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About this lesson
Once we pick out a few color schemes to try out we can begin coloring our main logo filling in the flat colors for different parts of the illustration.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Laying in the Flats60.6 KB Laying in the Flats
1.2 MB Laying in the Flats
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Quick reference
Laying in the Flats
Once we pick out a few color schemes to try out we can begin coloring our main logo filling in the flat colors for different parts of the illustration.
When to use
When you are ready to begin the coloring phase, start by blocking out your base colors or the 'flats' as they are often called.
Instructions
- Begin by opening the Laying in the Flats - Exercise.ai file
- You should have your Sketch layer, Trace layer, and also a First, Second, and Third Pass layer
- Open your Swatches panel by going to the Window Menu and choosing Swatches from the list
- After opening your Swatches panel, click on the hamburger menu on the upper right of the panel (the button that looks like three or four stacked lines)
- Go to 'Open Swatch Library' and then choose User Defined > Mascot_Logo_Custom_Palettes (or the name that you used for your custom colors)
- You should now have your custom colors loaded up in a new panel
- Unlock each of your three 'pass' layers
- Start by selecting the largest shape in the back (the neck/upper chest shape)
- Try out a few of your custom colors, making sure that they are the fill color and not the stroke
- If you notice the fill color changing but still have a black stroke around the shape, change the stroke to none
- Once you have a solid fill color and no stroke, you can press the Shift+X keys to toggle between fill and stroke with your new color
- When doing this, you may notice that when your shape is filled, that it is covering up some other shapes behind it
- To fix this, select your shape and go to the Object Menu and choose Arrange > Send to Back
- You should now see all of your black lines and shapes in front of your solid fill
- Select the main head shape layer and sample the same color as the base
- Send the solid fill color for the head to the back but NOT all the way
- Instead, we will send the head backwards one step at a time by using the keyboard shortcut Command/Ctrl+[ on the keyboard until all of the other lines become visible
- Repeat this process for both of the ears
- If you notice any of your black shapes from the pass layers disappearing, try sending your shape backwards until it becomes visible again
- Fill in the horns using a different color and make sure that there is no stroke
- Use the same color from the horns for the main nose/mouth area and save your work
Hints & tips
- When you begin filling in your shapes with solid color, you may notice that some of your other shapes seem to disappear. This is because the order in which we created the shapes is determining what is in front of what. In order to reveal your black shapes and lines you will have to arrange them accordingly.
- To send a shape backwards one step at a time use the keyboard shortcut Command/Ctrl+[ and to send it forward, use the ] key instead.
- 00:05 At this point, we should have our illustration pretty much all set up.
- 00:08 We've got our sketch layer, our original trace layer,
- 00:11 and then a first, second and third pass layer.
- 00:14 We should also have our custom color palette saved.
- 00:17 So if you come up to the Window menu and
- 00:19 come all the way down here where it says Swatches, bring up your swatches panel.
- 00:24 And if your colors are not loaded, like it appears here,
- 00:28 then we just wanna go ahead and load up our custom color palate that we saved.
- 00:33 So to do that, we'll come up to this menu on the top right, and
- 00:36 then we'll come all the way down to this option that says Open Swatch Library and
- 00:40 we'll choose User Defined.
- 00:42 Now, once you do that, you should see your custom palettes saved here,
- 00:46 which I called mine Mascot Logo Custom Palettes.
- 00:49 So I'm gonna go ahead and click on that to open it up, and
- 00:52 it's going to open in a new palette.
- 00:55 So here you'll see all of the colors that I saved from all of the reference and
- 00:58 inspiration material for the colors.
- 01:01 So the next thing that we wanna do here is to unlock each of our three pass layers.
- 01:07 Now, this is where we can begin laying in some of the flat colors.
- 01:12 So to begin, I'm gonna grab this large shape here in the back,
- 01:16 and I'm just gonna fill it with this orange color.
