- [Instructor] Over the course of this chapter
we'll be creating this illustration once again
entirely from scratch,
this time using Illustrator's shape tools.
And while this project is a little more challenging
than the previous one I'm confident
that you can pull it off.
And we're going to start things off
the same way we did in the previous chapter
by creating a new document complete with center guides,
which may make you wonder if there's some way
to save those upfront steps so you don't
have to perform them over and over again.
And the answer is to create a template file
as I'll demonstrate in this very movie.
And so the first step is to go to the File menu
and choose the New command,
or you have that keyboard shortcut
of Ctrl+N or Cmd+N on the Mac.
And notice if you've been working along with me
that you'll see your previous settings
stored inside the new dialog box,
but just to make sure that you and I are on the same page,
I'll go ahead and click on Art & Illustration
in the top left corner of the dialog box
and then I'll change the name of this file
to RGB with center guides.
Notice that the units are set to Points,
and so I'll go ahead and change the width value to 1008
and I'll tab to the height value and change it to 672.
And again these values just happen
to work well for the video and they also ensure
that you and I will get the same results.
Notice that the color mode is set to RGB Color,
which is exactly what we want.
I'm just going to make one change to the bleed values
by taking them up to 12 points which is the same
as one pica after which I'll click on the create button,
or you can press the enter key on the PC
or the return key on the Mac.
Alright next you want to go to the Layers panel,
and then click on the fly out menu icon
in the top right corner of that panel
and choose Panel Options from the bottom of the menu.
Next go ahead and select the other option
and change that size value to 60 pixels and click okay.
Alright now go ahead and double click
on the existing name of that layer and change
it to Guides and press the enter key
or the return key on the Mac.
Now to create the center guides,
go ahead and press ctrl + r or cmd + r on a Mac,
to bring up the rulers and then press the ctrl key
or the cmd key on the Mac and drag from the intersection
of those two rulers in the top left corner
of the screen in order to draw out two guidelines
at the same time and then press ctrl r
or cmd r in a Mac to hide those rulers.
Now we need to unlock the guide so we can center them.
And you do that by going to the View menu,
choosing Guides and choosing Unlock Guides.
Then armed with a black arrow tool up here
at the top of the toolbox go ahead and partially marquis
both of those guides like so and then click
on the word Align and make sure Align To
is set to Align to Artboard.
Now if you have a bigger screen you're going
to see the align icons up here in the control panel,
but because my screen is smaller I'm seeing
them in a pop up panel.
Either way you want to click on this second icon,
horizontal align center, followed by this fifth icon,
vertical align center in order
to exactly center those guides.
Now return to the View menu,
choose Guides and choose Lock Guides
in order to lock them down so you don't
accidentally mess them up.
Alright now I'm going to go ahead and zoom in a little bit
and now that I've established a Guides layer
I want to add a new layer that I can draw on
because after all the purpose of the Guides layer
is to hold the guides and nothing more.
And so I'll drop down to this little page icon
at the bottom of the layers panel
and I'll press the alt key or the option key on the Mac
and click on it in order to force the display
of the Layer Options dialog box and then I'll just call
this new layer Drawing and click okay.
Alright now we want to save this document
as a template and you do that by going
to the File menu and choosing Save As Template.
At which point Illustrator will automatically
direct you to its recommended folder
which is deep inside the system folder structure,
and so what you want to do is just go ahead
and save the file by clicking on the save button.
Now it's possible especially here on the PC
that you're going to get a privileges error.
In which case you'll either need to talk to your
IT guy or one of your very computer savvy friends
in order to address that problem just as I did, by the way.
Or you can save this template to a different location.
But in my case I'll just click save and because
I've created this file in advance I'll go ahead
and replace it by clicking on the Yes button.
Alright now all you need to do is close this file
and then return to the File menu
and choose New From Template,
and that will take you back to that exact same folder
at which time you can select the file and click
on the New button or you can just double click
in the file in order to load it as an untitled document.
So notice that it's behaving as if it's never been saved.
And that's how you create a time saving template
in the RGB color mode which is great for both
local printing as well as screen graphics,
complete with a couple of center guides
and these generously sized layer thumbnails
here inside Illustrator.