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- [Instructor] In this
movie I'll introduce you

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to a tool that allows you to

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both draw and combine
shapes inside Illustrator

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and it goes by the name Shaper Tool.

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Now, as you can see here in this slide,

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the Shaper Tool allows you to draw

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simple, geometric shapes including

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rectangles, ellipses,

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equilateral triangles, and hexagons

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as well as straight lines.

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It's pretty great at
making out these shapes

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even if you do a relatively
horrible job of drawing them.

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Let me show you how that works.

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I'll go up to the File menu
and choose New from Template,

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then I'll go ahead and locate

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that RGB with center guides.ait file

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and double click on it.

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I'll select the Shaper
Tool, which by the way,

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appears below the Paintbrush Tool

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in the same fly out
menu as the Pencil Tool

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and these other guys.

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Also notice that it
has a keyboard shortcut

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of Shift+N, which just happens to be

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a shortcut that was previously unused.

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If this is the first time you're selecting

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the Shaper Tool, you may
get a little help screen

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that tells you how to work with it,

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but obviously I'm going
to be demonstrating

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things in greater detail
including the fact

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that you can draw a rectangle.

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Notice here that I am doing a terrible job

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of drawing this rectangle
and yet it comes out

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absolutely perfect like so.

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You also have the option of drawing

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a rectangle at a 45
degree angle, if you like.

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Notice that your two options
are 45 degrees and 135 degrees.

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You cannot draw rectangles
at other angles,

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but you can draw a square as
well as a 45 degree square.

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To see what that looks like,

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I'll go ahead and switch back over

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to my document and I will
draw a perfect square,

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like so, and even though
my square is looking

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just horrible, it ends up looking great

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when I release the mouse button.

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I'm going to get rid of
those guys by pressing

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Control+A, or Command+A on a Mac

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and then I'll press the backspace key,

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or the delete key on the
Mac to get rid of them.

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Your other option is to draw an ellipse,

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either a horizontal one or a vertical one,

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or, in our case, one at a 45 degree angle.

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Even though my shape
looks like a bad potato,

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it ends up coming out as a perfect ellipse

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and of course you can also
draw a perfect circle, like so.

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I don't want those shapes so I'll press

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Control+A, Command+A on the Mac, backspace

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to get rid of them,
that's delete on the Mac.

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The other shapes that you can draw are

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a triangle, an equilateral
triangle, by the way,

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meaning that each of its sides
is exactly the same length.

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That's going to happen, even in my case,

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what I'm going to do is draw
an upside down triangle,

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even if you draw it very
skinny or very wide,

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it's going to come out
with all sides equal.

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Let's get rid of those guys.

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Next, we'll draw a hexagon.

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Notice I'll draw this
pretty terrible hexagon

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right here, and assuming
that I haven't done

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too bad of a job,
Illustrator will go ahead

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and give me a hexagon like so.

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What's interesting about the hexagon,

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I'll go ahead and press Control+Z,

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or Command+Z on the Mac, to get rid of it.

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You even get a hexagon
if you draw a pentagon.

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Notice I've drawn five sides, but I end up

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getting a six sided shape instead.

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If I want a five sided shape,

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then I can just go ahead and click on it

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in order to select that
shape, and by the way,

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I'm clicking with the Shaper Tool

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and my Bounding Box is turned on

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at which point I can go ahead

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and drag on this little plus/minus widget

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in order to reduce the number of sides

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to five, for example.

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I can increase the number of
sides all the way up to ten,

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which is interesting because
you can't really draw

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a ten sided shape.

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Notice that even if I draw, let's say,

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a seven sided shape, like this right here,

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then Illustrator is going
to turn it into a hexagon

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or if I try to give it even more sides,

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let's see if I can draw,
let's say, eight sides,

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then it's very possible that Illustrator

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is going to turn it into a circle.

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Finally, you can draw a line at any angle

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that you like just by dragging

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and if you draw a more
or less horizontal line,

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like so, it's going to turn into
an absolutely horizontal line

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and the same goes if
you do a vertical drag.

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You will get a vertical line.

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It is possible that Illustrator
is not going to recognize

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what you're doing so, for example,

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I'll just go ahead and get rid
of all these guys once again.

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Let's say I draw a letter "Z".

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In that case, Illustrator is either

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going to tell me that it
didn't recognize the shape,

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so you may see an alert message,

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or it may do nothing at
all as it did in my case.

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That goes for anything you draw

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where you end up creating a kind of zigzag

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or crossing the lines.

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You're not going to end up with anything.

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Also, if you don't draw
that last side long enough,

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then you may not get anything,
so what you need to do,

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for example, when drawing a rectangle,

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is make sure you get it more
or less back to the beginning,

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in which case you should end up with

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the shape you're looking for.

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Finally, notice that the
tool always creates shapes

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with light gray fills.

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If you want to change that,
just go ahead an click

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on the shape to select it
and then go to the Fill icon

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on the far left side of the control panel

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and change it to whatever color you like.

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The same, of course, goes for the stroke.

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For example, I'm going
to take the line weight

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up to 12 points and
then press the Enter key

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to achieve this effect right here.

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Then if you want to deselect the shape,

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all you have to do is click off of it.

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That is how you draw shapes
with the new Shaper Tool

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here inside Illustrator.

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I'll show you how to combine shapes

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with the Shaper Tool
in the very next movie.