ILLUSTRATOR

RASTER PROGRAMS Lots of programs, like MS Paint, Corel Painter, and Adobe Photoshop are RASTER based program. This means they deal mostly with pixels. Some other programs are VECTOR based (like Adobe Illustrator) and deal with points. With pixels, image resolution becomes important (printing, etc). More pixels in an inch (ppi) = higher quality images (smoother, crisper, lines). Print quality is 300ppi (web quality is about 72ppi). Ex: drawing a 5” x 5” circle at: 1ppi4 ppi16 ppi

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? Raster based programs rely on pixels. Illustrator doesn’t do this. It’s vector based, meaning it relies on points, connected to curves or lines. The computer notes the information in each point remembers its length, curve, or angle in relation to the other points in the image. This allows resizing, to any scale, with little to no quality loss.

VECTOR Portrait done in Illustrator at 100% Zoom showing each point in the vector – Each little colored Dot is a point, Connected to a curve or a line Vector Portrait scaled to 800% Portrait as a RASTER image Scaled to 800%

WHAT TOOLS WILL I LEARN? This project will focus on the: Pencil Select/Move tool Direct Select tool Fill (foreground color) and Stroke (background color) Gradient Layers Object Arrange Options Opacity – Layers and Shapes

HERE’S THE GIST You are essentially going to be tracing the photo. Your focus is on learning how to use the tools in the program, not learning how to draw. The higher quality your image, the easier it will be to do this. Your photo is raster based. If you zoom in too much what will it look like? In the end the kids really like1 realistically colored portrait, but you could really use any color combination with your students.

Essentially you have 2 layers. A background layer with your photo (at a low opacity). A top layer that you’re drawing on. You’ll draw/shade from background to foreground. Ex: skin, skin shading, eye whites, eye iris, eye, pupil, eyelashes, hair, hair shading, etc, etc. Oh wait, here are some process examples! PROCESS

eyes mouth finished

WORKSPACE

LAYERS = Images from tutorial9.com – working with layers in PS Layers are transparent workspaces, stacked one above the other. Each layer can be edited independently from the others. This is also how your shapes stack in Illustrator – the program will remember when you drew them and you can rearrange the order.

GETTING STARTED I’ll demonstrate but essentially: Log on, open Photo Booth from the doc (hit escape if you need to exit full screen mode) Take a photo. Drag it into Illustrator (the orange AI in the doc). With the photo selected, turn the opacity down. Lock the layer. New layer, drag underneath the photo layer. Draw with the pencil, filling with desired colors. Work from back to front. Your pattern will go – draw, fill, deselect, draw, fill deselect…. USER NAME = soguest PASSWORD = KAEA