Intermediate Adobe Illustrator CS3 welcome & course outline (2009)

Editor's Notes

1. Shift back and forth between the playground document to test tools/techniques and the main illustration you are creating. ADDITIONAL TOPICS TO ADD: understanding specific functions of the bounding box Editing groups in Isolation Mode setting preferences templates getting help and searching google
2. Please bring up your flash drive so that your workshop files can be updated!
3. introductions and administrivia what is illustrator? rasters vs vectors overview of the interface, including bridge viewing and navigation extremely quick toolbox overview
4. Have students open the .pdf file on their own screens. Use adobe bridge to open a complex illustration from the examples folder. ALSO use a playground document to make examples.
5. go back and forth between simple playground experiments and drawing a goal. Pen Tool follow pen tool exercises.ai. make sure to have students save as into their saved work folder so that we can use this later in the path manipulations exercises. AFTER NEXT SLIDE: I like the idea of drawing over something as a tracing image? Ctrl-click to end a path!
6. playground: make sure to experiment with brushes and colors. go back to pen tool playground, and practice applying brushes to the different paths created there. Eyedropper: using shift will lift only the active attribute do the tracing image exercise after you do this playground. try london bridge .jpg this london bridge was built in 1831 and moved to arizona in 1968 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_bridge#.22New.22_.2819th_century.29_London_Bridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_(Lake_Havasu_City)
7. how about a pen tool review with a new challenge?
8. The difficult part here is getting the circles in the correct order. When drawing new circles, it is best to first determine the circle on top of which you will be drawing, then label that path, then draw the new circle.
9. Use multiple documents for examples: 1) Use the original tony-poh from the example files folder. 2) From scratch create the circles-into-lace illustration. Eyedropper: using shift will lift only the active attribute Magic Wand: To create a new selection, click the object containing the attributes you want to select. All objects with the same attributes that were clicked are selected. Do one of the following to open the Magic Wand panel: Double-click the Magic Wand tool in the Tools panel. Choose Window > Magic Wand. CIRCLES-INTO-LACE 1) draw the three circles 2) use the appearance palette to set a THICK double stroke for the inner circle 3) use the eyedropper to copy this to the other circles THEN, THREE MANIPULATIONS 1) select control handles only, use resize tool 2) rotate next circle 45 degrees, select control handles only, use resize tool 3) quadruple the number of anchor points, select control handles only, use resize tool FINALLY, CREATE A COMPOUND PATH: Object: Compound Path: Make
10. In combination with previous slide, from scratch create the circles-into-lace illustration. CIRCLES-INTO-LACE 1) draw the three circles 2) use the appearance palette to set a THICK double stroke for the inner circle 3) use the eyedropper to copy this to the other circles THEN, THREE MANIPULATIONS 1) select control handles only, use resize tool 2) rotate next circle 45 degrees, select control handles only, use resize tool 3) quadruple the number of anchor points, select control handles only, use resize tool FINALLY, CREATE A COMPOUND PATH: Object: Compound Path: Make
11. Have students open file(s): Bedlam.ai Crystal.ai Ruffmouse.ai Hiding tools: tab vs. shift-tab
12. easy tracking, kerning, and leading with Alt arrows just do the headlines on ancient puebloans.ai
13. 1) create a simple pen tool curve playground for text along a path. zoom out to find the adjustment handles. 2) practice attaching text on a circle in the playground before moving into ancient puebloans.ai duplicate the circle , because once you attach text to it, it disappears!  annoying use Alt to activate text on a path. click on the very top of the circle . set the alignment to center . begin typing. text appears upside-down on the bottom of the circle. once you place text on a circle, it becomes impossibly difficult to edit, so get it right the first time!  annoying Use Type on a Path Options to FLIP, ASCENDER demonstrate how the text bounding box control handles affect the placement of the text. use the character palette “baseline shift” set to a negative value to float the text below the circle 3) repeat these same steps in ancient puebloans.ai. hide the hand objects and lock down the duplicate circle. before you attempt the text wrap, unlock al the paths in the logo and GROUP. place the text layer just below this group. select Object: Text Wrap: Make if you run into any problems getting the text to wrap around the complete object, a work-around would be to create an additional invisible circle, and wrap the text around it.
14. easy tracking, kerning, and leading with Alt arrows “Greek” text
15. These additional manipulations can be demonstrated on ellipse shapes in a playground document. For each tool, press ALT before using the tool, to change its size and shape. Look at “reshaping tool gallery” in adobe help for examples of how they work
16. You will want to give them a choice between: “ additional reshaping tools” applied to text live trace glass effect / reflection
17. you can use the london bridge document to create a simple opacity mask with the transparency palette. creating a glass effect object 1) first you must understand how gradients work 2) then you must understand how transparency/opacity masks work. (you cannot simply set a gradient stop to transparent like you can in Flash!) you will have to use an Alt click to select the object on the layer and not the layer itself.
18. Edit: Keyboard Shortcuts …
19. ASK: When resampling images, you can “upsample” or “downsample.” Which is the one you want to avoid as much as possible?