Adobe Illustrator Essentials

Learn how to illustrate; no drawing skills required.

Welcome to Ai Essentials– a free video series covering the basics of Adobe Illustrator, with a focus on the tools motion designers use most.

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Hello!

I'm Megan Friesth

...and I’m an explanimator–I write, illustrate, and animate educational animations.

I’m a self-taught motion designer, striving to help you learn motion design more efficiently than I did.

Megan Friesth

Adobe Illustrator is a robust program with tons of features to design everything from logos to packaging to complex illustrations. But if you're an aspiring motion designer or After Effects animator, you don't need to know everything about Illustrator to create your own illustrations to animate.

And, you don’t need to be able to draw to be able to illustrate in Adobe Illustrator!

Throughout this series, I’ll show you the tools and techniques to illustrate even the most complex visuals by building with simple shapes.

Even if you’re not planning to become a professional illustrator and animator, it’s still essential to be able to adjust illustrations that are provided for you, in order to animate them.

The goal of these videos and visual guides is to not only get you up and running in Illustrator for the first time, but to serve as an easy reference when you need a quick reminder.

Bookmark this page so you can reference it when you need it!

Adobe Illustrator file

Download the Illustrator Essentials Workbook to follow along with each lesson.

Lessons

Videos will be released every other week. Don’t want to wait to watch the series?

Watch all 8 videos now on Skillshare

All the keyboard shortcuts you need, in one place:

What's next?

Check out my class curriculum for learning motion design!

The best way to really master the skills you learned in these lessons is with hands-on projects.

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