Lately, my site has gone as feral as the animal pictured below. Which is somewhat intriguing. I mean, a site gone wild is a sight to behold. But my plan is to change that.
Today, I’m writing to announce two things: First, I finally finished my all-new Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced course for lynda.com. And second, while that course won’t go live until late November (about the time the U.S. members of this site celebrate how the Pilgrims ostensibly broke bread with the Indians before their progeny thought, no wait, let’s kill them), I have a special 6-day preview planned for you in just a couple of days.
In the meantime, we’re approaching my favorite holiday, Halloween. And I celebrate it with an outline of the forthcoming Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced course. Which is Halloweeny indeed:
Chapter 13, Live Trace.
In this first chapter, we trace some hand-drawn letters and create a pirate flag. You’ll learn how to make the latter starting on Friday.
Chapter 14, Gradients and the Gradient Tool.
Here’s where the cat enters the picture. Only here’s a better picture. The eyes comprise four overlapping gradients.
Chapter 15, Blends and Masks.
Things become downright goulish during my discussion of blends and masks, two of the most ancient but powerful features in all of Illustrator.
Chapter 16: Repeating Tile Patterns.
This chapter tells you how to create objects that precisely interlock with each other. What M.C. Escher could do with pen and ink, you can do even better in Illustrator.
Chapter 17: Live Paint and Intersecting Objects.
Anytime that one object crosses another, or a single object crosses itself, Live Paint is the answer.
Chapter 18: Advanced Type Effects.
Based on a character suggested by a friend, this is easily my goofiest sample file. But it yields some awesome, multi-dimensional results.
Chapter 19: Advanced Color and Harmonies.
Once packaged as Live Color, this collection of color features ranks among Illustrator’s (and Adobe’s) best. Illustrator not only makes it possible to recolor your artwork, it suggests what colors you should use.
Chapter 20: Symbols.
Illustrator’s symbol tools are enormous time savers. Unless you’ve tried out the symbolism tools, which are a bit broken in CS5. I explain uses and workarounds in this chapter.
Chapter 21: Illustrator and Photoshop.
In this chapter, I show you how to place, link, and embed images in Illustrator. I also share practical ways to combine the power of two of the most awesome graphics applications on the planet.
Chapter 22: Using Transparency.
There is perhaps no more flexible or worrisome feature than transparency. Only the truth is, it’s very safe. In this chapter, I show you how to make the most of transparency and guarantee terrific output.
That leaves just one more Illustrator course to go, Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Mastery. I’ll let you know all about it when I finish recording the series next month.
Awesome….Can’t Wait for
Awesome….Can’t Wait for that!!!
Black Seals ... White Reveals…!
Greaaaat! I’m looking
Greaaaat!
I’m looking forward to your training.
Martin
—-
http://blog.martindoersch.at
http://www.martindoersch.at
Help
Where can i ask a question?
me too
:-)
On transparency
I love that reflection effect (transformed extra fill). Mordy showed an even more interesting version in his Illustrator for the Web course where he added a mask to achieve fade-out look of the reflection. I’ve been thinking of, instead of having to add a separate object for masking, add another fill, transform, fill with B/W gradient, apply multiply blend mode through Transparency panel. If necessary “Convert to shape” can be used as one of the fx on that fill.
Gradients would work…
Alexei, gradients would indeed work for simple artwork. However, you would need to use an Opacity mask if you wanted to create reflections of a group of different-colored objects.
Mordy Golding
http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com
WOW Great Illustrator
I’m very pleased that you wrote this post.
Anywhere
Now that I’ve awoken from my coma, I’ll try to keep an eye out for questions.
There is no such thing
as darkness; only a failure to see.
Great!
Thanks for posting and sharing. It sounds wonderful!
Anybody know how to
I use Illustrator CS5 every day at work, my job involves making visuals of the various gift packaging , product box shots.
Basically eye candy to help with pitches to retailers, and to show what the product will look like before it goes into production.
The boss insists i have to make the visuals editable, and insists i use the shear tool, to achieve the 3d perspective look on my boxes.
She also insists i create everything in Illustrator only ..sucks.
Anyways id rather not use the shear tool, when i have access to CS5 perspective tool etc.. SO my question is:
With the shear tool I can easily distort a pixel based image ( jpg/png/tif)..
But how do I do the same with the new perspective tool..
It easily draws shapes and text onto the perspective plain but when i drop a clipping masked pic, or simply a jpg it dosent reconize it.
Am i doing something wrong here, or is this just not possible.
If you Deke or Mordy could shine some light on this be more than helpful for my day to day workflow..
Cheers;o)
Happy Halloween btway
Interlocking tile pattern in CS6
Hi,
I really enjoyed working through your spectacular Chapter 16: Repeating Patterns lessons, using CS5. While trying to recreate my effort in CS6, I’ve ran into a snag creating the swatch.
Thus far, the new, CS6 dialog box (Object > Pattern > Make) confounds me: Illustrator ignores the rectangle (bottom of stack, no stroke, no fill) that defines the pattern. Any suggestions about proper settings? Revised method?
I appreciate all of your great work! Thank you so much.
-bruce.
Appears to work with these settings
After playing around with editing the pattern, I’ve come up with these settings, which appear to provide the expected results:
Thank you,
bruce.