I’m very pleased to announce that my new workshop – Adobe Illustrator CS6 – Learn by Video – is now available to buy directly from the web store on my videos page. I’m also featuring some free example movies from this workshop right here so you can try before you buy.
Newsletter subscribers can also benefit from a 20% discount code off the price of the entire workshop so if you haven’t already subscribed you can do so now to take advantage of this and other special offers only available to my subscribers.
This Learn by Video course offers in-depth training on the interface, workflow, and features of Adobe Illustrator CS6. Amongst other things you’ll learn my own techniques for drawing characters including my “Illustrator” superhero. Here’s the intro movie where I tell you more about the course.
The contents of this course include:
Introducing Illustrator CS6
In this chapter you’ll be introduced to Adobe Illustrator — what it is and what it does — and get an overview of what will be covered in this course. You’ll also be taken on a tour of the new features in Illustrator CS6.
Illustrator Fundamentals
This chapter explores two concepts that are crucial to an understanding of how Illustrator works: the difference between bitmap (or raster) images and vector images, and the concept of paths.
Exploring the Illustrator Interface
In this chapter you’ll learn how to work with important elements of the Illustrator interface like panels, the Application bar and frame, artboards, and workspaces.
Navigating and Using Views in Illustrator
Being able to easily move around your documents and see them in different ways can be a big help in your work. This chapter will explain how to navigate in Illustrator CS6 and use the different viewing and screen modes.
Working with Documents
This chapter shows you how to efficiently create, modify, and view documents. You’ll learn how to use templates, guides, grids, Adobe Bridge, and more.
Creating and Working with Shapes
Shapes are a very important part of Illustrator, and in this chapter you’ll learn about the various tools available for creating and modifying shapes.
Transformations
You can transform objects in a variety of different ways in Illustrator CS6. This chapter shows you the various methods that can be used to transform and modify objects, including how to use the Transform panel.
Understanding Objects and Layers
This chapter shows you how to select and modify objects in Illustrator CS6 and explores the multitude of options you can use to create artwork. We’ll look at saving selections, grouping items, layers and stacking order, and Isolation mode.
Drawing
Drawing is at the heart of the work you’ll do in Illustrator. In this chapter you’ll learn all about the tools, techniques, and features related to drawing in Illustrator CS6.
Using Symbols
Symbols are a handy feature in Illustrator, and in this chapter you’ll learn how to create them, move and rotate them, adjust their size and color, and apply graphic styles.
Color
Color makes a big difference to the appearance of your artwork. In this chapter you’ll learn how to work with color-related features in Illustrator like the Colors panel, swatches, gradients, Live Paint, and more.
Typography
In this chapter you’ll learn how to add text to your documents, format that text, create styles, and more.
Working with Images
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to place graphics and see all the tools Illustrator offers once they are there to help you get great results in your designs.
Working with Effects
With effects, you can apply a look to a path that doesn’t alter the path at all. It will print like what you see on your monitor, but in reality, it’s all just an illusion…a very powerful, editable, printable illusion that can be saved as a PDF, placed in Photoshop and InDesign, and more. You’ll learn all about this incredible technology in this chapter.
Graphs
If you have information you want to convey as a graph or chart, Illustrator has the tool. The chart and graph tools in Illustrator aren’t new, but they are very powerful and allow you to present data in a more interesting way, as you’ll see in this chapter.
Beyond Illustrator
Eventually there will come a time when you want to save your Illustrator work as a PDF or in one of the common web file formats, or output it for use in an animation. The videos in this chapter will show you how.
Project Explorations
In this chapter you’ll apply the skills you’ve learned in this course to some projects that give you an idea of just what Illustrator is capable of.
Closing Thoughts
In this chapter you’ll get a brief recap of what’s been covered in the course and a few final thoughts from the author.
The lessons are wrapped in a feature-rich interface that lets you jump to any topic and bookmark individual sections for later review. Full-Screen mode provides a hi-def, immersive experience, and Watch-and-Work mode shrinks the video into a small window so you can play the videos alongside your application. Also included are exercise files that give you an easy way to try out the techniques you learn and a 48-page guide containing supplemental material.
