Class Info

  • Date: February 8, 2023
  • Meeting Info: 6:00pm – 9:20pm, Room P121

Topic

Creating and Aligning Shapes

Today, we will continue our exploration of the shape tools Illustrator has to offer.

Various Shapes can be aligned to finish an Illustration

Objectives

What you can expect to learn

  • Artwork Basics
    • Paths and Appearance
    • Selection and Direct Selection Tools
    • Drawing Basic Shapes
    • Drawing with Line Tool
    • Stacking Order and Isolation Mode
    • Grouping and Ungrouping items
  • Working with Fills and Strokes
    • solid, gradient and pattern fills
    • strokes – endpoints, dashed lines, and variable-width strokes
  • Drawing Basic Shapes
    • squares, circles, polygons, and stars
    • line Tools
    • selection tools – selection and direct election
    • hiding/locking objects
  • Color
    • The Swatch Panel
    • global swatches
    • spot colors and tints
    • color groups
  • Transforming Shapes
  • Rotate and Skew
  • Aligning Objects
    • To each other
    • To a Key Object
    • Distributing Objects
    • To Artboard and Selection

A few things to know:

  • Shapes are created with paths that are connected anchor points.
  • A shape = closed path because the ends of the path are connected)
  • A line = open path. An open path has endpoints at each end.
  • Both open and closed paths can be filled with color, gradients or patterns.
  • All of the shape tools, except for the Star tool and Flare tool, create Live Shapes. Live Shapes have attributes such as width, height, rotation, and corner radius that are editable without switching from the drawing tool you are using.

Lab

Lab assignments are done during class time. Create several shapes using the tools used during the demo, and fill them with different colors. Add some strokes to your shapes in another color. Duplicate some shapes and align them. 

Next create a 1 food item, and 1 household item using the techniques you just practiced.

Discussion

Each week you will need to respond to two questions posted. This is a requirement for participation part of your grade.

Homework Due Next Class

All work should be submitted by 11:30 pm the day before class.

Each file should be saved according to the following naming convention. i.e., 03_LastName_superbowl.ai (You will be saving an Illustrator file).

Create your own postcard for a SuperBowl Party invite. Design by duplicating your shapes, aligning them, and fill with RGB colors and strokes–similar to the in-class demo. Save it in the correct naming convention and upload it to the Google Drive Folder.

Vocabulary

  • swatches (global and regular)
  • ellipse
  • square
  • rectangular
  • polygon
  • stars
  • stroke positions

Resources

Here is a video to help with some of the steps we did in class.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxDyDUorQP0