There are a lot of Illustrator tutorials out there.  I’ll share some of them with you now.

1. Adobe Illustrator on Adobe TV. Learn the software from the source.
2. Check the Adobe Illustrator Blog for more tutorials and tips.
3. Vector Tuts+ has a lot of content including tutorials, articles, tips, and resources. Premium members can access features such as online courses and an ebook library.
4. Astute Graphics’ blog has a quite a few free tutorials, tips, and tricks.
5. Chris Spooner’s Spoon Graphics offers free Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials.  You can find more content on his Facebook  page too.
6. An excellent source for technology training is lynda.com. Most lynda content is available  to paying subscribers only, but if you’re serious about learning, it’s probably worth the expense. IU students, facutly, and staff get lynda for free!

I think those are enough resources to get you (and me) started. I’m collecting Illustrator tutorial resources on Pearltrees, check there once in a while to see if anything new shows up.

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This little tool can do big things in showing motion on paper!

First, create an object:

Next, make a copy of the object. To do this, select the object with the Selection Tool (Black Arrow) and the holding the Alt key down while pressing and dragging away from the first object:

Re-size one of the objects to give some perspective by holding down the Shift key and pressing and dragging a corner anchor point toward the center of the object. This is going to make it look like the object is going from the foreground to the background.

To create the effect, the objects must be selected. Select one object (Selection Tool), and hold the Shift key down and select the second object.

Now, double click on the tool.

The following menu appears:

The default spacing is Specified Steps. Note that the number of steps can be changed as needed. Let’s leave it at 8.

Simply clicking on the OK button here, makes nothing happen. The tool is now activated. Next, identify the objects to be affected. Click on an anchor point on the first object. Whichever point clicked, be sure to click on the corresponding point on the second object (top of one, click the top of the other).

As soon as the second object is clicked, you see a blending of the sizes. (If the objects were different colors, the objects’ colors would also blend from one to the other.)

In the Blend Tool Options menu, the Smooth color option calculates the number of steps for the blending.

One more option from the Blend Options menu, is the Specified Distance option. This option controls the distance between steps in the blend. Again, the user has control over this.

Next, we are going to investigate the Orientation option on this panel in a moment. We need to change our object to be able to show off how Orientation will affect our result.

Let’s start over with a new object. Draw a star from the Shapes Toolbar. Hold the Alt key down to make a duplicate and resize one of the starts so that it is smaller. Change the fill and stroke colors as desired. Use the Blend Tool as described above. Deselect the objects by click on the art board. (Following the steps lined out above.)

Our goal here is to change the connecting line from straight to curved. To do this, use the Convert Anchor Point tool which is located under the Pen Tool in the Tool Box. Press and hold the Pen tool to see:

With the Convert Anchor Point Tool selected, put it over the center point of one of the stars at the end of our string of starts. You will see the path in blue, but the anchor point will be hollow. Press and drag on that hollow anchor point and “handles” will appear. These handles allow you to change the direction of the base line of the stars.

The Orientation option of the Blend tool gives us two choices: Align to Page and Align to Path. The default is Align to Page. With your objects selected, choosing this option will place the blended objects perpendicular to the X axis as seen above. Because this is the default, it has already been applied.

Align to Path makes our blend perpendicular to the path.

Align to Page:

Now, change to your black arrow tool and adjust your blue handle to change the look of your line of start. Have fun playing with the line:

You can do:

Or, by using the same line of stars and changing the orientation:

Have fun!

In the tools panel on the left side of the screen, press and hold on the rectangle tool. Illustrator has a unique feature that allows you to “tear off” a menu and have it open while you work. As you are holding down your left-mouse button, glide your cursor to the right until it is on the small bar with the black triangle. When you let go of your mouse button, this is what you will see:

There is not an option for a triangle, so let’s choose the polygon tool. Your cursor will now be a plus sign. Click on your canvas. The resulting window allows us to select the number of sides we would like our object to have:

Since we want a triangle, we will type in 3 and either hit our enter key or click on the OK button.

Increase the size of the triangle by choosing the selection tool (black arrow  

)and putting your cursor on a corner, hold down the shift key (to keep the object with the same perspective), and pull your cursor away from the center.

