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Exercise files
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Adjusting our Lines - Instructions.docx60.1 KB Adjusting our Lines - Exercise.ai
1.2 MB Adjusting our Lines - Exercise Solution.ai
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Quick reference
Adjusting our Lines
After tracing all of the main shapes we may need to adjust the width of some of the lines and strokes to add variation and make things balanced before moving on.
When to use
Most of the time when we are tracing a sketch or a photo in Illustrator we won't be 100% accurate 100% of the time. This is the stage where we can begin thinking about blocking out or shadows and highlights, but even before that it is important to make sure that are lines are clean. We will go into our illustration and make a few adjustments to our lines to ensure that everything is lining up properly before moving on to the color stage.
Instructions
- Open the Adjusting our Lines - Exercise.ai file
- Unlock the first, second, and third pass layers by clicking on the small lock icon next to each
- Zoom in and begin selecting some of the shapes with the Selection Tool (V) and changing the shapes from outlines to a solid black fill
- As you begin to change these to fill colors you may notice some gaps or lines that don't line up as nicely as they could
- To fix this, you will want to grab your Direct Selection Tool (A) and click on one of the points that make up the shape you want to fix
- You can click on a point to move it around, or you can use the Direct Selection Tool to grab any of the handles or anchor points to modify the paths
- For the shadows over the eyes you will want to use the Transparency Panel to reduce the opacity to about 50%
- You may notice that for some of the shapes that overlap you won't be able to see them once they have been filled with a solid black
- In order to fix this you may need to select the shape or shapes you want to reveal and bring them to the front by first selecting the shape, and then going to the Object Menu and choosing Arrange>Bring to Front
- Once you have filled in most of your shapes and made sure the lines are clean, be sure to save your work before moving on
Hints & tips
- If you want to select multiple shapes at the same time you can hold down the Shift Key and then click on as few or as many shapes as you like.
- The order of your shapes is very important. If there is a shape in front, hiding a shape behind it, you may need to lock the shape in front by selecting it and choosing Object > Lock > Selection, or by pressing Command/Ctrl + 2 on the keyboard. Once you have locked the shape that is obstructing the one behind it, you should then be able to select the shape in back and bring it to the front by going to the Object Menu and choosing Arrange > Bring to Front. If this still doesn't work it could be because the shape underneath is on a different layer below. In that case you will need to select the shape, cut it, and then paste it in front on the correct layer.
- 00:04 Okay, so now that we have our first, second and third pass layers,
- 00:08 we can toggle the visibility of these layers on and
- 00:11 off to see how they look if we wanna adjust the weight.
- 00:14 So we wanna make a few adjustments to some of these lines
- 00:17 before we move on to the coloring phase.
- 00:20 So first thing I'm gonna do here is maybe take a look at just the third
- 00:25 pass layers or just the first pass layers to get started.
- 00:29 And all I'm gonna do here is hold down the Shift key, click on a few of these
- 00:34 shapes and then press Shift+X to convert it from these outlines into a fill.
- 00:38 And this is just gonna help give us a better sense of the way that things
- 00:41 are looking once they're filled in.
- 00:46 Okay, so we can kind of experiment with this a little bit.
- 00:50 Select a few different shapes and
- 00:52 see how they look as fill colors instead of just outlines.
- 00:56 All right, and then maybe turn on your second pass layer.
- 00:59 And we're gonna do the same thing here.
- 01:01 All right, so I'm just selecting the shapes.
- 01:04 Pressing Shift+X to see how they look as a fill.
- 01:07 First it's a stroke.
- 01:10 And now we can turn on our third pass and see all of these shapes here.
- 01:14 And you know,
- 01:15 we're going to probably end up merging these things together at the end.
- 01:19 But I find it very helpful, at least initially,
- 01:22 to start by keeping things kind of separate.
- 01:26 Okay, so here I can select both of those shapes and
- 01:29 press Shift+X, and you can guys can see what I was talking about,
- 01:32 how we have now kind of combined these into one shape.
- 01:37 All right, we haven't technically combined the shapes yet, but
- 01:41 it's just helpful to kind of think of it that way.
- 01:44 And these for example, these two shapes that I just changed to black here,
- 01:48 I'm thinking that ultimately we'll probably wanna go and
- 01:52 just lower the transparency of it a little bit later on, so
- 01:55 that it ends up looking like shadows inside the eyes.
- 01:59 So for now, I can just leave it like that, just so we remember.
- 02:01 And so that way, we can see how it looks,
- 02:05 surrounded by these other black shapes, right?
- 02:09 So again, just coming in here filling a lot of these shapes in now, so
- 02:13 we can start to block this out and think about which ones are gonna be our
- 02:18 highlights versus which ones are going to be our shadows.
- 02:22 All right, so this is a really helpful step,
- 02:25 because it starts to help you put a few of these things together,
- 02:29 whereas at first it may look just like a crazy mess of lines.
- 02:33 But now we can start to really bring these things all the way through.
- 02:41 Okay, let's see how that looks.
- 02:47 All right, so this shape here for the eyeball,
- 02:49 I'm actually going to press D on the keyboard to make sure that it has a solid
- 02:53 white fill because before it was just a stroke.
- 02:56 So if I change the color of this shape behind it or made it a solid black fill,
- 02:59 we can't really see anything else because there is no fill color here.
