Love the pace, clarity and explanation used in all the tutorials. I struggled with this program for years and you have resolved most of my issues. Thanks a lot for this free tutorial
This was the hardest video in the series. I still don´t understand the whole thing. I did it, but there are few things I did (like expand, compound) just by following you and I didn´t understand what am I doing. Can I find some more info about fill, stroke and compounding them all in vectors? Maybe it will be easier then.
Thank you so much for this. I didn't consider myself a beginner but I'm learning so much. All the time you have dedicated to this is greatly appreciated.
Omg thank you so much!! This has been a real help to me because I was trying to make a mandala I couldn't turn it into a compound vector shape and then I saw your video!! You are a blessing 💕
I've followed this vido to the Nth degree and still cannot get to a point where each individual shape is selectable at 10:20 "just like that"??? Any ideas where I'm going wrong? :(
If you're having an issue with your file where after uniting in Pathfinder it turns your entire artwork one colour (or random parts), just use his premade file and it works. I do not know why it happens, but after expanding, several of the objects within (all hearts, one of the below eye circles, and the cross) all turned black. When hovering over them in comparison to the objects that worked, the problem objects all had a red center path that popped up, while the working objects only had red outlines. I am not sure why this happened, but my theory is that something went wrong in the creation of these objects that makes them behave differently. If anyone has an explanation/fix, that would be appreciated, but if you are struggling just use his file to continue on in the tutorial.
This was great mate! I never thought there is an easy way coloring your vector artwork. I personally do it manually by creating vectors for each part. Thank you so much, I am learning a lot from you. xoxo*
I FOUND THE ANSWER FOR SHAPES GOING BLACK: It is probably because if you select them, they don't have the "fill" transparent but white. Be sure to set them all transparent. For me it was black the eyes and the forehead heart, but I selected them individually and turn the fill in transparent and then i could made all the process of compounding as in the video.
Can someone explain what does "expand appearance" then "expand" then after loaded he clicked on the panel list under pathfinder to click "unite" then clicked on upper right box to reveal another "expand" box at 5:40? What does each expand do?
Could you please explain why clicking "Expand" one final time after selecting "Make Compound Shape" is necessary, I understand every step in the process except the reasoning behind expanding the newly created compound shape?
because all the shapes and strokes (which don't touch each other) haven't compounded yet, they are still separate. So you have to click "expand" after selecting "make compound shape" to make a flat vector shape.
It looks like I am having the same problem with selecting objects individually after ungrouping at 10:06 -10:18. In frustration (and determination) I have fiddled around going over steps and re-doing steps, trying other possibilities only to come up with the same conclusion. On a few tries I thought I had it resolved but my background changes to a different colour yet appearing as a black fill. I haven't read if anyone came up with a solution....So Stuck!...want to move on.....
Was wracking my head over the same thing...Zooming in to at least 160% and clicking (once) inside a object (on it's yellow area) but NOT on a stroke or line is how I have been able to select objects individually. BUT this method doesn't seem to work on the black fill objects (ie the keyhole or shadows on the cheeks). Double clicking inside an object takes me to the Trace Layer which 1) lightens the yellow background color and 2) sometimes selects objects individually and other times selects groups of objects at once. Then I have to click an arrow in the top left of the window to get out of the Trace Layer. Hope this helps!
+yg93 I though I was having the same problem but actually, I just needed to make sure I was clicking on the space BETWEEN strokes instead of the strokes themselves.
that's because now you have two victors, one is the outline which is any black stroke or shape, and the individual elements are the second shape, for example, in the shadow area you cannot change the color, so if you want to be able to select it, then you have to go back to the original trace and remove the black fill from there and make it only outlined so you can fill it up latter,, hope thats cleare :)
Questions: Once you compound the vectors, can you still make changes to the vectors? Like if I want to add stuff? What's the difference between Compounding versus Grouping? Also, once you make the yellow interior cut-outs, can you still change them and change the outline of the skull later on? or are they 2 independent from each other? THANK YOU!!
i got it! i was having the same trouble with the ungroup option not available I'm not sure if you guys made the same mistake but it worked for me after an hour of struggle lol i noticed at (5:40) i didn't click the "expand" box once i did and then following the steps like normal i was finallllllyyyyyy able to cut out the yellow
Thank you sir, great tutorial.. Earlier I was not able to select objects individually, but after trying again and again I am happy I was able to do so. We have to click inside the shape on yellow part, not on the stoke...that's it... Thank you once again
Thank you so much for the tutorial. They're more than helpful. However, could you or anyone tell me what "make compound shape " does as "unite" would have already pressed everything down to one vector?
