- Alright, as you can see here,
I've gone ahead and finished off all my path outlines
which is why in this movie,
I'll show you how to assign color to your pencil tool art
with the help of the shape builder tool.
So the first thing I'm going to do
is create this lushly textured background.
And that's actually really easy to pull off.
Just by zooming out like so and then creating a new layer
in front of the template layer
by clicking on the template layer
and then pressing the alt key or the option key on the Mac,
and clicking on the little page button
at the bottom of the layers panel.
And I'll just go ahead and call this new layer background,
and green is fine as the color
so I'll just go ahead and click okay.
Alright, now you want to switch to the rectangle tool
here in the shade tool flyout menu
and then go ahead and drag
from one corner of the bleed to the other.
And the bleed, as you may remember, is that red outline.
And then go ahead and click on the second color swatch
up here in the control panel
and change that stroke to none
because we really don't need a stroke.
And then click on the first swatch,
which of course represents the fill
and change it to this medium shade of purple
which is R147 G39 B143,
and we end up with this color here
Alright, now you want to go up to the window menu,
and choose the appearance panel in order to bring it up
over here on the right side of the screen.
And what I'm looking for is
a second fill to blend in with the first one here.
And so I'll click on the second icon
in the bottom left corner of the appearance panel
to add a new fill and I'll go ahead and click on it there
to bring up a list of swatches.
And notice this last free swatch is a pattern called jive
which is included by default inside any basic RGB document.
So I'll go ahead and select it like so
and then I'll twirl this little fill open,
I'll click on the word opacity,
and I'll change the opacity value to 50 percent
and I'll press the enter key or the return key on the Mac
in order to create that unusual background.
Alright, now I'm going to switch back to the layers panel
and I'm going to click in the lock column right here
to lock that rectangle down so that it doesn't interfere
with otherwise coloring the artwork.
Alright, now I'll go ahead and zoom back in
and what we want to do is create a layer of fills
based on our open and closed path outlines right here.
And so I'm going to go ahead
and duplicate this drawing layer
by clicking the flyout menu icon
in the upper right corner of the layers panel
and choosing duplicate drawing.
And now I'll go ahead and drag the new layer down
so that it appears below the drawing layer
and I'll double-click on an empty portion of it
to bring up the layer options dialogue box
and I'm just going to call this layer fills
and I'm going to change its color to gold.
Alright, now I'll click okay to accept that change.
And I'll turn off the drawing layer
so that we can focus exclusively on this new fills layer.
Alright, now we need to get rid of a few shapes
so press the v key in order to
switch back to the black arrow
and now you can just sort of marquee around
to select all of these lines for example.
We don't need them.
So I'll go ahead and select them and delete them.
And also get rid of this path outline right there
these two extra pathlines inside the right foot
and these two inside the left foot as well.
I don't think these things are called feet, but still.
Now I'll go ahead and marquee these lines and delete them.
And I want these lines gone as well.
And now what you want to do is zoom in on the head
and marquee these lines right there in order to select them.
Do not select the mouth and don't select the eyes.
And then press the backspace key
or the delete key on a Mac to get rid of them.
Alright, now I'm going to select
the creature's carapace here.
And I'll go up to the edit menu
and choose the copy command.
Or you can press control c here on a PC
or command c on a Mac.
Alright, we're done using the pencil tool
so I'm going to go ahead and close this floating toolbar.
And also press control a or command a on a Mac
in order to select all the shapes like so
and I'm going to change their fills
by clicking on this first color swatch
to this medium shade of green which is R57 G181 and B74.
And that will go ahead and fill all the shades,
and that gives us a sense
for how things are going to come together.
Alright, now I'll shift click on both of the eye shapes
right here in order to deselect them.
And I'll go ahead and grab my shape builder tool.
And I want to change a setting here,
I don't want to replace this color,
so I'll just press the enter key or the return key on a Mac
to bring up the shape builder options.
And I'll change this pick color from setting to artwork
and then I'll go ahead and click okay.
Alright, now the easiest thing to do
is to press the shift key
and drag around all of these shapes like so.
Which in my case, produces this effect right here.
So again, we do not want those eye shapes to be selected.
Alright, now somehow we've got to fill in
this little area here and the easiest way
to do that is with an oval.
And so I'm going to go ahead and switch
from the rectangle tool to the ellipse tool
here inside the shape tool flyout menu.
And I'm going to drag to create an oval
that's about this big let's say.
And then I'll switch back to the black arrow tool
which of course I can get by pressing the v key
and I'll go ahead and drag this bottom point
until it snaps into alignment right there.
Alright, now I'll just go ahead
and zoom out a little bit here
and I will select these two shapes by marqueeing them
and then I'll switch back to the shapebuilder tool
and I'll just go ahead and drag through all of them like so
in order to finish off that effect.
Alright now you want to switch back to the black arrow tool
and I'm going to press control zero
or command zero on the Mac to zoom out.
And I'll return to the edit menu
and choose the paste in front command
or you can press control f or command f on a mac
to bring back that shell.
And now I'm going to change its color
to this darker shade of green
which is R0 G146 B69 in order to produce this effect.
Alright, now click on his outer eye shape right there
and I want it to be the same color.
So I'll go ahead and switch it as well.
So I'm changing the fill colors of course,
and then I'll click on the inner eye shape
right there if I can grab it.
And I will change it to white.
The fill, that is.
Alright, now we don't need any of these strokes,
so go ahead and press control a or command a on a Mac
to select all of these shapes,
and then click the second color swatch
up here in the control panel and change it to none
in order to get rid off all those strokes.
Alright, now let's bring it back
in the form of the drawing layer
which I will turn on here at the top of the layers panel
and then I'll go ahead and click off
the path outlines to deselect everything.
And that friends, is how you assign color
to your pencil tool art in part using the immense power
of the shape builder tool here inside Illustrator.