Class 8

Note to Self

Turn on the video record in Zoom

Crit Assignment 1

A few words about the "crit" or critique process

Assigned: Assignment 2 “Tattoo Design”

Specs

Color in Illustrator

Two Worlds: CMYK vs RGB

RGB

Red/Green/Blue
Additive, not Subtractive
For the world of screens

CMYK

Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/BlacK
Subtractive, not Additive
Standard for printed colors

An image separated into its component cyan, yellow, magenta, and black plates

Beyond the CMYK inks, there are also solid color cans of ink in a color system called Pantone Matching System (PMS)

PMS colors are chosen from a color book, which also is represented in Illustrator

Our Tattoo assignment is in CMYK with PMS colors

How to setup colors for the tattoo assignment

Create Your Project Document

Set artboards to 1
Units to Points

Use points because you want to keep an eye on line weights: nothing less than 1 point allowed

Size to whatever predetermined size you have for your tattoo + 1 inch

Type in the inch value followed by "in" and it will automatically convert to points

No Bleed
Color Mode: CMYK

Create a background color for your target skin-tone

Fill the artboard with a color rectangle, no stroke

Make sure that the Fill tab is the active tab
Pick something from the Swatches, then double-click on it
HSB color mode is the most intuitive

Hue: the "tint" of the color
Saturation: the "brilliance" of the color (gray=no brightness)
Brightness: the relative light or darkness

Lock the layer

Create Your Tattoo Color Swatches

You need to drag colors from the Pantone Color Book (Solid Coated) over to your document's color swatches panel. You get to the Pantone Color book through the menu in the lower left corner of the Swatches panel.

The color's needed are black and white, plus:

PANTONE 1795 C (Red)
PANTONE 7742 C (Green)
PANTONE 533 C (Blue)
PANTONE 114 C (Yellow)
PANTONE 7516 C (Brown)

Open the Swatches Panel and click on the New Folder button

Name the folder

Result

From the menu at the bottom left of the Swatches Panel, choose Color Books > Pantone+ Solid Coated

The Pantone Solid Coated Color Book Swatches set

Choose Small List View

Type in the color number in the find field, in this case 1795, and PANTONE 1795 C will appear

Drag the swatch from the Color Book set to your Tattoo Colors Folder

Repeat until you get the Pantone colors into your Tattoo Colors folder

Illustrator & CMYK Color

Let's Look Closer At The Default CMYK Swatches

CMYK represents 4 colors of ink, printed on top of each other at angles (0°, 15°, 45°, 75°) to create different colors: CMYK Screens

Sample file

Double-click a swatch for it's options dialog

Note the Color Type: Process Color

The alternative is Spot Color, which is what we just talked about

Note the Color Mode: CMYK

The sliders adjust the amount of ink of each color, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black
It's through these variations that all 4-color printed work is rendered
You can mix and save your own...

A word about CMYK vs. Spot color and the "Global" setting

Spot colors are Global by default
Changing a global color will change all instances of that color in the document

How To Mix Your Own Colors

Use the Create New Swatch menu item in the Color Panel, or the Create New Swatch button in the Swatch Panel. Set the Color panel to Show Options to view sliders.

Mix with the slider (which is kind of clunky)

Mix with the rainbow thingy in the Color Panel (also kind of clunky)

Use the Color Guide (more on this next time...)

Color basics: HSB = Hue, Saturation, Brightness

Hue: the "color" of a color, like red, blue, green, yellow
Saturation: the "intensity" of a color, like bright red (hi saturation), dull brown (low saturation)
Brightness (sometimes listed as "V" for Value): the amount of light or darkness in a color, like pink (light red), burgundy (dark red)

Use the H S B radio buttons to pick which color aspect you want to change in the vertical bar next to the buttons

Hue selected (in Degrees out of 360°)

Saturation selected (in percent out of 100%)

Brightness selected

Watch Out For Colors That Can't Be Printed!

The color picker will let you choose colors that can't be printed with CMYK inks. A warning icon will appear next to the color when you pick an illegal color

About Color Ranges, Or "Gamuts"

We see colors with lightwaves. When white light (which contains all colors of light - remember prisms and rainbows and Newton?) hits a red colored object, that object absorbs all the non-red colors of light and reflects only the red lightwaves. Our eyes can see a set of colors in what's called the Visible Spectrum. Certain media, like CMYK printing, can only create a limited subset of all the possible colors we can see. This subset is called a "Gamut"

When you go outside the gamut that CMYK can reproduce, Illustrator will tell you with that little ! icon

This is a graph of different gamuts

Why Does It Matter?

It matters because if you do something that looks great on-screen but is out of the CMYK gamut, you'll be really disappointed when it gets printed (and your client might refuse to pay you and you probably also get stuck with the printing bill).

Organizing Swatches

Swatches can be organized in Color Groups through the Add Color Group button

Drag a swatch to move it into a group

Watch out! Dragging from one group or the default colors moves that color without leaving a copy behind. To create a separate swatch of the same color in a group, click the swatch you want to copy, then drag if from the Color Panels color tab

Drag a color tab into a group

(make new example on the fly)

Create a new group with a selection and Add Color Group yields:

Painting In Illustrator

Working With The Paint Brush Tool

Makes editable paths similar to the Pen tool (demo)

The Paint Brush Vs The Pen Tool

vs.

Brushes

The Brushes Panel

Same path, different brush

Load brushes from the popup menu in the lower left of the brushes panel

Click on the above to see at full size. NOTE: Even though they're listed here, you're not allowed to use them in this class! However, you're welcome to build your own.

Brush Categories

Illustrator has five categories of brushes, which you'll see when you choose Create New Brush from the brush panel. Each brush category has its own dialog to control its behavior.

Brush Options by Brush Type

Brush Options: Calligraphic

Calligraphic brushes are based on elliptical shapes of various sizes. You can use a graphics tablet to vary the Angle, Roundness, and/or Size of the brush based on the pressure applied to the stylus (but don't forget to set the variability or it won't work).

Brush Options: Art Brushes

Art brushes are made from existing vector graphics. Setup is fairly complicated, we'll look at some examples later in the semester.

In fact, brush design is hard. We'll cover more on custom brushes later...

Painting With Illustrator Continued

Modifying Strokes

With the Width tool

Expanding The Paint Brush Stroke

Since the Paint Brush tool makes only strokes/paths without fills, it's often useful to turn it into an object whose outer visual boundary is a stroke and interior is a fill.

Use Menu>Object>Expand Appearance

Why? Useful for creating Live Paint objects

Hand-drawn thing from paintbrush tool

Thing expanded into filled objects with no stroke

Thing filled with Live Paint after being converted to Live Paint object with Menu > Object > Live Paint > Make

Fun With Brushes

The Scatter Brush

For interesting effects!

13 point star, radius 1 .8 in, radius 2 .25 in. 2pt stroke. Rotate each about 18.85 degrees (360 divided by 13 divided by 2) and scale down

First, create an object, or group of objects (without gradients, brushes or other fancy stuff)

Choose New Brush from the bottom of the Brush Panel

Size: Fixed, 23%
Spacing: Random, 2% - 5%
Scatter: Random, -10% - 10%
Rotation: Random, 0° - 180°
Colorization: None

Set some settings, we can tweak latter...

The Scatter Star brush applied to a star

Scatter Star Brush applied to Paintbrush path

Scatter Star applied to a paintbrush path with pressure controlling size

Working With The Blob Tool

Blob Vs. Paint Brush

Paint Brush makes editable paths without fills and strokes defined by Brushes

Blob makes contiguous areas of color with fills and invisible strokes

The Blob Options Dialog

Double-Click the tool icon to access

Keep Selected

Keeps blob gestures selected. Default is off.

Merge Only With Selection

Off by default. If Keep Selected is off, and Merge Only is on, then each blob gesture remains a separate entity
This and Keep Selected are the most frequently modified settings of the blob tool

Tolerances

No vector tool can capture every nuance of input gestures - these setting adjust how closely the tool imitates the original gesture
Fidelity

Higher values have less detail

Smoothness

Higher values do more smoothing

Default Brush Options

Changes the shape and size of the brush, and allows stylus pressure from a graphics tablet to control things like the size of the brush

Useful Blob Videos

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/how-to/use-brushes.html
Search helpx.adobe.com on "blob brush illustrator"

Creating Gradients

Using the Gradient Window

Gradient Types

Linear

Radial

Linear Gradient Angle

Radial Gradient Angle and Aspect Ratio

Changing Gradient Colors

Double-click on a tab to edit a color

Click below gradient band to add a new tab, click on an existing tab and drag it off the panel to delete it.

