Monday, March 2, 2009

Tutorial Video #5 - Using, Transforming and Shaping the Ellipse Tool in Adobe Illustrator

Ellipse tool adobe illustrator tutorial video Sherm Cohen spongebob
Click on image - video will open in new window

Video #5 - Shape Tools:
Using, Transforming & Reshaping

We're about halfway through the Adobe Illustrator inking tutorial videos, and when this phase is done we will make a brief stopover at Photoshop before heading into some really colorful video lessons on digital painting in ArtRage.

Today's video focuses on the nitty-gritty details of using a shape tool -- specifically an ellipse -- and then using the transform tool and the pencil tool to reshape them. You'll also see how I use copy and paste commands to reuse (and then tweak) various shapes and lines. A lot of it seems like it's tedious, but it goes pretty quickly when done in real time.
Ellipse tool adobe illustrator tutorial video spongebob

The pace will pick up in the next couple of videos because I'll be doing more drawing and less with the jawbone.

By the way, at one point in this tutorial video, I talk about a small X that appears next to the pencil tool in Adobe illustrator. When the X is showing, that means that the pencil tool will draw a new freehand line. When you get the pencil tool close to a previously drawn line that's selected, the X disappears. This means that you can now reshape the selected line by using the pencil tool (N on your keyboard).

Anyway, this screen capture software that I was using was not able to capture the little X for some reason. Here's a picture of it from the Adobe illustrator help site.
pencil cursor x reshape
If you want more information on how to use the pencil tool to reshape a line, hop on over to:
...And here's the YouTube version of the same video if you're having any trouble watching the high-resolution video at the top of the post.

In case you missed them,
here are links to the first four

Adobe Illustrator Inking tutorial videos: