Welcome back to Deke’s Techniques. This week Deke McClelland takes the 2D character from last week’s tutorial (inspired by the art of video game designer Dan Paladin) and adds a radiant cartoon aura in Adobe Illustrator.
1. Delete the template layer and select the back layer. Option-click or Alt-click the CreateNew Layer icon to open the Layer Options dialog box. Name the new layer aura andclick OK to add the layer to your document.
2. Unlock the body layer. Click in the upper corner of that layer’s row in the Layers panel to select all its paths.
Fans of Dan Paladin, the artist of popular video games such as Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers, are going to be really excited about this week’s installment of Deke’s Techniques. Deke McClelland uses a few predrawn elements and a template to create a Paladin-inspired 2D walrus warrior with Adobe Illustrator. By tracing Deke’s template, you’ll re-create his steps and learn vital drawing techniques to help you create your own characters. To get started on the helmet, watch the video and use the steps below to help you along.
A proper “bleed” ensures the ink extends to the very outside edges of a printed page, leaving no margin or whitespace around your artwork. And though there’s no way to set it up automatically, in this week’s Deke’s Techniques, Deke McClelland shows you how to precisely align your artwork to the bleed in Adobe Illustrator.
Last week, Deke showed you how to create your very own “grumpy bird” with Adobe Illustrator. This week, learn how to give our wingless friend a pastoral background filled with rolling hills of grass, rays of light, and a couple of flowers.
Follow along with Deke in this week’s free video and use the companion text below to help with each step.
Are you a fan of a particularly popular game featuring a group of agitated birds and noisy green pigs? Well, in this week’s installment of Deke’s Techniques, Deke McClelland shows you how to create your very own “grumpy bird” with Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started.
Follow along with Deke in this week’s free video and use the companion text below to help with each step.
Get a jump on Valentine’s Day by building custom artwork for your valentine in Adobe Illustrator! Building on the last technique, this week’s installment of Deke’s Techniques shows how to create the very picture of a couple in love—in pictogram form, of course. Learn how to combine your finished ISOTYPE figures (based on the picture language of the same name designed by Otto and Marie Neurath in 1935) and have them join hands. Follow along with Deke in this week’s free video and use the companion text below to help with each step.
2. First, select the man’s left arm and use the Appearance panel to bend the arm outward, increasing the Vertical Scale, Move, and Angles values in the Transform Effect dialog.
3. Duplicate the white underarm stroke and adjust its Scale, Move, and Angle values.
4. Next, adjust the shoulder by modifying the Scale property, and move it slightly left with Transform Effect.
5. Use the Move command to move the two figures closer to each other.
6. Copy the fill (the head) to start creating the heart shape. Move it between the figures.
7. Create a duplicate of the red circle and move it to the right to complete the top half of the heart.
8. Click Add New Stroke and choose an arrowhead effect (resizing it with Scale and Distort & Transform) to start the bottom half of the heart.
9. Create additional strokes to fill the heart.
10. Expand the effect to make the artwork easier to work with.
11. Use the Pathfinder > Merge command to combine all the paths.
12. Finally, delete any remaining empty paths.
Tune in next week, when Deke takes up with a couple of other universal symbols and combines them into a series of Andy Warhol–like silkscreen treatments. Members of lynda.com can view the entire Deke’s Techniques collection here.
In this week’s installment of Deke’s Techniques, Deke McClelland shows you how to create a pictogram of the universal male symbol, originally created as part of Otto and Marie Neurath’s ISOTYPE, or International System of TYpographic Picture Education, collection. Learn how to create this pictogram with stroke effects applied to a single vertical path outline in Adobe Illustrator. Follow along with Deke in this week’s free video and use the companion text below to help with each step.
1. Create a new file for your artwork and use the Line tool to draw a vertical line segment.
2. Choose Window > Appearance to bring up the Appearance panel, which allows you to stack multiple fill and stroke effects on a single path.
