Hi there, in this video we're going to use the very best creation tool... 1
in all of Illustrator, in my opinion, the Shape Builder Tool... 2
to make this whale circle-y special thing. 3
All right, let's go build it now in Illustrator. 4
First up, let's work out what Shape Builder does, or replaces. 5
It's the Path Finder Tool. 6
We love to hate the Path Finder Tool, right? 7
I want to join these shapes up, or knock them out... 8
and you end up kind of... 9
you know you can select only two at a time. 10
You have to do some copying and pasting, and have versions, and you're like... 11
"I'm going to click on this one." Not the one, undo. 12
Have everybody done that, or is it just me? 13
I do the undo, click on them all, see which one works. 14
That can take a while, right? 15
So this tool replaces that. 16
Goodbye, you guys. Hello, whale. 17
Let's draw you with the Shape Builder Tool. 18
Basically what we're going to do is... 19
kind of like we did with the Path Finder Tool... 20
have two shapes, and kind of cut them out... 21
but we can do multiple shapes, and there's some great perks. 22
You might have already used the Shape Builder Tool, and that's okay. 23
I'm going to try and do a bit more advanced techniques here. 24
So let's get started with-- I'm going to grab the Ellipse Tool. 25
I'm going to have 'no' Stroke, and a 'black' Fill. 26
I'm going to start in the center. 27
Kind of hold down the 'Option' key and 'Shift' to start from the center. 28
If you're on a Mac-- sorry, I'm on a Mac. 29
If you're on a PC, hold down 'Alt' key and 'Shift', and start dragging. 30
You can go and start from the centers. Not perfect. 31
I'm going to use my arrow keys to tap it around. 32
That's kind of a good start. 33
I want to draw a line across there. Just going to grab my 'Line Segment Tool'. 34
I'm going to click, hold, and drag. You can use the Pen Tool, doesn't matter. 35
Maybe the next thing I'll do is-- 36
I guess I want this... 37
big kind of like rolly, wave, kind of fan type thing. 38
So what I'm going to do-- I'm going to show you how I would build it. 39
So I'm going to copy and paste this. 40
Now if you use 'Command F'... 41
there it is there, or 'Control F' on a PC... 42
and paste it back exactly where it gets it. 43
So I use that often rather than copy and paste... 44
because, watch this, paste just puts it in the middle of the window. 45
Bad. So 'Command F' on a Mac, 'Control F' on a PC. 46
And what I want to do is... 47
actually I want to just-- I'm using my arrow key. 48
I want to kind of try and line up that. Probably have to make it a little smaller. 49
Holding 'Shift'. 50
What I want to do is-- 51
you're looking at this area here. 52
I'm just trying to get some sort of nice curve. 53
We could use the Width Tool... 54
but we're using the Shape Builder Tool, because I reckon it's going to do... 55
probably a better job. 56
Only because I want to keep this complete circle absolutely nice. 57
The design kind of calls for this whale to be this round bit. 58
So I've got that bit. 59
Let's start with that. 60
Actually I want to lob that bit off, I'm going to use the Line Segment Tool. 61
And I'm going to say, you, just draw a line through here. 62
I'm going to select it all with my 'Black Arrow'. 63
And what I might do, just to make it easier for you guys... 64
is, on my 'Layers Panel', just turn it off to see what we're doing. 65
So if you've never used the Shape Builder Tool... 66
be prepared, this thing is awesome. 67
Here it is there. 68
Hard to describe that one, right? That's the icon, Shape Builder Tool. 69
What we want to do is, there's two kind of modes... 70
there's adding and subtracting. 71
In this case, down the bottom here I want to add this bit. 72
So all I do is click, hold, and drag across... 73
and join these two bits... 74
and I want to add that bit down there. 75
Kind of make that one solid shape. 76
You can imagine using the Path Finder Tool, need lots of undos. 77
Now I want to slice these bits off. 78
So what I do is hold down... 79
the 'Alt' key on a PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac. 80
You can see, our cursor gets a little minus '-' there. 81
So I'm going to drag across it, drag across you. 82
Drag across. You can see how cool, quick, and easy it is. 83
I've built that first little path now. 84
I'm going to turn on that layer again. 85
Let's start doing the rest of it. 86
I'm not going to build every single thing with Adjust Shapes. 87
There's a couple of curves in here, I'll probably use the Curvature Tool for. 88
Let's do the hard stuff first. 89
So you can move on if you're getting bored of this. 90
So what we'll do is join this circle up the top here. 91
I'm going to grab the 'Ellipse Tool', draw a circle. 92
Kind of starting at the center there. 93
Now, a cool little shortcut is... 94
when you're kind of getting things lined up... 95
it can be a little hard when there's a Stroke Weight on it. 96
We've got a Stroke Weight of 1, I think. 97
