Illustrator: Ultimate Mastery

Creating basic Documents

• Explore the prebuilt Document Profiles
• Shortcuts to navigate the Artboard effectively
• Create custom Workspaces

Drawing in Illustrator

• Draw Paths with the Pen tool
• Add
• delete or adjust points along a path
• Understand how Bézier Curves work
• Freeform Drawing tools
• Live Trace to transform images or hand drawn sketches
• Into vector artworks that can be further adjusted
• Create Logo using simple Shapes
• Discovering basic Blends
• Symbols in Illustrator & Symbol Sprayer options

Modifying Objects

• Lasso select and the other goodies in the Select Menu
• Be precise using Smart Guides
• Grids & Guidelines
• Align
• Group & Duplicate to achieve better results
• Transform objects with Twirl
• Bloat & other Warp tools
• Layers palette: Hide & Lock Objects
• Intro to Isolation Mode for effective editing

Working with Colours in Illustrator

• Difference between Swatches and Colour palette
• Applying colour to Stroke and/or Fill
• Adjusting Stroke attributes with Stroke panel
• Introducing Gradients & Patterns

Text in Illustrator

• Point
• Area and Type on a path
• Import Body Type & fix Spelling Errors
• Find and Replace Text or Insert Typographic Characters
• Create Text Outlines to design your own fancy headlines

Outputting your Artwork

• Defining cropping area
• Saving your artwork in vector formats
• Save for Web & Devices

Creating Complex Illustrations

• Working with Compound Paths
• Use Expand Appearance to modify individual elements
• Keep your paths Simple & Cleaned Up
• Outline Strokes technique & option to add
• multiple Attributes to an Object
• Share the appearance attributes with Graphic Styles
• Create Custom Brushes: Calligraphy
• Scatter
• Pattern or Art – to place objects along a path
• Graphs – use your artworks instead of a simple bars

Modifying Artworks

• Discover Envelope Distort
• Utilize Clipping Masks for advanced design
• Live Paint as an easy way to colour artwork
• Learn about Transparency & Opacity Masks
• Stylize with Drop Shadows and Outer Glows
• Explore Gradient Mesh & its ability to add realistic
• 3D Shading and highlights to 2D graphics
• Learn the difference between Filters & Live Effects
• Advanced Blending techniques

Advanced Typographical Features

• Character Palette – adjust the kerning
• Baseline shift
• Horizontal & vertical scaling
• Paragraph Palette – Justification and Hyphenation options
• Use the 3D feature to extrude text or other Illustrator objects

Printing your Artwork

• Simulate multiple pages in Illustrator using the artboard and document setup
• Flattening Transparency for raster effects like drop shadows
• Glows and blurs
• Creating separations with Spot color vs. Process colour

Enhancing your workflow

• Live Colour for perfect Complementary / Analogous colours
• Creating Smart objects
• Dragging-and-dropping and exporting layers into Photoshop
• Editing options for PDFs
• Explore Links & Actions palettes
• Release to Layers command for quick web animations
• Get the best from Illustrator to Flash (SWF)

Advanced Techniques

• Working with Artboards
• Creating templates
• Drawing and transforming objects
• Pen tool best practices
• Brush types and the Blob brush tool
• The Width tool and options with Strokes
• Working in Isolation mode
• Opacity and Clipping masks
• Live paint
• Recolour Artwork
• Gradients
• Tracing photographs and pixel images
• Advanced type features
• Working with Live effects and the Appearance panel
• Graphic styles
• Working with Symbols
• Shape builder tool
• Drawing in perspective
• Preparing for Web and Flash
• Preparing for print

ACA Prep

• Copyright
• Design principles, elements, and image composition
• Design project requirements and deliverable
• Adding descriptive metadata to images
• Mock exam