Discover the process of creating intricate graphics using a pen tool. This article provides a step-by-step guide on creating a digital illustration of a rocket using various graphic design techniques.
Key Insights
- The pen tool is crucial in tracing and creating the outline of intricate graphics such as a rocket. The tool is utilized on a traced rocket layer to develop detailed portions of the design.
- Manipulating anchor points allows for adjustments to the design. With the direct selection tool, the anchor points can be moved and adjusted to ensure the lines match with the desired sketch.
- Various tools and shapes are integrated to create specific elements of the image. The rounded rectangle tool, for instance, is used to build the rocket's fuel jet, while the rectangle and line segment tools are used for additional detailing.
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In this video we'll begin tracing our rocket. In order to do this we'll be utilizing our pen tool and making sure that we're in our traced rocket layer.
Let's zoom in using CTRL PLUS (+). We'll start by creating the outline of a larger piece of our rocket. First we'll click on the fill and make sure that we have no fill as we'll only be utilizing our outline.
Again I'll be using a three pixel stroke in red however feel free to use whatever stroke you'd prefer. From here we're simply going to create each of these lines. So let's start with this top piece selecting at the path and with the pen tool we'll select right where the end becomes straight clicking here and dragging while holding the mouse button until we're in line with the sketch below.
We'll release and from here we'll see that it bends to each side unless we hold shift allowing us to draw straight down. We'll then click below right about here and while the pen tool wants to continue drawing and adding anchor points we can hit escape to end our line. Next let's work on our rocket.
We'll zoom in and again starting at our center path we'll click up top and from here we'll have to add a couple anchor points. I find it works best to add points right between our curves therefore on top we have a curve to the right and down below we have a curve going down into the right and finally we have a curve right at the edge. We'll want to add a point right between our initial curve down and to the right before the curve to the left.
In this case we'll add it right about here and simply click up and drag and as we release we'll see our line is intact. From here we can click right between this curve and the end right about here and we'll click over and even though our line isn't perfect we can make adjustments after. Finally we want to do our final point here at the edge and in order to create a straight line here we can click right at the point and finish our line at the edge.
Now we can do some adjustments to our line. We'll hit A on the keyboard for a direct selection tool and select our first anchor point. From here if we click the anchor point and drag to the right holding shift we can drag it so that our line matches up with the sketch below.
In addition we also need to make changes to this anchor point. Let's move it up and to the left a little bit and if we manipulate our handles here we'll have the ability to become more in line with our sketch. It takes a little practice depending on how your anchor points are moved.
We can often match the line created below. In this case we don't have to have our lines perfect to still get our rocket image. So let's hit CTRL shift a to deselect.
Next let's work on the fuel jet to the right. To do this we could use the pen tool however instead let's utilize our shapes and utilize our rounded rectangle tool. From here we'll get about the width and drag to the right and if your rounded rectangle doesn't look quite as round you can use the right and left arrow keys or up and down on the arrow keys to make it less or more round.
We'll leave it there for now and release and next we'll drag our top so that it matches the top of the right hand side. Finally in order to make this more rounded we'll hit a on the keyboard and select the anchor point on the right hand side and hold in shift select the anchor point on the left hand side. We'll then click and drag downward holding shift until it's in line with the sketch below.
Next we're ready to continue adding shapes. We can use our rectangle tool to add the lines within our fuel jet and we'll click when we're intersecting with the path and intersect all the way to the right hand side and release. Then using v on the keyboard and zooming in we can hold ALT as we click and drag while holding shift to make sure that we only drag below and we'll release a second rectangle below.
From here we can hit CTRL D on the keyboard to repeat this action and we'll do that one more time to add our final rectangle below. Next let's add our two lines. To do this we can utilize our line segment tool and we'll simply click when we intersect with the left hand side or our center line and we'll click and drag across holding shift and doing the same thing below we'll click and drag across holding shift and in this case we can extend beyond our rocket ship as we'll be cleaning it up in the future when we utilize our live paint tool.
Finally we utilize our rectangle tool clicking and dragging a rectangle and if we zoom in rather than recreating this rectangle let's hit v on the keyboard to select our rectangle and holding ALT we'll hold shift to drag below and release and if we drag to the right hand side we can match the length of this rectangle below. If you notice that the stroke increases in size beyond your desired pixels make sure that you right click and go to transform, scale as you may still have scale strokes and effects on. In this case we want it off and we'll click ok.
Finally as the last item to add we'll create the bottom piece. We'll again utilize the pen tool and select the bottom left hand point and let's add an anchor point right about here and click and drag. We'll then add our bottom right hand anchor point and we can adjust this in the future.
Finally we'll connect it on the left hand side and drag below till we've matched it and now we'll need to tidy up this anchor point. To do this we can hit a and select our anchor point and the first thing we want to do is drag our handle in and drag this handle in as well. If we zoom in closer we can change it a bit more and sometimes it just takes a little bit of finessing to make sure that we're in line with our sketch.
I think this does a good job of it right now. Just tweak it and this looks pretty good. If we zoom out we can see that we've now built most of our rocket ship.
In this case however we're going to wait to create our center circles until we've completed both sides of our rocket. So let's hit CTRL S on the keyboard to save our work and in the next video we'll be going over a few new tools. See you there!