Creating Transparent Objects in Adobe Illustrator: Step-by-Step Guide

Let's start where we left off. Unfortunately, we still need to do some work to make these objects transparent.

To do this, let's go back into the helmet by double-clicking, and then double-clicking again to enter isolation mode specifically for the helmet. From here, I'll zoom in, and as we can tell, our line is currently set to white. However, we want it to be transparent.

If we go to our stroke and click 'No Fill' or 'None, ' we'll see that it just disappears in front of the black background. Therefore, instead, I'll hit CTRL + Z to undo. Another thought might be to use the Shape Builder tool to do this.

So, with the Selection Tool, we'll click and drag a selection box over all of our objects and use the Shape Builder tool to create a shape. However, we can see that this doesn't work with lines. We’re unable to create a shape.

When we click and drag, it simply turns white. It doesn't match the width of our lines.

We'll hit CTRL + Z again. Instead, for this, we need to convert these lines into shapes.

To do this, I'll hit V on the keyboard.

Then, by hitting CTRL + Shift + A, I'll deselect all and only go back to select the four lines. With these four lines selected, we'll go into 'Object, ' 'Path, ' and then we'll go to 'Outline Stroke.' 'Outline Stroke' will now create actual shapes out of the strokes we've created.

From here, we can hold Shift and select the helmet as well. Then, use the Shape Builder tool to create one shape for our helmet and create the shapes that we'll be deleting and removing from the helmet.

From here, I'll simply hit V.

We'll hit CTRL + Shift + A to deselect.

Then, we'll go back and delete the shapes we need to remove.

I'll then highlight the helmet, color it black, go to our color panel, and see where the shapes are.

Next, we'll select all three triangles, holding Shift and hitting the Delete key.

Now, if we double-click outside the helmet and zoom out.

If we click and drag our helmet over, we'll see that it's fully transparent.

I'll hit CTRL + Z to undo this.

Finally, as one last addition, we'll go to our shapes and hit Delete.

Highlight the Rectangle tool.

And we're going to add a rectangle background to our shape.

We'll release, and you can color it whatever color you'd prefer.

I'll leave mine this color.

Now, we’re going to add it behind our helmet and glasses.

To do this, we'll hit CTRL + Shift + Open Brackets, or we can drag it beneath.

We'll see that our helmet is now transparent for the white areas and is only filled with black.

Next, let's group the helmet and the background together using V on the keyboard.

Highlighting both the helmet and glasses, as well as the background.

We'll right-click, select 'Group.'

Then, we'll rename this '16 Midterm.'

As a final step, we'll prepare to export this artboard.

Let's hit CTRL + S on the keyboard to save our work.

Next, we'll go to 'File, ' 'Save As.'

From here, we're going to rename this 'Midterm.'

From the drop-down menu for 'Save as Type, ' we'll select 'Adobe PDF.'

In this case, we'll change it from 'All' or 'All the Icons' to simply 'A Range.'

For our range, we'll remove '1' and keep it at '16.'

This way, we'll be exporting just the 16th artboard.

We'll then hit 'Save.'

In this case, we'll go to the top.

Select the PDF preset.

We'll select 'Smallest File Size.'

We'll then hit 'Save PDF.'

Click 'OK.'

This lets us know that this PDF won't be able to be edited.

We've now completed our midterm.

Please upload this file to the portal.

For our grade.

In the next videos, we'll be working on a postcard.

See you there!