Illustrator [Ai] Skills Show and Tell; Graphic 1
The first thing I did for the silhouette graphic was create a small photoshop image with a mashup of themed images that I liked. This would be the image to trace over in Illustrator.
I also had the same reference image with expected anchor points on it;
I intend to use this reference to create a cool silhouette image using both the text, the icon and the character as focal points.
In Illustrator, the first thing that I did was create a path around the Man, first along the outside, and then in each of the cutout sections within that first path.
I then combined those three paths into one compound path before filling it with white solid colour.
The next bit that I did was the Rune in the middle, this wasn’t as complicated as I could create one simple shape and duplicate it for most of the entire thing. To do so I created a circle, then put another slightly warped ellipse in the middle. I then also created a compound path to fill it in with white solid colour.
The last bit to do was the title before I could colour in the background. This bit was slightly complicated as there were a lot of different types of anchor points involved, but ultimately it wasn’t that bad.
The final Image came out looking much better than I was expecting actually. Despite being quite confident I was still surprised that a lot of the lines were exactly how I wanted them on the first try. There was only a small amount of adjustments to be made.
Here is the final image in monochrome;
And my personal favourite, here is the coloured background variation;
Afterward Toby came to look at what I’d done and he pointed out the Stroke Menu, which you can use to edit lots of features on the lines that you draw.
Shown below is the Stroke window, where you can change the different styles of corners, caps on the ends of lines, and even how you align the stroke to the path. This can change a lot of stuff about the line looks. It definitely would’ve come in handy in the sections on the end of the cape, these parts were a bit annoying as they kept rounding themselves.
Toby also showed me the Width Tool. This tool allows you to select a region on a line and expand/shrink the thickness of the stroke to your liking. This has a lot of application in creating fancier lines etc. I definitely could’ve used this in the Rune instead of the technique that I used with circles.
Overall I really enjoyed the first part of this project, and I thought it went really well.
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Current Software Skill Rating :
Windows : 10
MacOS : 9
Photoshop : 9
Illustrator : 9