Hi there, it is Advanced Pen Tool Tips and Tricks time in Illustrator. 1
Now if you are a bit afraid of the Pen Tool still... 2
you might want to check out the Essentials course. 3
Goes through the Pen Tool a lot more, kind of... 4
I guess, a bit more of basic understanding. 5
This one here is going to jump straight into the... 6
you're an okay user of the Pen Tool, and you want to take it to the next level. 7
So get a notepad out, there's a few shortcuts and key combinations... 8
to make this work and go fast. 9
Let's get in there, redraw this little doll thing... 10
and make it look like this. 11
All right, let's get started. 12
So Advanced Pen Tool time. 13
Let's bring in an image, so 'File', 'Place'. 14
Let's bring in, from your 'Exercise Files', one called 'Pen Tool'. 15
Where are you, Pen Tool? There you are, there. 16
Make sure it's a 'Template', click 'Place'. 17
So it's on its own layer, and locked. 18
Next thing is, under 'Properties'... 19
let's grab our 'Pen Tool' from our 'Tool Bar'. 20
Make sure we've got a Fill of 'none'. 21
We'll have a Stroke of 'black', that's fine. 22
One of the first things we need to do when using the Pen Tool... 23
is turn 'off' the Smart Guides. 24
So 'Command U' turns it off... 25
otherwise it starts trying to snap to things... 26
and you'll lose your Mojo. 27
Now first trick is for better curves. 28
Say I want to do this curvy bit down the bottom here. 29
You might be at a habit... 30
or the way you were taught, by clicking once for a corner... 31
clicking and dragging for a curve, then a corner here. 32
Now that is fine, but often you can get nice curves... 33
by using handles out of these corner points. 34
So I'm going to start by clicking and dragging out... 35
and I'm dragging out a curve. 36
I'm dragging towards the line I want to go. 37
Roughly about there. 38
Then watch this, I'm going to drag out... 39
and I get the same line with less Anchor Points. 40
You'll find that if you have just two Anchor points, using handles... 41
it will just give you a nice smoother shape... 42
than you would get from doing two corners with a curve in the middle. 43
The trouble it runs into, if you want to change direction here... 44
because it's a corner, right? We knew it was a corner when we drew it. 45
So that brings me on to my next shortcut. 46
If you've got a curve where you want it to be a corner... 47
you can just hold down the 'Alt' key on a PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac. 48
You can see, I've broken it up there. 49
I'm going to go up to here, and I want it to be a curve still... 50
so, I'm going to click and drag out. 51
I can break it again later on... 52
by holding the 'Alt' key on a PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac... 53
and breaking it as I'm drawing... 54
rather than drawing it out, then having to go back to... 55
the Convert Anchor Point Tool, or the White Arrow. 56
Just a nice handy extra trick. 57
So that's one way of doing it, let's show you an even better way... 58
and the way I normally draw is with the Pen Tool. 59
So I'm going to click and drag out here to get this first curve. 60
Click and drag out. 61
And instead of doing what we did before... 62
is draw it, and then come back to it... 63
and break it using the 'Option' key, or the 'Alt' key on a PC. 64
You can actually do it here. 65
Before you start-- before you get it kind of roughly where you want it to... 66
just hold down the 'Alt' key on a PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac, that same key. 67
Before you let go, and it actually snaps it while you're going. 68
So I'll often do this. 69
And drag out. 70
Let's say I want to keep these curves... 71
Doing a real rough job to speed through... 72
but I get to here, and I drag it out... 73
then I hold 'Alt', just bring it up this way... 74
because I know that's going to get me roughly where I want to go. 75
And we're going to get to this point. 76
So 'Alt' breaks it. 77
We get to this point... 78
and I know-- I need it to be really long to get that existing curve, right? 79
But I know that this top point up here, you can see... 80
you're like, "Man, it's gone too far", and you'll end up-- 81
you'll have your methods to fix it up. 82
What you can do is, watch this, while I'm dragging that one out... 83
if you hold down the 'Command' on a Mac, or 'Control' key on a PC... 84
you can-- it still keeps it locked... 85
but it brings this handle in, so that the extent is not as far. 86
So, while you're dragging... 87
you can kind of shorten one of them by holding the 'Command' key. 88
I know these are all a little bit tough to remember... 89
but you've got your notepad next to you, and you're going to just spend-- 90
whenever you're doing your next drawing, you're just kind of like, "Okay." 91
You might only use two or three of them... 92
but I find I use all of them, it just makes my Pen Tool experience a lot better. 93
Another one we're going to do is... 94
say I get along here, and I start drawing... 95
and it's just not quite on the line, right? 96
What I can do, before I let go, just hold down the 'space bar' key... 97
then when I move my mouse, it's moving the Anchor Point. 98
So I can continue on to get it perfect. 99
That's going to be it for super shortcuts. 100
What I'd like you to do for your project is to finish off this drawing. 101
