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About this lesson
Reviewing what we have so far and making any necessary color tweaks or adjustments.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Striking a Balance - Instructions.docx60.7 KB Striking a Balance - Exercise.ai
1.2 MB Striking a Balance - Exercise Solution.ai
1.2 MB
Quick reference
Striking a Balance
Reviewing what we have so far and making any necessary color tweaks or adjustments.
When to use
After figuring out our flats and our shadows we can begin thinking about the highlights.
Instructions
- Begin by opening the Striking a Balance - Exercise.ai file
- Make sure all of your layers are unlocked and also go to the Object Menu and choose 'Unlock All' to be sure
- Zoom in by pressing Command/Ctrl and the plus key and then use the spacebar to click and drag around the document
- Check to make sure that your edges and lines are clean and that they don't overlap where they shouldn't
- In some cases where this does happen, you will want to use the Direct Selection Tool (A) to select individual points and then move them around to clean up your shapes
- You can also modify the handles that are attached to your anchor points after selecting them
- If there are areas where certain shapes are overlapping such as the shadows of the eyes spilling outside of the eye area we will need to fix those as well
- If there are areas you are having trouble correcting you can draw a shape on top of the area you want to remove, and then hold down the Shift Key to select the new shape along with the one you want to modify
- Bring up the Pathfinder and with both shapes still selected, choose the Minus Front option
- This will remove the top shape or subtract it from the shape below
- Repeat this for the second eye so that the shadows have clean edges
- One more way that you can fix overlapping shapes is to draw a new shape on top of them and then fill them with a solid color to cover them up
- After cleaning up the edges we are going to make one more adjustment by selecting the curved shape just above the nose and duplicating it, then move it slightly below the original shape
- Hold down the Alt/Option key and move your cursor over the handle on the left or right of the bounding box and drag outwards to make it wider from the center
- Space out both of these shapes a bit vertically to create more of a wrinkled look above the nose
Hints & tips
- It is important to zoom in and check the accuracy of your lines especially when developing logos
- The Pathfinder can be very useful not only for removing one shape from another, but also for joining and combining multiple shapes together
- An easy way to make a copy of a shape other than copying and pasting is to hold the Alt/Option key and dragging
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