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Curvature Tool vs Pen Tool in Adobe Illustrator CC

Hi there in this video, we're going to redraw this whale in this weird flowery thing that I made. Okay and redraw like this. Not using the pen tool, we're going to use the new fancy improved curvature tool. Okay, you are going to test it. You might fall in love with it like me and you might be abandoning the pen tool. All right. I take that back Mental. I'm sorry, but you were very hard to learn in the curvature tool. Pretty easy. Alright, let's go and learn how easy it is in this video. Okay, so we want to work with, we're gonna show you the difference between the pen tool and the curvature tool. We're going to focus on the curvature tool because probably most of you doing this advanced class is at least got the basics of the pen tool. We'll do an advanced video right next so we can get your skills up with the pen tool, but for the moment we're gonna look at why you should give the curvature tool that go. Now if you are handy with the pen tool, like I am I found the curvature tool lik...

e at the beginning, I was like why do I need another pen tool? But it's it's actually quite amazing what it does. So throughout this course my request is just to give the curvature tool go throughout this one. It's pretty cool. First of all, let's look at the pen tool which we know and love. I'm gonna draw and we're gonna start with this guy on the right here, we're going to draw the basics. So let's say I want to draw the circle. Okay, pencil is click and drag for a curve and click and drag for a curve, click and drag for a curve. I'm trying my best circle. Okay, Bear circle, best circle, best circle. Okay, so it's it's okay, let's do the same thing with a curvature tool. Now curvature tool, you just click once for a curve, click once for a curve, you can see once I've kind of finished my first, you know, I've got more than two points here, it starts doing a lovely curve so I'm gonna click another time and another time roughly in the corners here, you can see it just does by default nicer curves. And let's have a little look at kind of some of the the pros and cons for the curvature tool. So remember the circle here? We clicked once for a curve, but let's say we want to corner. Okay, so what we do is we double click for a corner. Okay, and along here there's a long big curve here about halfway along and I click once because I want to curve and then you can see once I start dragging out, okay, I get roughly where I needed to be and I can remember this is a corner point as well because it's a change of direction. I double click cool up here, I've got two kinds of curves. Okay, so there's one going this way and then one kind of bending around. So I want one there for a curve and maybe one there for another curve. Missed it totally. That's alright and back to the beginning here, this is the way but when it joins back up um you just click once to kind of finish it off whether it's a corner or a curve, just kind of click once to kind of join it all back up. What your first of all notice is that it's a pretty sweet curve right? It needs some adjustments. Okay and you can adjust it and the cool thing about adjusting it, this is probably its biggest um awesome trait is watch this if I start dragging this one what you'll notice is can you see the line underneath here? I'll kind of point to it, watch this line while I'm dragging this top one. Can you see it actually flexes, this is not only adjusting this one, it's actually adjusting the next one to continue a nice nice smooth curve. I can drag this one. Okay to try and get a little nicer, drag this one in trying to do. I guess the difference would be is if I tried to do that in the pen tool. Okay so parental I'm going to click once for a corner, click and drag for a curve click once, it's not gonna be too bad like you know it's not a hard shape to do, I should get rid of the film, click once. The difference is if I go to the white arrow instead adjusting this, you can see it does nothing to affect this line here. And you end up with these kind of like really kind of well just not as balanced curve. So I find that the curvature tool just ends up making my drawings look a little nicer now if you love this control with all these handles, never fear they are still here which I can click on these corner points, they are still there. Okay, they're just kind of hidden from you. And remember the biggest thing is that if I change this one it influences the one above it and things just end up looking nicer. Alright, so remember double click for a corner click once for a curve. Double click for a corner mm No don't double click. So if I accidentally do it that's fine. I can double click it again and it goes back to being a curve. So it's a curve. Double click corner. Double click. It kind of toggles it in and out, come back here and it's a curve. No it's a corner. Double click. Okay and I should get rid of the Phil here. I will for this one and there's a curve. So click once for a curve click once again and you can just see Yeah, pretty nice curves. All right, so what we're gonna do now is redraw this whale. Okay and we're gonna use the curvature tool and we're gonna work our way around. There's nothing really new from what we've done here, but this is