In this lesson you're going to learn the Width tool so if you find it on the
Tools panel and click and hold on to it, there's a bunch of different ones on
here, and if you've ever used Photoshop Liquefy effect, we have Pucker, Bloat.
It's kind of similar in some ways but in other ways it's not at all the same. In Liquefy,
in Photoshop, you're editing pixels of course. In Illustrator we're just
adjusting shapes, vector artwork, illustrations, points and paths in between.
So go ahead and just select the Width tool. We don't have a shape here though
to edit right, so it's not going to do anything. So you need to draw something first.
So you can draw out a circle for example, and so then when you have the Width tool, notice that
this has a Stroke and a Fill. If it has no stroke, like if it's set to None, like that and if I
click on the path or if I click on the Fill, nothing happens, right. It's not
it doesn't have any effect. So if I do add a Stroke color and then I set it to, let's set it
to something a little bit thicker, and then now what the Width tool does is, if you
have a design here, say you're making a logo, and you want just the Width, the Stroke
here to be larger but just on one area, you can click and drag it out and see, it
will actually make it larger like so. It almost looks like an olive or maybe
eye in a cartoon illustration. So that's the Width tool. I don't use it too often.
There's a couple of other ones that might be useful just depending on what you're
designing, whether it's an infographic or a logo and what not. The Warp tool is,
basically, you just select it and then click and drag and you can just slightly adjust.
That's kind of like the one of the Liquefy effects in Photoshop, so it's kind of
similar in that way but we're not dealing with pixels per se in the file
at least. You know, on the screen, obviously it's displayed as pixels but it's points
and paths in between so it's vector.
So you can slightly adjust curves and if you want to create some kind of custom shape
and say you're making a logo for a company, this is one way to do that to
kind of play around and adjust the shape. So the Twirl tool is kind of interesting.
You can click and drag and I'll actually twirl these shapes out or it will
twirl them in like so, so it just depends on what you're trying to create. It can really get out of hand,
here obviously. If you want to customize it, you can double click it and then there
are some settings here. So if you don't want to twirl this way, you want to twirl it the other
way. You can have the rate at which it twirls, higher or lower and then you can
also change the width and the height of the brush that we're using and also the
angle. So I'm going to start over with another shape here.
Ellipse tool again. So the Twirl tool, I think you can stylize shapes. If you use it subtly,
I think it's a little better if you're creating some kind of ornate design. It may be kind of
useful in illustrations. You can also go to the Pucker tool. What does that do?
Well, it depends on where the center of the tool is, so if it's right here, it's going to pull it out
like that or it's going to pucker it in like that. So depending on if you're outside of
a shape or the inside of a shape. But the pucker just puckers it in and then the Bloat tool
just bloats it out. So if I'm on the outside of the center areas, on the outside,
it's going to bloat out from there, and if it's on the inside, it will
bloat it out like so to the shape of the brush. So the Scallop tool. It's just
going to stylize the edge a little bit. It's going to pull it in and pull it out and you
can also try the Crystallize tool, kind of similar to it and then also the Wrinkle tool
which is just going to roughen the edge a little bit. So if you're drawing some
illustrations and you wanted to stylize the edge, these can be kind of useful.
In the outlining text tutorial, I'll show you quickly how to use the Twirl tool, showing
you how you can use that in text so check that one out as well.
I'll see you in the next lesson.