4:22 After "expand appearance", I got a question mark in the "fill (x)" box. Following "expand" as I proceed to "Unite", all the strokes that were previously altered with brush "stroke 2" (the opposite direction brush) in the previous episode became black blocks instead of lines. I'm using CS3, not sure if that has anything to with the issue. Does anyone encounter similar problems? Update: The blocks that appeared were separate shapes and I was able to double click into them and delete them individually. Still dunno how they come about though.
when clicking on "unite", the heart where the keyhole is & the nose, become all black instead of black outline, why is that? i'm using cs6, could this be it? thanks
I was having so much trouble with the shape exclusion stuff. It might be because I'm not using the exact same AI software. However, I never got the ungroup option. The way I solved it (and this is super finnicky) was after doing the exclude (I had to do alt+click on the exclude button in pathfinder), I selected the black rectangle with the white outline on it (changed the color to make it easier for me to distinguish), then I went to pathfinder, clicked the options menu and chose release compound shape. I then had to go to the outline itself and right click and chose release compound path. You'll see that the entirety of your skull shape turned black (highlight and color it some bright color and group it). Select your second copy of the black outline and the group you just made and align them on top of each other (you might need to arrange it so the outline is on top since it you might have made the outline prior to the creation of the grouped stuff you just made). Then ungroup the thing you grouped and you'll have all the shapes. This is a really bad explanation of what i did, but it worked.
if you stucked with the ungroup section. I found a solution. After using exclude and expand it, you should select the new object and change the color for visibility. Then, bring the old compound image and fit them at the center as mentioned in the video. Now you should select the exluded and expanded version of the layer and right clicked it and you will see an option that "Release Compound Path". You should click that option. After that you should deselect the object by clicking somewhere else and then only select the outer surface of the skull i mean the rectangle shape. After selecting it, just right click and you gonna see "Ungroup" option right in front of you. After all, you can follow the other steps Mr.David mentioned. I hope it will work for y'all that struggling with ungroping part.
Copying the same line from your comment "Now you should select the excluded and expanded version of the layer" -> they are overlapping each other, then how we can select both?
Also if we select only skull -> then select -> "release compound path" -> the skull turns black(even inside skull is black, basically whole inside skull is black), unless fill is changed to "none" -> and if I follow next steps -> "ungrouping" as you and David told -> then skull boundaries is white (instead of black boundaries as above in video) -> although now selection tool is working fine now (almost, some minor strokes selection doesn't work though)
@@Ankur33Goyalby the boundries you can check and select the right object. Click somewhere out for deselecting whole then click only the rectangle shape includes shadowed skull shape with ease. ( Try to click near of the red dashed lines of rectangle.) You have to "release compound path" while the whole shape staying perfectly alligned.
Great Tutorial! I think the final compound shape and expand is not necessary. Expand appearance followed by expand fill and stroke and then unite shape already make the drawing a grouped flat vector.
5:40 I dunno what i missed. every time I click Make Compound Shape the image disappears and all that is left are the anchors then when i hit Expand the anchors are gone and im left with nothing
Hi. Thank you very much for this series! As I look into comments, everyone else is little confused with this video as I am. I don't fully understand what does all those steps do and the difference between compounding and grouping? Can you please more explain? Thanks for reply ;) EDIT: I played back the video and fiddled in each step with the picture and now I somehow understand what did each of the step do and understand the final picture. Thats very cool :)
Thank you for the amazing video series on AI. Though I am struggling to understand this video. Maybe going through it a few times will help me understand better. However, I have a query - can't this same thing be achieved - the need to create individual elements, so as to be able to colour them separately - using the Paint bucket tool? I don't know if this tool was available when this video was created. But I assume it gives the same result as using this compound vector method! Or - what is the difference btn them? TIA
I don't understand we had to use expand tool so many times when everything could be done with just one click. Also, in its original form, the shape was already ungrouped. So what's the point of ungrouping it again. Also, why did we use yellow colour to cut out the image when we're going to color it in some other color anyways? Or am I taking it way too seriously? Eitherways, this tutorial is absolutely amazing!
after align the two objects(blanc skull, black skull) ,right clicking shows "group" instead of "ungroup" , also when i press exclude (holding alt, i am using cs6) and even after "exclude", when i select blank skull with yellow background still the control panel is showing compound shape instead of group ,i cant find what is going on , help please!!:)
I spent a lot of time on this episode, I still did not figure out. Firstly, i did not find the "ungroup" option on the right click instead of under Object menu, and it did not work well. Some of parts are ungrouped, but the flowers on the forehead are still grouped. FRUSTRATING! Secondly, I try to reasoning the whole process, the ungroup was applied to copied the 2nd compound shape or the exclude one? if the former, does that mean the compound vector can be ungrouped any time? I lost the reasoning upon the last merge with 2nd pasted compound shape, will be highly appreciated to tell me why we are doing what we are doing, thank you .
SHAPE NOT ALIGNING ????? I was having a problem with clicking the aligning center or align horizontal buttons and my shape just not moving, or moving to the wrong place. If you are having this problem too: in the bottom right corner of the Align tab, which David has set up here in the workspace on the right, there is a drop down titled 'Alight To'. Go in here and make sure that you are aligning your selection to the artboard! I hope this helps anyone else frustrated with the same problem.
Hmm, for someone who cannot delete the outside area after ungroup(me too), I tried to double click the outside area(showed trace layer at the top) and delete, it works for me, hope this helps for yall!!
Hey there!! I've been following your 19 video course during this quarantine, but I'm stuck on this video and just mega confused. This might be long winded...but I could really use your help! When I get to the point of "Uniting" my paths, it distorts some of my lines and adds these weird gradient shapes! It's bizarre. And after I've followed every single step of yours...when I go to delete the outside color, it just deletes all the color. What am I missing here?!?!?! Thank you in advance!!!
I can't seem to get that menu to appear when clicking expand. i need to merge these vector layers on top of one another to create a flat image, but it keeps messing up when I move the layers to put them in the right order. I am opening the paths made from photoshop into illustrator and then filling the shapes. Why can I not easily change the layer positions like in photoshop? One of the layers always turns invisible...
And what if we have objects that overlap each other? When I am trying to unite them I get an outline of the two. For example, I made the eyes as they were in the hand drawn sketch (the flowers bigger than the eye), and I encounter this problem when I am trying to unite all the vectors...
I had the same problem and what I had descovered is that some of my strokes had fill so i came back and check all of then and after that I've got a result that I wanted.
Grouping is to help select multiple individual elements like shapes and type. Once grouped you can un-group. compounding is to merge objects together as one, where it becomes a single shape with the vectors around the outside you can further manipulate, once you compound you can not un-compound.
Sometimes when you merge and expand and so on, there can be issues with parts of the artwork not 'flattening' by using compound, it's a 100% fix. You know that all parts of the artwork will be forced to combine into one vector, so when you add effects like a gradient, you know it will be continuous throughout, as demonstrated in the video. 😀
even after ungrouping the objects I can not choose the shapes individually as you showed. When I try to select an object the whole objects get selected.
+Rabin Raie I stumbled on the same problem but luckily figured it out. Because there are two overlapping 'shape' on the art board, one is the frame and the other is the coloring background. In this case we need to choose the background part for coloring but sometimes Illustrator favor the frame. If you are forced to choose the whole object, just try to right click -> arrange -> send to back.
I got confused around 6 min in. I thought when we select all and unite them with pathfinder tool that it's then one vector. What exactly is the difference between that and compounding it to a shape and then expanding it?
