Hi there, in this video we're going to take the Width Tool to the next level. 1
We're going to take this hand drawn logo... 2
and amazingly vectorize it. 3
Same with this one here, we're going to take this Pen Tool drawing, and... 4
do all this kind of cool blobby bits to the ends. 5
All right, let's go learn how to do that now in Illustrator. 6
I've got open the 'Width Tool1.ai' file. 7
We're going to draw this kind of curve in the middle here. 8
Here's a logo I made a really long time ago for a company called Arctic Kiwi. 9
It just has this really nice kind of New Zealand coral shape in there. 10
Mountains, that's what it's meant to be anyway... 11
but we want to get this curve, we're going to use the Width Tool. 12
We'll look at some of the advanced Width Tool features. 13
First of all we need to get this kind of curve shape. 14
Now that can be the hardest bit, right? 15
I'm going to use the Curvature Tool, it gives me kind of nicest curviest line. 16
We're practicing the Curvature Tool, remember? 17
I'm going to click once. 18
Now if you kind of put two, not enough curve points in... 19
I'm trying to be really sparingly. 20
And if you know, the least amount of Anchor Points... 21
generally gives you a nicer curve. 22
That's good, but it's not following the line as I wanted it. 23
So what we might do is, I'm going to undo... 24
and just kind of add one or two more extra points... 25
instead of going all the way, down to here, I'm going to kind of maybe get there. 26
Maybe there. 27
Then, there. 28
There. 29
You'll see, as it comes around... 30
kind of reaches back, and influences the line. 31
Thank you, Curvature Tool. 32
Now if you get it close, and you're like... 33
"Actually it's kind of close, but not what I wanted"... 34
you can use the White Arrow to adjust it. 35
But let's say it's really bad... 36
and you've got something that's not what you wanted. 37
Actually let's do a duplicate over here. 38
A nice little trick before we do the Width Tool... 39
is, with it selected, if you've got something that just doesn't flow nicely... 40
you can use the 'Object', 'Path', 'Simplify'. 41
Doesnât always work, you can see, there's just kind of a tiny adjustment. 42
I felt like it's just a nicer curve there now... 43
especially across the top here, it's kind of peaked to across this. 44
You can play around with curve position... 45
and decide on how much-- 46
Don't worry too much about where it is in this slider... 47
because it just kind of changes the shapes. 48
So, just kind of drag along until you find... 49
like, "Actually I think that's quite nice." 50
We're kind of liking it about there. 51
Make sure Preview is 'on'. 52
Also know that sometimes I use it, and it does make a big mess of it... 53
but I'd say, 80% of the time it makes it a little bit better. 54
You can see, I'm liking that curve now. 55
Goodbye, you're in-- 56
I'm going to turn the background on, try and line him back up. 57
When you are drawing this, don't worry too much about the background drawing... 58
because that's just hand drawn... 59
like it was my good guess, to try and make it nice and curvy. 60
But we want to get something that looks perfect and vector. 61
Don't worry too much about it. 62
Now we're going to look at the Width Tool. 63
The Width Tool is this one here, it's like a harp or something. 64
Click on him. 65
And the easy way to do it is to find somewhere... 66
kind of the fattest point of that line, I'm going to just drag it out. 67
So that's a pretty cool thing, if you've never used it before... 68
but lot of people have. 69
So there's a few things you'll need to watch out for. 70
It is, if I zoom in... 71
because I used a Font size of 1, and a Stroke width of 1pt to start with... 72
you can see, it's got kind of flattened, it's not what I wanted. 73
So afterwards, you can do one of two things. 74
You can just grab it, and just drag it in, to get it to be nice and tight... 75
or you can just start with a really small weight font to start with... 76
before you start drawing it. Up to you. 77
Other things to know about the Width Tool, you can have more than 1 point. 78
You can see, you can kind of adjust this one now... 79
having lots of different points. 80
If you get something in the wrong place... 81
you can just click, hold, and drag the center of it. 82
You can see, you can kind of move it around. 83
I'm going to delete these by clicking it. I'm just hitting 'Delete' on my keyboard. 84
Grab you as well, delete him. 85
Another thing we can do is... 86
let's say I want this outside to be just a bit bigger. 87
Say I want it about there. 88
You can hold down the 'Alt' key on a PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac. 89
And you can grab either of these sides. 90
You can see, they work independently of each other. 91
If I let go of it, they start working together... 92
while I'm holding down the 'Option' key, or the 'Alt' key on a PC 93
I can kind of adjust just this one to get it kind of how I want it to be. 94
So lots more awesome Width Tool action to come, but let's just finish this off. 95
