In this Adobe Illustrator Essentials lesson, you'll get a tour of the workspace, learn which panels you'll need, and save your custom workspace. This lesson will set you up for efficiency!
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Illustrator is a vector-based program as opposed to a raster-based program like Photoshop.
A vector-based program uses math to create your graphics whereas a raster-based program creates images with tons of tiny squares called pixels. If you zoom in really close or scale up a raster image, you can start to see those pixels. So, while raster images are great for capturing all the details and colors in photographs, when you want to scale or zoom into them in animation, it’s not ideal.
Vector graphics, on the other hand, can be scaled infinitely without losing quality because the computer is calculating each line and shape to keep the graphic looking sharp at any size.
After Effects is a raster-based program; when you export a video, it’s exporting a ton of pixels. But, it has the ability to work with vector graphics so that even if you scale them up, they won’t look pixelated. After Effects converts vector layer to pixels, but if you turn on Continuously Rasterize, it will do so on every frame so that the vector graphic stays sharp.
When you’re creating artwork in Illustrator to animate in After Effects, you can usually just make the artwork the actual size you want it in the animation, even if you plan to animate it scaling up.
The exception is if you’re animating something very small. It may be hard to work with because if you zoom in to see it better in the After Effects composition viewer, it will look pixelated, because After Effects is a pixel-based program.
Dimensions: I usually animate in 1920 by 1080 pixels, but obviously customize this to your needs. There are also templates to work from in the New File window.
Units: Pixels is the unit of measurement that After Effects uses, so select pixels to avoid headaches later.
Artboards: When you’re importing Illustrator files into After Effects, it will only recognize one artboard. If you're creating storyboards for an animation, you'd likely want to use multiple artboards. You can separate each artboard into it's own file to import into After Effects later.
Bleed is for print, so skip over this.
Color: Make sure that your color mode is set to RGB, which is for anything digital. CMYK is for print and if you accidentally use CMYK and import that artwork into After Effects, the colors will look off because After Effects uses RGB.
PPI: You can keep this set to screen or 72 dots or pixels per inch because dpi doesn’t matter for video; these setting are only important for print.
I'd highly recommend finding the panels you'll use most and docking them in your workspace. Having to open panels when you need them and leaving them floating is an inefficient way to work.
Find default workspaces under Window > Workspace. I find Essentials Classic to be closest to what I want. We can customize from there.
Here are the panels I use most as a motion designer. Find all panels under the Window menu. Then click the name of the panel and drag/drop to rearrange your workspace.
Properties - The options in this panel change depending on what's selected so this is a handy panel to have docked.
Libraries - Allows you to save color palettes and graphics to use across other Adobe apps.
Color, Color Guide, and Swatches - Useful for coloring illustrations.
Stroke - Edit the outline or stroke of shapes and paths. Click the 3 line menu and click Show Options.
Gradient - Create and customize seamless color transitions.
Transparency - Control the opacity of layers, set blending modes, and create opacity masks.
Appearance - Add multiple fills and strokes to shapes. Add effects to objects.
Layers - Important for separating your illustration into layers so each layer can be animated in After Effects.
Artboards - Create or delete artboards, arrange artboards, and access artboard settings. If you just have one artboard, you probably won't need this panel.
Pathfinder - Combine shapes in different ways to create new shapes.
Align - Line up objects in various ways. I like to have this panel open, even though I also have the align tools in the top toolbar because there are a couple additional options in the panel.
Transform - Useful for editing and positioning objects. If you have a shape created with one of the shape tools selected, specific properties unique to that shape will appear in this panel.
Go to Window > Workspace > New Workspace
Then, just give your workspace a name. Here's what my workspace looks like:
When you import an Illustrator file into After Effects, it will only recognize one artboard. This artboard will be turned into a composition (don't worry if you don't know what that means yet–my After Effects Fundamentals series covers everything you need to know). Also, everything needs to be on the artboard for it to show up (or not be cut off) in After Effects.
If you need to change the size of your artboard, there are a couple ways to do that:
In the View menu, I recommend turning on Smart Guides. When you move objects around, pink lines will show you when things line up, if there's equal distance between objects, if something is a perfect square or circle, and more.
There are also snapping options in the View menu. I usually keep these off until I need them because Smart Guides helps with snapping without being overpowering.
Saving is pretty straightforward. The keyboard shortcut is ⌘/Ctrl S.
Being organized is generally always a good idea, but especially when you plan on importing Illustrator files into After Effects. Importing creates an invisible link to the file so if you move the file or rename folders, After Effects will get confused and your file will look like a colorful mess of missing files.
Here's how I like to organize each animation project:
Now that you know how your way around Illustrator, it's time to move on to the next lesson: Text.
