About this course
This Level 2 course picks up where our introductory course finishes by exploring the more advanced and professional features of this remarkably flexible and useful graphics application.
Illustrator is a comprehensive and complex application but it's also a lot of fun and a pleasure to use once you master the basics of paths, anchor points and the pen tool. This course takes up these fundamentals and takes you on a ride through the joy of Illustrator as a companion to any graphic workflow for web, print or video.
What you will learn
In our Level 1 course we take students through simple object handling and transformation, points and paths, the pen tool and the use of layers.
This course takes you to the next level by exploring many of the newer and more interesting features of Illustrator such as bitmap tracing, using and creating symbols, brushes and pattern swatches, working with charts, warping, effects and the new multi-artboard workspace introduced in CS4.
The course will begin with a quick review of essential topics covered in our earlier course before getting down to the business of blending, grouping and merging shapes using the Pathfinder and the Blend tools.
We then spend some time on the application of effects using the Brushes panel, learning how to load brush palettes and create new brushes from your own artwork.
We look at the Appearance panel (which is often overlooked) and how it relates to object properties and effects before moving onto the use and creation of Symbols and how these relate to print, 3D and multimedia workflows using Flash and other technologies.
Finally, we complete the workflow by looking at file formats, exporting, printing and pre-press issues such as separations as well as Saving for Web and Devices.
Assumed knowledge
You should have completed our Level 1 course before attending this one or at least be familiar with Illustrator fundamentals such as points, paths, Bezier curves and the Pen tool.
Photoshop Level 1
