Title: Colors and Fills Assignments Outline
Course: WILSON MC - INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER GRAPHICS HYBRID > Section: Week 5 - Colors and Fills

- INTRODUCTION TO COLORS AND FILLS

Because color is so central to illustration, Illustrator provides many ways to define and organize colors. The Color panel is a universal way to select colors. The Color Guide panel is helpful in choosing and generating color schemes — sets of a limited number of colors used in an illustration. Adobe’s Kuler site (http://kuler.adobe.com)includes many tools for generating color schemes. The Swatches panel provides a convenient way to access sets of colors. Often colors will be generated in the Color panel, but organized in the Swatches panel.

Working with color requires working backwards from output. Digital color is defined and generated very differently than colors for print output. So when working on any illustration project, you will need to define a color mode that will translate into the output you desire — RGB for digital output, CMYK for print.

New to Illustrator CS6 is the ability to easily create and seamlessly edit tiled vector patterns. Pattern fills can be rescaled together with, or separately from, the paths they fill. Swatch panels can include both colors and pattern fills.

Gradient fills merge different colors. Gradients can be defined from two or more base colors applied to stops within a gradient. Gradients can be defined in the Gradient panel, and applied (including the direction of the “fade” or gradient) with the Gradient tool. Gradient mesh fills are highly complex gradients generated with the Mesh tool. They can be used to create 3D-looking gradients (applicable, for example, to a topographical map, or sphere with an apparent light source).

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- MANAGE the Color panel
- DEFINE and apply color schemes
- CREATE fills
- APPLY pattern fills
- DEFINE and apply gradients
- GENERATE a gradient mesh

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 Colors and Fills:
- Chapter 2: Manage Color
- Chapter 4: Panels
- Chapter 10: Fill & Stroke
- Chapter 24: Gradients
- Chapter 29: Live Color

- PRESENTATION
  - View the 25-slide presentation on Colors and Fills 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  The Color Panel
    - 2  Working with Swatches
    - 3  Understanding Gradients