- 01:19 Now, you'll see as I click some of these different colors around here that it's
- 01:23 covering some of the shapes.
- 01:24 But that's okay because we're gonna be able to modify and
- 01:27 change the order of some of these layers later.
- 01:30 Now, as I begin looking at some of these colors,
- 01:33 I want a nice kind of midtone color that will serve as my base.
- 01:36 Because I don't wanna add shadows and highlights just yet,
- 01:39 I'm only thinking about what the flat color's going to be.
- 01:43 So for now, I'm gonna go with this orange color, it's a nice kinda puppy orange, and
- 01:48 I think it will work well as our base.
- 01:51 So if you notice over here in the colors though, we have a black stroke still.
- 01:55 So I'm gonna go ahead and turn that off now that we have this filled with a color
- 01:59 because that's going to make it easier for us to see.
- 02:02 Now, if I were to just press Shift+X to change this to outlines,
- 02:07 you can see that there are some shapes especially in here,
- 02:10 in the nose and the mouth area, that are not visible with our orange fill color.
- 02:15 So to fix that,
- 02:16 I'm actually gonna come up to the Object menu and chose Arrange > Send to Back.
- 02:21 Now you'll see all of our black shapes on top of this.
- 02:25 So if we wanna continue to use this color as our base,
- 02:28 we also wanna make sure that the head is the same color.
- 02:31 So I'm going to select this outline here, which is also on our first pass layer,
- 02:35 press i to get the eyedropper tool, and then just sample that orange color.
- 02:40 Now, for this, I'm going to do pretty much the same thing and
- 02:44 just press Shift+X to make sure that all of my lines are visible.
- 02:49 And it looks like there's a few that we're losing here on the sides of the nose and
- 02:53 also this top line here.
- 02:55 So again, this time I could come up to the Object menu, and
- 02:58 choose Arrange, Send to Back.
- 03:00 But I don't know if I wanna to send it all the way to the back,
- 03:02 I just wanna go one step at the time.
- 03:05 So in order to do that, I can just send this backwards by using the keyboard
- 03:08 shortcut Cmd and the left bracket, until those other lines become visible.
- 03:14 And there we go.
- 03:16 Okay, now I'm just going to repeat this for
- 03:18 both of the ears by holding down the Shift key and selecting both of those outlines,
- 03:23 pressing I to grab my eyedropper, and then sampling that color.
- 03:27 We lost the inside of the ear over here, so to correct that,
- 03:30 because I know that there's a shape there, I'm going to press Cmd and
- 03:33 the left bracket until that area becomes visible.
- 03:37 And there you go. You may have to press it quite a few times
- 03:40 because at this point we've got kind of a lot of shapes happening here.
- 03:44 But that will help to reveal this color.
- 03:48 Now, as for the horns, I'm gonna hold down the Shift key and select both of those.
- 03:53 At the moment, we don't have any fill color, we just have our stroke.
- 03:56 So I wanna think about what kinda colors could work well for our horns.
- 04:00 This will kinda be like our accent color, right?
- 04:03 Because we don't wanna have everything just be orange and
- 04:06 monochromatic, I actually wanna have something else in here too.
- 04:10 I'm thinking maybe a yellow color or
- 04:13 something like that could work really nicely.
- 04:15 But again, I don't really wanna have this stroke around the horns.
- 04:19 So what I'm going to do is press X to toggle between my fill and my stroke, and
- 04:24 then just choose None here for my stroke color.
- 04:27 Okay, and the last thing that I wanna do here is decide on a flat color for
- 04:32 the base of the mouth.
- 04:33 And I'm thinking that for this area, we may just go ahead and
- 04:37 sample the same color that we're using for our horns.
- 04:40 So again, I'm just using the eyedropper and selecting that color.
- 04:44 Now, we've got a few other areas in here that we may wanna change and
- 04:47 play around with.
- 04:48 But these are just the flat colors that we're going to lay down as a base.
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