Discover how to finalize an image of a Mars rocket using key illustrator tools and techniques. This tutorial will guide you through the process step by step, from adjusting shadows and light sources to adding backgrounds and making precise object modifications.
Key Insights
- The tutorial shows you how to adjust the shadows and light sources in your image for consistency, using transformation and reflection tools in Illustrator.
- It guides you through creating and arranging new layers for your image, such as a background layer, and modifying specific elements like moving the rocket upwards and adjusting the exhaust.
- Lastly, the article provides steps on how to enhance your image further by adding gradients to specific elements, making minor adjustments to shadows, and exporting your final project as a high-quality jpeg image.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video we're going to be finalizing our Mars rocket image. So first, let's begin by changing the shadows of our mountains.
As we can see here, the shadows on our rocket suggest light coming from the right-hand side, projecting shadows on the left. However, for our mountains, it shows light on the left-hand side, projecting shadows on the right-hand side. Therefore, we need to flip either our rocket or our mountains. In this case, since we have our Mountains Trace layer unlocked, let's flip these.
To do this, we'll first select all the elements within our Mountains Trace by clicking to the right of the layer, and then we'll right-click and go to Transform > Reflect. From here, we can select Vertical for our reflection and see a preview, and we'll click OK. Now we have consistent light and shadows.
For our next task, let's lock our Mountains Trace and create a new layer for our background. From here, we'll title this "Background" and hit ENTER, and let's drag our Background layer below our Mountains. We'll click and drag it right beneath Mountains Trace.
From here, let's add our background. We'll utilize the Rectangle tool and create a rectangle that spans the entire artboard. From here, let's change the color so that it's consistent with our last image of the city.
To do this, we'll go to File > Open, and let's open up our City Reflection image and click Open. From here, we'll want to sample the color of our background, so we'll use I on our keyboard for our Eyedropper tool and click the color. Then, double-clicking our fill, we can copy this hex code by hitting CTRL+C and clicking OK. If we now go into our Mars Rocket Illustrator file, we can paste this by double-clicking our fill and hitting CTRL+V and ENTER.
We now have our background color. Next, let's make a couple more changes. The first thing I want to do is move our rocket up.
To do this, let's unlock our Rocket layer, and we'll select all the elements within our Traced Rocket. We're going to drag it up using V on the keyboard for our Selection tool and dragging up while holding Shift. We'll drag it to about here. With this change, we also need to make a modification to our exhaust. So, let's relock our Traced Rocket layer and unlock our Exhaust layer.
To make this first change, let's hit CTRL+A to select all. This should select only the objects within Exhaust, since Exhaust is the only layer unlocked. From here, let's actually move our exhaust down a little bit, clicking and dragging down while holding Shift to about here. Feel free to adjust it with the arrow keys as well. Finally, we need to adjust the top of our exhaust. For this, we'll utilize our Lasso tool and simply drag a lasso around our top anchor points and move them up with the Up Arrow. We can move them more quickly by holding Shift and using the Up Arrow.
Next, let's hit CTRL+Shift+A to deselect. Now, we want to make one more change to our exhaust—we'll add a gradient. To do this, let's hit CTRL+A again to select all, and let's remove our stroke by selecting it and clicking None.
We're now going to group it by right-clicking and selecting Group. This will group each of these elements within our Exhaust group. From here, we'll add a gradient.
We can utilize our Gradient tool, and we're going to add a linear gradient. From here, we can change our gradient by clicking at the top and dragging down to about the bottom. Here, we can see that it's white on top with darker exhaust on the bottom. Instead of darker exhaust, let's still maintain the white color; however, let's make a change so it has less opacity toward the bottom.
To do this, we'll go to Properties, and by clicking on the three dots on the bottom right-hand side of Gradient, we can change our gradient. The only change we're going to make is double-clicking our gradient slider. We're going to select white, and for Opacity, let's type 70 and hit ENTER. Here, we have full white on top, and it starts to fade toward the bottom. Let's hit CTRL+Shift+A to deselect.
This looks great. As one final minor change, I want to simply move this shadow up a little bit as it's close to the exhaust. So, we'll lock our Exhaust layer, unlock our Mountains Trace layer, and hitting A on the keyboard, I'm simply going to select the anchor point at the bottom and drag it up, recreating the shadow so it's a little bit more removed from the exhaust. Feel free to make any changes you prefer to the shadows, and I think this looks good. Let's now lock our Mountains Trace layer and hit CTRL+S to save our work.
Finally, let's export this image as part of our final project. To do this, we'll go to File > Export As. From here, we're going to be saving this as our Mars Rocket JPEG, and let's select Use Artboards and click Export.
We'll have a couple of other changes that we can make. In this case, let's select RGB, set the quality to 10, and make sure that our resolution is at 300. Finally, we'll click OK. You've now completed your Mars Rocket.
I hope you've enjoyed this course, and I wish you the best of luck in your future Illustrator pursuits.