You can adjust the position of the tabs

Adjust the center point of the point-to-point spread of the gradient

Adjust the Opacity of a color tab

And Strokes can have gradients too!

The gradient tool doesn't work with gradients in strokes, but you can use the Angle to set the stroke, or use Menu > Object > Expand with only strokes, then select the fill in the appearance panel

Using the Gradient Tool

Important Trick: Gradients with Transparency

It's easy to mess up transparency in a gradient by making the transparent color different than the solid color. They should be the same.

The right way: black to black to black gradient, with the center black at 0% opacity

The wrong way: black to white to black gradient

"Freeform" Gradients

Only 2 years old, Freeform Gradients use points and/or lines to allow customization of a gradient within a shape.

To apply a freeform gradient to a shape:

Select the shape, then choose Menu > Window > Gradient to open the Gradient panel.
Click icon for Freeform Gradient next to "Type:"

Gradient panel with Freeform set as Type

The Gradient tool will be selected and points will appear on the shape icon for Freeform Gradient Color Steps (the number of default points varies by shape). Each point represents a color stop in the gradient. The colors will automatically blend from point to point, point to line, and or line to line within the shape.

To move a point within the shape, drag it.
To set a point's color, double click it.
To add additional points, click anywhere on the shape where there isn't currently a point.
To remove a point, click it then press Delete on a Mac or Backspace in Windows.
To expand or reduce the spread of the color from a point, click the point, then drag icon for Freeform Gradient Color Spread at the bottom of the dashed ring that appears around the point. The bigger the ring, the more the color spreads and vice versa.
To make the color from a point more or less transparent, click the point then set the number by OPACITY in the Gradient panel.

Freeform gradients can also be set using lines.

Click LINES in the Gradient panel.
Click in the shape to set the starting point for the line.
Click again to create another point and a line will automatically connect it to the previous point. Repeat until the line is complete. The line will automatically curve through the points.

The points in a line can be moved, added, deleted, and have their color and opacity set using the same steps as above.

Freeform gradients can be made using a combination of points and lines. Just click POINT or LINE in the gradient panel to switch between them. When finished, switch to another tool to set the gradient. To edit the gradient later, select the shape then either switch to the Gradient tool or click EDIT GRADIENT in the Gradient panel.

More Tools & Type

The Curvature Tool

batman icon to trace with curvature tool

Object to trace with curvature tool (right click to download)
Borrowed from 'Yes I'm a Designer' YouTube

Gesture	Result
First click/release	Drop and anchor for start of curvature line
Following clicks/releases	Draw a curved line from previous anchor and drop a smooth anchor
Following clicks/drags	Create a moving smooth anchor. Releasing the mouse drops the anchor
Option/Alt click/release or double-click/release	Drop a corner anchor
Esc	Stop drawing line
Click/drag on an existing line segment	Add a smooth anchor to that point. Drops the anchor on release.
Option/Alt click/release or double-click/release on existing anchor	Convert the anchor from smooth to corner or visa versa

Creating Type on and in a Path or Shape

Two ways:

Type Tool with gesture:

Normal text cursor

Click-release to create one continuous line of type
Drag-release to create a rect to fill with text

Text cursor over a closed shape

Hover near the edge of a shape
Click when cursor changes to fill the shape with text

Text cursor over an open path

Hover near edge of path
Click when cursor changes to place text on the path from the location you clicked on on the path

Specialized Type Tools:

Area Type Tool

Path Type Tool

Type On Path Editing Gestures

Demo... example file

Uses very small and hard to see cursors to indicate editing mode:

Adjust Type on Path: Left Margin

Adjust Type on Path: Right Margin

Adjust Type on Path: Center Align and Flip Sides

Working With The Appearance Panel

Changing parameters
Adding effects
Adding Strokes & Fills (brief coverage-things to come)

Blending Objects

Blends the stroke, fill and shape two or more objects together

Demo two stars
Demo three shapes
Demo path editing
Demo Isolation Mode editing

Blend sample blends.ai file

The Blend Tool

Look out for strokes with blending filled objects...

