- In this movie, I'll show you how to use
the Shape Builder tool, which allows you to take
basic lines and shapes --
and I do everything by the way,
that we're seeing here --
using either one of the line tools,
or one of the Shape tools,
that we've seen in previous chapters.
So, for example: this guy right here is a star,
I do this equilateral triangle using the Polygon tool.
We've got a ton of circles and ellipses,
there's a rectangle in the background right there,
and so forth.
And what we're going to do, is we're going to add them
or subtract them from each other,
to create the more complex custom path outlines
that you see here.
Alright so I'll go ahead and switch over to my starter file,
and you get to the Shape Builder tool
in the lower section of the Toolbox,
as we're seeing right here.
If you don't see it, then click and hold
on one of these Live Paint tools,
and select the Shape Builder from the flyout menu.
And then, just to make sure that we're on the same page,
I want you to press the "enter" key
to bring up the Shape Builder Options Dialogue Box,
and I want you to click on the Reset button,
just to reset all the settings,
so that you and I are getting the same results,
and then change this Pick Color From option to Artwork,
we'll how Color Swatches work later.
But for now, I want to lift the colors from the art,
at which point you can go ahead and click okay
in order to accept that change.
Alright, let's say I want to join this star
and this skinny rectangle right here into a magic wand.
Then you want to press and hold the "ctrl" key,
or the "command" key on the Mac,
to temporarily gain access to your last used arrow tool,
which I'm assuming is the black arrow,
and then just go ahead and partially marquee
those two shapes, and the reason is
that you have to select the shapes
before you can merge them.
And then I'm just going to zoom in a little bit here,
so I can really see what I'm doing,
and I'm going to drag up this rectangle,
and you want to drag all the way
into the star, incidentally, and that's because
Illustrator is only going to merge the stuff
that's covered in that dot pattern,
at which point, go ahead and release
in order to merge those two shapes into one.
Alright, now let's check out the snowman over here.
Once again, we need to select him.
So, press and hold that "ctrl" key,
or the "command" key on the Mac,
to temporarily gain access to the black arrow tool,
and just marquee down the left side of these shapes,
that'll select the arm as well,
but, not terribly concerned about that,
then release the "ctrl" key, or the "command" key,
to return to the Shape Builder tool,
and now, notice, I can drag over these buttons,
and over his eyes, and nose, and all this stuff,
but those items are not going to get merged
because they're not selected.
And so all you need to make sure of,
is that you don't drag over that arm,
and then release and you'll see that you've merged
those three ellipses into one single, lumpy snowman.
Alright, now let's take a look at the shoes down here.
I'll go ahead and press the "ctrl" key,
or the "command" key on the Mac,
and partially marquee those guys.
And notice we have red rectangles
and then I have this arc that I drew with the Arc tool,
and this straight line that I drew with the Line tool,
and then I just went ahead and joined
those two shapes together using the Join command.
So, in other words, this is an open path outline.
There is no segment on the righthand side here.
But it's got a fill, and so that's all
the Shape Builder needs.
So notice if I drag from the yellow path to the red one,
then I'm going to color the new path yellow.
Whereas if I dragged from the red path to the yellow one,
I'm going to color the new path red.
And so you have that kind of control
when you're working with the Shape Builder.
Alright, now I'm going to zoom in on this circle
and this line right here.
So I'll go ahead and press the "ctrl" key,
that's the "command" key on a Mac,
and click this pointy line.
And all it is, by the way, is two lines
that you drew with the Line tool,
and then joined together.
So this is another open filled path,
and then I'll "ctrl + shift" click,
or "command + shift" click,
on that circle right there, and now I'll go ahead
and drag across them.
And make sure to drag over both halves of the circle,
so in other words, the Shape Builder tool
sees every single path intersection,
at which point go ahead and release
in order to create that carrot nose.
Alright, now I'm going to scroll over
to these two circles right here.
Let's say what I want to do is subtract
the brown circle from the yellow one,
in order to create a crescent,
in that case I would press the "ctrl" key,
or the "command" key on a Mac,
and marquee the two shapes like so.
And I want you to see that the shape
in the background is a big circle.
And now notice, if I move my cursor out here,
that the Shape Builder tool appears
as a black arrowhead along with a "+" sign,
to show you that it's going to add shapes.
If you press and hold the "alt" key,
or the "option" key on a Mac,
that "+" sign is going to change to a "-" sign,
at which point you can go can go ahead
and drag inside the shapes that you want to subtract.
You don't want to drag into the big yellow shape,
because then you'll just subtract everything,
so I'll go ahead and press "ctrl + z,"
or "command + z" on the Mac,
to undo that change,
and I'll just go ahead and "alt/option + drag" over
both parts of the brown circle,
in order to create this crescent.
Alright, so those are the basics
of adding and subtracting shapes
using the Shape Builder tool.
In the next movie, I'll show you how to get
still better results.