All Shapes and Sizes

Quick reference

• 00:04 In the previous lesson I kind of touched a little bit on how to create squares.
• 00:08 But in this section I wanna show you guys some of the other
• 00:11 kinds of shapes that you can make.
• 00:13 And how you can manipulate or transform them.
• 00:16 So the first thing I wanna do is bring up my layers palette.
• 00:19 And we're just gonna add some shapes to our first layer, so
• 00:22 double click on layer one, and we're just going to call this layer Shapes.
• 00:27 Now, over here in our tool bar, I wanna show you guys some of these shapes.
• 00:31 So if I hover my cursor over this rectangle, you'll see that it pops up and
• 00:35 it says, rectangle tools, and it also gives you the keyboard shortcut,
• 00:38 which is M on the keyboard.
• 00:41 So, if I press M and then move my cursor over onto the art board here,
• 00:46 you'll see that I can create a shape pretty much whatever I want.
• 00:50 I can make a long rectangle, I can create a tall rectangle.
• 00:56 But if I hold down the Shift key while I do this, it's going to constrain
• 00:59 the proportions and make sure that it remains perfectly square.
• 01:03 By default, you'll probably have a white box with a black stroke.
• 01:07 But I can swap these colors by clicking on this arrow on the top right.
• 01:12 The keyboard shortcut to do that is to hold on Shift and press X.
• 01:16 That's another way that you can do that.
• 01:19 So let's just go ahead and get rid of this white outline by choosing none for
• 01:23 the stroke, so that all we have is a solid black fill, okay?
• 01:29 Now at this point we have our square.
• 01:31 And as I showed you in the previous lesson if I wanted to
• 01:34 manipulate some of these points,
• 01:36 well I could grab my direct selection tool by pressing A on the keyboard,
• 01:40 click on one of these points, or several points at the same time.
• 01:44 And then, manipulate those to transform them, all right?
• 01:50 So I can use the arrows, I can pull them, I can push them, whatever you wanna do.
• 01:54 That's the basic rectangle or square.
• 01:57 Now the next tool if I come back over to my rectangle tool and
• 02:01 I click and hold my mouse.
• 02:03 You'll see that there's a few other shapes here that we can create,
• 02:07 such as the rounded rectangle tool, the ellipse tool which is L on the keyboard.
• 02:12 A polygon tool, the star tool, and the flair tool.
• 02:15 And if I move over to the far right of this little pop out box here,
• 02:19 you'll see there is this small rectangle with an arrow next to it.
• 02:23 And if I click on that, it basically allows me to create this
• 02:29 kind of free flowing panel here, so that I can more this around in my work space.
• 02:34 So let's go ahead and click on the next one, the rounded rectangle tool.
• 02:38 Now this is kind of the same thing as the rectangle tool except you'll notice that
• 02:41 the corners are rounded.
• 02:43 And so, if I just drag out a shape like this,
• 02:46 you can kind of see what it looks like.
• 02:48 But if I move my cursor close to any of these corners inside of this shape here,
• 02:54 you'll notice this little white circle with a blue box in the middle.
• 02:59 And if I click and drag inwards,
• 03:01 it's actually going to round my corners even more until it becomes an ellipse.
• 03:07 And if I want to go the opposite way, I can click and
• 03:10 drag those points out until it becomes a square.
• 03:13 So that's kind of a nice way to choose how rounded you want your corners to be.
• 03:20 But if I grab my ellipse tool you'll see it's kind of similar where I can create
• 03:25 a shape that is just any size, length, or height that I want.
• 03:29 But if I hold down the shift key while I drag it out,
• 03:32 it's going to remain a perfect circle, okay?
• 03:35 So moving along, I have my polygon tool, which I can, again, click and
• 03:40 drag while holding the shift key to create that.
• 03:46 And you'll notice that I also have the ability to kind of rotate this.
• 03:50 And as I move my cursor inwards, I make it smaller, as I drag it outwards,
• 03:54 it gets larger.
• 03:58 But if I wanted to, I could take any of these shapes, really, and
• 04:02 move my selection tool towards the top corner.
• 04:05 And then, you'll see my cursor change and I can actually rotate these.
• 04:10 So you have the ability to rotate, manipulate the points, as you wish.
• 04:15 Alright, with the circle you won't really be able to tell because it's going to look
• 04:18 the same no matter angle it's at.
• 04:19 Let's say for something like this square,
• 04:22 if I wanted to make it more of a diamond shape, I would just rotate it.
• 04:27 And if you hold down the shift key while you rotate,
• 04:29 it will rotate by increments of about 90 degrees.
• 04:36 All right, but if I don't hold shift, and it just allows you
• 04:40 a little more freedom over exactly the angle that you want, all right?
• 04:44 And that goes with any of these shapes.
