Lesson Info
8. Join Tool in Illustrator
Lessons
Overview of the Pen Tool in Illustrator
06:51 2Handle Point Conversion with the Pen Tool in Illustrator
07:06 3Creating Curves with the Pen Tool in Illustrator
11:27 4Convert Anchor Point Tool with the Pen Tool in Illustrator
10:40 5Tracing an Object with the Pen Tool in Illustrator
12:33 6Using the Curvature Pen Tool in Illustrator
07:30 7Pencil Tool in Illustrator
07:48 8Join Tool in Illustrator
06:49Lesson Info
Join Tool in Illustrator
now one other thing. And again, things keep getting better here with the updates of the adobe products. I'm gonna go in and say I want to draw something and I'm using my pencil tool because I don't want to mess with my arm using a pencil tool. I don't want to mess with my pen tool. And I decide here that I want Teoh draw like a seashell. So I'm starting to draw these curves here like so you know, And then I want to go in. I'm gonna draw my seashell, and there it is. It's a really bad seashell, but nonetheless, I'm just doing a really quick drawing here. Maybe it's a caterpillar. Instead, there we go. We'll call it a caterpillar. And now what I've got is I got all these lines that are all over the place, so I would love to have all of these lines stop at my shape here or if I want to join them together. So I'm gonna select my lines and I'm going to go under my let's see under my paintbrush Here now paintbrush my pencil and I go to my join tool And my joint tool is awesome. Wherever you ...
have random lines intersecting other lines, I'm gonna take my join tool. And I'm literally just gonna go in. And I'm just going to scribble over those areas that I want to join together. And if I want to, like, connect these, I can go ahead and I conjoined those and I'm going Teoh, come on. I have to get rid of my big shape Here. You do it this way. Take this. Here we go. We have my pencil tool. There we go. A draw like this over these lines. Put these all together and I grab my joint tool right there and select all my objects. And I'm going to join these altogether. I'm gonna go when I'm just gonna kind of scribble in paint over those areas and will join those selected lines. So these lines right here again you have to have the line selected that you want to do that with. If they're not selected, they don't work. But where Those two cross right there those are gonna come together. Were these two cross When a paint here those are gonna come together Thies to cross the paint come together The tricky thing is, once you paint with a joint to only come together, they're no longer selected. So then you have to go back and you have to select them again if you want. Teoh, enough. It's a common thing that I keep forgetting to dio because once I do that and then I want to connect these two together. It doesn't work, you know, and these don't work and these don't work. They have to be selected and then they work. So I want those to come together where they cross. I do that and they basically come together. Do you that select all those objects where they come together or where they don't come together? There it is. Those overlap there run over those. If I want Thies to come together, I could just select them, run over them and they will connect them together. Now the joint tool is one of those things where it doesn't produce results exactly the way you want them to every single time. It's a little bit more unique in how it actually works and understanding the algorithm of how that works. I want all these shapes to come together and where they come together is definitely where they're going to join. So I go to my joint tool. Not a problem. I got that. But now I need to select those again and then go over that and then select those again and then go over that as well. If you have open paths here and they're not touching and you have them selected and you use the joint tool, they will join together. It's just that they may not join exactly the way you think. OK, it joins with a corner there. Then you have to select them again. I want to join those together like so come on, join. And sometimes they don't want to join. So I've noticed that with that, their radio doesn't want to join together. They did before, overlap them, put them together and then use the joint tool right there. No preferences for the joint tool. Double click on it and nothing comes up. But interesting nonetheless so varying degrees of success with the joint tool here on how those things actually work. So join those together, not getting anything happening with that. Once an open shape, one's a close shape, but they're both selected and reason why? Because you're shapes have to be open it. So if you have a close shape trying to join, it doesn't want to do it. It's a little bit more tricky, little bit of fun there, but certainly trying things with a pencil tool. Definitely more up my alley. Go in and create anything that you want. It's going to smooth things out Really nice. There's my little racetrack. Go in and do a little checkered flag right here. Cough it so I don't keep dragging on there. Here we go. There's metal checkered flag right there, nice and easy. So much for high class illustration. So that's basically how to use the pen tool going in and drawing with pen tool, using your shapes and your curves, adding and subtracting points and then being able to go win trace over existing icons. Do your sketching, but introducing the pencil tool there as well for a lot more free form. A lot quicker shapes around your objects and having them do kind of a smooth job with that. And wow, that was quite interesting. There we go. Let's do our line again. All around are little lemon right there beautiful, Much better. I love it when you do shapes like this. It's just so accurate that it does almost a near perfect. So that's the basics of using the pen tool pencil tool and a few little bits of the joint tool. One question that people do ask me is if I learned the pen to an illustrator, will it work in Photoshop? Absolutely. Some people say, Oh, it works differently. Well, works pretty much the same in Photo Shop is it doesn't in design. It's the pen tool, and it's made for drawing shapes. There are a few little features that are slightly different in the other applications. But once you use the pen tool and illustrator, you're gonna have a really good idea of how it works in both in Design and Photoshopped.
Ratings and Reviews
MikeD
This tool is a bit in the ..., however Jason's inimitable style and affable character makes the class a delight to watch. I *MUST* learn to use the Pen and Pencil tool because I can't draw; not at all, not even a little bit. I say this literally, there are modest people and there are people who should be more modest and there are people who are poor at drawing, there are all colors and flavors and I say hands down, I cannot draw, write or even make an approximation of a straight line (literally, not an exaggeration) and my hand will not do what my eye and brain tell it. I can see where I want something to go and can't make my hand do it, I can't even trace something on tracing paper - the lines go every which way and this is something mastered by a six-year-old. So when I say I *MUST* use these tools, it's because I have no alternatives. Jason's class has been a Godsend because I can actually make plausible sketches, drawings and convey ideas through the use of these tools. I highly recommend this class if you want to learn how to get started using this tool. It's even fun once you learn a little bit about it.
Adrian Chorlton
Great course used as revision on using the tools. Well presented, interesting, waffle free. Be useful if there was a section on closing and opening paths
Fuzzy Piglet
I would consider myself as an intermediate illustrator user, having been around it for many years but only needing to use a minimal amount of the software. I also an advanced photoshop user with around 22-23 years experience so Ive made my share of clipping paths etc. This course provides all the technical information about the tools, paths, points and handles and Jason presents it in a very easy to understand way. I learned a few things from it but its also good to know the 'hows and whys' which is not something you might learn from a user manual or even necessarily from experience. Well worth the cost!