This tutorial explains how to create a looping walk cycle animation in Adobe Flash (Adobe Animate) like the one shown below.
You can use the same technique for other types of internal animated loops. Watch the video below to find out how to do this using either the Adobe Flash or Adobe Animate software.
This video tutorial explains how to use the Gradient Tool in Adobe Illustrator to combine two or more colours to make a gradient effect. We will look at how to make linear gradients and radial gradients as shown below. Gradients can combine multiple colours or different shades of the same colour.
Linear gradient (left) and radial gradient (right).
Watch the video below to see how you can use gradients in your own Illustrator drawings and illustrations.
Do you have an image that you’d like to laser engrave on to the surface of a material such as timber or plastic? If it is an image that has a lot of detail and you would rather not just engrave the outlines of the shape (using the image tracing tool), then follow this tutorial!
Step 1
Find the image you would like to use. It should have good contrast. Once you have a suitable image, copy it to the clipboard. For this tutorial, I will use the image show below (left). It will end up looking like the image shown below (right).
Step 2
Open Adobe Illustrator and click File > New to begin working on a new document. Make sure you change the Profile to Basic RGB, then change the document width and height to suit your preferences and click on OK.
Step 3
Click on Edit > Paste to paste in the image that you copied earlier.
The image should appear in your document. Resize the image to suit your preferences.
Step 4
Grab the Selectiontool (the black arrow) and click on the image to make sure it is selected. Then click Image Trace on the top toolbar (if you don’t see this option on the toolbar, click Object > Image Trace > Make). If you see a warning message telling you that image tracing may take a while, just click OK. It may take a few seconds to process the image.
Step 5
After the image has been traced, change the Preset from Default to Shades of Gray. You can do this from the toolbar. Illustrator will take a few seconds to process the image (or longer depending on the size and quality of the image).
And that’s it! The image should look like the one shown below. Now when you send the document to your laser cutter, it should engrave the image using a different laser engraving intensity for the different light and dark parts of the image.
If you need to do any other editing, such as changing the shape of the image then it is best to do this in a photo-editing program like Photoshop before copying it into Illustrator. Remember, Illustrator is not a photo-editing program – it is a drawing and illustrating program.
This tutorial explains how to use Adobe Illustrator to easily create a circular pattern with repeating elements. By applying the steps shown in this tutorial, you will be able to create patterns like these:
Watch the video below or download the PDF instructions here.
This tutorial explains how to convert a bitmap image into a line drawing (or how to trace an image) using Adobe Illustrator. There is no video available for this tutorial, but you can download the PDF instructions here.
This tutorial explains how to prepare your work files and folders, set up your documents and how to modify page layouts and columns. You will also learn how to organise your projects, arrange pages, import images, add text and use some of the drawing and shape tools.
Watch the video below and then try out InDesign for yourself.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to record actions batch process images in Photoshop to save you time and effort when applying the same edits or changes to multiple images. In this example, we will change several images from RGB colour mode to CMYK colour mode.
If you are not sure what RGB and CMYK are, it can be summed up like this: RGB is a colour mode that is used for images that are going to be displayed on screens. CMYK is a colour mode that is used for images that are going to be in print. Watch the video to below to see how several images can be converted from RGB to CMYK in one go.
This video tutorial explains how to use green screen footage with the Ultra Key effect in your video projects. This is demonstrated using Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 on Mac OS X Yosemite but the steps are the same on Windows.
Watch the video below and then try out the effect yourself. You can find free green screen footage on the web and on YouTube channels such as the Footage Island YouTube channel.
This tutorial explains how to set up your documents in Illustrator to use with a laser cutter so that you can mark, engrave and cut your own designs on a range of materials such as timber and plastic.
Watch the video below or scroll down to download the PDF instructions.
You can also download printable instructions here.
This video tutorial explains how to use the Adobe Shape CC app (on iOS and Android) to take a photo of a hand-drawn sketch and turn it into an SVG vector graphic which can be opened and edited in Adobe Illustrator CC.