3. Create the right leg first.
a. Click the Stroke option in the Appearance panel and change the Weight to 28 pt and the Cap to the middle Round Cap option. Be sure to click on Stroke inside the Appearance panel or Options bar to get to the Cap option.
b. Choose Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform. This command allows you to create and alter the stroke independently of the path outline.
c. In the Transform Effect dialog box that opens, turn on the Preview check box to reveal your changes and change the Vertical Scale value to 70%. Select the bottom point in the reference point matrix. Make sure Scale Strokes & Effects are deselected. Be sure to change the Horizontal Move to 19 pt. This ensures you scale the virtual path that Illustrator is stroking here, but you do not scale the line weight itself. Click OK.
4. Duplicate the right leg to build the left.
a. Select the stroke in the Appearance panel and click the page icon at the bottom of the panel to duplicate the stroke.
b. Twist open the properties of the new stroke and click the Transform property to open the Transform Effect dialog box. Change the Horizontal Move value from +19 pt to –19 pt, turn on Preview, and click OK.
5. Now it’s time to create the body.
a. Select the first stroke in the Appearance panel, click the page icon to duplicate it, and change its stroke to 66 pt.
b. Click the word Stroke to bring up the Stroke panel and change the Cap to Butt Cap to remove the rounded edges from the path.
c. Click Transform to bring up the Transform Effect dialog box and change the Vertical Scale to 40%, the Horizontal Move to 0, and the Vertical Move to 54. Select the top middle point in the reference point matrix and click OK.
6. Create a rounded negative space between the legs with a white stroke.
a. Select one of the leg strokes in the Appearance panel. Option+drag (Mac) or Alt+drag (Windows) it to the top of the stack to duplicate the stroke.
b. Click on the swatch of your new stroke to bring up the Swatches panel and select white.
c. Reduce the stroke to 10 pt.
d. Click Transform to open the Transform Effects dialog box. Click the center point in the reference point matrix to scale the stroke from its center. Change Vertical Scale to 20%, Horizontal Move to 0, and Vertical Move to 54. Click OK.
7. Now to add the arms.
a. Select one of the 28 pt strokes. Option+drag (Mac) or Alt+drag (Windows) it to the top of the stack to duplicate the stroke.
b. Change the weight of the new stroke to 24 pt.
c. Open the Transform Effects dialog box and reset the reference point to the center. Change Vertical Scale to 26%, Horizontal Move to 55 pt, and Vertical Move to –18. Click OK.
d. Duplicate the new arm by clicking its stroke in the Appearance panel and clicking the page icon.
e. Click the Transform property of the newest stroke and change the Horizontal Move value in the Transform Effect dialog box from +55 to –55. Click OK.
8. Create the shoulders.
a. Duplicate one of the arm strokes by selecting it and clicking the page icon in the Appearance panel again.
b. Click the new stroke’s Transform property. This time, change the Rotate Angle to 90 degrees. That rotates the stroke so it’s perpendicular to the path outline.
c. In the Transform Effect dialog box box still, set the Vertical Scale to 28%, the Horizontal Move to 0, and Vertical Move to –56. Click OK to commit your changes.
9. Create negative white space underneath the arms to simulate rounded joints.
a. Select the 24 pt stroke that represents the right arm. Option+drag (Mac) or Alt+drag (Windows) it to the top of the stack to duplicate the stroke.
b. Click on the stroke’s color swatch and change it to white.
c. Change the line weight of the stroke to 10 pt.
d. Click the stroke’s Transform property and change the Vertical Scale to 24%, the Horizontal Move to 38 pt, and the Vertical Move to –16 pt. Click OK.
e. Copy the right underarm stroke to the left by clicking the stroke in the Appearance panel and clicking the page icon to duplicate it.
f. Click the left underarm’s Transform property to open the Transform Effect dialog box. Change the Horizontal Move value from 38 pt to –38 pt and click OK.