Now for the fun, but challenging part. We are going to use the pen tool to modify this shape. Let’s say we want to create an ice cream cone shape.  First of all, the triangle is upside-down (for an ice cream cone).

Make sure that the object is selected, meaning that you see a bounding box around it:

With the shape selected so that we see the bounding box around it, right click and choose TRANSFORM>ROTATE. In the window that opens, type in 180 for the number of degrees to rotate the object. We now have our cone.

Let’s make the top of the triangle rounded to represent ice cream. Again, the object needs to be selected. (Click on the object with the Selection tool.) We will be using a form of the pen tool. So, put your cursor on the pen tool, press and hold, and tear-off this menu. We are going to use the Convert Anchor Point tool 

so click on it. Put your cursor on top of one of the upper corners of our inverted triangle and press and drag downward. You are dragging “handles” out of the corner point and changing the angles of the lines that this point controls.

Do the same thing with the other point except drag upward. The handles should be about the same length.

We can begin to see our ice cream, but we lost the shape we wanted on the lower part of the cone. Let’s modify our shape again. Now that we have our handles, we can use the

Direct Selection tool to do the next step. With the Direct Selection tool active, put the cursor on the point at the bottom of the lower handle and press and drag upward until the point is on the anchor point. The side of our shape is now straight.

Do the same thing to the other side. If you do not see the lower handle, click on the anchor point and it will appear.  We have our cone shape back.

Learning how to use the Pen tool will unleash the power of Illustrator. To learn more, watch this spot. You can also attend our workshop: Adobe CS5: Pen Tool Basics for Advanced Graphic Design.

To find Clip Art, go to the Window menu. Choose Symbol Libraries. There are lots of options from the fly-out menu. Choose one and click. This opens up the panel for the option you chose. To apply a clip to your project, simply press and drag from the panel to your project. Remember that you can re-size without losing any quality when working with a vector image!

One more feature! As you go back into the Window>Symbol Libraries menu and choose another panel, the newly chosen menu will be added as a tab in the same panel you opened with your earlier choice. Even if you close the menu by clicking on the X in the upper right hand corner, choose another panel and you will find the new panel is added to the previous one.

There are many panels in the Window menu that will give you options such as brush, graphic styles, and swatch libraries. You can get some interesting effects by pressing and dragging an effect, for example, on top of a piece of clip art.  Experiment and have fun!

To Start with, create a new Folder on the Desktop (or wherever you plan to save your website) and title is “website.” This will provide a location where all your files for this particular website will be saved. It is important to keep all web files for one website in one location.

Launch Illustrator and create a New Document: Document Profile: Web (this will assure that your document will be set to a resolution of 72 ppi, optimized for web); document Size: 1024 x 768 (standard web dimensions). Dimensions are set in pixels. Save your new file as “website” in the Illustrator (.ai) file format inside the “website” folder. Saving your original .ai file will allow you to make changes accordingly and easily if needs be.

Designing different states on different layers while maintaing surrounding elements will result in consistency and flow when the site is completed. Under special circumstances you may need to have more than two layers, however, you will definitely need at least two layers to create the rollover effect. Another approach to this process would be to create one bottom layer where the overall design would be placed, with two upper layers that would hold rollover effects. Regardless, designing in layers is VERY important in maintaining exact dimensions when slicing different elements, especially states of rollovers. Keep in mind that you do not need concern yourself with elements that fall outside the artboard as Illustrator will only export what is inside the artboard.

Do add an uppermost layer that will hold guidelines for slicing as well as act as the slicing layer. You will only have to slice your artboard once using this layer. This will be a third layer.

Once the design of your website and states is completed, press and drag Guidelines on the guideline (uppermost) layer. Guidelines work well inside of Illustrator because the slice tool will snap to the guidelines by default which will help you to avoid unnecessary slices. The Slice Tool and Guidelines can only draw straight lines which means your slices will be rectangular in shape. Keep this in mind when placing guidelines where your intended slices will fall.

Once your guidelines are in place, use the Slice tool to begin slicing with only the State One layer and the guidelines layer visible, using the guidelines as guides. Keep in mind: for every one slice made, Illustrator will automatically determine the next slice so the pieces of the artboard remain as a whole. When slicing your page, turn caps lock on for the Slice Tool icon to appear as a cross hair.

After all slices are made, choose Save for Web and Devices under File on the Menu Bar.

