Creating Complex Graphics by Combining and Editing Basic Shapes in Illustrator

Let's see more about combining fundamental shapes or basic shapes into more complicated ones and editing them to create some interesting graphics. I'm going to open up a file that's provided as part of the Illustrator class files. It's going to be for exercise 1D, so I'm going to open this up.

And this is the cloud that we created in an earlier exercise. If we look in outline mode, this uses the circle shapes and the rectangles, and kind of combines them together into this cloud shape, but it is made up of those individual shapes. And we can kind of go a little bit further along in this.

Let me command plus to zoom in, control plus on Windows. I want to add a lightning bolt. Now, with a lightning bolt, imagine this being kind of a diagonal line that kind of zigzags and comes to a point.

So it's kind of like a rectangle, but it's been skewed or slanted. I'm going to use a rectangle tool to do this, but right now I'm already kind of loaded up with this blue color, but you don't always have the appearance that you want preselected. So I'm going to click the default fill and stroke just to show you that if I use my rectangle tool right now, it would use whatever my fill and stroke are.

But I want to match this fill and stroke, so I'm going to delete this. And all I have to do is just click on one of these, and it loads up that fill and stroke, in this case, no stroke. So all I have to do is just click on any one of these.

It doesn't matter which one. It loads up that appearance. And then the next thing that I create will have that appearance.

And I can drag out this kind of part of my lightning bolt. Now, rectangles essentially are four corner points. And I can see these corner points if I use the direct selection tool.

The direct selection tool works differently from the regular selection tool. The regular selection tool is for moving entire objects. It moves all of the points that make up that object.

The direct selection tool goes into an object and allows you to work with individual points in that object. So here, if I click off of the object, notice when I hover over, there will be individual points that will appear. I can also click on the object, and I can see these points.

Now it's very important to note the difference between a selected point, which is a solid blue, and a deselected point, a point that is not selected, which is white. So if I hold shift and click on another point, notice those two bottom points are selected. I can also drag over those points to select them.

And what happens is if I move an individual point, notice I can move that one point without moving the others. So let me undo. So the idea here is that the selection moves all the points.

And the direct selection tool, if you click on a point, you can move that individual point. Or if I click on the line, I can actually drag the line, which moves both of the points that are attached to that line, which is actually what I want to do in this case, is to kind of move this over. And maybe if I want this to be a little bit thicker at the top or a little thinner at the bottom, I can adjust those as well.

So that gives me kind of direct access that I can drag a line. And if you don't want it to move up and down or in a certain direction, if you hold shift, you will move in that same direction. So here I'm dragging, holding shift, and it moves only in that one direction that I'm dragging.

So here, for example, if I just want to move it up and down, I can hold shift just to move it up and down. So that lets you take a fundamental rectangle shape and create something a little more interesting from it. I can then copy this by option dragging or alt dragging on Windows.

And I'm going to have a little bit of overlap because I want to create the zigzag for this lightning bolt. But while I do like the same kind of general diagonal, I want this to come to a point. So I don't want this point right here.

I want to get rid of that point. And if I show you the outline mode right now, notice that we can see that the outline goes around. And I want to get rid of this particular point.

Now, the pen tool, as we're going to learn more about later, allows you to create your own custom shapes and create your own custom paths. And there is a specific delete anchor point tool in here to delete those anchor points, which is what we call those points. But also, the pen has an auto-added delete feature that, if I simply select the pen tool, hover over a point, then I can remove that point.

So with this path selected here, I'm going to come in with the pen tool. And when I hover over, I notice there will be a little minus. So I don't want to see the asterisk on the cursor.

I want to see the minus. And when I click, I can remove that anchor point. And by not having an anchor point, the idea of these paths is that they will connect from one point to another.

And so if you simply remove a point, it gets rid of it. Vice versa, if you added a point, so let's say I go over an area that doesn't have a point, then I'll get a plus, and I could click to create that point. Then I could use my direct selection tool to move that point.

And now I have another place where I can change that line. So in this case, I want to remove it. So I will go to my pen tool, and I will remove that.

That's different than hitting delete on your keyboard. So I'm going to use this tool to remove it, but not hitting delete on my keyboard. Now I'm going to go back to preview mode, switch back to my direct selection tool, and I'm going to move this out of the way.

And then I can adjust this and make changes as necessary until I'm happy with the lightning bolt that I've created. If I want to make this thinner, I can make it thinner by grabbing the edge until I get what I like. If I want to move the middle points, but not the top and the bottom, I can drag a selection over those middle points and then drag.

And you're just moving the middle points. You're not moving the top and the bottom. So you can adjust where that lies.

If you want to adjust this part over here, I can drag a selection over those and just move those points as well. Nice. If you want to move the whole thing without moving individual points, again, use the selection tool.

And then I can move all of that without having to worry about accidentally changing one individual point. I think I'm pretty happy with that. And let's move on to another example here of creating things using basic shapes, but going a little bit beyond that.

I want to create a plug, and the plug is going to have the two prongs of the plug with a half circle on the bottom connecting those two prongs of an electrical plug. So for these, I need to draw my two rectangles for the prongs of the plug. So I'm going to use my rectangle tool and draw out a rectangle.

