Discover how to meticulously refine a graphic design piece using anchor points and the shape builder tool. This informative guide provides step-by-step instructions on adjusting various elements of a digital character, including the neckline of a shirt and the details of a jacket.
Key Insights
- The guide demonstrates the use of anchor points to adjust the neckline of a shirt and how to integrate it seamlessly with other clothing items, such as a jacket, enhancing the overall look of a digital character.
- It further explains the use of the pen tool to create new shapes or make adjustments to existing ones, highlighting the importance of intricate details in graphic design.
- The article emphasizes the importance of the shape builder tool in creating and integrating individual shapes, thereby creating a cohesive and detailed graphic design piece.
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In this video, we'll continue working on our recruiter. Let's zoom in.
Next, we'll be working on the neckline of the shirt. To do this, we'll use A to select our top anchor point. We'll simply click and drag it up so that it intersects with the jacket.
We'll select the handle and drag the neckline down. If we then scroll down, we'll see that we also need to adjust the hand and jacket here. To do this, let's create a shape with the Pen Tool.
We'll select the Pen Tool, and hit CTRL + Shift + A to deselect all objects. Then, with the Pen Tool, we'll create a new shape, starting at the bottom to remove this edge from the hand and include it in the shirt. I'll click at the intersection here.
I'll then click right where it intersects with the hand, clicking and dragging to maintain the shape of the arm. I'll click over to the other edge, and then I'll finish our shape by clicking at the end, then clicking and dragging to create the shape.
Next, let's convert all of these shirt and jacket shapes into individual shapes. I'll hit CTRL + Shift + A to deselect all objects. Then, hitting V on the keyboard, I'll select the shirt, the jacket, and the inside shape.
From here, we'll use the Shape Builder Tool, Shift + M on the keyboard, and I'll highlight the shirt and the inside white area. We'll then highlight the jacket to create the jacket and absorb this part of our shirt. It's now turned white, so let's hit CTRL + Shift + A to deselect it, hit V to select the jacket, and hit I using the Eyedropper Tool to click on the yellow and return our jacket to yellow.
Next, let's work on her shoulder on the right-hand side. We'll do this again with the Pen Tool, clicking P, and we're simply going to create a shape, starting at one end, clicking and dragging up to this intersection. And if we drag a line, we can create a curve.
Then, to finish this shape, we'll simply add one more point and close it off. From here, we'll build our shapes as appropriate with the Shape Builder Tool, hitting V on the keyboard, and selecting this shape, the shirt, and, from here, we can create our shapes using the Shape Builder Tool, Shift + M on the keyboard. We'll create the shoulder by dragging these three shapes.
I'll then create the hand, including this shape into it, and finally, the shirt. Let's now recolor these shapes using CTRL + (minus sign), and hitting V on the keyboard, selecting the hand, hitting I, and returning the skin color. Then, hitting V, we'll select the shirt, hit I, and gain the same color here, and hit V again, clicking outside, to observe our change.
We now need to make adjustments to the edge of the jacket. Let's zoom in, and we can see that while we added this shape, we need to make a couple of adjustments. The first one we'll do is by combining these two shapes.
I'll click on the top shirt, and holding Shift, click the bottom shirt, then use the Shape Builder Tool to combine both shapes into one. Next, I want to make some adjustments to how many anchor points we have here. I'll hit A on the keyboard, and select a few of our anchor points, and remove them, because they aren't all necessary.
Sometimes, the Image Trace will add more anchor points than necessary. So, I'll select another one and remove it, then another one and remove it. We'll continue doing this, and as we can see here, if we select this top anchor point and move it over, we get a nice curved shape.
If we zoom in towards the bottom, we can see that these anchor points aren't all necessary. So, I'll hold Shift, select multiple anchor points, and simply remove them. If we use CTRL + (minus sign), we'll see that we now have a nice curved line that's easily manageable.
And I think this looks good. We'll now use the Shape Builder Tool, hitting V on the keyboard, to select our shirt and our jacket. Then, I'll use Shift + M on the keyboard, to create one shirt shape out of both of these shapes.
I'll then hit CTRL + (minus sign) on the keyboard to zoom out, and hit V to see our progress. Click outside for art. This is starting to look good.
Let's hit CTRL + S on the keyboard to save our work, and in the next video, we'll continue working on our recruiter. See you there.