Software:Adobe Illustratordifficulty: beginnerscreencast length: 5m 49S
A reader asked how he would cut the outside his area the objects. There is no crop tool in Adobe Illustrator, but there are a few ways to remove or hide excess shapes that overlap at the edge of the Artboard - if you want to. In this screencast we show you four methods: Pathfinder, clipping mask, opacity masks and marquee delete.
Vector illustration used in this screencast is at GraphicRiver available.
Software:Adobe Illustrator & posedifficulty: advancedcompletion time: 3 HoursThanks to support the website, feel free to download of the ZIP file for this Tutorial.Quelldateien for this tutorial are available to premium members.In this tutorial of tuts + premium learn step by step process of using Poser create by reference, as based on a superhero in Adobe Illustrator is used to Illustrator. If you are searching your skills to the next level then log in or register now to get started!
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The first time you open Inkscape, it may take a while to finally discover gradients. When you do, they can be rather overwhelming and confusing at first. Check out this quick tip to learn some tricks with Inkscape’s gradients, Gradient Editor, and Gradient Tool. While I’m using linear gradients in this tutorial, the same principals apply to radial gradients.
This little tip allows you to apply a gradient on the fly. Originally, you’d have to open up Fill and Stroke and set the Fill to a linear or radial gradient to your object.
To demonstrate, just draw a square with some sort of color. Then, select the Gradient Tool.
Now with the Gradient Tool selected, just double-click on the object to apply a gradient. Easy enough!
When you make a gradient in the Gradient Editor, it stays in that little drop-down menu. You can apply this same gradient to as many objects as you’d like.
So if you go to edit that gradient, those changes will apply to every object with that gradient. Even if those objects are not selected. Below, you’ll see that I just changed one of the stop colors, which was applied to both of the objects with that gradient.
While this can be very helpful, sometimes you just don’t want the changes to apply to every object with that gradient (perhaps you’d like to make just a very small adjustment to just one object).
The solution is to select the Gradient Tool and click the object that needs adjusting. This brings up nodes for each stop of the gradient, which can then be selected individually and changed using Fill and Stroke. This method does not alter the original gradient, instead it creates an entirely new gradient with your changes.
To add more colors in your gradient, you need to add more stops. Open that Gradient Editor and click Add stop. You’ll notice that you now have three stops in the drop-down box. You can as many of these as you want and change the color of each.
With more than two stops, you now have the Offset option available. The offset simply changes an inner-stop’s position, as you can see below.
It’s worth noting there are some handy hotkeys for when you’re working with gradients. You may find it quicker and easier to use these:
Hold Control while dragging nodes to snap the angle.Hold Control + Alt to maintain the original angle while dragging nodes.Hold Control + Shift to move around the center point while dragging nodes.
The Repeat drop-down box is located right under the Edit button when you select a gradient fill. Here’s what they do:
Repeat: none means that when the ends of your gradient are exposed, they’ll just keep those end colors and repeat them until the end of time.
Repeat: reflected will instead keep reflecting the alternating directions of your gradient when the ends are exposed.
Repeat: direct will just keep repeating your gradient exactly how it is until it fills the entire area.
You can apply gradients to strokes just the same as you can to the fill. Once you apply a gradient to the Stroke paint, you might notice that you now have two gradient sliders on your object. This is a great thing, because you can now use these to adjust both the fill and stroke paint gradients independently (shown below).
We’ve went over six pretty cool tips on using gradients in Inkscape. Gradients are an amazing feature that should never be passed up, so hopefully this should be enough to get you started in the world of gradients. Thanks for reading!
In this tutorial I would like to show you a few techniques on how to create the long shadow effect seen in recent design trends. Feel free to read along and choose which one best suits your design needs.
With a document of your size created let’s begin by selecting the Rounded Rectangle Tool and create a rectangle of any size and radius of your choosing. I’ll be using the information outlined below.
To make things simple I’ll be using text to create the effect but these techniques can be applied to any shape you have for your icon. I’ve added the text below with the following settings.