+Ralphunreal May be I can help you out, Although This tutorial guy tried his level best to explain it and he was just bang on but few things u have to find out by yourself, after expanding means that ur vector stroke transformed into vector shape and ur vector shape will be overlapped with each other thats why u unite them which means the overlapping object will be merged. got it !!
i have a divider line going down half my skull. at the end of the video it seems to cut all the vector shapes in the skull in two, so if i click on a shape that crosses that vertical divider, i only get one half of the shape activated. can anyone help me with this. can't see that divider line in his video.
the ungrouping part isn't working until i tried same procedure for another artboard on the same sketch then it worked but looks faded compare to the first i made(which was not ungrouping) i will used the faded one to continue the series but has anyone found a solution for this in 2018.. plz help
Your outer skull must have fill in it (often white so you didnt notice). After you copied the entire skull to new artwork change fill in the outer skull to no fill and do the tutorial. Cheers
![Colouring a vector drawing in Adobe Illustrator Ep17/19 [Adobe Illustrator for Beginners]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0MDns4AP4Qw/mqdefault.jpg)
![Colouring a vector drawing in Adobe Illustrator Ep17/19 [Adobe Illustrator for Beginners]](/img/tr.png)
![Tracing a hand drawn sketch & Converting to vector artwork Ep15/19 [Adobe Illustrator for Beginners]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_PDgoisoCwo/mqdefault.jpg)
![Image trace tool for sketches in Adobe Illustrator Ep14/19 [Adobe Illustrator for Beginners]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4X1uc4dUoC0/mqdefault.jpg)
![Grouping | Compounding vectors & Using the shape builder tool Ep9/19 [Illustrator for Beginners]](/img/n.gif)
I have been following your entire series...just want to tell you that it is extraordinary. Thank you some much for all you hard work and thinking
I went from not knowing anything about illustrator to knowing quite a bit. WOW this was helpful.... finished during this COVID pandemic.
I wasn't expecting much from this video. However, I clicked play and, upon release, I found it to be very useful. Nice.
Hahahaha!
HAHAHAHA, brilliant.
and up will pop my upvote
I love how he explains as if he's story telling haha
I challenge anyone to find me a better tutorial series than this!
Love the pace, clarity and explanation used in all the tutorials. I struggled with this program for years and you have resolved most of my issues.
Thanks a lot for this free tutorial
Had to watch this twice to really understand what was going on here. Thanks! Moving along
Thank you so much!!! I was having so much trouble with an artwork because it did not want to compound. This video is a lifesaver!
You are so welcome!
You my friend are a legend in the Illustrator field and as an online tutor, you kickass!
can you tell me, how to ungroup? i am not able to ungroup them, even after using object menu?
I watch this series from the beggining. Thank you so much, I've learnt a lot from u!
This was the hardest video in the series. I still don´t understand the whole thing. I did it, but there are few things I did (like expand, compound) just by following you and I didn´t understand what am I doing. Can I find some more info about fill, stroke and compounding them all in vectors? Maybe it will be easier then.
Thank you so much for this. I didn't consider myself a beginner but I'm learning so much. All the time you have dedicated to this is greatly appreciated.
i LOVE THIS video, i come back every time i want to make a compund vector :) love you david!
can you tell me, how to ungroup? i am not able to ungroup them, even after using object menu?
Im loving this series, appreciate your hard work and time you've put into this. I learned a lot, Thanks again Cahmp
Omg thank you so much!! This has been a real help to me because I was trying to make a mandala I couldn't turn it into a compound vector shape and then I saw your video!! You are a blessing 💕
I've followed this vido to the Nth degree and still cannot get to a point where each individual shape is selectable at 10:20 "just like that"??? Any ideas where I'm going wrong? :(
Great tut! You are a extraordinary teacher!
Thank you!
If you're having an issue with your file where after uniting in Pathfinder it turns your entire artwork one colour (or random parts), just use his premade file and it works. I do not know why it happens, but after expanding, several of the objects within (all hearts, one of the below eye circles, and the cross) all turned black. When hovering over them in comparison to the objects that worked, the problem objects all had a red center path that popped up, while the working objects only had red outlines. I am not sure why this happened, but my theory is that something went wrong in the creation of these objects that makes them behave differently.
