Alphabet Soup Illustrator Workshop

From our past Alphabet Soup brief we have to produce the full alphabet, based on one of our letterforms, on Adobe Illustrator.

As many of us have not had any experience with Illustrator we have a series of workshops to help build our confidence with the software. 

I  our first workshop we were introduced to the pen tool, we had to complete a series of tasks which, when completed, meant we could draw almost anything using illustrator.

I found the tasks rather simple though I did have a problem with the last 3 points in the last shape. I especially liked Illustrator because of the ability to create curves which I have problem with when I am drawing by hand. 

The second task we had to complete was a trace of the letter G.

I found this task quite hard and was unable to finish due to the time the workshop finished. I will have to carry on experiment with illustrator and complete the trace of the letter G.

Another way to create the letter G is to use the pathfinder tool. I favour this method more as I use a similar technique when designing on photoshop.

The pathfinder tool is really easy to use as it is simply building up images from shapes and cutting them out of others to build one letterform.

Using the width tool I edited the letter 'e'.

When creating typefaces on illustrator we use an existing typeface and edit them slightly which means anyone can use them for free. I did this with a letter E, L and X.

We also tried out the blend tool which I think could be really useful using my time on the course.

My Alphabet Soup letterform of choice was full of popcorn illustrations which I designed on Photoshop. I used the pen tool to recreate this on illustrator but also tried my hand at using the pathfinder tool. I found the pathfinder tool easier as I am used to creating image this way on Photoshop. One thing I would like to learn how to do is to warp shapes to make the illustration look more realistic.