Adobe Illustrator

May 15, 2014

WOrking with the Pen Tool

The following is a tutorial/guide to how to better work with the pen tool.

February 17, 2014

Prom Tickets

You have a hard deadline of Friday, February 21 for this assignment.

We have been tasked with creating the tickets for this year's prom. The design is all in all pretty open-ended, but there are a few considerations and pieces of specific information that must be present on your completed design. Attempting to turn in or 'be finished' with a design that lacks this information will affect your grade. You need to double-check that everything is present before claiming you are done. As such, keep in mind the following specifications from our clients:

• Be sure to include that this is for the Bushland Prom
• Dimensions: 2 inches by 6 inches (or vice versa, depending on if you want a tall or wide ticket)
• Theme for the evening: A Night of Elegance
• Cost $35.00
• Colors White, Black, Gold
• Color of paper the tickets will be printed on White
• Location Amarillo Civic Center, Heritage Room
• Date 3/22 8:00-11:30 PM
• Date and location should not be written as seen above. Look for ways to separate items such as date, time, and location in other examples
• Other specifics: No meal will be served
  • The theme is elegance, and the overall design should project that theme.
• Using photos, be they full-color or greyscale, is strongly discouraged and will require my approval prior to adding them to the design. Small symbols or vector graphics are acceptable and encouraged, however.
  • Don't forget to use the Symbols panel in illustrator, accessing the other symbol libraries available via the button at the bottom left corner of the symbols panel.
• This is a perfect time to utilize lines, shapes, and text as the emphasis of your design.
• Head out to the Web and look for terms that will bring up elegant print designs. These might include:
  • Vintage wedding invitations
  • Formal tickets
  • Prom tickets
  • Formal invitations
  • Ball tickets

January 24, 2014

Illustrator Tips and Tricks

Ten Illustrator Moves you Should know

Ten Tips for working with Swatches

January 15, 2014

Shape up or Ship Out

You will utilize everything you have learned so far to create a simple design that illustrates a multi-step process of your choice. To do so,

• Create a new document that is 8.5 by 11 inches, 300 ppi, CMYK color
• Drag out guides to 1/4 of an inch all around your page
• Create steps for your process that are contained within shapes. These may be complete or incomplete shapes.
• You must include at least four steps in your process.
• Guide the reader across your process using some means other than lines and arrows. However, consider using lines and such in the overall design as accents. In doing so, remember that lines are both solid and dotted in nature. Also, shapes don't have to be entirely enclosed; they could be four uneven brush strokes that roughly resemble a square.
  • Also, remember that 'dotted' lines don't necessarily have to be made up of circles.
• Utilize a monochromatic color scheme.
• Include a live-traced image in your illustration, with lowered levels of detail and single, solid colors. See me about selecting and changing colors.

January 8, 2014

Shape up or Ship Out

So you can replicate via a tutorial, but now let's create something on our own. Find a photograph of a real-world object, and then use either a combination of shapes or shapes and the pen tool (NOT just the pen tool for tracing) to create a stylized representation of that object. The photograph can be used as a visual aid, but you will not trace it. You will be graded on the following:

• Initial choice of object - I MUST APPROVE THE OBJECT YOU CHOOSE. In other words, a box won't work. Nor will a house. Your object must include more curves than straight edges.
• Effort and productivity along the way
• Complexity/number of shapes used to 'create' the object

January 6, 2014

Back in the Swing of Things

Let's start off the semester with one of the following tutorials, to work on some simple shapes and pen tool/direct selection work:

Little Red Riding Hood

Birds - You must do at least three different birds if you choose this option.

Feel free to take any liberties with the overall look of these designs, especially the Little Red Riding Hood. However, they must be quality additions/modifications, not senseless scribbles.

