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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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- 00:04 At this point, I'm pretty happy with our color palate.
- 00:07 Now, we have our main colors or our flats, along with our shadows and
- 00:11 some highlights.
- 00:13 So what I wanna do here is basically, just revisit this take one more look at it and
- 00:17 make any adjustments to the colors or the shapes that we want to, before moving on.
- 00:22 So there are a couple of things that I may want to change in here like,
- 00:27 reverting these colors back to the shadow colors.
- 00:30 And the reason that I am doing that is,
- 00:31 because I just want to have the shadows really be in that one area.
- 00:34 And I also want to come up to the object menu and choose unlock all so
- 00:39 I have access to all of these shapes.
- 00:41 Now one thing I'm noticing here is just that some of these lines are overlapping
- 00:45 a little bit.
- 00:45 So I'm going to zoom way in and just set these off here,
- 00:51 so that this shape can come in front, okay?
- 00:55 So you may have to zoom way in,
- 00:57 just to get those shapes to line up a little bit better.
- 01:00 And we're gonna do the same thing on this side to make that that lines up nicely
- 01:04 here as well.
- 01:05 Okay, and if you notice this little point here on the top of the mouth,
- 01:09 you can kinda see that it's a hard edge.
- 01:12 And if I wanna round that out, all I have to do is select this little circle here
- 01:17 and then, kind of bring it down a little bit to smooth it out.
- 01:20 And it's a nice and quick and easy way to kind of round out your shapes.
- 01:24 Now, another thing that I need to adjust is to come in here with
- 01:29 my direct selection tool and
- 01:31 make sure that this shadow on the eye is only inside of the white.
- 01:35 Now, it may be a little bit tricky for
- 01:38 you guys to see this because it's a pretty small and thin Line.
- 01:41 But you basically see where this overlapping.
- 01:44 So I wanna show you guys, a quick trick for kind of correcting this.
- 01:49 Okay, so what I wanna do first is basically come in here.
- 01:53 I'm gonna use my direct selection tool to do the same thing and
- 01:57 just lineup these points, as best as we can while we're zoomed in.
- 02:01 Okay, and we’re gonna have to use the handles a little bit here just to play
- 02:05 around with these points and get them to follow the same path or the same shape.
- 02:10 But it’s actually pretty easy once you zoom in like this.
- 02:14 Okay, and we’re just kind of cleaning this up a little bit,
- 02:17 to make sure that our shadows look good inside of the eye, All right?
- 02:21 You may have to do this with some of the other shapes here, as well,
- 02:24 since we are zoomed in really far.
- 02:32 Okay?
- 02:33 And it doesn't have to be right on the money, but
- 02:36 we wanna try to get it as exact as we can.
- 02:39 And then, if we still are having a little bit a trouble grabbing it,
- 02:43 we can also use our path finder.
- 02:45 So what I'm gonna do is grab the shadow in the eye here,
- 02:50 come up to the path finder from the Window menu, and bring that up.
- 02:55 Now, what I can do is use my pen tool and
- 02:59 draw a shape that basically intersects our shadow.
- 03:04 So I mean by that is, I'm just gonna come in here.
- 03:06 You can see where the dark line is.
- 03:08 So I'm going to use this handle on the anchor points, to create a shape that
- 03:13 follows the area where we want the shadow to be, which is just inside of the eye.
- 03:20 So I'm doing is creating the shape here and
- 03:23 it click on the last point, drag and click around it.
- 03:29 Okay, and now, I can press feed to get my selection tool.
- 03:34 Hold down the Shift key and select the shadow inside of the eye, and
- 03:37 then we're gonna choose minus front.
- 03:39 And that's just gonna clean up that little piece that was overlapping it there.
- 03:43 Okay, and if you want, you can do the same thing on this part of the eye.
- 03:47 Where you can see this overlap here that's showing.
- 03:50 I'm just gonna drag to create a curve that follows the shape of the eye,
- 03:55 click on my last point, close the shape,
- 03:59 grab my selection tool and hold the shift key.
- 04:02 And then we'll once again use the path finder to subtract that.
- 04:06 And now our shadow is much cleaner.
- 04:09 Okay, so let's just go ahead and repeat this process on the other eye as well as,
- 04:15 cleaning up any other lines that we see that need a little fixing.
- 04:20 I am going to use my direct selection tool again,
- 04:23 to modify some of these points and handles.
- 04:27 Click on the point there.
- 04:31 Let's see, if I can get that handle there.
- 04:38 A little tricky when you have all these shapes happening in here, but
- 04:41 not impossible.
- 04:47 So again,
- 04:48 if I wanna get rid of this part on the outside where we don't want the shadow.
- 04:53 Simply going to grab my pen tool, draw a shape on the inside.
- 05:00 Click and hold to create my curves, and then use this anchor point tool,
- 05:04 which I'm getting by just toggling the Alt and Option key.
- 05:07 Then, I'm going to use that to follow the path and try to make it,
- 05:10 as accurate as I can.
- 05:16 Going to close the shape on the outside.
- 05:18 Hold down the Shift key and select both shapes and then choose minus front.
- 05:23 Now, for
- 05:24 any other areas in here that we're having a little bit of trouble covering up.
- 05:29 We're gonna show you guys another kind of work around that you can use for
- 05:32 fixing this.
- 05:33 So what I wanna do is just bring up my layers pallet really quickly.
- 05:36 So I can show you guys where our pass layers are.
- 05:39 We're gonna create another new layer on top.
- 05:41 And this is just going to help us cover up or fix any of these issues.
- 05:46 So let me grab my eyedropper tool and just sample some of that dark shadow color.
- 05:50 And then, I'm just gonna draw a shape on top.
- 05:54 And I can kinda follow the inner shape of the eye here, and
- 05:58 just give myself a little bit of extra room, so that I can cover up these areas.
- 06:03 So here, I'm just continuing to follow the shape, follow the curve of the line.
- 06:10 And then, I'm just going to complete that shape by clicking,
- 06:16 and following it all the way around, okay?
- 06:20 Like this, and that's another way that you can kind of cover up
- 06:25 any of these inconsistencies in here.
- 06:28 Which, I may wanna do on the other side really quick as well.
- 06:33 Okay, so I'm gonna start down here using my same shadow
- 06:37 color just follow the path and trace the inner part of the eye.
- 06:46 Like so, and with just a couple of clicks, It's easy to fix.
- 06:58 All right, then I can close it.
- 07:00 And now, when we zoom out, we've got a much cleaner looking result.
- 07:04 So let's just go ahead and fix a few more things before we move on.
- 07:07 I'm gonna select this shape here on the nose.
- 07:09 And then, I actually want to duplicate it.
- 07:11 So I'm gonna press Cmd+C, and then Cmd+F to paste it in front,
- 07:14 hold down the Shift key and tap it down once with the arrow.
- 07:18 And now, with my selection tool still selected,
- 07:20 I'm gonna hover over either the let or the right, hold down the Alt+Option key and
- 07:24 drag outwards a little bit.
- 07:26 And that's just gonna make it a little bit wider.
- 07:28 I'm gonna tap it down a few more times, select the original shape above it and
- 07:33 tap it up a few times just to spread it out.
- 07:35 And I think by doing that, I'll create a bit of a wrinkle effect
- 07:40 in the end of the nose here, which I think will look pretty good.
- 07:44 I'm just going to widen that top line a little bit more, and there we go.
- 07:48 So now, we've kind of corrected and smoothed out a few of these lines,
- 07:52 made a couple of last adjustments.
- 07:54 And now, we can start thinking about adding in some text.
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