In this lesson you'll learn about the Shape Builder tool and the Live Paint
Bucket tool in the specific context of logo design. So if you look at this here,
it looks like a simple symbol, right
It's kind of symmetrical, kind of like a flower shape but as I hover over it, you notice these circles, right.
If you use the Direct Selection tool just click one of these, I can move it
around and stretch it and actually adjust the edge so that it makes it asymmetrical for example.
Or I could rotate it, something like that. Make it more like a butterfly type look and
then use the white Selection again, make it asymmetrical. You know, there's many different
things we could do. So how do you create something like this? Well this is
actually pretty simple. You go to the Ellipse tool. So go ahead and create a
new Illustrator file. Click and hold on to the Rectangle Tool, go to the Ellipse tool.
Click and drag out just a shape here
and if we want to see the edges, let's just make no Fill and then have just a
skinny stroke here. So flip those so you have some kind of color for the
Stroke. I just have one point and then no Fill,
and then ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC. Click and drag and hold SHIFT so it
remains level like that, alright.
Then click and drag around both of these and then ALT or OPTION.
Click and drag again and just hold SHIFT so it goes straight down. You just want to
bring the top of that area here to meet the bottom of that so that looks pretty
good, and you can see the pattern here right. It's right there. How do you make
that just a shape? Well what we can do is, I'm going to select them all here and I'm just
make no Fill and no Stroke,so basically there has no color in it there and
we're going to add it with, you click and hold over here. Click and hold onto the
Shape Builder tool and go to Live Paint Bucket. And so now you can see the Fill
color there set. It's just set to None so if you press the left and right
arrows on the keyboard, it will cycle through those. It's changing it over there
which you know, if we wanted some kind of custom color, we could click there as well.
Or you could press, before you did that, left and right. So just click here, click there, click there.
So we've got our shape here and if you click off then you've got a
custom shape just by using the Live Paint Bucket tool. So what it does is,
wherever there are shapes overlapping, or if there's a shape that's not overlapping,
or anything else, you can fill it with that Paint Bucket tool. And even after
the fact, we can still move it around. We can resize this of course, the whole
thing with the Selection tool or you can use the Direct Selection tool and just
click and drag one area and just customize it. Say you want it to be asymmetrical,
something like that. I'm just trying to experiment there and then you could use that in a logo.
So if you want this to be just a normal shape or you don't have these
extra lines here that even though they don't print out, you just want it to be
a normal shape. You can go to Object and then Expand comes up here and then
Object, Fill, Stroke is fine. Click OK and now you've got the shape there just like a
normal shape as if you drew it with say the Pencil tool or some of the shape tools
and just customize it. So now we can use the white arrow, move it around,
customize it even more with the black selection tool and it will select all of it.
You can go to Object, Ungroup, ungroup that. Do that again. There we go.
So that's how you can come up with more custom shapes using the Live Paint Bucket tool.
So you can create some pretty cool shapes. These might be too busy for a logo
per se but things like this are pretty fun to make. You can experiment and just
try different looks, something like this. All you have to do is just click and
drag a circle out and then just hold on to ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC and
then with the selection tool just click and drag, click and drag, click and drag
or you could select it all. Click and drag again and you just get these overlapping areas and
then you use again Live Paint Bucket tool. Just to show you this again, it just fills in
certain areas and kind of gives you a preview of that border look. You can
press the left arrow, change the color. So it's a pretty fun technique and you can come up
with different things. Now this one, as well as this one and this one here, zoom it out.
This one is actually duplicated but this one and this one above it, what you
do is you draw some kind of shape out so let's just say, the Polygon tool. Click and drag
it and just press the down arrow until you get to the triangle and then hold SHIFT
if you want it to be level. And then what you can do is just go to Object, Transform, Transform Each
and just change it to some kind of rotation. Click Copy. I did 45 degrees on
this one and then press CTRL D to do it again.
And then, well you don't need to do it again, but anyway, you can, this is almost like a spirograph
effect at this point. So then you can just select it all and then click None and then
Live Paint Bucket tool and again, you just fill this in and just be creative with
different colors. This is going to be a little bit too busy probably for a logo but
hopefully you get the idea and the technique in the context of logo design.
So practice with that and the other one, Shape Builder tool.
You know traditionally we want to, say, create a logo with some clouds right. We can just
click and drag and then click and drag, click and drag, click and drag.
Make a basic cloud shape that's pretty simple.
And we want to select around them and we don't just go to Object, Group. What we can do of course is
go to the Pathfinder. We could go to Unite and then we can unite it, right.
Well, what you can also do, alternatively to that, is do the same thing where you draw out shapes here.
Select them all and then over on the Shape Builder tool, what you do is just click and
drag and whatever you click and drag over, it will make that a shape. So I can click
and drag over all of this, obviously and it would make it just one shape.
But, as you can see here, it's got that extra behind it, it cut it apart into different
shapes, right, which you could use to make a simple shape here. If you wanted all of
those, I'm going to go back, or if you wanted all of those as a one, Shape Builder tool, and just
click and drag. It's got to be selected. So then Shape Builder tool and you just click and drag
around all of them, right. Now it combines it as one shape. So the same effect. You've got
this with Pathfinder, this with the Shape Builder Tool. Now if you're clicking,
you click and let go, click and let go, click and let go.
And then hold ALT on the PC or OPTION on the MAC. That will actually subtract from that shape
area. So if you do something like that, it will actually get rid of those parts of the
shape, right. So now you've still got separate shapes here. Click and drag
over them with the plus. But I'm just trying to give you an idea of what that does in the
context of logo design. You're trying to create simple but stylized and distinct
shapes and so just experiment with that and see you what you can come up with.
But if you want to make some symmetrical shapes like this or asymmetrical or just
experiment with different methods, just check that out. It's the Shape Builder tool,
and you're building a shape by clicking and dragging over many of them or just
selecting them all, and again
ALT or OPTION and you can subtract from the shape and then Live Paint Bucket tool
just paints either shapes or where shapes are overlapping so something like
that, you could create pretty quickly with that tool. So if you want, just go to
File, Save for Web and save it as a JPG or PNG and then just upload it to the
course discussion board for critique and we can check out what you've been working on.
Thanks.