But if you hit 'Command Y' on a Mac, or 'Control Y' on a PC-- 98
I'm also going to turn the background layer off. 99
It just gives you kind of really fine detail. 100
The long way is under 'View', and it's called... 101
This one here, Pixel Preview, versus-- not Pixel Preview. 102
Outline, there it is at the top there, versus GPU Preview. 103
So that's the thing we toggle between. 104
I use that one all the time, 'Command Y', or 'Control Y'. 105
I'm going to go back in. 106
What I'm looking to do is just get this thing kind of close to here. 107
It's never going to be perfect. 108
I'm just trying to grab the edge and get it kind of touching here... 109
so this curve is going to look nice. 110
I'm going to select both of them. 111
I don't have to come out of a Wireframe Outline mode... 112
to keep using the Width Tool. 113
Now, the Width Tool is one-- I say, the Width Tool... 114
I might say that a couple of times in this course, I don't know why. 115
I say that all the time, it's the Shape Builder Tool. 116
So, it's 'Shift M', it's one of the shortcuts, write it down. 117
It's actually one of those ones you use all the time. 118
I'm going to click, hold, and drag across all these guys... 119
and you'll notice along here, it's done a pretty good job of lining this up. 120
I'll do one more and see if I can't fix it... 121
or I can't make that look a little worse, so I can show you how to fix it. 122
It's all looking okay, 'Command Y'. 123
Let's look at this. I should have really had that on to draw out a circle. 124
I'm okay with that. 125
My drawing in this is a hand drawing. 126
What I'd like to do here, is I'd like this to join up to this bit. 127
Let's grab the-- I'm going to deal with two Ellipses again. 128
I'm going to be able to use it, how? 129
Corner Options, which is cool. 130
I'm going to draw a circle roughly in the center here using my tricks. 131
Roughly the right size. 132
That feels a bit right. Be a little bigger. 133
I'm going to have another circle. 134
It's going to be a lot smaller to get that kind of inside radius. 135
Now I'm just banging it around, trying to figure out... 136
needs to be a bit smaller. 137
There's times where Smart Guides can be a little painful. 138
At the moment, I'm going to leave them on. 139
Just using my arrow keys to tap it around. 140
I want this to kind of line up here, and what I'll do is-- 141
actually I'll make it even a bit smaller. 142
And I'll have this... 143
I want this a bit smaller. 144
I want this kind of corner, you can see here, it just kind of corners in. 145
And I want it to be smooth, and that's why Corner Options are going to help. 146
So, you... 147
Quit messing about, Dan, and just do it. 148
I'm going to lob it off, probably about here. 149
I'm going to grab all three of these guys. 150
With my 'Black Arrow', remember, 'Shift M' is our cool tool... 151
and I'm going to drag you guys. 152
Drag these guys to join them up. 153
I want to minus that. 154
Goodbye to you, drag you across. 155
I've kind of got rid of lots of bits. 156
There's this kind of junk going on here... 157
so I'm going to go to 'Command Y' just to see what's going on. 158
I'm going to zoom in. 159
I'm going to drag across these two guys to join them up... 160
and I'm left with this. 161
Now I'm going to grab my White Arrow, and remember, those Corner Options? 162
This is where this is super handy, right? 163
So, I'm going to click on just this point here, and tidy it up. 164
Can you see, kind of just flows it around a lot more. 165
Happens quite a bit. 166
Nice, easy way to kind of fix those terrible joints. 167
I could fix this one, I don't want to in this case, because-- 168
but it's just an easier way than... 169
you've probably done it before... 170
and you've spent ages with the Pen Tool, and Anchors, and trying to delete bits... 171
Man, it's a pain. 172
So that's your handy tip. 173
Let's continue-- any other hard bits? 174
We're going to do the circle thing again here. 175
What other hard bits? 176
They're the same thing here with the Corner Options... 177
let's do that one next, before we do that. 178
So I'm going to draw-- I'm trying to match these two Ellipses roughly. 179
A bit bigger. 180
Something like that. 181
'Command C' for copy, 'Command F' for paste and place... 182
right on the top of that. 183
Make it a bit bigger, this curve. 184
That feels okay. 185
Select both of these guys, 'Shift M'. 186
I'm going to minus that bit, minus that bit... 187
join these guys here, join you. 188
Get rid of that bit, join these. 189
If you've forgotten the shortcut already, sorry about that... 190
it is 'Alt' for PC, and "Option' for Mac, to minus. 191
Otherwise it just works by joining. 192
I'm going to grab our 'Arrow Tool'... 193
and down here, I'm going to click on just this point, and I'm going to tidy that up. 194
You can see, how nice... 195
you can see a perfect circle, look at that, handy. 196
Same thing is going to apply to this. 197
