Illustrator CS6 Tutorial

The world of animation can seem really intimidating – between AfterEffects, Flash and everything else, there’s so much to learn. And who has time? Never fear – you can create simple Flash animations without ever leaving the familiar confines of Illustrator, and without any knowledge of Flash. Here are two easy ways to get things moving. Final Image Preview Below are two final SWF animations we will be working creating. Want access to the full Vector Source files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join Vector Plus for just 9$ a month. Tutorial Details Program: Adobe Illustrator CS4 Difficulty: Intermediate Estimated Completion Time: 45 minutes Video Tutorial I’ve created this video tutorial to compliment this text + image tutorial. Method I: Blend and Morph For this type of animation, in which one shape transforms into another (and another and another, if you wish), we’ll use the Blend Tool to make the in-between shapes, then ...

Now let's say you want to magnify your illustration on screen, but none of the standard zoom increments are really working for you. For example, here I am taken in the illustration wide and if I press Ctrl+Plus, or Command+Plus on the Mac, then I'll zoom to 100%. And if I do it again, I'll zoom to 150% and then 200% and then 300% and so on. So we've got some pretty big increments going on and these are the exact same increments we get with the Zoom tool and with the other zooming techniques. I'm going to go ahead and press Ctrl+1, or Command+1 on the Mac, to zoom out to 100%. Illustrator cs6 If you want to dial in a custom zoom value then you can drop down here to this zoom option that's listed in the very bottom left corner of the document window. Click on it, and then instead of entering a value, which you can do if you like, but my preferred method of working here is to press the Up arrow key in order to zoom in increments of one so you have very t...

In this movie, I will show you how to scroll or if you prefer pan your Illustrator cs6 . And this comes in handy when you are zoomed in. So here I am zoomed in on a detail, but I want to be able to scroll around a little bit. Take a look at a different detail at this exact zoom level. You can take advantage of the scroll bars down here at the bottom and along the right side of the Document window. But the better way to work is to get the Hand tool. So if I switch to the Hand tool which has a keyboard shortcut of H, then I can just drag my Illustrator cs6 around as much as I like. Of course, you don't want to have to go running after the Hand tool every time you need to scroll. So here's a better way to work. I will switch back to my black arrow tool, and then I will press and hold the spacebar. Notice that gets me the Hand tool as long as the spacebar is down, and then I can drag the document as much as I want. Now, what happens though, if you've got live t...

In this movie, I will show you how to zoom in and out in Illustrator cs6 . . And the idea is this, sometimes you are going to want to magnify portions of your illustration in order to fine-tune adjustments, and other times you are going to want to zoom out so that you can take in your entire artwork at a time. I am working inside of a document called Welcome again.ai found inside the 03_navigation folder. If I go up to the Window menu and choose Artboards command, you can see that this document contains a total of six Artboards. So we have the central Welcome screen, and then we have renderings of a bunch of paint tool cursors. These are the new paint tool cursors in Illustrator cs6   and then finally I have got this big Artboard that contains everything. I just wanted you to see that because these Artboards will become important in a moment. In the meantime though, you zoom in and out from an Illustration right here located in the View menu. Now notice that each one...

Illustrator CS6 Tutorial Video All right, so the first thing that we are going to look in, in this chapter is the new dark interface, and I'm a big fan. Very much like the new dark interface in Photoshop CS6 , but the great thing about it, in my opinion, is that it allows me to focus in on the Illustrator cs6 . without being distracted by all the screen folders. And Illustrator cs6 . takes it even farther than Photoshop does, by darkening dialog boxes, and other screen folders. Now, there's a few exceptions to this rule on the Mac, on a Macintosh side of things, you got a bright menu bar, you can't do anything about that, because Adobe doesn't have control over the menu bar. And if you're your illustration inside of a floating window, then you'll see a bright title bar for that window as well, and you may see elements of applications running in the background, as well as the finder desktop and so forth. If you would rather have Illustrator cs6 . ...

Illustrator CS6 Tutorial Video This chapter is all about getting around in Illustrator cs6 . , magnifying your artwork, panning to another location, and managing your workspace. I spend nine movies on this topic, which is a lot, for the simple reason that there's a lot to know. I want you to be able to move around inside Illustrator cs6 . without even thinking, because that's how everything about the program is going to make sense. Better still, you will be able to focus less on the mechanics of the software and more on the task of creating great artwork. Allow me to help you feel at home in Illustrator cs6 . .

In this movie, I'll show you how Artboards and Rulers interact with each other inside Illustrator cs6 . I have saved my progress as Nice and tidy.ai. I'm going to once again switch to the Artboard tool, and then I'll bring up my Rulers by going up to the View menu choosing Rulers and then choosing the Show Rulers Command. And what that does is it shows me about the Horizontal Ruler at up the top of the screen and the Vertical Ruler over here on the left-hand side. And we can see that the unit of measure is points and the reason we can see that is because they're very dinky units. Illustrator cs6 . If you wanted to switch out the unit of measure the easiest option is to right-click on either one of the Rulers, and then choose a different unit, such as Inches, and then both Rulers will update in kind. Now notice this 00 point right there, so there is a 0 point for the Vertical Ruler, and there is a 0 point for the Horizontal Ruler. I am going to go ahead and ...