Blending objects generates a path that can be edited

Blends the stroke, fill and shape two or more objects together

Three shapes blended. Note unpredictable transition between anchors

It can make a difference where you click with the blend tool

Blended Gradients

Blended Spiral Paths

Blended Paths

Blended stars on straight path with Menu > Object > Blend > Replaced Spline

Clipping Masks

Very important feature!

Select two or more objects
The top object must be a closed path
Menu > Object > Clipping Mask > Make
You can create clipping masks for objects within clipping masks

Files For These Demos:

Working With The Shaper/Pencil/Smooth Tools/Path Erase/Join Tools

Shaper Tool

Leftover tool from Adobe Flash/Animate (circa 1993) originally developed for the Apple Newton. Turns objects roughlty drawn as ellipses and rects into acutal ellipses and rects. Really utterly useless...

Pencil Tool

Like a cheaper version of the Brush tool. Has no adjustability for Accurate vs Smooth and won't use brush shapes, only stroke widths.

Smooth Tool

Takes the currently selected path and sort of massages areas into being smoother. Really hard to predict how it will work. It's usually better to use Object > Path > Simplify (although it affects the entire path and not just a portion of it). There are also extensions to Illustrator that do this much better (like Astute Graphics VectorScribe).

Path Eraser Tool

Erases part of a selected path. You have to drag along the actual path for it to work. Similar to the Eraser tool, but the Eraser tool will erase part of a closed-path object and keep the path closed, while the path eraser will turn the path into an open path or paths. The Eraser tool also has an adjustable size, while the Path Eraser tool is just a small point.

Circle with Path Eraser tool used on two sections.

Circle with Eraser tool drawn across it. Creates two closed paths with a gap between the size of the Eraser.

Circle with Scissor tool touched on right and left parts of the path, then moved down. Note that the path does not need to be selected.

Circle cut with Knife tool, then moved down. It creates two closed paths with no gap between the two parts.

Join Tool

Takes two paths and connects them together. Works best with overlapping paths. If you have two open paths that don't overlap, it's better to select the two points with the Direct Selection tool and use Menu > Objects > Path > Join.

Pattern Brush

Really complicated, possibly too much for this course.
Here's a nice set of brushes from different vendors.
But remember, you can't use stuff made by other people for this class...
Demo on making a pattern brush (Ace) ivy_pattern2.ai

Playing Around With Gradients

Demo... example file (playing_around01-2.ai.zip)

A cool trick for precise control reviewed

Go to the preferences panel and change General > Keyboard Increment to 0.0005 (you can go as low as .0001)

Another Cool Trick for Measuring

Make a square and use it as a measuring device.

Saving appearance settings as a Graphic style

Type example

Any set of attributes you apply to an object, as seen in the Appearance Panel, can be saved as a style and applied to other objects

Select the object you want to create a style from

Click on the Create New Style button in the Graphic Styles panel

Then select the object you want to apply the style to and click on the style in the Graphic Styles panel

A practical Scatter-Brush application

Practical Scatterbrush (practical_scatterbrush.ai)

Set Size: 52%, Spacing 52%, then use Modify > Scale: 99.9% until the overlap is perfect

Practical Artbrush (practical_artbrush.ai.zip)

Practical Pattern Brush

More here and on the web

Pattern Brush

Really complicated, possibly too much for this course.
Here's a nice set of brushes from different vendors.
But remember, you can't use stuff made by other people for this class...
Demo on making a pattern brush (Ace) ivy_pattern2.ai.zip

Using The Distribution & Align Panel

Aligning Objects

Six Align Options:

Align Left Sides

Align Vertical Centers

Align Right Sides

Align Tops

Align Horizontal Centers

Align Bottoms

Three Align To Methods:

Align To Selection

Default, demoed above

Align To Key Object

Very handy!
Shift-click to select multiple objects, then click again (without shift) on the object you want the other objects to align to. The Key object will get a heavy selection line on its path.