Title: Complex Shapes Assignments Outline
Course: WILSON MC - INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER GRAPHICS HYBRID > Section: Week 4 - Complex Shapes

- INTRODUCTION TO COMPLEX SHAPES

Once you have created paths, then selecting them — and selecting elements that comprise them — is the key to working with objects.

There are three main ways to select paths and anchors in Illustrator: The Selection tool, the Direct Selection tool, and the Group Selection tool.

You can use both the Selection and Direct Selection tools to click on an anchor or path, or use drawing marquees to select sections of the artboard. You can group objects. Grouped objects can be easily selected and edited together.

Selected objects (and groups of objects) can be stretched, resized, moved, and rotated with selection tools by using the bounding boxthat defines the parameters of the selection.

In this lesson, you will explore how to work with complex and intersecting paths. In the real world, of course, objects intersect with each other. Someone looking at a tire hanging from a tree can see through the middle of the tire, which (abstracting this scene as an illustrator) “dissects and frames” things behind it — some of which are obscured by the tire, some of which are visible outside, and inside, the tire.

Reflecting such complexity in illustration, Illustrator’s Pathfinder panel is used to define how intersecting paths “merge” with each other. And the Shape Builder tool allows you to perform the kinds of path combination available in the Pathfinder tool “on the fly” as you draw.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

- SELECT paths, objects, and multiple objects
- DRAW complex shapes
- COMBINE shapes with the Pathfinder and Shape Builder tools
- WARP shapes
- DRAW with the Blob Brush tool
- GROUP objects
- WORK with bounding boxes to rotate, resize and reshape

ELEMENTS OF THIS LESSON INCLUDE:

- CHAPTERS
ILLUSTRATOR CS6: VISUAL QUICKSTART GUIDE

Using the book Illustrator CS6: Visual QuickStart Guide refer to the following chapters for Complex Shapes:

Chapter 6: Geometric Objects

Chapter 7: Freehand Drawing

Chapter 8: Select

Chapter 12: Reshape

Chapter 15: Effects

Chapter 21: Pen Tools

Chapter 25: Combine Paths

- PRESENTATION
  - View the 23-slide presentation on Complex Shapes in MGLab to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts and the terminology.
- VIDEOS
  - Watch the following lesson videos in MGLab. As with the slide presentation, use the video content to expose you to the techniques demonstrated. You may need to re-watch portions - or all-  of a video for complex techniques.
    - 1 Using the Selection Tools