In this movie I'll how you how to delete and organize art boards from the Artboards panel.  they are in regular alignment once again. I've saved my progress as 10-page jumble. ai. Again, it's found inside the 02_artboards folder. The reason I saved these progress files, by the way, is just in case you're dropping in on a single movie, and you don't have a progress file of your own. I'm going to start by getting my Artboards panel out of the way by clicking on this little double-arrow icon there. Now switch back to the Artboard tool, and notice that Artboard 10 is selected in my case. Illustrator CS6 I want to show you couple of other options that are available to you. If you go up to the Object menu, and you choose Artboards, you'll get the submenu of commands, including this one here Fit to Artwork Bounds. And that's going to go ahead and expand the Artboard so it encompasses every bit of artwork inside your document. And that's ...

Icon Design in Illustrator cs6 are nifty little designs that add flavor to your web pages while helping to direct users to different areas of interest. While most websites don't require a ton of icons, they do usually require several and creating these seemingly simple designs can be much more complicated than you think. -Planning the concept for a cohesive icon set -Creating and refining icons in Adobe Illustrator -Working with multiple artboards -Advanced icon drawing techniques -Working with perspectives -Finalizing and polishing finished icons Download Icon Design in Illustrator cs6 : Tuts.Icon.Design.2012.part1.rar Tuts.Icon.Design.2012.part2.rar Tuts.Icon.Design.2012.part3.rar Tuts.Icon.Design.2012.part4.rar Tuts.Icon.Design.2012.part5.rar Why Use Icons  Design in Illustrator cs6 Icons Design in cs6 are used in the design of your web pages to add a visual element to your content. While paragraph after paragraph of text will eventually get bo...

In this movie, I'll show you how to begin creating the heart outline using the Arc tool  in Illustrator CS6 . I've saved my changes as All guides.ai found inside the 04_line_art folder. Let's go ahead and switch to Arc tool, and it's a pretty easy concept when you drag with a tool you can see that you create as I was saying before, a quarter ellipse. And you might imagine that this is going to serve as well for the first hump in our heart, but we are not going to start at this arbitrary location. We are going to start right there at the intersection of the central vertical guide and the second horizontal guide down. So I will go ahead and press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac, in order get rid of that bad arc. And now I will drag up on to the left, like so, while pressing the Shift key, and you want to drag until you snap to that guideline up there. And you kind of want to inch it back a little bit to the right so that the heads-up display says, a ...

In this movie I'll how you how to delete and organize artboards from the Artboards panel.    Illustrator CS6 Tutorial Video I've gone ahead and saved this document 12-page mess.ai because it is a 12-page mess after all. Let's say I want to tidy things up here, so we end up with ten identically sized artboards, all of which are absolutely in order. Let's say I make some additional modifications to what I've got so far. I'll go ahead and switch over to the Artboard tool, and then I'll Alt-click or Option-click on this Artboard 4 here in order to select it independently of the Uberboard, and I'll drag it down to the lower right corner. Then I'll Alt-click or Option-click on Artboard 8 and move it up to this location. And now let's say I want to add another artboard, but I'm going to do so from the Artboard panel. I'll go up to the Window menu which lists all the panels inside Illustrator cs6 , which we'll ...

In this movie, I'll show you a couple ways to create new artboards, and I'll also introduce Illustrator CS6 Tutorial Video you to some artboard editing tricks that hinge on pressing the Shift and the Alt and Option keys. I've once again restored my 8-page newsletter.ai file. I am going to switch over here to the Artboard tool. One way to create an artboard is just to drag somewhere in an empty portion of the pasteboard, like so. And let's say I want to create an artboard that completely encompasses all of the other artboards. So I've got a new artboard that's coming in automatically called Artboard 2. I am going to click on the Name item up there in the Options bar, and I'll change this guy to Uberboard let's say, and then press the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac. And we can now see that it's artboard number 09, up here in the upper left-hand corner, because after all, it's the ninth artboard I've created. An...

Changing the size and shape of artboards in Illustrator CS6 In this movie, I will show you how to change the change the shape and size of your artboards. Illustrator CS6 Tutorial Video, I have gone ahead and restored the saved version of 8-page newsletter.ai found inside the 02_artboards folder.  Now the first thing I would like you to do, just to make sure that you and I are on the same page, is to go up to the View menu, and make sure that the Smart Guides command is turned on.  If you see a check mark everything's good, if not go ahead and choose the command, you also have the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+U and Command+U on a Mac.  What Smart Guides do is they allow you to align objects inside of your illustrations as well as artboards on the fly.  Next step, of course, is to switch to Artboard tool , you can get by pressing Shift+O, or you can just click on it here inside the toolbox.  But before I do that, I want you to notice something. ...

In this movie, I will show you how to modify a document by moving its artboards to different locations. Illustrator CS6 Tutorial Video This works a little differently inside Illustrator than it does inside other programs. Quite a bit differently than you would reasonably think as well but once you come to terms with it makes a fair amount of sense. Working inside of a document called 8-page newsletter.ai, it's found inside the O2artboards folder. Notice if you go up here to the File menu, you have a Document Setup Command, that allows >Moving and modifying artboards in Illustrator CS6  you to modify the existing document. The keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Alt+P , or Command+Opt +P on the Mac, I will go and choose the command. Notice that we have a whole slew of options that we did not see in the new Document Dialog Box , and we're missing a lot of those options as well, we have no control over page size. The only options that we have that are the same these Blee...