With our text still selected navigate to the Appearance panel (Window > Appearance) and click the Add New Fill option from the bottom of that panel window. Be sure to click-drag the newly created fill below the “Characters” line to it appears behind the text itself. At this point it won’t appear as if much has happened.
This is where the magic happens. Select the Fill line and then click Add New Effect from then bottom of the panel window and choose Distort & Transform > Transform and enter the following settings. You can then drop the Opacity of that fill to around 12% or where ever you feel comfortable.
As you can see, we’re creating multiple copies of the fill then nudging it over and down 1 pixel so it repeats smoothly creating our flat shadow. Unfortunately the shadow now appears over the icon element we created earlier so let’s create a mask now.
Select the Rounded Rectangle and then Copy and Paste it in front of the text itself. With both the text and the top most rounded rectangle selected right-click on the Artboard and choose Make Clipping Mask. The extra shadow bits will now be hidden and you can go ahead and select the underlying Rounded Rectangle and add the same technique to create a shadow for that as well.
Set up your document as you did before and select the text once again. Copy and Paste your text behind the original (Command + C > Command + B) twice to create a total of three instances of your text. Now adjust the color to Black.
Select the bottom most copy and while holding Shift on the keyboard drag it down at a 45 degree angle so the edge of the text just hits the edge of the edge of the rounded rectangle. Now drop the Opacity to 0%.
Now select both the completely transparent text and the black opaque text then navigate to Object > Blend > Blend Options and enter as many Specified Steps as you wish. I’ll be sticking with 150 to give it a nice smooth transition.
You can now drop the overall Opacity of the blend to 12% then apply the masking steps from the first technique and duplicate this technique for the Rounded Rectangle as well.
This technique is similar to the last one. You will copy and paste the text twice behind the original and make a blend. However, there is no need to drop the opacity of the last copy.
With the blend created visit Object > Expand. This will release the blend to 150 individual shapes that will be selected. With these shapes still selected visit the Pathfinder (Window > Pathfinder) and select Unite. This will merge all the shapes into one.
With this newly created shape selected, enable the Gradient Tool (G) and create a black to transparent gradient that runs along a 45º angle. Then drop the overall opacity for this layer as well.
If you notice, after merging, there are quite a number of anchor points to this shape. Let’s go ahead and reduce these so our over all shape is clean.
Since our overall shape is quite simple and angular it would be easier to just zoom in on our shape and with the Pen Tool (P) visit View > Smart Guides and you can quickly click around the shape to recreate it. If you hold down the Shift key on your keyboard this will let you create straight or 45º lines with ease. Should you have a more complex shape or icon you are using this technique on you may wish to use other methods or reducing the anchor points.
Another quick method would be to enable the Direct Select Tool (A) and select the unwanted points then select Remove Selected Anchor Points in the Control panel.
You can mask off this shape as well and repeat the steps to create one for the Rounded Rectangle beneath it.
As you can see the first two are completely non-destructive and the text or icons can be updated or adjusted with ease. The last one takes a bit more effort but they all can be easily implemented and adjusted to suit your needs.
Software:Adobe InDesigndifficulty: beginnerscreencast length: 8m 54s
In this tutorial, you learn to wrap text in Adobe InDesign use different ways to make interesting interactions between your text and images. Martin Perhiniak will show you, how to define the edges of the text wrap detects edges, Photoshop paths and alpha channels with.
Program: Adobe IllustratorDifficulty: BeginnerEstimated Completion Time: 15 minutesIt seems in one of my previous tutorials, Create On-Trend Flat Type with a Nautical Theme in Adobe Illustrator, I struck a cord regarding my technique for adding shadows to text. In this quick tip I’d like to show you an alternative method for creating 100% vector shadows using the Appearance panel and and offset fills in Adobe Illustrator.