In the Save for Web and Devices dialogue box, choose the 2-up tab. From here you will be able to determine the best quality in format and file size taking into consideration download time and optimal visuals. You can save each slice as individual file formats if needs be. It is a good idea to check Interlaced because this will build your image a line of pixels at a time when being viewed in any web browser. Basically, with users who have very slow connections, this will allow them to see that an image is being created rather than requiring them to stare at a blank page as the website loads.

Once each slice is optimized, click the Save button. The Save Optimized As dialogue box will appear. Locate the Folder initially created titled “website” under Location. Under Format, select HTML and Images. Under Slices select All Slices. Click Save.

You will be returned to Illustrator. Illustrator will automatically generate the code required to create an HTML page that you can upload and view online. If you;d like, you can check the “website” folder. You should see inside the folder: website.ai, website.html and an images folder which will contain all slices. If this does not exist, repeat steps starting with Save for Web and Devices, making sure you designate the “website” folder for the location of which your files will be saved.

In the Illustrator window, turn off all other layers except the next visible state (state two). Choose Save for Web and Devices under File on the Menu bar, choosing Two-Up in Save Fore Web and Devices dialogue box.

Unlike the first time, you will need to only optimize secondary states for rollover elements and disregard all slices that remain the same in both initial and secondary states. To do that, hold down Shift to select all slices to be optimized at once. Click Save. In the Save as Optimized dialogue box, locate the “website” folder for location and save as “rollover.” Under Format, choose Images. Under Slice choose Selected Slices Only and click Save.

You will be returned to the Illustrator window. Check the “website” folder to be sure that the “images” folder now contains “rollover” images. If the “rollover” images do not exist, repeat steps.

You are now done with Illustrator! Save and close.

Launch Dreamweaver. In the Dreamweaver welcome screen, under Open, choose “website.html” from inside your “website” folder; “website.html will open.”

Inside of Dreamweaver, choose Classic for interface and then the Design view on the Control panel.

Notice you are able to click on each slice in the Dreamweaver window. Select the first rollover element and locate the Place Image icon on the control panel. Use the drop down menu and select Rollover Image.

The Rollover Image dialogue box will appear. Name the element. Under Original Image locate state one of the rollover element in the “images” folder inside the “website” folder (this may be titled something like “website_01.png”). Under Rollover Image, locate the corresponding rollover image (something like “rollover_01.png”). Note: it is VERY important that all these elements are in the correct locations; without these correct locations, your website will break.

Notice that you have an opportunity to add a link connected with the rollover element. We will not be adding a link in this tutorial. You are also able to add alternate text at this point as well. It is always a good idea to add a description in the alternate text field. Click Okay.

By default, Dreamweaver will place the rollover element aside the original image selected. This will make your website appear broken and may be somewhat alarming. Simply delete the original image. Sometimes you will need to then “refresh” the window to see the changes made. You can do this by changing views on the control panel.

Under File on the Menu bar, choose Preview in Browser. To preview in browser, you will need to Save the file. Click Save. If the rollover effect does not work, chances are that you deleted the rollover image instead of the original image when placing the rollover. This is a common mistake. All you need to do it repeat the steps.

Repeat steps for all other rollover elements. Keep in mind that Dreamweaver, by default, should automatically target the last location used. Be sure that your state one images are named “website” and secondary images are named “rollover.” Preview the site in a browser window by choosing Preview in Browser under File on the Menu bar. Be sure to save often. Once completed, close Dreamweaver.

In this video presentation, we’ll examine some simple uses of the Shape Builder tool to get a feel for how this new tool might be used to create interesting shapes.

Illustrator CS5: Using the Shape Builder

You can attend in person on the IUB campus at the Kelley School, room CG1014 or on the IUPUI campus, in ICTC room IT497.

You can find an online link to the presentation here: http://webcommunity.iu.edu

Hope to see you there.

I realized as I was discussing it, that many of these options are not as straightforward as the end-user might like. I promised the class I would go into more depth on our blog.

So in the following video, I will explore the Pathfinder panel, and demonstrate each of the buttons, so that we can see exactly what they all can accomplish.  Hopefully this will spark your creativity, and give you a better idea of the power of these simple buttons.

Illustrator: Exploring the Pathfinder Panel