Illustrator: A few requests
04/07/08 18:01 Filed in: Illustrator
Hit there
2. Click OK and then head over to Object> Expand Appearance, as ever very important this one. Now hit Apple-F to paste the copied object in front of the rounded corner. Reduce the height and then bring out the Pathfinder palette. With both objects selected alt-click the Add To Shape Area button. Half way there already...
3. Now hit Apple-F to paste in front again. This time reduce the width of the pasted object. Now repeat the same process with the Pathfinder palette.
4. Task completed. If you feel like tidying things up you might use the Pen tool to clean up the spare anchor points that have been created.
Now for the second exercise. I don't know what you would call this particular shape, if a name exists for it at all. This was requested by someone who contacted me from Thailand. Hello there if you're watching.
1. Start with another square or rectangle. This time head over to Object> Envelope Distort> Make With Warp... Choose the Arc Upper shape and round off the object to your liking.
2. Go to Object> Expand. Now draw a vertical line with the Line Tool and align both objects to the centre of the artboard.
3. Now select both objects and hit Divide in the Pathfinder palette. Ungroup the resultant objects and delete the one you don't require.
I don't quite know what exactly you would use this shape for, but this is what was requested.
Once again, sorry for the simplicity of today's outing. I'll make sure that the next one makes you sweat a little.
I'm responding to a couple of requests today, so the following exercises are probably going to be a little too simple for a lot of people. Sorry.
The first request was from a pupil in London. She wanted to produce an object with only one rounded corner. Should be simple, shouldn't it? But try as she might, she couldn't do it. Illustrator, you see, ain't Freehand, I'm afraid. And even though Adobe have paid good money to purchase the venerable vector old timer from Macromedia, the ability to customise rounded corners independently is a feature that is yet to be added to Illustrator's fairly substantial toolset.
So here we go:
1. Create a square or rectangle and centre it to the artboard (as I always do). Now copy the object for later use and go to Effect> Stylize> Rounded corners... Turn on preview and use the up and down arrows to intuitively round the corners.
2. Click OK and then head over to Object> Expand Appearance, as ever very important this one. Now hit Apple-F to paste the copied object in front of the rounded corner. Reduce the height and then bring out the Pathfinder palette. With both objects selected alt-click the Add To Shape Area button. Half way there already...
3. Now hit Apple-F to paste in front again. This time reduce the width of the pasted object. Now repeat the same process with the Pathfinder palette.
4. Task completed. If you feel like tidying things up you might use the Pen tool to clean up the spare anchor points that have been created.
Now for the second exercise. I don't know what you would call this particular shape, if a name exists for it at all. This was requested by someone who contacted me from Thailand. Hello there if you're watching.
1. Start with another square or rectangle. This time head over to Object> Envelope Distort> Make With Warp... Choose the Arc Upper shape and round off the object to your liking.
2. Go to Object> Expand. Now draw a vertical line with the Line Tool and align both objects to the centre of the artboard.
3. Now select both objects and hit Divide in the Pathfinder palette. Ungroup the resultant objects and delete the one you don't require.
I don't quite know what exactly you would use this shape for, but this is what was requested.
Once again, sorry for the simplicity of today's outing. I'll make sure that the next one makes you sweat a little.
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