There is some debate over whether or not one should use the “Drop Shadow" Effect found under Stylize in the Effects menu, or if you should use a new Fill and Offset the fill to create your shadow. They both have their own merits and are both vector but it is believed that using a fill rather than the Drop Shadow is the proper method for creating shadows in Illustrator. Neither way is ‘wrong’ but I’ll show you both below and let you decide which you prefer.
To begin, select your text and navigate to the Appearance panel (Window > Appearance) and at the bottom select the “Add New Fill” button and change the color to something other than the main text color Now click-drag that new fill layer below the “Characters” text section in the Appearance panel so that fill will appear hidden.
With that new fill layer still highlighted in the Appearance panel, click the Add New Effect button at the bottom of the Appearance panel and select Distort & Transform > Transform.
When the Transform window appears you can use the Move options to adjust the position of this fill layer to suit your needs. You can also scale the fill and rotate it as well as flip it and create a series of copies of this same fill. For now however we’ll only be using the Move options as seen in the screenshot below.
Let’s go ahead and duplicate this Fill layer by clicking the Duplicate Selected Item button at then bottom of the Appearance panel. Then change the color of the fill so you can see the difference in the previous effect. Once done, click the Transform text under the fill layer in the Appearance panel and adjust it over another few pixels as seen below.
Go ahead and create another text object. Now navigate to the Appearance panel (Window > Appearance) and at the bottom select the Add New Effect button and select Stylize > Drop Shadow and enter the settings seen below. Notice with this method you only have the ability to Offset the X and Y axis, but you can also adjust the Opacity, as well as the Blending Mode, and even add a Blur. In the previous method these options would have to be addressed separately after the Fill was moved into place.
Next, go ahead and duplicate this Drop Shadow layer by clicking the Duplicate Selected Item button at then bottom of the Appearance panel while the Drop Shadow layer is highlighted. You will notice that once duplicated the Drop Shadow automatically offsets based on the position of the previous Drop Shadow. You can go ahead and change the color of this new Drop Shadow to give you a better understanding of what I’m talking about. In our previous method you would have to adjust the position manually.
Viewing both methods side-by-side reveals there are no visible differences. The only real difference is the amount of steps and options one has between the two methods.
In my eyes there is no wrong way to apply a Drop Shadow. Both methods have their own merits, it simply depends on how much control you wish to have over the shadow itself. Feel free to experiment with both methods and choose which ever one fits your projects needs.
Check out these other Quick Tips that show other techniques for adding shadows to your vector elements:
It is hard to compare male to female faces simply because each face is unique, but there are some features in the face that can make a male portrait look more masculine or a female portrait look more feminine. In this article we’re going to take a look at those features. You will be able to accentuate your drawing in those regions, so that the masculinity or femininity will become more prominent in the portrait.
Generally, men have longer and larger faces than women, but this doesn’t necessarily give you something to work with when it comes to drawing a very masculine or feminine portrait. What I find really helps where it concerns the face shape, is by drawing a male portrait with a square aspects to it. The cranium, as you can see in the diagram, has sharp corners as do the jawline and the neck line.
Whereas the female portrait has rounded curves wherever appropriate, to soften her features. The cranium is rounded, as are the cheeks and the neck line is curved rather than straightened.
Depending on what you are aiming to portray in your male or female portrait, for this article we want to look for the traits that accentuate either sex in their features. Eyebrows play a big role. It’s not impossible to draw a beautiful male or female portrait by giving a woman thick eyebrows or a man thin eyebrows. But there are common traits you’ll find in the male and female faces. Men tend to have thicker eyebrows as opposed to women.
As shown in the diagrams, you can see that I gave the male portrait far thicker eyebrows than the female portrait. You can accentuate male features further by drawing the eyebrows without curves, opting for sharp corners instead and to soften the face of the female more, you would give the eyebrows soft curves rather than sharp corners.
Side note: Keeping in mind that more women than men pluck their eyebrows, if for some reason you wished to draw a male model/actor, you’d draw the eyebrows very neat as they are likely to pluck them due to their job. Whereas if you are wishing to draw a more day to day male you’d see walking down the street, they are more likely not to do so, so drawing them with thick and ‘unshaped’ eyebrows would be the way to go.
