Explore the steps to create an accurate traffic cone illustration using various techniques in Adobe Illustrator. From altering colors to adjusting shapes and perspectives, this article guides you through each step to achieve a realistic representation of a traffic cone.
Key Insights
- The tutorial demonstrates how to create a traffic cone by changing the color of different segments to match the typical colors of a traffic cone. The process involves using the stroke and fill option to alternate between black and white colors for different segments of the cone.
- The article provides a step-by-step guide on how to create a square base for the traffic cone. It involves using the rectangle tool, rotating the created shape to 45 degrees, and adjusting the perspective to give it an angled look.
- The article further shows how to position and adjust the traffic cone’s components by using the direct selection tool, aligning the cone and base, and using keyboard shortcuts to manipulate layer arrangement. The final steps involve grouping the whole illustration and resizing it to suit the desired size on the artboard.
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In this video, we're going to be continuing to work on our traffic cone. As we can see, we have the first making of our traffic cone, however, we need to shift the color of each of these segments so that we can change it to the color of our traffic cone. If we look at our PDF, we'll see that the top and middle segments are black while the second and fourth segments are white.
We'll go back to our traffic cone, and we'll select the top segment as well as the third segment; these two are going to be black. So, within our stroke and fill, we'll simply click the swap fill and stroke and see that they're now black. Next, we need to change the stroke of our second and fourth segments, holding Shift to select both, so that these two are white.
We'll reverse our fill and stroke so that we have no stroke, and for our fill, which is selected on top, we'll hit white. We now have the top of our traffic cone. Let's create a selection box selecting each of these objects, and we're simply going to drag it up a little bit.
Now, it's time to begin working on the square base of our traffic cone. To do this, we'll go to our Shapes group, click and hold the Polygon tool, and select the Rectangle tool. We can now create a square that will work at the base of our cone.
We'll click and drag, holding Shift, about this size, and next, we'll want to rotate it by going to the top corner and clicking and dragging. If we hold Shift, we'll rotate it 45 degrees, and we now have the bottom square for our rectangle. Now, we need to change the perspective of our square so it's not flat but appears to be drawn at an angle.
To do this, I'll hit V on the keyboard, and let's just move it to the right of our cone for now. In order to make this look a little bit more flat, we're going to be using our Direct Selection tool, A on the keyboard, and we're going to bring in the top anchor point and the bottom anchor point closer to the center. With the bottom anchor point selected, I'm simply going to move it up with my arrow keys. So, I'll click on it and move it three keystrokes up.
I'll do the same with the top and move it three keystrokes down. Here we have a square that looks a little bit more flat. Next, let's change the color of our base as it will be black. To do this, we'll make sure that our fill is on top and we'll select black.
Let's now move it over and place it under the cone. I'll hit V on the keyboard to select the entire base and simply drag it over until it's centered with the cone. As we can see now, it's right above the cone. However, we want it behind each of these layers.
While we could do this in the layers panel and drag it under the layers, we can also change where our object is stacked within our layers panel by using a keyboard shortcut: CTRL + Open Bracket to move it down or CTRL + Close Bracket to move it up. This can be a helpful keyboard shortcut, allowing you to experiment with different layer arrangements. In addition, if we want to move it all the way to the top of our layer, we can hit CTRL + Shift + Open Bracket to move it to the top, or CTRL + Shift + Close Bracket to move it to the bottom.
We now have our cone. Let's make a few changes. The first change we'll want to make is I'm simply going to drag the square base up just a little bit more so it's more centered, and next, we're going to expand it slightly.
We'll click on the edge of the bounding box and drag down while holding Shift to maintain its shape. And from here, we can move it up a little bit. Next, let's change how high my cone is.
We'll drag a selection box over each of the cone segments and hit Shift to deselect our square base. We'll then drag them up with each of them selected and see if we've increased the height of our cone. It's important to ensure that the cone is appropriately sized as it will become difficult when we start working with transparency.
In my case, I'm also going to shift the insides of our square base up a little bit, so I'll hit A on the keyboard, toggle the anchor point in the middle, and just move it up one keystroke. Doing the same thing with the anchor point behind, I'll hit V, select the base, and make it a little bit bigger. I'm simply going to deselect the base and make the cone a little taller. I think this looks good.
Next, I'm going to round out the edges of the base by selecting it with V and then hitting A so I can work with the live corners. I'll round these in to about here, and I've now completed the cone. Let's now group the cone, selecting all and right-clicking to select Group.
From here, we can drag it into the middle of our artboard, resize it to be a little bit larger. Remember to hold Shift as we resize, and we'll leave it right about here. We'll then align it, and we'll rename it in our working layer by double-clicking and typing '14 Traffic Cone' and hitting Enter.
Let's now save our work, and in the next video, we'll be working on the transparency of our cone. See you there!