the shape we're going to use for this class. So this is the one I really want you to do if you skip this one, I really want you to do this shape. So we let's do it together. Okay so double click for a corner and maybe halfway down here once for a curve we can adjust that later on. Okay and I'm gonna double click for a corner. Now. This feel here is driving me mad. I'm gonna go to properties. I'm gonna say Phil have no feel you should have done in the beginning, that's what I said I was gonna do. Alright so curve take once. Double click once for a curve. Double click for a corner. This curve is just kind of slight here in case I'm gonna click once about here and maybe you once in there and you're like what what is it doing? It's not. So you kind of like go out here. Okay so we're looking for the change of direction because it's changes there. Right so I want kind of halfway in there, you're looking for the apex really? So I'm gonna click once click once man, look how good it's looking. Okay double click um You know if you're like me the pencil you get good but you've got to really fill it with it afterwards using the direct selection tool to get any sort of like lovely curves through here. Um This one has a slight dip so click once there's a bit of a corner there, click once and double click for a corner that's coming out. Pretty be nice if I do say so myself that will click click ones. Double click there's a curve. I probably wanna yeah do one there and then this one here probably can't go all the way out here. So I'm going to double click for corner and that's probably what I'm going to have to tidy up. That's all right. It's a double click. There's a slight curve here once back in here. All right, give it a feel color. I'm going to give this one a field color of blue just because it's a whale and yeah, I'm going to continue on drawing this now with the curve tool. Let's have a look at adjusting this thing. Okay so there are times were like actually just didn't do what I want. You can grab the curve tool. Okay and go in and go actually this guy just needs to be maybe up here. Okay I can try and get him to blend a bit nicer. Okay that would work or I can undo grab my white arrow, the direct selection tool and grab this guy and go what's going on here and go. This guy needs to be coming straight out of the back of this one and this one guy needs to go over higher so it's up to you how you just want to do it. But yeah, let's continue on. Alright, double click take once, double click click, once look pretty nice. Double click for a corner, click once, double click. I'll show you one little trick because this is getting boring, it's great. But let me show you a little trick you can do is say you want some reason I draw these leafy things all the time if you watch any of my tutorials too many leafy kind of things Anyway, this is meant to be water by the way. But what I can do is say this guy here, I can grab the curvature tool and remember if I want to change it from a curve to corner. Remember if I've got it wrong, I just double click it. I find that's kind of cool like especially that one, like that kind of like leafy shape with one end in pointing, especially if it's balanced, it's quite tough to do now if you're getting bored you can skip to the next video now I'm going to delete that, just double click click it once, double click click once, Double click wants to look like to win. Double click, double click, one click click once the pick, driving myself mad. Now click once I'm just going to do it in silence if that's okay you get the idea right, how awesome are we? Okay? This one needs a little bit of adjusting and I grab the curvature to and to say you, my friend come down a little bit if you're just snapping, that's one of the things is like, oh, why are you doing all of these things and snapping? There's two ways of getting around that. You can zoom right in. Okay, So I've had command plus or control plus on a pc. So zoom right in, gives you a lot more control. You can see it's not trying to snap now just because it's kind of filling in the screen or you can get a view and turn off smart guides. I use the shortcut all the time. It's command you on a Mac or control you on a Pc and even if you're far further out, it's not going to try and snap as much. Okay, so I'm gonna turn it back on for smart guides and yeah, do some adjustments. All right. The only thing I need is my eyeball the last of it. Um what am I gonna do? I'm just gonna get rid of full draw my eyeball, You're like, he's not going to use the curvature to lizzie. I am, you should just use the lip still, but we're proving a point, click. Once click, once, click, once, click, once click ones, it's not a perfect circle, but it's not what I'm looking for for this guy, I'm just looking for a little bit of weirdness. Okay? There you go stroke. Okay I've got a stroke and a fill and I'm gonna put this one back in. I'm gonna grab my black arrow and I'm gonna use my eye dropper tool just to steal the color from him. Alright that my friends is the curvature tool. The next video. Let's get into some super advanced mental stuff. But if you're like me, okay you're good at the pen tool. Try the curvature to at least for this class. I bet you you're gonna find some nice things about it. Alright I'll see you in the next video.