We're going to draw that with the Curvature Tool. 198
Let's draw-- this is probably the last thing... 199
that would be useful for you before I start actually just filling it in. 200
I'm going to grab my Curvature Tool. 201
Now Curvature Tool has a really weird shortcut, I use it all the time. 202
It's a really hard one to learn, it's Shift and Apostrophe. 203
I think it's Apostrophe, I think that's what you call it... 204
if you hover above that... 205
it is Shift plus that little tricky thing, I'm pretty sure that's Apostrophe. 206
So, Shift and that. 207
I'm going to draw through it... 208
because if I get close to this, it's going to try and join it. 209
Remember that shortcut we had before, if I select it with my 'Black Arrow'... 210
and go 'Command 2', it locks it, if you're on a PC, it's 'Control 2'. 211
Now I can go back to my Curvature Tool, and I can click once there. 212
And I'm going to click once there. 213
I'm probably just going to go through... 214
I'm not going to do this at one go, I'll cut this out with a circle. 215
So I'm going to about there, then I want to go down to about... 216
you can see, it's locked, but I can still follow that path, which is really nice. 217
So, about there. 218
We totally missed it though, let's bring him down. 219
Yes, it's a bit good. 220
'Black Arrow', click it from the background. 221
I'm going to unlock them all. 222
Sometimes my shortcut doesn't work, so 'Object', 'Unlock All'. 223
They're all unlocked, I can select him, 'Shift M'. 224
Actually I donât really need to, like... 225
change him. 226
If I click on him, at least he's another shape now... 227
if I grab my 'Black Arrow'... 228
this guy here is a separate shape, so I can color it later, I might just do that now. 229
Don't worry about this little speckly line. 230
We'll do that in a sec, actually we'll just do that now. 231
So he's part of this thing here. 232
So what ends up happening is, the line's trying to go through here... 233
it doesn't know at all, when it's going to the edge, it's going like... 234
all the way out, and all the way bent to give it a nice pointy edge. 235
If you don't want that... 236
I don't really mind it at the moment... 237
because I'm probably going to get rid of the Stroke, but you might not. 238
So with it selected, go to 'Properties', go to 'Stroke'... 239
and you got options along here for the way the corners are handled. 240
At the moment, it's got this kind of mighty joint, which is this spiky thing. 241
I can round that off, which just be nice... 242
or I can kind of bevel it off, which gives it a hack at the end. 243
It's hard to tell. 244
You have to zoom right in, and use this tool to see what happens... 245
but have a play around with them, see which one will work for you. 246
Let's tidy up a few bits and pieces. 247
Let's draw the little thing here. 248
I'll use my shortcut, 'Shift-Apostrophe'. 249
Remember, double click for a corner, click once for a curve. 250
Click once for a curve, double click for corner, click once for curve. 251
Click once for a curve. 252
Click once for a curve, and then, actually... 253
you really want to hit double click for a corner. 254
That's just one click to kind of finish this thing off. 255
Am I happy with it? 256
Yes, so now it's turning the background layer on and off. 257
That's good enough. 258
Let's slice out the circles. 259
I'll use you, I'll duplicate him, and I'll use the same one across here. 260
Now duplication is, 'Black Arrow'... 261
and while I'm dragging it... 262
holding down the 'Alt' key on a PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac. 263
Now the Smart Guides is battling with me. 264
I'll just tap it up with my arrow key. 265
Select all of you guys, 'Shift M'. 266
I'm going to say, I would like to join you guys up. 267
And I want to hold down... 268
the 'Option' key on my Mac, or the 'Alt' key on a PC... 269
to delete all these guys. 270
Now there's a couple of things, this thing's going up the top here. 271
I feel like I want to go and redo it, so that... 272
because it's still not what I said, it's kind of not lining up. 273
So I want to go back and look like a professional... 274
and know exactly what I'm doing... 275
but I'm going to leave it in here... 276
because you might run into the same problem. 277
How to fix this? No idea... 278
but we're going to just try and make it do again. 279
So I just selected both of them, gone back to my Shape Builder Tool. 280
Join them up. 281
You can kind of see, it still wants to be two separate shapes. 282
I'm not sure what that is. 283
'Command Y'... 284
now he's in there, he's looking good. 285
I don't know. 286
Now let's ignore that for the moment... 287
and we'll go color this thing and see if it runs into any more problems. 288
Let's do this circle here. 289
Goes down the center. 290
I turned these off way too early. 291
If you're doing yours, and following along, don't turn this off early... 292
because I have to move my curves up around. 293
