Illustrating In Illustrator 101 Part 2 of 5 – taterboy
January 5th, 2009 | Filed under: Digital Art, Illustrator, Tutorials

Construction

Wether I am illustrating an imaginary device or something I use everyday, it is good to understand how the object is or should be constructed. Other information like functionality, and how these objects are interacted with are very important in making our illustrations more convincing.

Questions you could ask yourself are how much heft and mass does this object possess, What kids of materials are used to build this object? How does this information effect how light reflects/refracts off the object. These evaluations help us understand how the details should be rendered.

The object could be steel, but is it built assembled with welds, bolts or both? The object could be made from concrete, Styrofoam, wood, glass or plastic molds. Each material is assembled differently with different types of joints. The time when an object is built also will give us a clue as to the type of assembly would have been used. We should carry that information or hints of that information into our illustration.

We do not have to have an engineering degree to know that some buildings are made from glass and steal, brick/concrete block, or wood. A glass building would be smooth and shiny on the outside with little definition where each glass plate comes together. Brick buildings have thick walls so windows are inset into the wall. Wood buildings have window frames that are used to hold the window into the wall.

These are the types of things that should be going through our heads as we sketch, construct, color, and touch up our work. In the meantime we are building our forms in Illustrator, here are some techniques to speed up our work as we construct our illustrations with the provided tools.

Using divide and Unite:
Divide and Unite are two pathfinder tools I use the most. You should set these to actions with keyboard shortcuts.

Divide Tip 1:
Create a shadow, reflection, glare on a larger shape. One of the rules for quick illustration in Illustrator is to never draw the same line twice. Another rule is divide does not have to be destructive. If you have ever used Divide before on a shape and zoomed out, sometimes you will notice a little background seeping through where the Divide incision are applied.

Draw the path how you would like your incision, over lapping on both ends and making sure the path has no fill. Select the larger shape first, Copy and Paste in Front (Command + F / Cntr + F) then select the line you created for your incision. Apply the Divide to the shape and delete the unwanted piece.

This creates a smaller shape on top of the original shape, in seconds, with no gaps and non-destructive. If we do not like the way it looks, we can always delete it and start over with our original shape still intact.

Divide Tip 2:
Again Divide does not have to be destructive. If you have a few overlapping paths, Divide with create a joined shape and trim off the excess paths. This can come in handy when using a grid, copy the lines we want to use from the grid, and apply a Divide. You will now have a new shape that matches your guides without having to draw anything. We drew the lines once for the guide, we should not have to draw them a gain.

Divide Tip 3:
Overlap your paths with working with divide. It is much easier to make sure your division are complete if you see your incision paths are overlapping your original shape.

Unite Tip 1:
Sometimes Divide can have some unwelcome results, but they can be cleaned up quickly with Unite.

Unite Tip 2:
Unite goes hand with Outline Stroke. If you have a fill and a stroke, using Outline Stroke then Unite will convert a path into a new solid shape. I like to use this for making nice outlines or inking effects. Depending on your Illustrator Preference settings, paths will scale on one machine and not another. It is also a good idea to Outline & Unite paths if the size relationship is important.

Below is a simple funny faced frog made almost intierly with the oval tool and Outlined paths.

Flash tip: Paths have never translated well to Flash, so I always Outline & Unite my paths before importing to Flash.

Offset Stroke:
Found in the Object:Path menu, is similar to Outline Stroke. In CS3 and before the new path is automatically grouped to the original path. So if you have a few paths being made from the Outline Stroke command, you will have to select all the pieces and Cut & Paste them out of the group to work with them easier. I still use it very often, mostly on simpler shapes.

In Illustrator CS4 Outline Stroke works much better and mimics the functionality mentioned in Unite Tip 2.

Duplicate and Transform:
There are many times while we are illustrating that we come across many objects that are similar like windows, bolts, or even spider eyes. By completing on object, then copying and distributing those copies around will make creating all these objects less redundant. Even if shapes, size, perspective differ, there may be parts that are reusable, or a quick transform can really help save time.

Drawing vs Editing:
We have discussed never drawing the same line twice and was to create new shapes from exiting ones. Also we went over duplicating shapes and objects to help speed things up. The rules in this series are just like most rules, there is very often an exception. If you are comfortable with the pen tool in Illustrator, it is almost always faster to draw a new line then it is to edit an existing one. If you are tweaking a couple points on an existing path, that is one thing, but if you copy an path with the intent on modifying many points, it is most likely faster to draw a whole new path. Or at least delete the points you would like to edit, and draw a new path in it’s place.

Join and Average:
Even drawing paths holding down the shift key will not always get our lines straight. The keyboard shortcut for Average is Command + Option + J on a Mac and Control + Alt + J on PC. Any lines that are supposed to be straight that for some reason are not, is just a second away from be so, but you have to remember the keyboard short cut to really make it worth while.

Another Keyboard shortcut to remember is Join. Command + J on a Mac and Control + J on PC, will be used over and over again to clean up stray points. Divide, Outline Stroke and other wonderful tools we have covered so far are great time savers but can put unwanted points in our paths. One of our objectives it to create Clean artwork. Extra points and text Miter spikes will not do, so a quick select with the Hollow Arrow, or Hollow Lasso, then Join, will clean those points up quickly.

Group and Layer as you go:
As discussed in Part 1 of the series, grouping is important in speeding up our work. It is much easier to grab a bunch of paths that have been grouped with the solid arrow, then selecting many paths to do a tweak. Many time you will be working on something else in the illustration and you will notice something you want to tweak something that was done previously. As you finish objects with multiple paths they should be grouped.

Distributing artwork in layer is a great way to create a groups too. The results of good groups is easy selection and/or isolation of parts of the illustration. Using Lock and Hide as well as layers are great ways to isolate our work.

Next - Illustrating In Illustrator 101 Part 3 of 5: Defining Shapes (coming soon)

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1 Comment »

  1. i was searching for a psychology term for art history and found your site. what a great resource for illustrating! im so glad google sent me your way!

    Comment by this is awesome! — March 16, 2009 @ 7:17 pm

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