Yuna:
This is kinda my home. I store everything you’ll need to understand the entire Illustrator toolbar here. Periodically new quests will show up here. While not all of these quests are required this is where you begin to control your learning. How far do you want to go? how much do you want to Master? Its certainly understandable to option for one of those Epic Quests that become available on your journey, but realize these quests will always be here to advance your understanding of the toolbar tools.
Before you get to questing your toolbar check out this Quick Intro
- WARNING: Be sure to REFRESH (command-R) each quest after you open it. Otherwise s bug causes it to show you an old version instead.
- Selection Tool AKA the Black Arrow.
- Direct Selection Tool AKA the White Arrow.
- Group Selection Tool Don’t watch this one until you have finished the Grouping Quest
- Rectangle tool a simple tool that is still used often
- Pen Tool– The most powerful and challenging tool Illustrator will throw at you.
- Magic Wand
- Lasso Tool
- Line Segment Tool
- Arc Tool
- Spiral Tool
- Rectangular Grid Tool
- Polar Grid Tool
- Type Tool
- Type on a Path
- Area Type Tool
- Vertical Type Tool
- Vertical Type on a Path
- Vertical Area Type Tool
- Rounded Rectangle Tool
- Ellipse Tool
- Polygon Tool
- Star Tool
- Flare Tool
- Paintbrush
- Pencil
More to come…hopefully sometime soon.
After all this time I’m going to claim mastery for the Gravatar quest! Everyone says that the hardest toolbar in illustrator is the pen tool but if you work with it and just practice and practice then it will become easier and easier to use. The pen tool is probably the most used tool that I am working with in illustrator. I literally us it for all of my quests that don’t require a certain tool. I even used the pen tool for everything on my winter show case poster!
Could you perhaps use the flare tool to create the iris in an eye? I’m not sure if it would work, but the minute you made the first flare in the video, it immediately resembled an eye to me.
I could see that as a possibility but I think I could also create an even better one using my own circles, colors, and other shapes. That could at least be a legitimate option though and it not simply using it “because it looks cool.”
The pen tool is the best tool in Illustrator. It really makes you think about what your doing, plus it looks way better in the end. I can’t wait to learn more about it.
All of the tools are challenging in their own way, but the one that I believe is the hardest is the Pen Tool. The Pen Tool is the most confusing because it does take a while to understand it and how it works; the pen tool has multiple purposes and you just have to experiment with it to understand it. The Pen Tool is probably the most important tool and the most complicated to understand but using it over again and again you’ll understand it. You’ll use it in many of the quest, so you’ll need to know how to use it and all of its purposes. It makes lines, curved lines, shapes, words, etc. That is the reason its so hard it has so many uses but after a while it becomes easy.
You should make videos for all the tools on the illustrator toolbar quests.
I definitely will. If only there were more hours in the day. I need to make all of the tool videos plus panel videos plusall the same for photoshop…coming soon.
The pen tool is really challenging, but I can see how we will benefit from it later when the designs need to be more precise.