December 16, 2013

Fun With Flags

Let's join Sheldon Cooper (of The Big Bang Theory) in celebrating the wonder of flags. To do so, you will create your own flag using the following guidelines:

• New document with 11 inches wide by 8.5 inches tall artboard dimensions
• Evidence of the following tools in your work:
  • Shape Builder tool used to either combine two or more shapes or cut away part of one shape by using another one
    • If you need a quick refresh on how the shape builder tool works, look HERE
  • A pattern created by using either the scale or rotate tools while holding the ALT key to set a transformation point other than the center of the shape, and then using the Edit --> Transform --> Transform Again command found in the menus. For an example of how to do this, see files just beneath this assignment.
  • Make use of at least one of the following tools: Warp, Crystalize, Pucker Bloat, Swirl. We haven't used them before, but you simply select a shape, select a tool, and then either click and hold on a part of your shape or click, hold down the mouse button, and move in a motion as if you're using a brush tool.
• If you don't want your country's name as part of the artboard, do this part of the design in the pasteboard/scratch area to the side of the artboard.
  • The Banned Fonts List applies to the following two bullets!
  • Write out the name of your country (no more than two words), then go to the menus at top and use the Type --> Create Outlines command to give your lettering that 'extra touch' of style via reshaping.
  • Beneath your country's name, give me a short phrase in a much smaller (the country name should be at least six times larger) font that will serve as your national motto. Pick an appropriate font size and tracking value (tracking is found on the Character panel) to make your motto exactly as wide as your country's name.
• Use other commands and explore other options that we've both used and not used! Go above and beyond!
  • The Effect Menu can get you into a fair bit of trouble if you're not careful, though, and result in your computer freezing up. Just a warning.
• Remember tricks such as the following:
  • Text on a Path
  • Simple, subtle Gradients involving the same hue (red to dark red, light blue to medium blue, etc)
  • Opacity of Shapes
  • The Alignment Panel
  • Different stroke widths and brush tips for the stroke of your shapes (the drop-downs at the top that say 'uniform' and 'basic.' Remember the double folder icons in the bottom left of these drop-down menus allow you to access even more options/libraries!)
• Save your file as Fun-with-flags-FirstName-LastName.ai

December 4, 2013

Line Art Project - Illustrator

Using your skill acquired from the chapter 4 videos, you will create a line art design. I'll personally offer the concept of 'crop circles' as a theme, but you may pick any other direction to go with it if you like. Before you begin, be sure I have shown you some of the extra features you can use when working with lines/strokes. For full credit, your design must utilize the following:

• At least 3 of the 5 different line art tools
• Repeated transformations/duplicates of a segment utilizing the 'Transform Again' command (CTRL + D)
• EITHER Variable width strokes OR dash patterns; you CAN USE BOTH, but you have to use at least one.
• Precise, equal spacing utilizing the Distribute commands.
• A shape created by joining multiple paths
• A path that has been re-shaped using the direct selection tool
• Symmetrical design element created using a reflection
• Guides used to precisely line up design elements

When you are done, save it in the following folder on your Documents/your USB:

• Graphic Design --> Illustrator

You must save it in the above system of folders (create them if you need to), and you must save it with a file name 'Line Art Project _______________ (your name in blank)' .AI

When you have it saved as described, flag me down for checking it out, and then we'll also put a copy on my USB In the finished student work folder.

November 21-22, 2013

Line Art Designs - Illustrator

You will need to actually watch and complete the work that Deke (that's his name, by the way) does all the way through video 4-14. There's not really anything to skip here, as I look back. So, that means videos 0404 through 0410, essentially. This will be a daily grade, and by the time I return on Monday, you need to have prove you at least made it to video 4-10, barring any absences. This is plenty of time to watch that many videos.

I made the video for your class before I double-checked where I wanted your cutoff point to be on the videos; you most likely won't have much or any time after getting all the way through 4-14, so we'll just call it good until Monday after that.

November 15, 2013

Changing your Document Profiles

In order to add your change to the Document Profiles in video 104, you need to alternately access the folder. Do so by doing the following:

• Go to the start menu and go to 'Computer.'
• From here, go to the following folders: Windows (C:) --> Users --> Your User Name (it will be the only one with a lock)
• When you get here, press the ALT key and then let go. A hidden menu will show up at the top of the window.
• Click on Tools --> Folder Options
• Go to the View tab
• Turn on the option to Show Hidden File Types
• Click Okay
• Go into the now-revealed Application data folder
• From here, go to Roaming --> Adobe --> Adobe Illustrator CS5 Settings --> en_US --> New Document Profiles

November 11, 2013

Vector vs. Bitmap

Your assignment for tonight is to discover three differences between vector and bitmap graphics. Opposites will not count as two separate differences (for example, if vectors had to be grayscale and bitmaps can be in color. This is not true, so don't bother using it.). You must have these differences written down/typed/ready by the start of class tomorrow (Tuesday, November 12). It is a quiz/daily grade.