Everything Adrian

Welcome back!

Here’s a big Illustration this time. I learned more about Adobe Illustrator in this one and I’d like to share!

This is a stylized map of a cartoon superhero setting with three distinct segments.

There were two parts of the drawing that motivated me to learn new techniques:

• The rain in the green section required me to understand how Clipping Masks work.
• I made the textured stroke of the pink portal by modifying a brush and using the Paintbrush Tool (B).
• I learned how to reduce the number of anchor points in the image automatically to eliminate extraneous information.

Clipping Mask

In the middle section of the illustration, I’ve used a clipping mask to separate the rain blend from the rest of the illustration.

To create this mask, I drew a new object covering the area I wanted the rain to appear.

I then converted the object to a clipping path. To do this, I put the object and the rain blend in their own new layer, with the object on top.

Then I selected their new layer and went to the bottom of the layers panel to call Make Clipping Mask.

Adobe Help has a useful article on the topic. Check it out!

Brush Editing

I found an interesting brush pattern that I wanted to use, but It needed to be reversed to achieve the effect I wanted for the stroke.

The brush I liked is part of the Art Brush group. This brush type operates by taking a shape and stretching it along the path you draw with the Paintbrush tool (B).

In order to edit the art brush, I opened the brush menu and dragged the image of the brush stroke shape into the art board.

The stroke becomes its own object with anchor points that you can edit to your liking.

I just wanted to reverse the stroke, so I selected the object and mirrored it in the properties panel.

To save the edit I made to the brush, I held the Option button and dragged the object back into the brush panel where I initially grabbed it. This will prompt the program to create a new brush with the new object.

Make sure to select “Art Brush” as the brush type! Each type has different functionality.

Reducing Extra Anchors

Working with such a large image had me worrying about adding too many anchor points to my illustration, making it too confusing to edit and too large for my computer to handle smoothly.

Luckily there’s a tool we can use in Illustrator we can call to clean up our anchor points!

Simply select an object and go to Object > Path > Simplify.

A popup slider will appear. This will tune the sensitivity of the automatic action. Slide the switch to the left to reduce the amount of anchors in the object or to the right to add anchors.

Press Enter and your object will adjust.

Short and sweet!

On the Design

I loved creating this design! I wanted each section to have very different feelings to them but still obviously fit together. Having that yellow road bit running through most of it helped make everything cohesive.

Color choice was a big decision for this project as well. I wanted the left portion to have a very warm color palette and contrast against the rightmost part of the image which would have a cold color palette.

As for the functionality, this image makes a simple map for the Superhero TTRPG I’m running. My players have a clear idea of what the setting looks and feels like, and I can point out the buildings in the background and connect them to places in game.

I’d like to keep making things like this for other projects. Lets see!

’till next time!