Title: Symbols and Blends Assignments Outline
Course: WILSON MC - INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER GRAPHICS HYBRID > Section: Week 9 - Symbols and Blends

- INTRODUCTION TO SYMBOLS AND BLENDS

Using symbols is a powerful technique for generating instances (sets) of globally updatable artwork. Once a symbol is defined, you can generate and apply instances of that symbol in an illustration. Any change to the symbol affects all instances of that symbol deployed in the artwork.

Symbolism tools such as the Symbol Sprayer tool can splash, splatter, and spray symbols on a page, wholesale, populating an illustration with stars, houses, trees, and so on. Or a symbol tool such as the Symbol Shifter tool can adjust symbol instances on a page — instantly compressing stars, warping houses, bending trees, and more.

Symbols are also essential to mapping artwork onto 3D effects.

Blends are an effect, in that they do not change the underlying paths of an object. Blends can be used either to create gradient-like transitions (step blends), or as a productivity tool, to generate a lot of objects in between two objects (smooth blends). An example of the latter would be quickly generating a bunch of musical notes by drawing two notes and then generating the notes in between them. The path along which a blend flows is the spine, which can be edited like any other path.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- CREATE symbols
- APPLY Spray Symbol instances
- GENERATE step blends
- CREATE smooth blends

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 Symbols and Blends:
Chapter 28: Symbols

- PRESENTATION
  - View the 22-slide presentation on Symbols 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 Symbols