My Illustrator Working Process for Derby 63: Art as Text.

For those of you interested in working in Adobe Illustrator this is my process for doing a design.

Step 1: Turn on the computer. This may seem like an obvious step but you'd be surprised how many people forget to do this.

Step 2: Load iTunes (or music program of your choice) and get some music playing. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to have plenty of tunes that support the theme I'm working on like the Work Derby, or The Old West but generally i just load whatever band puts me in the proper mood like Rush, REM, Barenaked Ladies, and so on. Sometimes i just hit Shuffle and go with whatever pops up. For this one i went with the soundtrack for Once More with Feeling, the Buffy Musical episode.

Step 3: Load Illustrator. Open a new file. I usually set the page size to 13" x 15" (for horizontal designs) or 12" x 14" (for vertical) because that's the standard size I've worked in at my job for many years. If I'm planning to do a large design I'll bump it up to the woot standard 16" x 20", but 13" x 15" is the maxium area for most of my designs. After doing that grab your trusty tablet and select the pencil tool. In this case i started with the letters I wanted and sketched them out loosely on a layer.

Step 4: Next, i change the color of the "sketch" to blue. Mainly from working with a blue pencil for so many years in the pre-computer days of the 80s. In some cases i apply group to the sketch and try some warping effects. this doesn't always work, but when it does it gives the design a look i can't get drawing something by hand, conforming the lines to an overall shape.

Step 5: After getting the basic layout of the design the way i want it, i lock down the layer and (after switching to the brush tool for a heavier line) i start refining the letters and adding detail. building the characters to their basic shapes based on the letter.

Note: The Brush Tool: easily my most used tool since getting the Wacom, i start with the 3pt calligraphy brush. it simulates a traditional inking brush almost perfectly using pressure from the stylus to get variations in line width. with the added bonus of being able to smooth out a line if it goes all wonky (Option key on Mac) without having to repeatedly redraw the line. for heavier lines or fills you can add or edit other brushes to the size and roundness you want. for really large fill areas the pencil tool is better though.
Step 6: Once all of the letters are sufficiently detailed lock down the layer and create another one for the final inks.
Step 7: Inking the sketch. at this point things get pretty basic. switch the brush tool's color to black and refine and clean up the rough sketch.
Note: I generally set the brush's pressure variation as high as i can get it (i.e. if the brush size is 3pts. i set the variation to 3) to get the appearance of feathering. i find it's best to go from thin to thick with the brush tool which is completely opposite from working with an actual brush.

Step 8: After finishing each letter i grouped it for future editing. which turned out to be a good idea because the arced layout wasn't working for me the way i thought it would. although looking at it now it doesn't look as bad as i thought at the time. oh well.
Step 9: Using the rotate feature on the grouped letters i re-arranged them horizontally, adjusted the spacing and size. now the design is ready for the next step: coloring. first lock down the ink layer and create a new one. put the new layer under the ink layer. by doing this you can fill in the shapes without covering up the line.

Step 10: Coloring. when starting this part of the process i just use basic colors from the Illustrator pallette and apply them without concerning myself with how many colors i'm using or the exact color i want to use in the final design. this step is just to block in the basic color scheme to give me an idea of what the finished design will look like and to make sure the colors are not clumped in one area.

Note: as you can see i originally planned on using an Olive shirt for this design. at this point the shirt color isn't totally set, so it can always be changed later (which it did when i realized i needed one more color i didn't have available on anything besides black).

Step 11: Coloring Part 2. once i've settled on a basic color scheme i start the refining process. consolidating colors, setting the proper PMS shades. this part of the process is time consuming and requires a lot of thought. how can i get the most out of one color? is the main question going through my head at this point. note the brown now has more red in it and the blue changed to a greyish green. the red has more orange in it, and so on.

Step 12: Detailing. at this point the final colors are pretty much set. i find it helpful to go to the swatch pallette and do a "select all unused" and drag them to the trash so i can count the colors and make sure there's 6. doing this eliminates any chance of using a 7th color by mistake.

this is the "bells and whistles" stage where you go back in and add highlights, shadows, and textures to make the design pop. the sad part is most of these aren't visible in the comp, but if the design is printed they're a nice little bonus for the buyer.

Step 13: Finalizing the design. once the design is the way you want it, next comes the clean up stage. if you're like me i tend to work fast and messy. mainly because i've had to deal with short deadlines for many many years. sometimes i stray outside the lines which leaves little bits of color that make the design look messy.

first, if you haven't already, delete the blue line rough layers. next unlock the remaining layers except for the background layer. select all and "expand appearance" (under the object menu) to convert all of the brushstrokes to shapes. then go to the objects menu/paths/clean up.. and delete all of the uncolored paths. (this is an important step because those paths can cause problems later.)

next, select all and apply a divide (in the pathfinder pallette not the menu). what this does is eleminate any overlapping shapes. doing this will group everything into one object so you'll have to ungroup it at this point. now (and this is the hardest, most boring and tedious part of the process) go through the design and find all the little scraps of color you don't want around the edges and delete them.

when that's done go through the design and select each color and apply the unite pathfinder to them individually. what this does is make the design easier to print (unless you have a really complex design then you can skip this part). having worked in color separation messy art is a pet peeve of mine so i try to make it easy on the separator guy.

i work in a separate file from the woot template and then copy the final design into the template file when i'm finished, but that's just me.

okay, that's pretty much it as far as how i use Illustrator for my woot designs. of course there are other tips and tricks i use which i can explain later if anyone's interested. i hope this is helpful for people wanting to learn and use Illustrator for their designing. Thanks for dropping in!