And I want to run into one of the problems that people do have... 96
and a little cool shortcut to fix it. 97
Let's say I'm using the Curvature Tool. 98
I want to draw these lines, but I want to draw them as separate lines... 99
because what happens is, click once, click again, click there... 100
and it's joined up, that's easier, I can click off. 101
Now I want to click down here. 102
You, I don't want this to join up. 103
Because it does kind of weird stuff, it just wants to do separate lines. 104
The quickest way to fix that is, with it selected with the 'Black Arrow'... 105
hold 'Command' on a Mac, or 'Control' on a PC, and hit '2'. 106
It just locks it. It's kind of locked in the background now. 107
Back to the Curvature Tool, click once, click once. 108
Then at the top here, it's not going to try and join it. 109
If we hold 'Command 2', it just locks it again. 110
So it's kind of-- easy to put him on its own layer. 111
Again, you, stop doing that. 112
I'm going to go 'Command 2', all locked. 113
So I can just continue on my merry way. 114
I probably want to join some of these lines, but that's okay. 115
So you, my friend, 'Command 2'. 116
Then I grab my Curvature Tool. 117
Click once, click again, back at the top there. 118
Now you're thinking, "These are not joined." 119
So, nice little trick is, let's make sure to unlock them all. 120
So under 'Object', there's 'Unlock All'. 121
For some reason that shortcut doesn't work on my machine. 122
It's been done by something else... 123
but what we can do is grab all of these Anchor Point at the top here. 124
So I've used my 'White Arrow', I've just selected them all. 125
Then I can go over here, the 'Align Panel', let's say I want to align there. 126
'Align Vertical'. 127
And 'Align Center Horizontal'. They just overlap each other now, perfect. 128
So let's move on to our next Width Tool example. 129
So the second example, open up 'Width Tool2'. 130
And we'll do this kind of [size Scott style] kind of words. 131
Check out [??]... 132
he's got amazing stuff, like it's total copy of that type of effect. 133
What we're looking for is... 134
we're looking for these kind of tear drop ends, and nice curves. 135
There's two things we're going to do, let's do the tear drop one first. 136
So I'm going to grab-- 137
We'll use the Curvature Tool... 138
because I find it easier for doing these curves. 139
Click once, click twice. 140
How many do I need? 141
I've practiced this a couple of times, teaching it... 142
so, kind of know I need a little bit more than I normally do. 143
I want to kind of come around here, and then, maybe... 144
there. 145
Now I could use the White Arrow to tidy these up... 146
but I'm happy, roughly how it is. 147
What you might have run into problems is-- mine didn't have a Fill... 148
if you're finding it hard to draw... 149
just turn off the Fill before you start drawing. 150
Next thing I want to do is... 151
turn the Stroke Weight way down, so it's nice and thin. 152
Let's grab the Width Tool. 153
There he is there. 154
We're going to have a couple of things, one is the Star Point. 155
What you'll find with the Star Point, suppose you drag it the wrong way... 156
and it's like, seems to not work... 157
just drag it the opposite way, so I'm dragging it down. 158
So that's my kind of first part. It's doing a pretty good job, right? 159
The next bit is, I want that tear drop end. 160
So what we'll do is-- I'm going to zoom in close on this tip. 161
And you need two parts, I'm going to draw out one part. 162
Now it just kind of looks like a regular line... 163
but just behind it, drag in a skinnier bit. 164
It kind of makes like a little tuber thing. 165
Yours might be working by default, it's probably not... 166
but if you click on the line... 167
go over here, Stroke, and click on the word 'Stroke'. 168
By default it's set to the unfortunately named Butt Cap. 169
You want to go to the next one called 'Round Cap'... 170
and it will give you that kind of look. 171
Breaks this end, but we can fix this end the easy way by lobbying it off... 172
but it gives you that nice kind of tear drop shape. 173
That's kind of what we're looking for, for this drawing. 174
Now you might be a master with the Pen Tool... 175
and spend a while getting this curve... 176
because it's pretty good, but it's not perfect. 177
I'll show you a way, say this one here is quite circular, I want to kind of-- 178
I'll show you a trick that I use to get a reasonably perfect circle. 179
I'm going to start with an Ellipse. 180
You might have to hold down the 'Rectangle tool'... 181
and grab the 'Ellipse Tool'. 182
I'm going to draw an Ellipse. 183
Now, shortcut, if you hold down... 184
the 'Alt' key on a PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac, it starts from the center. 185
And hold down 'Shift', it will give you a perfect circle. 186
That's what I'm looking for, right? 187
Now remember, my thing underneath is just a hand drawn one... 188
so it's never going to match up perfect, so don't-- 189
We're not looking to try and do that, right? 190
We're looking to get it close. 191
