This article provides a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to add a safety glasses icon to a helmet icon using various drawing and editing tools. The process includes creating a rectangle as the base of the glasses, shaping the glasses, and cutting out a triangle for the bridge of the nose, as well as making adjustments to create a more natural look.
Key Insights
- The creation of a safety glasses icon starts with drawing a rectangle that has the same width as the helmet. This serves as the base of the glasses.
- Different tools are utilized throughout the process, such as the shape builder tool to combine shapes and the pen tool to add or remove anchor points. These tools allow for precise adjustments and modifications to achieve the desired shape and look of the glasses.
- Final touch-ups, such as rounding out some corners of the glasses and grouping all the objects together, are necessary to finalize the icon. This helps ensure the glasses fit naturally with the helmet and that the overall design is cohesive and visually appealing.
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In this video, we'll be adding our safety glasses to our helmet icon. Let's first start by using the "H" key on the keyboard to adjust our perspective of our artboard. Next, let's draw the rectangle that will form the base of our safety glasses.
To do this, we'll go over to our rectangle tool found in the toolbar. We'll click and hold, and we'll want to make sure that we are in the working layer. Next, let's draw our glasses so that they have the same width as our helmet.
To do this, we'll click and drag from one anchor point to the other, and we'll make our glasses about this tall. Next, we can move this entire rectangle down using the arrows on the keyboard, or using the selection tool. We’ll leave them here for now, and as our next step, let's draw the edges of our glasses.
To do this, we'll start towards the top of the glasses, and click and drag over, drawing a small rectangle. Next, we’ll want to combine this into one shape. To do this, we’ll hit "V" on the keyboard, hold "Shift, " and select both objects. We'll then use the shape builder tool found in the toolbar, and we'll click and drag across all segments to create one shape.
We’ll then press "CTRL + Shift + A" to deselect. Next, we’re ready to cut out the triangle for the bridge of the nose. To do this, we’ll go to our shapes and select the polygon tool. From here, we can click, ensuring we have three sides for our triangle, and for the radius, we’ll type five and hit "OK."
While this triangle is still too big, we can click on the edge and drag it down, holding "Shift" to adjust the size. Then, hitting "V" on the keyboard for our selection, we’ll drag it up. We’ll want to center it within our goggles. Next, I'm simply going to drag up while holding "Shift" from the bottom, so that we line up the bottom of our goggles with the triangle.
From here, we'll hold "Shift" and select both objects so we can build it with the shape builder tool. We'll click and drag, and we’ve now incorporated this within the shape. We’ll hit "V, " "CTRL + Shift + A" to deselect, and we’ll select the triangle inside and press the "Delete" key on our keyboard. Additionally, we’ll also press the "Delete" key behind it, removing the shape behind.
We now have our goggles, however, we want to make a couple of changes. First, we'd like the top path to be a bit more rounded. To do this, we can use the Pen Tool. We’ll go up to the top left-hand side and select the Pen Tool. If we hover over the line, we’ll see that there's a small plus sign to the right of the Pen Tool cursor. This indicates that we'll add an anchor point.
If we hover over an existing anchor point, we’ll see a minus sign. If we click, we’ve now removed the anchor point. We’ll press "CTRL + Z" to undo this, and in this case, we want to be adding an anchor point, so we’ll find the intersection right at the top middle of our glasses and simply click.
We’ve now added our anchor point, and let’s hit "A" on the keyboard to select it, and only it. Finally, let’s drag this anchor point up just a little bit. If we notice, as we drag it up, it’s not curved, but consists of two straight lines connecting to the anchor point. When we release here, it points at the top.
In order to round this out, we could use live corners, or we can go to the top control bar and select the convert selected anchor points to smooth. If we click this, we’ll see that it’s now smoothed out, and we actually have handles to adjust it to become even smoother if we prefer. We’ll release it here.
Let’s deselect it now by pressing "CTRL + Shift + A, " and we can now view our glasses. This looks good. Let’s now round out some of the corners of our glasses by clicking on the object and selecting the corners that we would like to change.
To do this, we’ll hold "Shift" and click all the hard edges except the edges where it extends out. With these anchor points selected, we can now use live corners. We’ll simply round them slightly so that the corners are less sharp.
Well done. As a final step, let’s group all of these objects together. We’ll then right-click and select "Group, " and now, let's center our work within our artboard. Additionally, let’s double-click on the group, and we’ll type "15 helmet and glasses, " then hit "ENTER."
Finally, let’s move this down into our final layer by selecting it and dragging it down, and we’ll delete the guides by selecting both guides and using the delete selection icon at the bottom right-hand side of our layers panel.
If we click outside, we’ll see our finished work. Well done. Let’s press "CTRL + S" on the keyboard to save our work. In the next video, we’ll cover transparency for our icons.
See you there.