- 03:04 Okay, so I'm just going to press D on the keyboard to make it a white fill with
- 03:09 a black stroke, and it looks like we may need to either move this shape forward or
- 03:13 send this other shape back.
- 03:16 So what I want to do is hold down the Shift key and
- 03:18 select both of these shapes together.
- 03:20 And then I'm going to press Shift+Cmd and the right bracket on the keyboard, and
- 03:23 that's going to bring it all the way to the front.
- 03:27 All right, let's do the same thing here.
- 03:28 Select the other eye, press D on the keyboard.
- 03:31 Hold down the Shift key and select the shadow on the inside of the eye.
- 03:35 And then once again, press Cmd+Shift in the right bracket on the keyboard.
- 03:39 And then you can select this shape just behind the eye,
- 03:41 and press Shift+X to create a black fill.
- 03:45 Now, if I zoom in here, obviously we need to fix a few of these points,
- 03:50 maybe move a few things around.
- 03:53 But it's easy to see now where things are overlapping,
- 03:55 and It makes it makes them a lot easier to fix them and modify some of these points.
- 04:00 So I'm just pressing A to get my direct selection tool, clicking on a point.
- 04:04 I'm gonna put it in place there so it's not spilling outside of the shape.
- 04:07 Then I can just use this handle to drag it up and
- 04:10 make sure that there's no white gap there in between.
- 04:14 I'm gonna do the same thing on some of these other shapes here just to try and
- 04:18 mesh things up nicely line everything up.
- 04:24 Okay and by filling these colors in with solid black,
- 04:28 it does make it a lot easier to see these things, they really stand out more.
- 04:34 So for example here, I could see that I need to modify that shape a little bit.
- 04:40 Same thing here.
- 04:41 And we're just kind of tweaking and adjusting the lines now before we move on.
- 04:46 All right, it's better to do it now and just kinda get it out of the way.
- 04:51 All right, let's see if we can match these lines up a little bit All right,
- 04:59 just modifying a few more of these points here, there we go.
- 05:05 Right, and sometimes I have to press Cmd+Shift+] to bring it in the front
- 05:09 before it will allow me to grab any of these handles here.
- 05:14 Right, sometimes it's a little picky, but we do our best.
- 05:24 All right it looks like this one I may just want to redo.
- 05:27 So I'm just gonna select that point, click and hold over here so they can follow
- 05:32 the same direction or the same path that our other shapes are already in.
- 05:37 Bring it all the way down and just close the shape.
- 05:41 Right, press Shift+X to turn it into a fill color, and there you go.
- 05:45 Right, and I'll zoom in down here, just move that up slightly,
- 05:51 make sure that there's no weird gaps in here.
- 05:56 It looks like there may be a little one, So
- 06:01 we can just do that, right?
- 06:05 Now we'll continue doing this for some of our other shapes just filling it with
- 06:09 black, and trying to line them up as best as we can, all right?
- 06:15 So here I can just grab these handles.
- 06:17 Maybe that not that handle, this handle.
- 06:21 Just bring that down, come in here and check this side.
- 06:27 And then we can just modify this a bit.
- 06:31 Again, I think I'm grabbing the wrong handle here.
- 06:37 Let's see, maybe if I just bring this up.
- 06:44 It doesn't really matter how you guys do this,
- 06:47 the important thing is the end result.
- 06:52 All right, so if you need to, if you're having a hard time filling some of these
- 06:55 things in, you can just come back in afterwards and draw on top of them.
- 07:01 All right and I think this piece we may fill with a different shaded color.
- 07:07 So for now I'm not gonna to worry about that cuz it's gonna
- 07:09 be filled in with something other than black or white.
- 07:15 But let's just come in here and
- 07:16 finish adjusting some of these lines to make sure that we are In good shape.
- 07:25 There we go, just making a few more adjustments.
- 07:30 And we did pretty good guys, there's alway gonna be some tweaks that you have to make
- 07:35 as you go along, but all things considered, this one's.
- 07:39 Pretty good so far, this part is probably going to be overlapped,
- 07:42 I think the ears are gonna come in front of the horn on this side, so
- 07:46 you don't have to worry about that too much.
- 07:48 Let's line our shapes up with the horns here, make sure
- 07:53 that this is filling in here nicely And that there's no white gaps, all right?
- 08:00 And we can just continue modifying these a bit more as you go.
- 08:06 So here, for example, I just wanna make sure that this edge lines up, right there.
- 08:12 And it's super helpful to be zoomed-in for this, because there's a lot of these
- 08:16 things that you just can't see when you zoomed further out.
- 08:19 But you know,
- 08:20 it's one of those things where you don't want to look at it after it's finished and
- 08:24 be like, you know, I should have fixed that when I had the chance.
- 08:28 So better to get in there now and do it at this point.
- 08:35 There we go, guys.
- 08:36 We pretty much have all of our lines filled in,
- 08:39 let me just come back in here, okay?
- 08:44 And for that line I think we can just take that out for now.
- 08:49 All right, move this up here and
- 08:52 we're just about ready to move on to the next phase.
- 09:00 All right, so there we go guys.
- 09:02 At this point, we've kind of modified a lot of these lines,
- 09:05 filled them in to see how they look.
- 09:07 And this will make it a lot easier for us to start blocking in some color.
- 09:11 So be sure to save your work before you move on.
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