For the eyes, the main thing that can make a female portrait more feminine, is by giving her long lashes that curl outwards, helping to give the impression of the eyes being bigger. You can make them more compact and darker to have it appear as though the woman is wearing mascara. For a male portrait on the other hand, keeping the lashes very short will help draw the eyes appear more masculine, sometimes I don’t draw any lashes at all. This might not work well when you’re executing a close up, but for anything where the eyes aren’t the main focus, I personally don’t give male characters any lashes at all to make them appear more masculine.
Another thing you can do to make eyes look more feminine, is to base the shape of an oval, whereas to give a more masculine effect, you can base the eyes off rectangular shapes. Again, for more feminine eyes, you want to draw rounded curves and for more masculine eyes, you can draw sharper corners and use straight lines.
Tricks to make a nose look more feminine would be to make any focus on the nose to a minimum, this is mainly so that the viewer looking onto the portrait would direct their focus on the eyes and lips. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t give a nose on a female portrait some character. The main thing that could be suggested would be to focus the details along the nostril shape and the tip of the nose, along with the nostrils, leaving the definition and depth of the bridge and ridge of the nose to a minimum.
This is the opposite with males when wanting to add a more masculine feel to the portrait. Use angular shapes and sharp edges create a more chiseled look.
The main way to shape cheek definition would be through the light source and how the shadow hits those areas, but you can add thin lines to show where the cheekbone would be. For a man you are more likely to draw the line of where the bottom edge of the cheekbone is, this will allow it to define the area where the cheek would shape the lower part of the face, giving it a sharp cutoff.
With the woman on the other hand, you want to keep the cheeks rounded and soft. So instead of accentuating the lower edge of the cheekbone, aim to detail the top part underneath the eye. You can do this below the lid so it appears as if she has very full cheeks, or you can create thin lines located closer to the temples on each side to define she has very long cheeks, giving the face a more open look.
The mouth can really help make a portrait more masculine or feminine. Depending on how realistic you want to draw your portrait, with men, you can sometimes leave out the upper lip entirely. I personally have stopped drawing the upper lip for male characters for a while now as it really helps remove the feminine air it could give. The male characters I draw are generally not very rough and overly masculine in their appearance, so their delicate features could have viewers wonder whether they were male or not. But when I started to draw them without upper lip definition, the question of whether they were male or female wasn’t raised anymore. My style is semi-realistic though, so a slight cartoon feel to the characters isn’t out of place.
For a more realistic look, you can give the indent centered between nose and mouth extra detailing so it helps clarify where the upper lip would start and give the bottom lip more detail. Otherwise, if you wish to draw the lips entirely but find it hard to make them appear masculine, what I find very effective is to give the male in the portrait a very thin upper lip. Another thing would be to give him a wide mouth. Since you’d be drawing quite a thin upper lip, you could lose focus on the mouth in the portrait due to this, but by making it wider, you’ll even out the loss of the upper lip definition.
What is great with drawing women is that, the moment the definition made on the upper lip is present, the mouth will have a more feminine air to it. Doesn’t matter if the lips are full, wide, small, thin, etc, giving the upper lip as much detail as the bottom and defining the indent between upper lip and nose, will instantly make a mouth appear more feminine in a portrait.
The chin and the jaw go hand on hand. Much like all other areas of a face, to make a face appear more masculine, you’d aim to draw a very strong jawline and square chin, whereas to make a face appear more feminine, you’d want to aim for soft curves and rounded edges, avoiding sharp corners and straight lines. For a more masculine feel, allowing a lot of focus and detail to go in the chin and jaw, would be very important, but to obtain a more feminine feel, you’ll want to keep the focus on the jawline and chin to a minimum.
So far we have been making the male features very sleek and sharp. The jawline and chin wouldn’t have to be. They can be a bit rougher and prominent as those two areas will be one of the main things that will help make a portrait more masculine. The moment you give a male portrait a small, none prominent chin and no definition in the jaw line, the other details added to the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth won’t be as effective.