If anyone has an explanation/fix, that would be appreciated, but if you are struggling just use his file to continue on in the tutorial.
You should go back and check if your black objects are with white fill. You should make it without fill.
That is such a cool trick to color something in very quickly! Thank you.
This was great mate! I never thought there is an easy way coloring your vector artwork. I personally do it manually by creating vectors for each part.
Thank you so much, I am learning a lot from you. xoxo*
You lost me on this tutorial. When I right click after excluding, I have no ungroup option at all, and I'm unable to find a solution. :/
I had the same issue - I had to click around back and forth to finally get the ungroup option to show up, not sure what was going on.
I FOUND THE ANSWER FOR SHAPES GOING BLACK:
It is probably because if you select them, they don't have the "fill" transparent but white. Be sure to set them all transparent. For me it was black the eyes and the forehead heart, but I selected them individually and turn the fill in transparent and then i could made all the process of compounding as in the video.
you're professional, i proud i'm learning from you, thank you
This is really helpful for every beginner, thank you so much.
Can someone explain what does "expand appearance" then "expand" then after loaded he clicked on the panel list under pathfinder to click "unite" then clicked on upper right box to reveal another "expand" box at 5:40? What does each expand do?
If the EXCLUDE part does not work for you, hold the ALT key while clicking it (exclude button). Version it worked on: CS6.
thanks, it works for me! would you mind explaining why?
thanks anyway :)
Thanks
can you tell me, how to ungroup? i am not able to ungroup them, even after using object menu?
Could you please explain why clicking "Expand" one final time after selecting "Make Compound Shape" is necessary, I understand every step in the process except the reasoning behind expanding the newly created compound shape?
same query
because all the shapes and strokes (which don't touch each other) haven't compounded yet, they are still separate. So you have to click "expand" after selecting "make compound shape" to make a flat vector shape.
Thank you Thank you Aloooot......I appreciate what you give us alooooot. Thank you from my heart.
It looks like I am having the same problem with selecting objects individually after ungrouping at 10:06 -10:18. In frustration (and determination) I have fiddled around going over steps and re-doing steps, trying other possibilities only to come up with the same conclusion. On a few tries I thought I had it resolved but my background changes to a different colour yet appearing as a black fill. I haven't read if anyone came up with a solution....So Stuck!...want to move on.....
same problem over here!
Was wracking my head over the same thing...Zooming in to at least 160% and clicking (once) inside a object (on it's yellow area) but NOT on a stroke or line is how I have been able to select objects individually. BUT this method doesn't seem to work on the black fill objects (ie the keyhole or shadows on the cheeks). Double clicking inside an object takes me to the Trace Layer which 1) lightens the yellow background color and 2) sometimes selects objects individually and other times selects groups of objects at once. Then I have to click an arrow in the top left of the window to get out of the Trace Layer. Hope this helps!
***** I tried your method, didn't work, any other suggestions? please help!! thanks
+yg93 I though I was having the same problem but actually, I just needed to make sure I was clicking on the space BETWEEN strokes instead of the strokes themselves.
that's because now you have two victors, one is the outline which is any black stroke or shape, and the individual elements are the second shape, for example, in the shadow area you cannot change the color, so if you want to be able to select it, then you have to go back to the original trace and remove the black fill from there and make it only outlined so you can fill it up latter,, hope thats cleare :)
Questions: Once you compound the vectors, can you still make changes to the vectors? Like if I want to add stuff? What's the difference between Compounding versus Grouping? Also, once you make the yellow interior cut-outs, can you still change them and change the outline of the skull later on? or are they 2 independent from each other? THANK YOU!!
i got it! i was having the same trouble with the ungroup option not available I'm not sure if you guys made the same mistake but it worked for me after an hour of struggle lol i noticed at (5:40) i didn't click the "expand" box once i did and then following the steps like normal i was finallllllyyyyyy able to cut out the yellow
+Tre' Maddox Thankss same problem struggled till finally looking through the comments!
