10 Tips: Illustrating in Adobe Illustrator

hello and welcome to let's create something my name is Michael and this videos topic is ten tips for illustrating in Illustrator one quick note I started a patron profile where you can support this channel and unlock exclusive previews and other rewards I'd be happy if you check it out link is in the video's description so let's get started with the workflow overview my process always starts with a lot of drawing sometimes on screen sometimes on paper it doesn't really matter in this case I was using an iPad and the app procreate my recommendation is to refine your drawing until you leave no questions unanswered for the vectorizing process which includes thinking about lion weight and shading up front later in Illustrator I start with the outlines go on with the fill colors and last but not least draw the shadows for each of these steps I got a couple of tips for you that I hope you'll find useful some of them are already covered in my other tutorials but need to be mentioned here as well for completion let's start with a set up number one the small bits you're a pro on your way becoming one so use precise cursors hit ctrl K to open the Preferences and in the general section and able use precise cursors your cursor is now an X or crosshairs for most tools instead of those little tool items that sometimes leave you just guessing where your click will end up on the screen also check out if your layer color collides with your sketch color if that's the case like here it'll be hard to see the preview lines just double click your layer exactly in the space between layer title and the selection total this opens the layer options where you can easily change the layer color number two use a multi window layout this is one of my favorite often overlooked features and the main menu go to window and then click straight at the first point called new window you now got two windows for the same document but you want to have them dock next to each other so click on this little icon that stands for the arrange windows menu and choose the two up layout this is one of my most favorite features because of two main reasons first each window can be at a different zoom level and second every window can have the Files layers individually set to visible or hidden in my case that means that I have one work window in which I work mostly zoomed in with a sketch visible on a lower layer and the secondary window at a zoomed out state where I can see the full character and approximately its final size and without the underlying sketch that way I can always have a controlling view on the curves and final look RGB or CMYK what color would to use is a bit up to the task you're working on RGB is used for screens CMYK for classic offset print I personally always work in RGB and convert to CMYK if needed in the end I do that because of one main reason that might not be that apparent to you depending on your screen and resolution but I have these very tiny white borders everywhere where different colors meet each other and they're driving me nuts there are plenty of tips out there on how to get rid of them but they all didn't work for me the only thing that works for me is working in RGB where this display arrows simply doesn't exist number four global colors I don't want to go into too much detail about global color swatches as they got a big feature in my ten essential illustrator tips video but for setting up my document for illustration at least create one swatch for my ink color and set it to global which enables that editing this swatch will have an effect on all objects using its color and recolor them I mostly use a ping during the progress as a contrast color to underlying sketches drawing the outlines number five moving the point on the fly when you draw a line with a pen tool you can still change the current points position after clicking just hold down the mouse button while simultaneously holding down the space key now you can move the point around just let loose of space to gain back control over the handles friends of my other tutorials already knew that little trick but here's one use case I didn't talk about every time I need to make a point very close to another line I use this trick to avoid adding a point on the wrong line or accidentally closing any paths so I click outside of the other path hole of the mouse button hold down space drag the point to the final position and voila got some very close lines without any misinterpretation of my clicks by the software number six smoothing lines I rarely used a smooth tool but I know that it can be a relief for beginners struggling to get a nice flowing curvature and Alliance you find it under the shaper tool set hold down control to temporarily switch to the direct selection tool and click the line you want to smooth after that draw the the path where you're unhappy with the curvature to smooth out the bumps number seven rounding corner points after redrawing the outlines of the beard shape I decided that I want to go with a more bubbly style which means avoiding sharp and pointy shapes and corners there are two quick ways and many more slow ways to get this done number one would be opening the stroke menu and clicking on round join in the corner settings if you have very fat lines this might already do the job but it gives you zero control of a size of the rounding and no individual rounding of individual points it applies to all corners of the selected path number two is my favorite new tool since 2017 the corner widget it's not a tool you can directly choose from the tool palette but comes built in with a direct selection tool select a corner point with a direct selection tool and then drag the white dot which is the actual corner widget until you are happy with the roundness I was talking about this tool before and had a lot of comments about not finding it so here's some troubleshooting a your version of Adobe Illustrator might be too old the widget has been introduced in CC 2017 older versions just don't have it be you accidentally disabled it to n able it go to view and then show corner widget if that line is not showing up your problem is probably point a see you are not selecting a corner point the widget only appears on corner points as soon as there are tangent handles coming out of your point it is a curve point no matter how small they are and not a corner point anymore you can convert it to a corner point though by using the Anchor Point tool you can find under the pen tools single click a point a little pecans the corner point again which then displays the corner widget number it my line waiting workflow I'm not starting to work on waiting the lines before I didn't finish drawing all lines that keeps me from having to irregular weights in the end and helps me keeping an overview when all lines are done I changed the ink color to black and dragging the color while holding down alt onto the ink color swatch to replace the pink now I select all lines and go to the stroke menu where it shows a weight that matches the maximum line thickness I don't want to exceed let's start with a weighting by choosing the width tool I first stabilized the chosen line at the segments that should stay at maximum width that's done by clicking the line with a width tool and dragging out the handles until the shape matches the predefined width after that I move on to the paths where I want the line to be thinner doing the same procedure as before just with dragging inwards instead of outwards from the lines Center I repeat this process until all lines are weighted and correct Sun curvature using the direct selection tool when necessary coloring number nine making fields there are multiple ways to color illustrations in Illustrator but they all come down to creating shapes overlapped by the outlines one way or another for me the most convenient way is using the Live Paint Bucket tool before I can use it and need to duplicate all my outlines and drag them onto another layer these will be used by the tool to create the filler shapes because the tool can't handle weighted lines I was set the profile and the stroke menu to uniform and changed the weight to one let's select the Live Paint Bucket tool it's a bit hidden but you find it in the shape of the tool set while holding down control click and drag to select all lines release control and click totally normal on the selected lines this will first convert the selected outlines to a live paint group which you can then easily color with a tool at the end I like to go to object click expand appearance while the filling shapes are selected that converts the object back from a live paint group to normal editable shapes number ten using the pathfinder for shading last but not least I am tracing the shapes for the shadow colors where those shapes shall touch the outlines are just roughly draw over the borders because I am going to use the Pathfinder to cut them to the right shape for that I'm duplicating the fill shape by hitting ctrl C for copy and ctrl F for pasting in front and to the same place then I select both shapes open the Pathfinder menu and use the intersect function to cut the shape by the way the color of the newly created shape is defined by which object lays on top so you might want to arrange your shapes accordingly to not override your color choices that sums up my workflow in Illustrator my process often goes on and Photoshop for collaborating or depending on the project in after-effects for animating but both of these topics will be covered in their own tutorials if the pattern campaign gets enough support to make it happen I hope you enjoyed this tutorial a special thanks and shout out to this month's top tier patron 0 the ghost many many things this means so much to me and to the future of this channel if you want to keep new content rolling in you might want to support my journey on making new tutorials and my own game on patreon.com slash michael creates become a breakfast bestie a burger body or a generous megaman you made many rewards like getting your questions in the video answered and exclusive previous are waiting for you thank you so much catch you next time and happy creating yours Michael

