The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design MODULE 1 IMAGE TRACE AND BASIC MANIPULATION IN ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 1
Hi everybody and welcome to our Make it in Design technical workshop. In this demonstration we will be using Adobe Illustrator CC. Throughout this workshop we will be exploring Image Trace, which was formerly known as Live Trace in the earlier versions of Adobe Illustrator, however the basic functionality does remain the same. We will also explore some basic motif manipulation, this will allow you to then duplicate your trace motif, duplicate a row that contains your motif and use your motif to actually fill a page and decorate a specified area giving you a basic pattern concept. Image Trace is such a great tool for designers. It allows you to trace your scanned in art work, Illustrator traces your art work and turns it into a vector and that then allows you to create really quick placement prints, patterns, surface pattern concepts, the list is really endless. It's a really quick and easy process. What I would like to say is that with your artwork that you scan in, even if it is just simple black and white imagery I would advise you to scan in high resolution to ensure the best quality and then with that I would recommend a minimum of 300 dpi. So the images that you see here on screen are black and white. I tend to personally use a variety of pens to give me different line weights. I might colour sections in, add little details, textures, all of those sorts of things and over the years I ve found that they work really really well with image trace. Image Trace won't be for everybody. If you re someone who works really really detailed with lots of colour, mixed media, it's really really painted in, then you are best working in Adobe Photoshop. You will not achieve the results you are after with Image Trace. However if you are scanning in kind of textures made of black and white, stitch line work, kind of brush strokes, scratching and those sorts of things you can use image trace and I do that also with my own work but you will have to experiment with some of the settings. But Image Trace The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 2
definitely works better with black and white imagery if you are wanting to have a sort of quick and very easy result. In today s demonstration we will trace a motif, I will show you how to use Image Trace and then we will use that motif to create a very basic surface pattern concept. So I just want to show you an example of what I mean by a surface pattern concept. So I m just going to enlarge this for you, so as you can see here these patterns contain just a single motif. They are quite simplistic. Within my design portfolio I have some very busy designs, simplistic designs, it really depends on what the end result is and the product that it is going on, but simplistic designs can sell along with busy designs. Both of these designs are actually just loose kinds of pattern concepts; I ve just created enough artwork to fill the area or the size of my page. They are not actually technical repeat tiles and that s fine, you only kind of need the technical repeat tile on things that are produced on a roll such as gift wrap on a roll, all fabric and things like wall paper. So with the techniques that you re going to learn in today demonstration hopefully you will go away and know how to create a very basic kind of pattern layout. I m just going to open up some more examples for you. So the image that you see here on the right you will notice that that is the motif that I have shown previously on my drawings so I ll click back on that for you so you can see that. So they were actually just traced again using Image Trace, I created a background colour, built up some layering to create this piece of artwork here on the right hand side. The image on the left hand side again was a scanned in drawing that I d done with quite a kind of thinner pen, added some kind of scratchy details to the edge and then that was also Image Traced. The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 3
So I will just open up some more examples for you. So the examples that you see here, the butterflies show different weights of line work. You ll notice some stitch lines. If you use black kind of thread on your sewing machine and it's quite thick that will Image Trace really really well so that s something that you might want to try. You know I have scanned in kind of paint logs, all those sorts of things. Thicker pens, scratchy pens, pens that are not working very well, neat and accurate kind of drawings, all of these things if they are in black and white they will work really well. The image on the left you will notice that there is a lot of motifs, textures, layering, and there is a kind of texture in the background. That is actually a The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 4
scanned paper that I placed on a background layer within Adobe Illustrator, which is what you can do also. If you re someone who s going to layer up a lot though and use lots of effects and kind of mixed media and those sorts of things again you might be best off using Adobe Photoshop, but if you re definitely tracing your artwork and just placing basic elements within, then Adobe Illustrator will be great for you. So I ll just open up another example, again just some simple doodles that I ve done. I ve coloured up sections within Adobe Illustrator, added kind of bright pots of colour to make it stand out but they are very simple drawings but Adobe Illustrator is really effective for Image Trace and I really love it within my own artwork. The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 5