Huge thanks!
This is so useful 😍 thank you so much for this series..
Perfect tutorial, love from Pakistan !!!
Thank you sir, great tutorial..
Earlier I was not able to select objects individually, but after trying again and again I am happy I was able to do so.
We have to click inside the shape on yellow part, not on the stoke...that's it...
Thank you once again
can you tell me, how to ungroup? i am not able to ungroup them, even after using object menu?
Thank you for this info about clicking. It was driving me nuts.
Thank you, Anjali. I was struggling with this :)
Awesome Tutorials, keep them coming learned so much from your videos :)
For those interested, the exclude tool only worked for me when I used the direct selection tool as opposed to the selection tool.
Thank you so much for the tutorial. They're more than helpful. However, could you or anyone tell me what "make compound shape " does as "unite" would have already pressed everything down to one vector?
4:22 After "expand appearance", I got a question mark in the "fill (x)" box. Following "expand" as I proceed to "Unite", all the strokes that were previously altered with brush "stroke 2" (the opposite direction brush) in the previous episode became black blocks instead of lines. I'm using CS3, not sure if that has anything to with the issue. Does anyone encounter similar problems?
Update: The blocks that appeared were separate shapes and I was able to double click into them and delete them individually. Still dunno how they come about though.
when clicking on "unite", the heart where the keyhole is & the nose, become all black instead of black outline, why is that? i'm using cs6, could this be it? thanks
I was having so much trouble with the shape exclusion stuff. It might be because I'm not using the exact same AI software. However, I never got the ungroup option.
The way I solved it (and this is super finnicky) was after doing the exclude (I had to do alt+click on the exclude button in pathfinder), I selected the black rectangle with the white outline on it (changed the color to make it easier for me to distinguish), then I went to pathfinder, clicked the options menu and chose release compound shape. I then had to go to the outline itself and right click and chose release compound path. You'll see that the entirety of your skull shape turned black (highlight and color it some bright color and group it). Select your second copy of the black outline and the group you just made and align them on top of each other (you might need to arrange it so the outline is on top since it you might have made the outline prior to the creation of the grouped stuff you just made). Then ungroup the thing you grouped and you'll have all the shapes. This is a really bad explanation of what i did, but it worked.
Why do I have to click "Make compound shape" (5:30) ? Can I finish the work by clicking "Unite" step and no need to "Make compound shape" ?
same query
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Thumbs up!
I first saw this good technique, great tuts, thanks!
if you stucked with the ungroup section. I found a solution. After using exclude and expand it, you should select the new object and change the color for visibility. Then, bring the old compound image and fit them at the center as mentioned in the video. Now you should select the exluded and expanded version of the layer and right clicked it and you will see an option that "Release Compound Path". You should click that option. After that you should deselect the object by clicking somewhere else and then only select the outer surface of the skull i mean the rectangle shape. After selecting it, just right click and you gonna see "Ungroup" option right in front of you. After all, you can follow the other steps Mr.David mentioned. I hope it will work for y'all that struggling with ungroping part.
Copying the same line from your comment "Now you should select the excluded and expanded version of the layer" -> they are overlapping each other, then how we can select both?
Also if we select only skull -> then select -> "release compound path" -> the skull turns black(even inside skull is black, basically whole inside skull is black), unless fill is changed to "none" -> and if I follow next steps -> "ungrouping" as you and David told -> then skull boundaries is white (instead of black boundaries as above in video) -> although now selection tool is working fine now (almost, some minor strokes selection doesn't work though)
@@Ankur33Goyalby the boundries you can check and select the right object. Click somewhere out for deselecting whole then click only the rectangle shape includes shadowed skull shape with ease. ( Try to click near of the red dashed lines of rectangle.) You have to "release compound path" while the whole shape staying perfectly alligned.
what's the difference between compounding and grouping?
exclude didnt work for me either until by accident i click on the alt key at the same time as clicking exclude
Patrik J thank you.. I clicked the alt key and them it worked! :D
+Patrik J thanks, worked for me too
+Patrik J thank u it didn't work for me too until i saw ur comment
Thank you so much Patrik J ! I was having the same problem!