This goes for a female portrait as well, no matter how well you worked on the feminine air for the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth, once you give the portrait a strong jawline and a prominent chin, it won’t necessarily cancel out the other areas, but they will lose focus.
As an experiment, try swapping the jaw line and chins on either sex and see how it changes the overall feel of the portrait.
As shown above, when swapping the jaw lines on the portraits the masculinity and femininity do as well. Naturally the first thing you’d want to do is give the male portrait an Adam’s apple. Even by drawing a small line to define it, you’ll notice a large difference. If you were to draw an Adam’s apple on a female portrait and touch up the jawline just by a small amount and lessen the feminine feel to the features by, for example, removing the eyelashes and giving the upper lip less definition, people viewing the portrait will wonder whether the face is that of a man or a woman.
By sharpening the corners on the overall facial features and drawing an Adam’s apple definition, the once female portrait now appears more masculine. Another thing that can really help pronounce masculinity or femininity is by giving female portraits long and thin necks and male portraits shorter and thicker necks.
The most obvious way to make a portrait look more masculine, would be to add facial hair of course. Even a five o’clock shadow can do the trick without actually needing to draw any hairs. If the facial features are prominently masculine, giving a male portrait longer hair won’t take that away. Same goes for a female portrait with a shorter hair cut even though it is often associated with masculine hair cuts, tomboy aspect.
The hairline for a man is further back than a woman, giving the appearance of a larger forehead. The hairline is also more rounded for a female which further reduces the appearance of the forehead.
For men, no matter where the light source is coming from, giving the shadow sharper edges and more of a square aspect, will help add extra definition to the straight lines and sharp corners you’ve drawn for the lines. With women, quite like the line work, you want to soften the shadows along the edges, giving it a smoother look rather than harsh and rounding out the edges and corners to help soften the face further.
For men, highlighting the edge of the draw will help draw attention to that area, whereas you’d want to highlight the cheekbones for the women so it clears the cheeks and opens up the eyes.
The portraits I made for this article were as generic as possible without pushing the traits I pointed out to far so that you can see that even drawing subtle accentuation in these features can help make a face look more masculine or feminine. Here are the same faces, but with everything mentioned above made much more prominent to show you how far you can push it.
Adding wrinkles are definitely the main thing to make a face appear older. The main areas would be the forehead, corners of the eyes and the surrounding area of the mouth. By drawing only wrinkles, but keeping the face shape the same as you initially had it, will simply give the portrait a more mature aspect. If you wish to make a portrait look older, the face shape changes and the bone structure underneath the skin becomes more visible.
The features in a face that change most prominently throughout the years are the jaw, nose, ears and mouth. As you can see in the diagram, I drew the skin over those areas with a less tight aspect to them. The noses are bigger, as they keep growing as we age and the eyes are slightly tilted downwards in the outer corners. Another, quite like the nose, would be the ears. While you can leave the top of the ear as it is, making the lobe of the ear ‘droop’ downwards will add more age to the portrait.
Another thing that helps make a face more aged, is by thinning out the hairline and eyebrows.
To make a portrait look younger, you will want to do the opposite of making one look older. You want to avoid drawing definition lines as much as possible and for both male and female, everything has a rounder and softer aspect. Cheeks are more puffy and the jawline is softened. To make sure you don’t lose the similarity of the adult portrait, you can keep the chin the same as it is, only changing the jawline.
Another thing that helps make a face look younger is by allowing the eyes to be bigger, as well as the mouth. Whereas you can make the ears smaller and the noses less defined. For male portraits, making the eyebrows thinner is another trick to make the face appear younger and avoid drawing facial hair.
Here we are! Some of these tips were more obvious than others of course, but I hope that they were useful to some and that they will help in your future drawings! The general rule is that male portraits use more angular shapes where as female portraits use softer curves. Try playing with portraits yourself and see how you can create the same effects.