Okay so I m just going to open up another example here and this is just to show you what happens when you use a kind of mixed media and things like that. So you ll notice on the left I have kind of pencilled areas, paint that s been used as textures, and the image on the right shows the results after being image traced. Now you ll notice that the motif here that I m hovering over and the one here is the same actual motif. The result is quite different. Now for me I really like that result however, for you, you may want to experiment with the settings on Image Trace. I tend to use the default or kind of the black and white setting, which I will show you in a moment. This page was used in my 20 Ways to Draw a Doodle book so Image Trace can work really well for a number of things. So I m now going to open my Adobe Illustrator document and I ve opted for an A4 size which is one of the pre-sets. If you re opening up a document you would simply go to File> New, and then either enter your dimensions or go to the size guide here and then hit Okay and then you will have your page to work on. I ve got my Layers palette open, my Colour palette and my basic Tools. If any of these are missing or there are extra things you want to use you will find them under your Window menu and you just need to select them to turn them on and then they will appear. You will notice that the colour mode that I use is CMYK, this is the most popular one that I tend to use and again this can be found under the File menu here, Documents> Colour mode, and you can just kind of select the option that you want there. So what I m going to do is open up the flower that I want to work with for the demonstration. There are a few ways you can do this. You can go to File> Open, which will open it up in a different document and then you can paste it in. You can drag your actual.jpg or.psd or whatever it is that you want to use into the Illustrator icon which will then open it for you or you can go to File> Place which The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 6
is what I m going to do now, so I m selecting the one here that I want which is the flower and I m going to place that. Okay so you ll notice here that it's kind of hovering with my blackened pen cursor so I m just going to now click on the actual document and then the flower drawing has appeared and this is a high resolution scan with a black and white pen that I ve drawn with. So I ve placed that on my document, as soon as that s selected, now you can select that by grabbing it over it, dragging it or just kind of clicking on there. Okay so that s selected, and as soon as that s selected on the top left hand menu you will notice the Image Trace button appear. That will only appear if your scan or image is selected. So again we talked about the different options, I ve used default for most of my work, black and white logo, shades of grey, they ve The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 7
worked for me in the past, sketched art but it just depends on your artwork so it really is a case of trial and error. For black and white imagery default tends to work the best. So I m now just going to hit the Default button and then what happens is you will get this message and just press Okay. And what that s done is it's traced my image but you do need to do one more thing, you need to press Expand and always remember to press Expand so I m going to do that there and you can see that here. So I ve now pressed Expand and what that does is trace the whole drawing including kind of the white area so for the demonstration I m going to show you what to do with that and how to kind of delete and clean up your trace motif. If I click on this here you will notice that it's traced the white area. Sometimes when you re in Illustrator you click on this, this little option can appear here, all you need to do is go back to your artboard without this menu is just click on this arrow. So if that happens to you just click on that there. Okay and as you can see that s disappeared, that just happens now and again. Okay so I m now going to click on it, as I said I ve got this white area which I don t want so with the white arrow tool which is the Direct Selection tool I m now going to Delete the bit that I don t want. So I m just going to drag over it and hit Delete on my keyboard. I don t want this bit of text also here so I m just going to delete that. You might find that you need to select over your motif and go to Object> Ungroup to ungroup certain elements to make it easier for deleting parts of your motif however or me the white arrow tool was the easier option then but you can go to Object> Ungroup and that will ungroup the elements within which allows you to, as I said, delete it easily. The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 8
I ve deleted the bits that I don t want so I m now going to create a layer and you can create a layer by clicking on this icon here. If you don t have any of your palettes open then simply go to the Window and click on your Layers palette or Colour or your Tools palette which ever you need for the workshop. I m just using my Tools, my Layers and my Colour palette for this actual workshop but everything you need will be found in any of these menus but Window is the one that s most commonly used. Okay so I m going to create a new layer. As you can see the layer has automatically gone to the top, I m going to double click on it, which allows me to then name the layer so I m going to call this BACKGROUND and then call this MOTIF. I always say think of your layers as pieces of paper kind of sat on top of one another so you need to kind of visualise them that way, almost imagine pieces of tracing paper kind of peeking through so if you ve got a background layer you want that at the back so I m just going to drag that and put that to the back so my motif will always sit on the top. So just for the workshop just to show you the white areas within, I m going to select a colour and then I just want to check one thing actually that my colour mode is in CMYK which it is so that s selected there, CMYK and so that s good to go. And if you ever want to change your colour mode as I said you could just go to Document Colour Mode as well and check you re in CMYK. So I m now going to click on a colour so I ll go for the turquoise, okay so we ve got that colour there, that s a fill colour that s been selected and that says that there. So I m going to click on the Geometric tool and select the rectangular one, and I m just going to with that tool drag it to kind of fill the artboard area and I m just doing this really rough and loose as it's a basic introduction to Image Trace and motif manipulation and add that there. There you go and I ve got a coloured background instantly. The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 9