Great Tutorial! I think the final compound shape and expand is not necessary. Expand appearance followed by expand fill and stroke and then unite shape already make the drawing a grouped flat vector.
Thank you for this!
Glad it was helpful!
5:40 I dunno what i missed. every time I click Make Compound Shape the image disappears and all that is left are the anchors then when i hit Expand the anchors are gone and im left with nothing
I'm slow so I had to watch five times to kinda understand and do from this tutorial. Thanks.
can you tell me, how to ungroup? i am not able to ungroup them, even after using object menu?
Hi. Thank you very much for this series! As I look into comments, everyone else is little confused with this video as I am. I don't fully understand what does all those steps do and the difference between compounding and grouping? Can you please more explain? Thanks for reply ;)
EDIT: I played back the video and fiddled in each step with the picture and now I somehow understand what did each of the step do and understand the final picture. Thats very cool :)
Thank you for the amazing video series on AI. Though I am struggling to understand this video. Maybe going through it a few times will help me understand better. However, I have a query - can't this same thing be achieved - the need to create individual elements, so as to be able to colour them separately - using the Paint bucket tool? I don't know if this tool was available when this video was created. But I assume it gives the same result as using this compound vector method! Or - what is the difference btn them? TIA
Awesome Tutorial!
I don't understand we had to use expand tool so many times when everything could be done with just one click. Also, in its original form, the shape was already ungrouped. So what's the point of ungrouping it again. Also, why did we use yellow colour to cut out the image when we're going to color it in some other color anyways? Or am I taking it way too seriously? Eitherways, this tutorial is absolutely amazing!
Thank you Gareth
Why would you do the exclude stencil for coloring? Why not just the Live Paint tool? Is there a reason?
This is the most complex video of the series. I might have to watch it over a few times to grasp the concepts. Nevertheless, the tutorials are awesome
Why compound vectors when you can just right click and group the vectors together?
Does this only work if you use the brush tool rather than image trace layer? Expand appearance is faded out for me and I can't click it.
after align the two objects(blanc skull, black skull) ,right clicking shows "group" instead of "ungroup" , also when i press exclude (holding alt, i am using cs6) and even after "exclude", when i select blank skull with yellow background still the control panel is showing compound shape instead of group ,i cant find what is going on , help please!!:)
I run into the same issue, using Illustrator CC. if it is a compound shape, can't color them sharps to different color. Help please.
I spent a lot of time on this episode, I still did not figure out. Firstly, i did not find the "ungroup" option on the right click instead of under Object menu, and it did not work well. Some of parts are ungrouped, but the flowers on the forehead are still grouped. FRUSTRATING! Secondly, I try to reasoning the whole process, the ungroup was applied to copied the 2nd compound shape or the exclude one? if the former, does that mean the compound vector can be ungrouped any time? I lost the reasoning upon the last merge with 2nd pasted compound shape, will be highly appreciated to tell me why we are doing what we are doing, thank you .
great tutorial man!
When Im uniting all elements on this skull, eyes, in the center of these flowers become black all of a sudden.
SHAPE NOT ALIGNING ?????
I was having a problem with clicking the aligning center or align horizontal buttons and my shape just not moving, or moving to the wrong place.
If you are having this problem too: in the bottom right corner of the Align tab, which David has set up here in the workspace on the right, there is a drop down titled 'Alight To'. Go in here and make sure that you are aligning your selection to the artboard!
I hope this helps anyone else frustrated with the same problem.
Thank you. I was having the same problem and your comment helped me through this hiccup.
Thank you Nathan!
Great Share!
good trick at the end ; ) thanks a lot
Hmm, for someone who cannot delete the outside area after ungroup(me too), I tried to double click the outside area(showed trace layer at the top) and delete, it works for me, hope this helps for yall!!
