simple, how do you send it back to normal? Well, whatever normal is, some people want to get the tools right back. Well, it's just a six sided polygon is the normal or the default right there change the number of sides. But when I'm drawing this polygon clicking on this every time. Changing the number of sides is okay, but I'd like to be a little bit quicker about this. So here's the trick. Draw with the polygon and while you're having your mouse held down, don't let go. There's times let go. This isn't one of them. I'm still drawing the polygon. Then you're going to use your down arrow to remove sides of a polygon up arrow is going thio add sides now if I get to the number of sides that I'd like and I then hold down my shift key that's going to constrain it. So I get a level surface and then, of course, let go of the mouse first and then the shift key later. So this is a really easy way to change the number of sides while I'm drawing without having to click, call it the dialog box and set the number of sides to simple is drawing up arrow. Add sides down. Arrow takes them away. One little trick here that's just a little subtle one here, but while you're drawing here, stop moving the mouse, but keep it held down when you use your up or down arrow if you go ahead and use your up or down arrow and you move the mouse up your use your up or down arrows while you're moving your mouse here, it will add or delete sides at a very rapid pace. Okay, because all of a sudden it's like whoa! And this happens when you're both moving the mouse and you're using your up and down arrow keys. So draw the shape, keep them house held down, but don't move it and then use your upper down arrows and then you will not get that super rapid side creation or deletion. It's a little point there, but nonetheless. Okay, so that's a nice trick to be able to draw polygons nice and easy and get a level side on there as well. We're gonna jump over to our star tool. Our star tool draws a traditional star when we start off again. If you hold down your shift key, the little legs were gonna be level so we don't have kind of a rotated star. Nice and easy. Now, when I go in and I simply click on the desktop, this is going to give me my dialog box and Now I've got these weird things Radius one and Radius to and I can understand the number of points here, but what does this actually mean? Well, I'm going to set the radius one to be two inches and the radius to to be one inch and I'm gonna click, OK? And here's what this means. Radius one is going to be the distance from the center of the star to the furthest point. So any one of these points So I said this is two inches, So from the center here to the edge is gonna be two inches radius to is going to be the inset. So I said that to one inch You're gonna measure from the center here to that closest point. What does that make any difference? Well, if I take this star in a draw and I would like to create a very pronounced are with very sharp points, I'm going to put a lot more difference in between radius one in radius to which is going to give me ah, lot sharper points if I go in and I would like to do something like this where I don't have a lot of difference between radius one and radius to. I'm going up this right here to 13. This is going to give me kind of a burst or a little medallion of some sort. I'm gonna reduce this down on one quick way. Thio, reduce this down. You don't have to highlight the numbers here cause there's no little upper down arrows. Put your cursor in the fields here and then just use your up or down arrows on your keyboard. There doesn't have to be up or down arrows here. So if I do that, then I get a nice little burst, you know, 50% off going out of business, you know, buy one, get one free. That's how it works. So that's a start. Now you'll also notice two. When we do this, there is no preview. So unless you really know what this means and you can understand this in your mind, it's hard to get a grasp of what this is exactly going to look like. So while this is nice and now you understand what radius one in radius to is and this is what you get. I'm a visual person and I want to see how this works when I'm drawing. So if I draw with the star tool, it always draws from the middle. By the way, I'm going to click and drag And I'm not gonna let go of the mouse If I use my up arrow that's going to add points to my star down Arrow is going Thio take those points away If I want a traditional star five points up down Arrow is going to go ahead and do that and give me those number of star those number of points. Now, if I hold down my shift key again, the legs are gonna be parallel. So that's great. It constrains that. But how do I control Radius one in radius to basically the length of the points? While I haven't let go of my mouth yet? I'm still in drawing mode here. I'm gonna hold down my command key and I'm gonna pull away from the center of the star that's gonna pull my points longer. I'm going to push into the center of the star, which is gonna make my points shorter. Now if I keep going, they kind of invert themselves So we get more. But a smaller star right here. But again, pull out makes longer points, push in, make shorter points right there. Get that to be. However, I'd like hold down my shift key to go ahead and constrain it size of however I'd like and then let go. Now, this is my new default. If I want to draw a star like this because this is the last star that I used, I could just simply go in and draw as many stars as I want with those settings. I'm all good. So quick and easy Way to be able to go through and work with ease and edit. Thes makes it super simple. A couple other things. He's gonna use my selection tool and I'm going to select all of this and delete them right here. There's a couple other tricks withdrawing with the shape tools as well. I told you that when we draw there with a rectangle and the ellipse here, they always draw from a corner. Okay, we don't draw from the middle, but wouldn't it be nice to have them draw from the middle for some reason? Sure. Absolutely. And the reason why may wanna have them draw from the middle is because maybe I want a land to objects centered with each other and draw from there. So I've got my shapes and they're not selected. I'd like to put a circle right in the middle of this here. Now, what you're seeing here are smart guides, these little magenta lines and these little hints that are showing up. We're gonna talk about smart guides when we talk about alignment and spacing. And smart guides are awesome because this allows us thio align thing, snap things to each other, get the spacing distance, and it's absolutely phenomenal. The smart guides are turned on by default. They're there under the view menu. So you're going to see this going through here now? The reason why I mentioned the smart guides here is because I've got this square that I've drawn here and I don't have it selected. So I would like to draw a circle right in the middle of this square. If I take my lips tool and I park it right there in the center, it actually lands there. The smart guide tells me Hey, you're on the center. Well, I know if I click and drag here is going to draw a circle from the corner and give me this. Well, that's not what I wanted. So if I put my cursor in here and I hold down my option key, you'll notice when I hold down my option key and I'm drawing in a lips, a little cross hairs will then give me kind of a little circle area. And, of course, if I go when I draw from there, that's gonna draw from the center, holding down my shift key to draw from the center and gives me a perfect circle in the center of my object on. I don't think I start in the center there. Now, that's in the center. Okay, Well, if I do the same thing here, I've got a circle. It's not selected. I'm gonna draw square here. I'm gonna find the center of the circle here, hold down the option key. You'll notice that it gives me a little square corners here, Hold down the option. If I hold down my shift key to this allows me to draw a perfect square already centered in the middle of my object. It's like, Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, it is instead of having to draw and align them here, just draw them right there where you want them. So now I've been able to go ahead and draw perfect circles and perfect squares and put them right in the middle, all by drawing from the middle. So if I don't have my option key held down, it'll just draw from the corner. If I hold down my option key, it's going to draw from the center. So no option key draws in the corner. Different ways to do it depends on what you want and how efficient you are. It's just these little tips just speed things up that much more.