What I want to do is slice this into bits. 192
Now, I don't use the Knife Tool very often... 193
see this shortcut, this Scissors Tool... 194
I said knife, I meant scissors. 195
So if you can't find it, it's hiding underneath the Eraser Tool. 196
And he's really good at going-- 197
click once, and click again. 198
And what it's done is, if I hit the 'Delete' key twice... 199
it deletes that chunk. 200
You might have the wrong bit deleted. 201
So you might have to select with the Black Arrow... 202
and delete the bit you need to go on. 203
You can see here, I've kind of got the beginnings of this going. 204
Now I want to continue it on. 205
So I'm going to use the Pen Tool or the Curvature Tool. 206
Where's the Curvature Tool? 207
I want to show you something. 208
Curvature Tool is like, "I want to be this side"... 209
because that was the last point drawn. 210
And you're like, "No, I want you to be this side." 211
I'm going to grab the 'White Arrow', and I'm going to say... 212
click on you. 213
Now if I go back to my Curvature Tool, it says... 214
"I defy you, and do whatever I want," and go back to that first one. 215
So I find this is a little bit of a bug. 216
If you can think of a better way than this hack. 217
What I do is, I click on this thing, click on it once... 218
and then go back to my Curve Tool, and it goes... 219
"Did you mean this guy?", and I'm like, "Yes, I did." 220
So I use the Pen Tool just to click it once. 221
So what I'm looking for now is probably one about there. 222
I'm just going to follow this guy down the middle. 223
Now I want it to follow down the center... 224
I want it to be straight, don't want it to be a big curve like this. 225
So I'm going to double click. 226
Then here, double click. 227
It didn't do a great job there... 228
so I'm going to go back, and maybe just adjust it. 229
Try not to wreck it too much. 230
It's looking okay. 231
You might now go with your White Arrow, and tidy this up. 232
There's a couple of bits. 233
Whole mad stuff, we're not getting perfect circles. 234
Width Tool helps. 235
I'm using the White Arrow... 236
the Direct Selection Tool just to tidy it up. 237
I feel like I'm kind of there. 238
Might need a little bit of work across. 239
What I might do as well is turn this one underneath off... 240
because it's kind of influencing where I think it should be. 241
Same thing again. 242
So, I've used this circle to get the bulk of it done. 243
Now I'm going to turn down my 'Stroke' to something really light. 244
I'm going to grab my 'Width Tool'. 245
I'm going to-- 246
I might need to turn that back on now. 247
Just turned it off. 248
I want a big chunk this end. 249
Probably want to match it about here... 250
because I want the font to be the same width... 251
to about there before it gets kind of skinny. 252
What am I doing? 253
It gets a bit thinner across here, so I'm going to tighten it up about there. 254
Then I want to do this little blob bit. 255
Let's practice that. 256
So I want to go, you... 257
to get the kind of end piece, then just a bit further back. 258
So I want that last part of Anchor. 259
And, a bit further back. 260
I'm just going to tighten it in. You might find it like, Holy Molly... 261
goes to a, maybe a bit too big, you just chuck this in there. 262
Awesome, I am happy enough. 263
What I might do is trim it up, I want it to be a bit further back... 264
so 'C' on my keyboard to get the Scissors Tool, so it snaps. 265
'Black Arrow', grab that chunk, don't need him. 266
I need my blob back here. 267
It's working properly, right? 268
I'm drawing a little circle here. 269
Switch these guys around, it's kind of the thing I'm looking for. 270
Zoom out. 271
How perfect is it? 272
It's pretty good. 273
Cool! So, what we're going to do now is, draw these letters. 274
You can totally easily draw these, but you draw them separately. 275
This L, I draw with just the Pen Tool, the Curvature Tool. 276
And I draw these two things separately using the Width Tool. 277
I will join them up in an episode... 278
probably two videos after this one, actually no, the very next video... 279
where we start merging different kind of shapes... 280
like this Width Tool, with just regular shapes. 281
So what I'd like you to do is keep practicing on a few of these. 282
There's a few of them that changed direction. 283
In this case, I'll probably just do two separate lines. 284
So I'll do one that came out of here... 285
and stopped there. 286
Now I need to lock it and put it on its own layer, and draw another one. 287
That will be really easy to do with the circle. 288
I should have done that one, would have been real easy. 289
I did this one that kind of curves as well. 290
But you get the idea. 291
Some of these ones change direction. 292
And I totally do that in one big, long line. 293
I'd like you to practice on a few of these... 294
and we'll finish it off in a future video. 295
All right, on to the Shape Builder Tool, which I keep talking about. 296
We'll finally finish off a few of these drawings in the next one. 297
All right, let's go do it.