Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

Adding and Subtracting

Shapes

In this, the fi rst of our robot art adventures, we’ll be

introduced to our protagonist, Ghost Robot, and his

sad space opera of unrequited mechanical love. (Hey, it

worked for Battlestar Galactica.) But more importantly,

you’ll see how to add and subtract primitive shapes to

build more complex ones. You’ll start with shapes that

I’ve already created, and—over the next few exercises—

assemble them into your own full-fl edged masterpiece.

1.

Open the ghost robot artwork. In the

son 06 subfolder inside the Lesson Files-

AIcs5 1on1 folder, you’ll fi nd a piece of

art labeled Ghost Robot.ai. Open the fi le, and meet

our translucent metal friend—featured as the cover

model for a fi ctitious magazine, shown in Figure 6-12.

2.

Examine the Layers panel. In the Layers panel,

you’ll notice a total of six layers, as pictured in

Figure 6-13. Click the icon to temporarily turn

a layer off and see the layers underneath; click the

empty box to turn on the layers. The Type, Frames,

and Backdrop layers are window dressing to fl esh

out the illustration; the Ghost template layer shows

my original sketch. These layers can be safely ig-

nored. The two layers of most interest to us are the

Pathfi nders layer and the Ghost Vectors layer. The

Pathfi nders layer shows your ultimate goal; you’ll

be starting with the shapes on the Ghost Vectors

layer. To that end, turn off all other layers.

3. Duplicate the Ghost Vectors layer. Because many

pathfi nder operations are destructive—that is to

say, they alter paths permanently—it’s best to work

from a copy and keep your original primitives in-

tact. Duplicate the Ghost Vectors layer by dragging

it to the icon in the Layers panel, as shown in

Figure 6-14. Illustrator dutifully copies all the ob-

jects on the layer to a brand new layer. To doubly

protect your originals, click the

icon to hide the

original Ghost Vectors layer.

Figure 6-12 .

PLUS

BOLD EXPERIMENTS IN UNFEASIBILITY

THIS MONTH: EPIC SPACE POEM “FLIMFLAM FELLOW FROM PHARAWAY 5”

Pre po st e rou s NE W S to ry by

Tale s Less L i k ely

to Sell M a ga zines b y:

Fl o ppy Fi s hin nar ds

J. K. Ele m eno py

Tar t Boy sen b err y

Ur s ula K. Fon ebo n e

Yarg y B h arg S narg

& Gra ybe a rd Mc G eez e r

“Ghost Robot”

75 ¢

Figure 6-13 .

Figure 6-14 .

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Adding and Subtracting Shapes