Getting started with Illustrator Advanced

All right, you've made it inside the course. Welcome. You're in here with me. Uh, to get started, I want you  to download the exercise files. Okay? There'll be a link on the page here somewhere.

Okay? Download those exercise files,  unzipped them, get ready for the course. Um, inside those, um, exercise files,  there'll be a shortcut sheet. Okay? You'll see it labeled in there  and you can print that off and stick it next  to your computer to help along with the course. Scribble down any kind of new obscure ones  that are relevant to you.

Okay? Circle the ones on there that you like. Okay? So they're in the exercise files. Uh, the other thing you can do is  speed me up or slow me down. Okay?

Some people think I speak fast,  some people think I speak slow. I don't know how I can be both, but hey, there you go. Uh, there'd be a cog in the bottom corner. You can just turn it up to whatever speed you like, look  for a little gear icon and look for a speed. Uh, also, let's reset our preferences  'cause uh, so that yours looks like mine. We'll jump into the computer now and do it together.

Let's jump in. First up, you don't have  to do this if you don't want to mess  with your illustrator setup. Hey, we're gonna reset a bunch of stuff to the factory. Um, I'm gonna do it now so  that mine's more likely to be like yours. And if you wanna follow along,  exactly, you can do this as well. But if you're comfortable enough  with an illustrator, you don't have to do this.

Uh, first thing we're gonna do is just open up a,  any old document on a Mac. Go up to Adobe Illustrator and go to, Nope, yes, we are. We're gonna go to settings  and we're gonna go to the general. Okay? If you're on a pc, go to edit down  to preferences down the bottom here, okay? And go to the same thing, general.

Okay? We go. And all I want you to do is click these two,  reset all warning dialogue boxes,  and then reset preferences. I've already done mine. It'll ask you  to restart Illustrator, and then come back in here. So once you've done that, okay, come back in again  and open up a blank dock and go to window.

I'm gonna go to Workspaces, okay? And I'm gonna be working on this class in Essentials,  and I'm gonna make sure I hit Reset Essentials, so it kind  of re jigs it, how the factory is. And yours might match mine a lot better. A couple of other things is there's a toolbar  on the top that's really handy. It goes away when you reset essentials. You might've turned it on, you might've never noticed it.

So this is a good one. So go to Window. And along the top here,  there's a couple of different options. This one here called control gives you this top app bar. It's just really handy when you're working. I think especially when you're advanced.

There's lots of good stuff up there. You don't have to have it on. Pretty much all of it can be found in the properties panel,  but I like to have both options. The other Handy one is over here, the toolbar. This is the basic toolbar,  and it's just got the tools that people use the most,  or the latest tool that they're trying to show off. Okay?

So this will change a little bit. So if there's something in this course  and you're like, Hey, it's not the,  it's not over here anymore,  it'll be hiding under these three little dots. You can click on them and you might find it being  bumped over to here. Okay? And you can just click on it  and say, all right, I want the polar coordinates tool,  which I don't use very much. Okay?

But I can start using it, okay,  by just clicking at it in there. I can click undo. You can add them to the toolbar  by clicking the three little dots  and say, man, I use this all the time. I'm gonna click hold, hold, drag, drag,  drag, and find a spot for it. If you wanna get rid of a tool,  I'm gonna click over here in the background  and just actually now I'm gonna go back into here. And then you can click and drag it off into no Man's Land.

And it just kind of comes away. What I do want you to do though,  so yours looks like mine is up in the same thing. Go to the three little dots and go to the top right up here  and say, let's switch to Advanced. 'cause we are advanced now. We have no longer basic. Another one to check before we move on,  I'm gonna grab the rectangle tool  and just draw out a rectangle.

Okay? I'm gonna go to my Move tool  and you'll see this thing here. It's called the Contextual Task Bar. Kind of whatever you have selected will give you options  that it think you might want to use. Okay? Uh, this thing might be turned off, okay?

Uh, under window, go down  to Contextual Task bar, turn it on. Okay, problem is, it's kind of in the way. I find it in the way anyway, you might not. So I'm gonna grab the type tool, draw a type box. Okay, that's really awesome. But often I don't, it's kind of covering this.

I like to just grab this edge here. Can you see this like little shady dot thing? Hey, click hold and just drag it somewhere. Then it won't appear underneath and kind of in the way. I just like it. I like it.

It's awesome. I just like it in the bottom here. If you do want to get it to snap again,  see these little dots here? You can say more options and say, let's reset that bar. Okay? And it'll go back to being close.

It's, it's not right or wrong. You might like it really close to it. That's actually really handy. Often doesn't take me long  before I end up dragging it outta the way. Last one is, there are lots of class projects in the course,  and just in case you're kind of newish the way  to save those class projects in this course. Okay?

We'll do exporting advanced at the end of the course. But I wanna do this at the beginning. Okay? You've made this beautiful design is wonderful, okay? And I want to export this to be sent as a class project. So I'm gonna go to file  and we're gonna use the one that says Export.

Export as. That's a real simple one. We'll do more advanced ones later on. And in here you can save our p g's probably the best,  or jpeg if they're getting a little big. Okay? And that will be enough to be uploaded for the course.

But again, we'll go through advanced exporting. You'll see a category at the end of the course  that has a whole bunch of cool exporting  options, but it's towards the end. So that'll do four now. Alright, that's it for now. Boring stuff over. Let's get into the fun course.

Actually, quick outro. Alright, let's get into the course. But actually quickly before we dig your spot, em,  there is a, see that black ball over there? You'll see 'em in the first few videos. He's home. Sick.

Sick. Look how sick he is. So sick. Say hi to everyone. Camera  There. Hi.

Wait, where's the camera there? Oh, hi. Bye. Say enjoy the course. Enjoy. Enjoy the course.

Nailed it.