10. Now draw the missing head.
a. Move the fill from the bottom of the Appearance panel to the top of the stack.
b. Change the fill color to black by clicking on the swatch and selecting black from the Swatches panel. Note you are not actually going to see anything change immediately because you’re trying to fill an open straight path outline.
c. Click on the fill to make it active and choose Effect > Convert to Shape.
d. Choose Ellipse as the shape in the Shape Options dialog box. Select Absolute from the Options and dial in Width and Height values of 52 pt each. Click OK.
e. The fill needs to be moved upward on the canvas. Choose the fill from the Appearance panel and choose Effect > Distort and Transform > Transform. When the Transform Effect dialog box opens, type in a Vertical Move value of –122 pt. Click OK.
Side note: Positive horizontal values move things to the right; negative values move them to the left. Positive vertical values move things down; negative vertical values move them up. It is a little counterintuitive, but that’s the way it works inside Illustrator.
11. Now you need to convert the strokes to path outlines.
a. Return to the Layers panel.
b. Option+drag (Mac) or Alt+drag (Windows) your man layer to the top of the stack to duplicate it.
c. Double-click the new layer to open the Layer Options dialog box. Change the Name to paths and select a new color for your outlines. Click OK.
d. Choose Object > Expand Appearance.
e. Choose Path > Outline Stroke to convert all the strokes to filled path outlines.
f. Then merge all these path outlines according to their colors. Choose Window > Pathfinder to open the Pathfinder panel and click the Merge icon.
g. Choose Object > Ungroup to ungroup the white paths that are nested inside the black ones.
h. Press V to switch to the Selection or black arrow tool, click off the path outlines to deselect them all, and then click one of the white outlines that represents a void space. Go to the Options bar and click the arrow next to the far right Select Similar Objects icon. Choose Fill Color from the popup menu to select all the paths with white fills. Press Backspace (Windows) or Delete (Mac) to remove them.
i. Now you can rotate, size, or manipulate the figure however you want, as he’s now a single merged path outline.
For members of lynda.com, Deke has another exclusive movie this week called Building a universal woman with strokes, in which he shows you how to create the female companion for your figure. Plus, stay tuned for next week’s tutorial, when Deke shares a special Valentine’s themed project in Illustrator.
In this week’s Deke’s Techniques series, Deke McClelland shows you how to create an intertwined-rope pattern, then he shows you how you can use the perfectly aligned rope pattern with the Adobe Illustrator Pattern brush feature. Unlike a similar circular-stroke pattern Deke created a few episodes back in “Creating a currency-style emblem in Illustrator,” this approach creates a pattern that can successfully navigate 90-degree corners.
The entire pattern begins with a simple, unassuming line segment:
The wave pattern is created by applying the Zig Zag effect, setting the absolute size to 4 points and the number of ridges per segment to 1.
Next, Deke creates the second strand of the twist by using a Transform effect that reflects the now wavy segment over the y-axis:
Deke completes the straight portion of the pattern by copying one link of the twist and attaching it to the end. He then duplicates those same two segments and rotates them to begin building the corner component of the pattern.
To make the looping design in the corner, Deke starts with a carefully measured Arc segment:
After rotating the arc into place, Deke lines the segment up and attaches it to the existing pattern using the Join tool. In the Join dialog box, you can tell Illustrator to create a smooth point at the join site.
The link shape is then duplicated, truncated, and rotated to become the basis for the next part of the corner loop. Again these end points are joined to the existing path:
To create the very outer turn of the corner, Deke uses a modified ellipse. By measuring the distance he wants to cover ahead of time, Deke can tell Illustrator precisely the dimensions he needs for the ellipse:
Once the ellipse is clipped in half, maneuvered into place, and joined up, the corner loop design is complete:
Deke also uses a similar measure, draw, cut, and rotate procedure to make the end segment. The result: three perfectly aligned components ready to serve inside the Illustrator Pattern brush feature. (I temporarily changed their stroke colors so you can see where each begins and ends.)
To see how these pieces are put to work, Deke has a member-exclusive movie this week called Assembling a seamless pattern brush, in which he shows you how to set your pattern pieces up for use in a Pattern brush.
Deke will be back next week with another free technique.