It's all right, remember, 'Command Y' to go to outline. 294
And we're just going to get this to-- 295
Now, I'm going to leave that little bump in there... 296
to show you how to fix that. It's a cool way of doing it. 297
So, 'Command Y', 'Shift M'... 298
almost done the same thing. 299
Interesting. 300
So what I want to do is tidy these up, so I'm going to grab my 'Pen Tool'... 301
and there's a couple of corners I want to get rid of. 302
I'm going to go back to my 'Outline View'. 303
'Command Y', or 'Control Y' on a PC. 304
I want to get rid of these guys. 305
So, with the 'Pen Tool', nothing selected... 306
it's got the minus '-', just kind of does it by itself. 307
I don't want to get rid of that one... 308
because he controls a lot of this, I'm going to get rid of you. 309
Now we've got a problem of this kind of flowing along here. 310
The easiest way to do it, is grab the 'White Arrow', click on this guy. 311
He has a handle at this side... 312
but he has nothing on the other side, so the easiest way, what it does is... 313
a tiny little handle there, can't really see. 314
So with it selected, I'm going to go to-- is it a curve already? 315
I'm going to say, "Be a curve." 316
You can see, it kind of extends that little guy out... 317
and has it made it perfect? Not quite. 318
I might have to do some manual adjustment. 319
Often that little-- just make it a curve, we'll just fix it right up. 320
I'm going to say I'm happy enough with it. 321
I might have to play around with the handles. 322
This tutorial is getting really long now, so I'm going to leave it. 323
Let's do a couple more of these... 324
then I'll go and fix this by myself, and come back. 325
Actually I'll do that now, let's see if it's working one last time... 326
and then I'll pause and try fix it, and give you the ?? 327
So you two, join. 328
You're still separate, join. 329
Still separate. 330
I'm going to pause it now, I'll be back in a sec, figure it out. 331
It's got me stumped. 332
I'm just going to leave it there... 333
because you might run into the same problem. 334
I remember, when I drew it before-- 335
Might be just that version problem. 336
How bad? In your comments, let me know. 337
Did you run into it, or is it just me? No, just me, or leave it. 338
If it's for everybody I'll contact Adobe, and we'll try figure it out together. 339
Let's look at finishing the last little bits off. 340
So I'm back from the future. 341
I couldn't work it out when I was originally fixing this video... 342
and I got in touch with Adobe to help me. 343
And made me look like a fool, but I'm back, humble pie-- 344
these two things are still separate, remember, I had that problem. 345
All it is, is the options in your Shape Builder Tool. 346
If you double click it, you get this option... 347
it was on Gap Detection 'Large'. 348
I was messing around with that on some other project... 349
and I left it along. 350
Turns out it causes that problem. 351
So change Gap Detection 'off', click 'OK'. 352
Yours is not going to have this problem by the way, probably just mine. 353
But now with it selected, I can go back to my Shape Builder Tool... 354
and everything should be good. 355
Nice! 356
I already have both of these selected. 357
We still have a problem. 358
So now they're joined, and they stop being separate. 359
One thing you'll also notice that I turned back on,... 360
was, if I double click, I turned this off previously. 361
This thing here, where it says... 362
Cursor Swatch Preview. 363
Turn it off because it's annoying, it's the thing just above the cursor. 364
See that, if I double click it again it shows me the coloring just above it. 365
I find that a little bit annoying, so I turned it off. 366
We'll turn it back on now. 367
Continue watching Dan floundering. 368
But there's some good tips in there, continue watching... 369
and now we'll learn. 370
All right, back to your regular scheduled programming. 371
We'll do this bit down here... 372
and actually what I'll do is reuse the shape. 373
So I'm going to drag this across here, we'll show you how I work, right? 374
I'm just going to slice this bit here using the 'Align Tool', select all of that. 375
My Shape Builder, goodbye; goodbye, you two, weirdos. 376
And I can get rid of these bits. 377
So I've got this thing, I'm going to-- 378
I should have officially gone in, like, use the proper flip... 379
but I just often do this. 380
I know, you shouldn't, but, flip it across. 381
I'm going to shift all these curves, who's going to know? 382
You all are going to know, you're watching. 383
Put it on a little bit smaller. 384
Maybe make it a bit bigger. 385
I'm messing about, we can fix that curve, right? 386
So select both of these guys, 'Shift M'... 387
and I'm going to drag across there, across there... 388
and grab the 'White Arrow', come down to here... 389
and say, you my friend need to be just a bit nicer. 390
Grab the Target, not the Anchor Point. 391