You can use the Pen Tool or the Curvature Tool... 102
which we learned in the previous video, it's up to you. 103
Just kind of a rough drawing, don't worry if it's not perfect. 104
I'd like you to do it, because we're going to use it as an example later on... 105
to kind of color it in, show you how to color in a hand drawn drawing. 106
One of the things that you might run into is... 107
like how do you want to complete this now. 108
You're going to get to this point here, and go... 109
"Do I go down here, or up this way?" 110
So let's just turn it into a pilot piece. 111
What I mean by that is that, I'm going to grab my 'Black Arrow'... 112
just click off in the background... 113
and I'm going to draw it as a separate line. 114
We'll join them all up later on using... 115
some cool tool called the Shape Builder Tool. 116
I'm just going to click and drag down here. 117
Do I want it to join? Yes, I probably do. 118
You can see here, I'm not worried... 119
that it doesn't go around, completely joins... 120
we're going to go through and connect these up a different way. 121
So, Pen Tool, let's say this line here, there's this kind of hand... 122
what I'm going to do is, click once, and just click once there. 123
That's going to be enough for what I need. 124
I'm going to use the Pen Tool now. 125
I'm going to draw a curve. 126
A curve. 127
Curve. 128
What I might do is just overlap this a little bit... 129
because, do I want to get them a perfect line there? 130
It becomes too hard to draw that way. 131
So we're going to overlap that... 132
and what I'll do is I'll draw that foot over the top... 133
and we'll trim that up using the Shape Builder Tool. 134
So that's the kind of technique I want you to use. 135
Just make sure everything is-- donât have to overlap completely like this. 136
It can be close like that. 137
We'll show you later on, there is a magic way of joining those up. 138
I'd like you to go through, draw all the lines you can see here. 139
Don't stress too much about it... 140
but this might be a really good time... 141
to practice your super amazing, fantastic new advanced Pen Tool tricks. 142
All right, I'm back. 143
I was just drawing this, and I thought... 144
actually there's probably more I can add to this video... 145
because one of the big problems is... 146
let's say we're using any of the tools, I'm using the Pen Tool... 147
is if I kind of-- say I want to click over here... 148
it's going to really want to join up to this tool... 149
or join up to the end of these lines... 150
and you're like, kind of, "Stop connecting up." 151
The easiest way is-- 152
so the Curvature Tool is the worst for it, right? 153
If I start down here, and I put one there, one there, I want to go to this... 154
it really wants to kind of do stuff with this, and you're like... 155
"Oh, what happened? We're just doing this line." 156
The easiest way is just to go, zoom in real quick. 157
So if I click there, it joined up. 158
I've really exaggerated these lines, you can see, they all overlap. 159
We'll tidy that up in a future tutorial... 160
but we click once... 161
and where it gets in here, where it really wants to join, just zoom in. 162
I'm using 'Command +', you might use 'Control +'... 163
and just click in here, it gives you, I guess, a bigger room to kind of-- 164
so it's not kind of trying to guess these lines. 165
I often do that, zooming in, just to make sure... 166
it doesn't join up with other lines. 167
Another thing I realized while I'm working is that... 168
to deselect you can go to 'Black Arrow', or hit the 'V' key. 169
The shortcut I use the most is holding the 'Command' key down. 170
You can see, we get the 'Black Arrow', and just click off in the background. 171
So while I'm drawing-- 172
Let's say we want to draw this line. 173
So click once, I'm using the Curvature Tool, click once. 174
I've got just a nice curve. 175
It keeps on joining, so hold 'Command' and just click off in the background... 176
so I can start again. 177
And again, it's going to really want to join that line. 178
So if I zoom right in... 179
holding 'space bar' to click and hold, and drag this around. 180
Just going to start, kind of exaggerate this. 181
I'm going to try avoid this line here. 182
Click once, click once. 183
Click once, click once. 184
Go to 'Curvature Tool'. 185
Built for making weird flowers. 186
Click off in the background. 187
One last thing before I go is, when you get to the end of your drawing... 188
because we're going to color this in later on... 189
youâre kind of left with an ugly looking drawing. 190
A lot of things overlap, and it's not very nice. 191
Nice little easy trick is... 192
I'm selecting it all with my 'Black Arrow'... 193
holding down the 'Alt' key, or 'Option' key on a Mac... 194
and just making a duplicate. 195
And with it selected, just go over to 'Stroke'... 196
and pick something down here where it says Profile. 197
Let's pick something nicer, like this first one here, the 'Width Profile'. 198
Just gives it a nice kind of hand drawn look. 199
I've bumped mine up to '3pt'. 200
Looks a bit better. 201
Like I said, Shape Builder Tool... 202
we're going to make this, fill it in, and do some cool colors. 203
All right, that's it for Advanced Pen Tool stuff. 204
I'll see you in the next video.