Channel: Let's create something

Views: 424,394

Keywords: tutorial, characters, cartoon, Adobe Illustrator, Illustrator, Ai, Illu, tut, tips, tricks, vector, vectors, vectordesign, vector design, vector illustration, how to, howto, illustrating, illustrations, illustration, pen tool, global colors, color swatches, swatches, essential, essential tips, window, secondary window, smooth, line weight, drawing, sketching, procreate, tools, tool, beginner, design, graphic, graphicdesign, graphic design, character design, bold style, bold

Id: 2ycw20MaugA

Length: 11min 39sec (699 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/6SOE]

Been using Illustrator for years, I had no idea this was possible. I constantly get reminded of how much I can learn. Thanks for sharing this!

[u/sixtyshilling]

This technique was demonstrated in a VHS that shipped with the first version of AI in 1987. You can watch it, here.

[u/pinkknip]

This was so helpful. I knew about the capability because I saw it in a follow along lesson. However the lesson I watched didn't highlight the practicality like this video did. After I learned about it I was like why would someone use that feature. I think I'm definitely going to give it another go in my next project. Thanks for the tip.

[u/egypturnash]

I do this less often than I used to. A few versions ago some weird glitches started popping up for me: once I have different layer visibility settings in each window, the Layers panel starts flickering constantly, and the disclosure triangles can stop working. It's really annoying and someday I need to spend some time tracking it down and finding a reliable reproduction for making the disclosure triangles quit working so I can submit it as a bug.

Multiple windows is super useful for drawing icons, book/album covers, or anything else that will be seen at a small size for much of its life - keep a little window at thumbnail size, then you'll always be aware of how it reads at the size it'll be seen in online stores or whatever.