In the exercise, you'll use precise shapes by clicking and then typing in amounts. And the only reason we're doing that is just so you can replicate the same proportions that we're doing here. When you're doing this without the exercise, if you're just doing this in kind of normal drawing, you do not have to type in precise shapes unless you specifically want those.

And so let's say I create one of these prongs, and then I can option drag or alt drag on Windows to create another one. All right. Now, I want a half circle down below to connect these two prongs.

Now, I don't have a half-circle tool, but I do have a circle tool with the ellipse. I can use my circle tool by holding shift to create a perfect circle instead of just an oval. So I'm going to hold shift, and I think about how it looks good.

Now, I only want half of this. So there are multiple ways that I can create a half circle. And let me go through a couple of options here.

You might think of using that subtract point tool, because if I view this as outline mode here, right, these are just outlines. It's just paths. And if I use my direct selection tool, you can see the points and notice there's a point at the top.

Now, this is a curved point, and we'll talk more about curves later on, but these have handles that you can use to distort or change the curve. But there's still a point up here, and that lets you move that point to change that path that's there. If I were to remove that point, these points are still curved points.

So if I use the same technique that we just learned with the pen tool to remove the anchor point, we get something that is rounded on top, which is interesting. Maybe if you're creating like a drum or something, but not exactly what I'm looking for. I want a clean, straight line going across.

So let me undo that. I'm going to take a different approach. Instead, I'm going to delete the point using my delete key.

So I'm going to use my direct selection tool. I'm going to click on that anchor point right there and hit delete or backspace on my keyboard to actually sever that point and sever the line. Notice how I have an open line now.

And I do this in outline mode because I want you to see this. Because if I'm in preview mode, it still looks like it's a filled thing because there is a fill. But if I showed, let's say, a stroke, maybe I could add a black stroke just so you can see.

See how with a black stroke, you can better see that if you're doing like watermelon or something, this could be kind of interesting with the rind of the watermelon and then the filled red area. So I can have like green and red. This could be interesting.

But the idea here is if I did want that stroke to continue across, I literally kind of broke the line. And so it's not a filled shape anymore. This is now a line.

And you can see that better here. And so with lines, if you do have a fill on a line, you will still see that fill. It'll connect your starting point to your ending point.

And whatever that connection is, it'll just draw a straight line between them. But if you did actually want to connect those and reform this as a filled shape, not just an open-ended line, then I could join those two points together. So to do that, I can select my shape.

And since there are only two open points on that, I can say object path, and I can say join. And I'll join those open-ended lines. So if you were having a stroke, that obviously would make a visual difference.

If you're having a stroke, if you are not having a stroke, let's say there is no stroke here. So let's say I go in and say no stroke, then technically it doesn't really matter if you close it. If I go back to outline mode, though, you will see it as a closed shape.

So it depends on what you're doing as to whether you technically need to close it or not. But just something that we wanted to kind of explain the difference between deleting anchor points and removing anchor points with the pen tool. There can be differences between those.

I'm going to move this up here, and I want to make this a little bit bigger. As I size this up, I'm going to hold shift to keep it proportionally scaling, but I'm also going to add the option key on the Mac. So what happens here is normally as you're resizing something, notice how it kind of grows away from that point there.

But if I hold Option or Alt on Windows, when I resize, I notice how it sizes from the center. So it's that option key on the Mac or Alt on Windows that sizes from the center. Shift keeps it proportional, so I'm proportionally scaling from the center.

And I can choose a size that I think looks good for my plug. Now, I do want to make sure that this is perfectly centered on those prongs. I can select all of these, and I can use my alignment features.

Now, my alignment features will show up here. They can also show up if you don't have this there or don't have easy access. They also show up here in your properties panel.

And if I, let's say, choose center, all of the shapes are centered on each other. Which means those two prongs were centered on each other, which I don't want. So let me undo and go back.

Instead, what I want to do is group these two together first so they act as one object. So I'm going to say object group. Now that they are grouped together, they move and act like one thing.

Although I can double-click to go in. And now that I'm inside that group, I can adjust things individually. When I double-click to leave the group, they are still grouped.

So we double-click to go inside groups and edit things in groups. And then we double-click outside to leave the group. It still keeps the group.

Now that this is one thing and this is another thing, when I select those two and then center, they center to each other. But the prongs are still kept as a group. And I can put this like so to create the upper part of the prong.

Now, I do also want a cord down here. So I'm going to go into this group. I'm going to double-click to go in and copy one of these.

I'm going to double-click to leave the group and paste it outside of the group here. So this is now outside that group. And again, I want to line this up.

Now, Smart Guides will appear. If you have Smart Guides on. If you don't want Smart Guides, because sometimes they do get in the way and they start snapping to too many things, you can turn off your Smart Guides by going to View and then going down and turning off Smart Guides.

But in addition to using your Smart Guides, I can, again, select all of these three things and center them to each other. If I wanted to shorten the prongs here, I could also select them. And as a group, I can make them a little bit shorter.