- [Instructor] In this movie,
I'll show you how to combine straight and curving segments
to create the letter D.
I'll go ahead and switch over to my document so far,
and you can see that I've drawn in
the I and the N off screen because after all,
both letters exclusively comprise quarter points
and we've frankly seen enough of them.
Alright now I'm going to go ahead and just switch
all the layers to the outline mode.
By choosing the outline command from the view menu
or pressing the keyboard shortcut of control Y
or command Y on the Mac.
Alright so this time around, let's go ahead
and create the straight segment first
by pressing the P key to select the pen tool
and then I'll click right here to create a corner point
and I'll create another corner point at this location.
And you may notice that by rubber band preview is back.
For whatever reason, I had to close this document
and reopen it.
Alright now, I'll click up here in order to create
a third corner point and now, because
I want the next segment to curve,
I'll go ahead and drag out from it
to create a control handle.
Next, I'm going to drag from the very top of the D
to set a smooth point here, and I'll press the shift key
as I do in order to constrain the angle of my control handle
to exactly horizontal.
Now I want this one to be longer
so I'll press the control key or the command key on a Mac
in order to stretch this handle
while leaving the previous one unharmed.
And if you take a close look here,
I think this corner handle is too high
so I'll press the control key or the command key on a Mac,
to get my white arrow tool,
that was the last arrow tool I'll use,
to get that tool on the fly, and drag this point down,
and then I'll control or command drag
the control handle down as well.
Alright now I'll zoom out just a little bit
so I can see more of my illustration.
And I'll begin dragging from the far right point
while pressing the shift key as well
in order to create an entirely vertical control handle.
And that actually looks pretty good.
So I'll go ahead and move down to here
and now we've got a problem at this location.
Normally, I would just go ahead and start dragging
at this lowest point in order to add a control handle
about there and I'll take it pretty far out as you can see
and then I'll press the control key
or the command key on a Mac and I'll bring it back.
But I need a heck of a lot of control handle on this side
in order to pull of this degree of curvature.
You can see that the designer of this specific D
decided to flatten things out right here at this location.
So what I'm going to do is add another smooth point
right there and then I'm going to
control or command drag it up like so
in order to flatten out the curve,
and I'm going to move this control handle up and outward
in order to produce this effect,
which I think is more or less dead on.
I could take this handle out a little bit if I wanted to,
but I'm worried that we're going
to have a lump in this location.
So I think that's as far as I'll go.
And now I'll zoom in, and I will drag out
some pretty small control handles from this smooth point
and then I'll finish things up by dragging outward
from this corner point so that
the control handle that I'm actually modifying
is going up and to the right as I drag down and to the left
and I'll end up with this effect right here.
Okay now we need to draw the inside of the D shape,
and this time I'm going to start with the smooth points.
So I'll go ahead and drag like so
to drag out some pretty big control handles.
And they might need to come out a little farther even.
And then I'll go ahead and drag from this far right point
right there like so.
I don't want the bottom control handle
to be this long, though, I don't think
so I'll press the control key or the command key on a Mac
as I'm dragging in order to move it back in,
and this control handle has to come farther out
so I'll control drag it, that's a command drag on a Mac.
Again the control or command key
is going to get me the white arrow tool on the fly,
and then I'll control or command drag this guy downward.
Alright now notice here, we've got a little bit
of a cusp point, so I'm going to drag like so
to begin a smooth point and then midway into the drag,
after I get that opposite control handle
on the right location, I'll press and hold the alt key
or the option key on the Mac,
and I'll send this control handle in a different direction
and then I'll drag right here
to create another smooth point like so.
And it looks like I didn't quite position that cusp point
at the right location so I'll press the control key
or the command key on a Mac and move it down a little bit,
and that looks more or less right.
And now, I'll control drag or command drag this control
handle outward and so in this case,
we've got a cusp point that's surrounded by
two curving segments.
Alright now finally, I'll go ahead and zoom out.
I actually want to take this guy down a little bit
or at least maybe its control handle has to come down.
That looks good to me.
And now I'll go ahead and lop off this control handle.
I don't want it because I have a straight segment coming up
so I'll just click on it to get rid of its control handle
and then I'll go up to this guy and just click on him
to lop off his left hand control handle as well.
Alright now I want to see what I'm doing so I'll press
control Y or command Y on a Mac to switch back
to the preview mode and I'll zoom out a little bit.
And that's looking pretty darn good,
but obviously I need to convert it into
a compound path so that this inner path cuts a hole
out of the outer one.
But before I do that, I might as
well create the beveled edge.
So I'm going to press control Y or command Y again
so I can see the tracing template,
and I'll press the V key to select my black arrow tool.
And I'll go ahead and click right there
to select that inner shape and I'll press control C,
control F, that's command C, command F on a Mac,
in order to copy this shape and paste it in front.
And I'll click on the word transform
up here in the control panel or,
if you don't see the word transform,
click on the XYW or agent stat.
Now I want to make sure that the chain icon is off.
We do not want to constrain
the width and height proportions.
Go ahead and select the bottom left reference point
and then click into width value and press the down arrow
key until it looks like you've got that left edge
in the right location and then press
the tab key to advance the height value,
and press the down arrow key until we get
the top edge in the right location as well.
Now we need to get the right edge over a little bit.
So I'll select this bottom left reference point
and I'll click into width value and press
the down arrow key until it moves over as desired.
And now I'm going to select this top left reference point
and I'm going to increase the height value
until this point moves down underneath.
Alright, now let's go ahead and select the outer path.
Copy and paste in front so control C, control F.
That's command C, command F on a Mac.
Click on the word transform, leave that top left point
selected, click into width value,
and press the up arrow key until that letter
gets sufficiently wider as we're seeing here,
and then press the tab key to advance
to the height value and press the up arrow key
until the bottom edge goes down as we're seeing it do now.
Alright now I'm going to make some manual adjustments
by zooming in a little bit and then I'll press
shift left arrow in order to scoot that path to the left.
And I'll press the A key to switch to the wide arrow tool.
I'll select this anchor point and just drag it down and out
like so.
Alright, now let's press control Y or command Y on a Mac
in order to switch back to the preview mode.
And I'll switch to the black arrow tool
by pressing the V key and I'll click on this big path
and then I'll click on the innermost path
in order to select it.
And I'll go up to the object menu, choose compound path,
and choose make in order to force the inside path
to cut a hole in the outside one.
And let's go ahead and fill this path
with this dark shade of gray
in which all the RGB values are 77.
Alright and now, we need to send this guy to back
by right clicking on him, choosing a range,
and choosing send to back, and now we want
to select each of these white shapes
so I'll click on the big one, shift click on a smaller one,
return to the object menu, choose compound path,
and choose make.
And now I want the fill to be slightly darker
so I'll go ahead and select this very light shade of gray
in which the RGB values are each 230
in order to produce this effect here
and now I'll click off the path outline to deselect them
and I'll press control zero or command zero on a Mac
to take in my entire document.
And that's how you combine straight and curving segments.
Not to mention a couple of compound paths.
In our case, to create the letter D in the word design,
here inside Illustrator.