- All right, the time has finally come
for us to really truly draw with round corners
inside Illustrator.
And in the end, we're going to take this collection
of Pen Tool corner points, and we're going to turn it
into this rounded piece of artwork here.
All right, so the first thing to reckon with
is how do you go about drawing your free-form polygons?
And the answer is to make sure that your corners
that we're seeing here are on the outside
of the final rounded edges.
So think in terms of control handles.
Remember how control handles attract their arcing segments.
Well, that's what we want to do with round corners as well.
So every one of these corner points
is on the extreme side of its round edge.
All right, now armed with White Arrow Tool,
I'll go ahead and click on the orca's nose right here,
and you generally, by the way, want to start
with the smaller rounded segments as opposed to the big ones
because if you start with the big ones first,
then you may end up eating up at the whole segments
so you can no longer round the other points.
For example, watch what happens if I drag this guy
right here all the way down
so that I end up with his dark red line,
which shows me that I've used up the entire segment.
Well then, there's no way I can round this point any longer
no matter how hard I try.
So I'll go ahead and press ctrl + z or cmd + z on the Mac
to undo that change, and I'll click on this point instead
and round it off just a little bit like so.
And then I'll click on this point and round
the heck out of it so that I get that big red segment
which shows me that I've reached maximum roundness.
All right, now I'll click on this guy and round it upward,
and I'll click this one and round it downward like so.
And you don't have to round each and every point by the way
because we do still want corners in some locations.
But I do want to round this guy pretty good
until I more or less match that template.
Again, you don't have to exactly match it,
and you may arrive at some points where you just can't do it
in that would be my fault, because it means
I put the corner points in the wrong locations.
So just do your best with this, as I will as well.
And so I'll go ahead and drag this guy up
until I reach maximum roundness right there
at that location, and I'll click here,
and here I have all the room in the world
because this guy is going to remain a corner,
and so is this.
So I can just drag this as far as I want to,
and you may find that you have to scroll down a little bit
in order to make more room for that round corner control.
Notice how far out it is located right now.
It's way out here at the bottom of the pasteboard
to the point where I really can actually see what I'm doing
but that looks actually very nice.
So I'll go ahead and stick with it,
and then I'll round off the edges of the tail right here
on both sides, because these are the little rounded corners.
And this one is a big one of course,
and so is this guy right here.
So I'll go ahead and round it off quite a bit,
and I'll click here and round this one off
quite a bit as well,
although not to its maximum.
All right, now I'll start up here and I'll round down.
I think you're beginning to get the sense
for how this works.
It's just a matter of tugging at these round corner widgets
to whatever extent you like.
All right, but if only for the sense of demonstration here,
I am going to finish this project.
So I'll go ahead and click on the eye,
this point right there in the eye this time around,
and I'll drag it down 'til I get maximum roundness,
and then I'll click on this guy and drag him down
to about here.
I want the eye to end up being just kind of a slit.
All right, now let's work on a spot here
by rounding this edge and then rounding this one,
and you're going to get the smoothest results
if every once in a while, you go as far as you possibly can.
So if you don't see that red edge
and you want more smoothness, then go ahead
and round it off all the way.
And now I'll go ahead and round this guy off
as much as I can, and I'm not really going to be able
to match the template exactly this time around,
but it doesn't really matter because this spot
is just really a big blob.
All right, now I'm going to click on the fin,
and I'm going to take this edge right here inward like so,
and I'm going to take this guy outward
until I get maximum roundness.
And then I'll click on this corner point
and drag its widget outward.
Again, I just hit maximum there.
I'll drag this guy in until I hit maximum as well,
then I'll drag this guy out as far as I can.
And I'll click on the very edge of the fin
and I want to take in quite a bit, but not to maximum,
because I want to leave a little bit of a straight edge.
And so I want you to see, this is what's happening.
If you do not go to maximum roundness,
then you are going to be left with a straight edge,
albeit one that is tangent to the next line.
And what I mean by that is that we have a nice,
smooth transition.
So if I were to click on this segment
with my White Arrow Tool,
I would see that the straight segment
continues on to the lever of the control handle.
So we have a nice, smooth edge,
even though we're transitioning into a straight segment.
So that's what's going to happen,
whereas if you go to maximum roundness,
you're going to end up with nothing but curving segments.
All right, I'm going to go ahead and zoom back out
a little bit here, let's now take on the big body
by clicking at this location,
right there at that corner point,
and I'll drag that edge in,
and then I'll click on this anchor point
and drag it to maximum roundness once again.
Click this one, drag it to maximum roundness,
although that's going to take a little bit of work
because we're going to have to drag
very far down indeed into the pasteboard.
All right, next I'll select this guy
and drag it up, but I don't dare take it to maximum
because I want to leave some room to round
this corner point right there.
So I'll go ahead and take it all the way down like so,
and this looks pretty good to me.
It does leave a straight segment right there
at this location, but that's all right.
And now let's go ahead and zoom in on the mouth shapes.
I'll select this one and then click on this corner point
in order select it.
Drag it in a little bit.
That's too far, actually, so I'm going to press ctrl + z,
or cmd + z on the Mac to undo it,
because I really should have started with this guy.
And so I'll drag it up and then I'll select this one
and drag it out like so,
and so that's all the roundness I'm going to get out of it
unless I could go back to this point right there
and I could back it off a little bit to give myself
more room for this segment.
So you can go back and forth if you like.
All right, now I'll select this corner point
and drag it upward quite a bit.
And I might as well see if I can achieve
maximum roundness with this by dragging far, far up like so.
And I still haven't quite gotten it,
but I will in a second.
One more drag should do it, there it is,
now I'll go ahead and zoom in on the path
that represents the tongue.
And I'll click on this corner point
and drag it to maximum roundness as well.
And I think that just about takes care of everyone.
And that's how you turn a bunch of corner points
created just by clicking with the pen tool
into a series of organic curves
using the round corner widget here inside Illustrator CC.