Just trying to flatten it out. 392
Now if you find it doesn't flatten out really well... 393
you can see, there's an Anchor Point there... 394
and there, they're both trying to do stuff. 395
So what I might do is... 396
this guy here doesn't seem to be doing a whole heck of a lot. 397
So I'm going to grab my 'Pen Tool'... 398
and by default it will just try and minus it, which is cool. 399
Now with my 'White Arrow', my 'Direct Selection Tool'... 400
now gives me a bit more of a nicer curve there. 401
All right, last little bit here, Curvature Tool. 402
Double click for a corner, click once for a curve... 403
click once for a curve, double click. 404
Click once for a curve, once for curve... 405
and the weird one, when you get back... 406
when you double click here, it does it wrong. 407
Just click it once to kind of finish the line. 408
And that's the weird little thing there. 409
Have I missed anything? Oh, this guy down here. 410
I'll join you guys up. 411
Turn it off, Layers. 412
I think it's like coloring time, and avoid these guys. 413
So let's do a couple of things. We're going to do some Gradient. 414
You might totally move on now, because I'm just going to color it in... 415
but you can watch if you like... 416
but I'm just going to color it in. 417
I'm going to turn the background 'off', because I don't need you anymore. 418
I am going to make another Layer. 419
Actually I'm not going to make a Layer, I'm going to... 420
you should put Layers in, right... 421
but I'm getting into the habit of just grabbing the Rectangle Tool... 422
and filling it with color, and locking it. 423
Super handy, that was super quick. Send it to the back. 424
Shortcuts to send to back is... 425
at the moment, it's way above my whale, right?... 426
but I can, with it selected, with pretty much any tool... 427
I can hold 'Command Shift' and hit the first of the square bracket '[' 428
So look at your keyboard, just next to P there's the first square bracket. 429
So that's 'Command-Shift-[' sends it all the way to the back. 430
If you're on a PC, it's 'Control-Shift-['. 431
And the second square bracket, ']' sends it to the front. 432
Back, forth, back, forth, all the way through. 433
So that's what I want. 434
I'm going to lock it using 'Command 2', or you can use 'Control 2' on a PC. 435
I'm going to stop giving the shortcuts. 436
You'll be going mad soon, but... 437
we'll do a lot of it later on, we've got lots of videos to go. 438
He's in the middle because that's where I want him to be. 439
I am going to give him some Fill colors. 440
I want to start by selecting, or just give it all the Fill. 441
Now I'm going to-- because it's basically only a couple of shapes... 442
I'm going to get rid of the Stroke... 443
and that's going to avoid my problem of joining along the top there. 444
It could be that ??, maybe. 445
These guys here, I'm going to do a lighter color. 446
Just some sort of lighter color. 447
This guy here is going to be the same color. 448
He's my Eye Dropper Tool, just to select from that. 449
And this guy here is going to be lighter too, just because. 450
Is it cool? Yes, it's all right. 451
One last thing I'm going to show you. 452
We'll put Gradients in this thing. 453
Good old Gradients. 454
So I'm going to draw a big kind of circle in the background. 455
It's just for show, right? It's just, I wanted to... 456
I want to pick 'black', actually I'll go to my Swatches... 457
I'll pick this one. 458
Maybe lower down the Opacity, it's just kind of, like a... 459
I guess a look that I want. I just want to kind of lower it down. 460
Send it to the back. 461
Send this guy to the back. 462
He's locked. 463
See, he's the come forward one. 464
What I could do now... 465
I just want to crop it so it's not hanging around the edge. 466
There's two ways of doing it, I can grab a 'Rectangle Tool'... 467
just drag it out. 468
Drag it to the edge properly, select both of them... 469
and hit 'Command 7', or if you're on a PC, 'Control 7'... 470
and that crops it, and that's cool but you end up with this kind of... 471
it's a cropped circle, and sometimes it runs into problems, right? 472
So I'll show you how to do it with the Shape Builder Tool. 473
You probably can imagine how this is going to work. 474
'Shift M' for the Shape Builder Tool, it's going to delete that bit... 475
and inside. 476
Now send him to the back. 477
That's kind of it for what I want to do with the whale. 478
And now if you have joined, and yours look different... 479
you can totally go in a different direction in terms of the flairs. 480
You could do the whole thing slightly different, and different colors... 481
but I'd like to see it, and I'd also like to find out... 482
if you had the same problems with the joining bits. 483
But yes, send me-- I'd like to see what you've done. 484
Either Instagram, Twitter... 485
or here on this platform... 486
there's an option for posting your projects. 487
All right, happy whale making... 488
not hunting.