This workshop from author and animator Angie Taylor will teach you how to use Illustrator’s tools and features to prepare 2D files for animation in Adobe After Effects. You’ll learn how to make the most of Illustrator’s drawing tools and Autotrace feature, and to how use Live Paint and Kuler to recolor artwork. You’ll also get tons of tips and tricks for giving artwork a hand-drawn look and find out how to set up layers, aspect ratios, and transparency options for importing into After Effects. The lessons are focused and solution-oriented, and all the project files are included. Topics covered include:
Setting up your workspace for video and animation
Working with Autotrace, Live Paint, and Kuler
Using multiple artboards for creating storyboards
Taking advantage of views and workspaces
Drawing freehand in Illustrator using a variety of tools including the new improved Eraser tool and the Blob Brush tool
Here’s another free tutorial from my first venture into making video tutorials for Adobe Illustrator. My tutorials are probably what you’d call non-standard! I’m not going to teach you how to ‘the cool look’ that we’ve all seen a million times before, that doesn’t really interest me, and there are plenty of other websites that will whow you those techniques.
What I hope to do with my tutorials is to teach you new and interesting ways of using the tools creatively. How to ‘think’ with the software. It’s then up to you to add your own style to what you’ve learned to conjure up something unique.
This tutorial focusses on Adobe Illustrator’s amazing reshape tools that can help you create more organic-looking drawings in Illustrator. These include Warp, Pucker & Bloat, and Wrinkle. In this movie you’ll use the Bloat tool to add muscle to your character, create hair with the Wrinkle tool, and use the Warp tool to transform primitive shapes into more realistic and organic body parts. Enjoy!
I’m very pleased to offer my readers a couple of free tutorials from my very first video2brain workshop on Adobe Illustrator. This workshop will teach you how to use Illustrator’s tools and features to prepare 2D files for animation in Adobe After Effects.
You’ll learn how to make the most of Illustrator’s drawing tools and Autotrace feature, and to how use Live Paint and Kuler to recolor artwork. You’ll also get tons of tips and tricks for giving artwork a hand-drawn look and find out how to set up layers, aspect ratios, and transparency options for importing into After Effects.
I’ll share many of my techniques for using Illutrator’s extensive drawing capabilities to create characters for animation. Topics covered include:
Setting up your workspace for video and animation
Working with Autotrace, Live Paint, and Kuler
Using multiple artboards for creating storyboards
Taking advantage of views and workspaces
Drawing freehand in Illustrator using a variety of tools including the new improved Eraser tool and the Blob Brush tool
Whether you’re a motion graphic designer, animators, storyboard artists, video editors or illustrators, if you want to create 2D animation from flat, vector-based artwork, this workshop will be an invaluable resource.
The lessons are wrapped in a feature-rich interface that lets you jump to any topic and bookmark individual sections for later review. Full-Screen mode provides a hi-def, immersive experience, and Watch-and-Work mode shrinks the video into a small window so you can play the videos alongside your application. Also included are exercise files that give you an easy way to try out the techniques you learn.
Click here to get an overview of the workshop and download free tutorials using the following links;
It’s a hot debate, as a designer, is it important to have drawing skills? I mean, you don’t need to draw anymore really? Surely computers can do it all for you now, download a few images, treat them with filters, composite them together in Adobe Photoshop – Bob’s yer uncle (as we say in the UK!)
But drawing is not only a process used to create finished aesthetic imagery to include in a finished design, it’s much more than that. It’s a learning process that is an important stage in the development of a confident visual language. When you draw something you learn to see with a different, more focused awareness. You start to question why things appear in a certain way, as a result you can understand how things are constructed, how light interacts with surfaces and how colors affect each other. Things that may not occur to you by just simply looking at an object. you need to truly understand these things to make your drawings work. Even if you don’t like your finished drawings, that really doesn’t matter, it’s the process of losing yourself in the craft of drawing that matters.
And it’s never too late to learn, in the Drawing chapter of my book, Design Essentials for the Motion Media Artist I talk about my mother who didn’t start drawing till she was in her 70’s. It has made a huge difference to her life and now she can draw and paint like she would never have thought. You can check out excerpts from this chapter using Amazon’s “Search Inside” feature now. The chapter also contains some of the exercises that helped me learn to draw during my time at Art College. There’s also a resources section on this website that contains some tips, tricks and links to useful tutorials, websites and a complete reading list.
Drawing Exercise from Design Essentials book - draw 6 circular objects with the same drawing implement achieving different textures for each
Writing this book inspired me to include more about drawing in my software tutorial too. I recently recorded a new video training workshop for video2brain on Animation Character Design in Adobe Illustrator which will be available soon. In this tutorial I showed that you don’t need to limit yourself to using traditional drawing materials. In one of the tutorials I show how to create body shapes from primitive shapes and then use Illustrators fabulous drawing tools to sculpt these into more organic shapes, it’s an addictive and very creative process.
So, I hope that you’ll give drawing a chance, pick up whichever implement inspires you to make marks and get sketching! don’t worry about the outcome, just enjoy the process!