• 04:48 Again to go by increments of 90 degrees, hold down the shift key while you rotate.
• 04:52 But if you want to do something a little bit more free,
• 04:55 just release the shift key and you can drag it and rotate it however you like.
• 05:00 Okay, so from there we have the Star Tool.
• 05:02 Now the Star Tool is another cool one where,
• 05:06 I can kinda rotate it as I'm creating it.
• 05:09 Or I can hold down the shift key and move it in and
• 05:13 out to have it constrain the proportions.
• 05:17 Now if I combine this with my direct selection tool,
• 05:20 I can grab some of these points here on the star and I can move them down.
• 05:25 I can move them up, I can grab a point and move it outwards.
• 05:31 And just to manipulate and make it a little bit more interesting looking, Okay?
• 05:38 And then, from there we also have the flare tool.
• 05:43 Now, the flare tool is one that I don't use very often, but
• 05:46 it can come in handy for certain things.
• 05:49 Now sometimes it's nice to add a little burst of light here and
• 05:52 there in an illustration or a typography design.
• 05:56 But this basically just gives you a quick and easy way to do that.
• 05:59 So it's grouped with our shaped tools even though it's slightly different.
• 06:04 Now all of these things can be accessed easily either from this floating dock, or
• 06:09 back over here in our toolbar.
• 06:12 And again, if I click inside of here, you can either have this pop out
• 06:16 to move it around or you can access it directly from the left side.
• 06:21 So one of the other things that I'd like to show you guys about
• 06:24 these basic shapes is that if I select any of them, sure,
• 06:29 I can rotate them, but you can also flip them.
• 06:32 So let's say I select my star, for example.
• 06:34 I could hold down the Shift key and
• 06:36 just rotate it a few times until it's upside down.
• 06:40 Or I could select it, come over here to the top where it says object, and
• 06:45 then I can choose Transform, Move, Rotate, Reflect, Scale, or Shear.
• 06:51 So these are some of the ways that you can transform anything ranging from
• 06:53 shapes to type and things like that.
• 06:57 So for example if I clicked on rotate,
• 06:59 you'll see that I can now put in a specific angle that I wanna rotate it by.
• 07:04 And as long as I have my preview box checked off I can enter that value.
• 07:11 So you can rotate things like that.
• 07:13 You can rotate it 180 degrees, 360 degrees,
• 07:16 pretty much anything you want, okay?
• 07:20 And if I select that again and come back up to Object and
• 07:22 Transform, you can reflect it.
• 07:26 And see if you reflect it, you can just flip it horizontally, vertically, or
• 07:31 again, by a specific angle.
• 07:37 All right, but let's say I wanted to try something a little bit different.
• 07:39 I can select my square over here, come up to Object Transform,
• 07:43 and this time let's choose Scale.
• 07:46 Now this is another handy option because it allows you to increase or
• 07:49 decrease the size of a shape or an object.
• 07:52 Either in a uniform size, meaning it will constrain the proportions or if you just
• 07:57 want to stretch it one way but not the other, you would choose non uniform.
• 08:01 So you'll see I've entered a value of two hundred percent which doubles the width of
• 08:04 this square.
• 08:06 But it doesn't change the vertical height.
• 08:08 And if I check off uniform, and let's say I enter 50,
• 08:11 it'll make it half of the size it was while constraining the proportions.
• 08:17 You can also do this to double or even triple the size of your shape, okay?
• 08:24 And you also have these options,
• 08:25 this scale corners proportionally as well as the Scale Strokes & Effects.
• 08:31 And all that means is that if you have an outline,
• 08:33 it's going to scale that in proportion to your shape.
• 08:37 So those are some of the ways that you can transform a shape, and
• 08:41 the last one that I wanted to show you guys is the Sheer option.
• 08:44 So if I selected my rounded rectangle here, come up to Object,
• 08:48 Transform and Shear.
• 08:51 Well this time I can enter an angle to basically kind of skew our shape.
• 08:57 So let's say I enter an angle of 45 degrees and set it to Horizontal.
• 09:03 Well now it's gonna slant this shape 45 degrees horizontally.
• 09:07 I can also enter a negative value, say negative forty five degrees to go
• 09:10 the opposite way, or if I wanted to go vertically, I can do the same thing.
• 09:16 Negative or positive values will work.
• 09:19 Or you can enter any kind of angle that you want
• 09:23 in here if you want something a little bit different.
• 09:26 And just a little more random looking.
• 09:29 So those are some of the basic shapes that you can create in the illustrator and
• 09:33 the different ways that you can transform them, manipulate them and rotate them.

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