I m now going to click on this space here which will add a little lock to my background which is I m doing that because I don t want to knock anything on my artboard. The little eye icon that you see here you can turn that off and on at any time. I ve got all these white areas within, you know if I wanted to colour those up I can kind of - or delete them I can click on them with the white arrow tool and hit Delete. Sometimes you ll find that there s a double layer because there s a white silhouette behind so you may have to go on and delete that. So you will see me do that now. So again clicking on all the individual bits deleting bits, if I wanted to colour up bits I would just click on it, go to my Fill> Colour Picker, and select a colour. As you can see there it's gone grey, I must have knocked something here in my settings so I m going to go back to the Colour menu again which is found here and click on CMYK and that should then allow me to colour that up. Okay as you can see that s worked. So sometimes if you ever get that little kind of thing happening, use your Colour menu and you can check that you re on the right setting okay. So you can keep going, colour up as much as you want within that flower. I don t want any white bits for the purpose of this demonstration so the quickest way to delete them all is to click on one, go to select same fill colour, as I said your menus at the top are really useful so spend some time kind of exploring those but we re going to select same fill colour, it's selected all of the white within my flower and I m now just going to hit Delete on the keyboard. I m just going to go back and delete that little pink one that I coloured up before. So now we have our cleaned motif ready for our motif manipulation. Okay so what I m going to do is I m going to drag over my motif and then what will happen then is you will notice you will get a transform box and kind of little white edges. So when you hover over it will allow you to make your motif bigger or smaller. If you hold down your SHIFT key and your ALT key when you are The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 10
dragging over your flower to increase or decrease it, your motif, it will keep the proportions constrained so it won't go kind of distorted so that s a great little tip there for you to take away. Okay so I held down my SHIFT and ALT key as I pulled the corner in and out and that keeps it all nice and neat. Okay so I ve done that there. So I ve got one motif again I m going to get to the size that I want okay so we have that there. Now I want to duplicate this motif so what I m going to do is with the black arrow selected I m going to select over that there, hold down my ALT key on the keyboard which brings up a double arrow and then hold on my SHIFT key and then I m going to duplicate it to the side. Again that keeps it inline using your SHIFT key kind of keeps everything constrained within a set size and in order so that will keep the flower on a set line there. So with that selected I ve got a motif duplicated instantly. Now if you re on your Mac there is a short cut you can use which is CMD D and it repeats basically the last step so if I do CMD D it will keep duplicating that flower. So you can at any point click on a flower just hold down your ALT key and move it about but if you want it in a line hold down on your SHIFT key to do that. So again you can use your alt key, put it on the page, make it larger, smaller, kind of experiment with that but I m going for a row within this demonstration. The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 11
Okay so now I have a row, I m going to select over the whole row, repeat the same process again, hold down on my ALT key and just drag it below. Because I want it to kind of go to the side I m not holding down on my shift key at this point just on my ALT key and click that there. Okay so now we have the two rows, so now I m going to drag over the two rows, use my ALT key again and drag it down but this time I m holding onto the SHIFT key because I want it to stay aligned and kind of ordered with the row above so I ve done that again there, I ve used the SHIFT key and the ALT key. So I ve done that and now with that selected I m going to use the short cut that I did with the CMD D to repeat kind of the last step and I m going to go CMD D. And then as you can see I ve filled a page so quick, it's really easy to do. You know I m now going to drag over that enlarge it a little bit, fill the kind of area, at The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 12
any point I could go in and click on an individual one make it really big, that sort of thing, the possibilities are endless but you can see from image trace how quick and kind of easy it is to create just a pattern concept and a lot of manufacturers these days particularly with panel printing you are given the dimensions of a set area to fill so you re not creating a repeat tile, so this basic kind of concept is a great way to kind of break into the surface pattern industry, kind of understand everything and you can actually manufacture this way also from just using such a simple technique. So that s basically it for our demonstration. We ve explored the image trace, motif manipulation. What I would say to do is when you go to save your files go to File> Save As, pick your desired location, name your file as an.ai file, as you can see here it says the format. You might want to work in versions so I m just going to hit save on this one, obviously I saved one before so it's saying do I want to replace it, but I m just going to call this version 2 okay and hit Save. So at any point if I want to change this I might just want to grab it, take it to the side, grab one of the individual flowers, kind of enlarge it, play around with it, hover over it to kind of get this rotation going on. You can see the little kind of anchor tool to rotate, I m going to rotate it, enlarge it, and again holding my ALT key, duplicate it, make it smaller, go really big, just spend some time experimenting and have fun basically designing your first kind of basic pattern concept. Please remember it will take a little bit of time for you to fully understand the software. You re best off watching the demonstration a few times, exploring all of the different menus and options within the programmes. The more you can practice the better. Sometimes when we actually go wrong within the software that s how you fully learn and understand the programme. So keep with it, have patience, it does get easier. I do hope that you ve enjoyed today s demonstration and thank you for watching. [End of recording] The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design 13