Hey there!! I've been following your 19 video course during this quarantine, but I'm stuck on this video and just mega confused. This might be long winded...but I could really use your help! When I get to the point of "Uniting" my paths, it distorts some of my lines and adds these weird gradient shapes! It's bizarre. And after I've followed every single step of yours...when I go to delete the outside color, it just deletes all the color. What am I missing here?!?!?! Thank you in advance!!!
Lets say you had Photoshop, would it be more efficient to save the drawing after compounding & using the paint bucket tool ?
You're the best thank you so much
Expand apperance is greyed out, but expand is not. Why is that?
you are a Angel....
I can't seem to get that menu to appear when clicking expand. i need to merge these vector layers on top of one another to create a flat image, but it keeps messing up when I move the layers to put them in the right order. I am opening the paths made from photoshop into illustrator and then filling the shapes. Why can I not easily change the layer positions like in photoshop? One of the layers always turns invisible...
When I click, there is no ungroup option..
And what if we have objects that overlap each other? When I am trying to unite them I get an outline of the two. For example, I made the eyes as they were in the hand drawn sketch (the flowers bigger than the eye), and I encounter this problem when I am trying to unite all the vectors...
Awsome!
Anyone knows the reason of making a compound shape? is it for possible adjustment in the future?
I had the same problem and what I had descovered is that some of my strokes had fill so i came back and check all of then and after that I've got a result that I wanted.
My image fills in to black after clicking unite in pathfinder. How do I fix this?
can anyone explain whats the difference between grouping and compounding ? im really confused, tks in advance. Great vid btw, still relevant in 2020
Grouping is to help select multiple individual elements like shapes and type. Once grouped you can un-group. compounding is to merge objects together as one, where it becomes a single shape with the vectors around the outside you can further manipulate, once you compound you can not un-compound.
why do we compound it?. wouldnt this work if we just expand > unite /merge and start coloring ??
Sometimes when you merge and expand and so on, there can be issues with parts of the artwork not 'flattening' by using compound, it's a 100% fix. You know that all parts of the artwork will be forced to combine into one vector, so when you add effects like a gradient, you know it will be continuous throughout, as demonstrated in the video. 😀
@@GarethDavidStudio 😃 Thank you !!
even after ungrouping the objects I can not choose the shapes individually as you showed. When I try to select an object the whole objects get selected.
Rabin Raie hi, just wondered if you ever manage to ungroup each item?
+Rabin Raie I stumbled on the same problem but luckily figured it out.
Because there are two overlapping 'shape' on the art board, one is the frame and the other is the coloring background. In this case we need to choose the background part for coloring but sometimes Illustrator favor the frame. If you are forced to choose the whole object, just try to right click -> arrange -> send to back.
+Rabin Raie or just simply click on the color instead of the vectors.
hey thanks Tuan..I was facing same problem but now its solved (y) :)
@@displeasedEconomist can you tell me, how to ungroup? i am not able to ungroup them, even after using object menu?
Sir, any new tutorial do you have illustrated 2020
I got confused around 6 min in. I thought when we select all and unite them with pathfinder tool that it's then one vector. What exactly is the difference between that and compounding it to a shape and then expanding it?
+Ralphunreal May be I can help you out, Although This tutorial guy tried his level best to explain it and he was just bang on but few things u have to find out by yourself, after expanding means that ur vector stroke transformed into vector shape and ur vector shape will be overlapped with each other thats why u unite them which means the overlapping object will be merged. got it !!
@@shantanubhattacharjee8004 can you tell me, how to ungroup? i am not able to ungroup them, even after using object menu?
Thanks 😊
i have a divider line going down half my skull. at the end of the video it seems to cut all the vector shapes in the skull in two, so if i click on a shape that crosses that vertical divider, i only get one half of the shape activated. can anyone help me with this. can't see that divider line in his video.
Expand Appearance is grayed out. I have gone through and made sure I have no grouped paths anywhere, and still nothing. What am I doing wrong?
For me .. just clicking "Expand" works perfectly, its like you start from the second step here.
when clicking on "unite", the EYE FLOWER , become all black instead of black outline, can someone help with this?
the ungrouping part isn't working until i tried same procedure for another artboard on the same sketch then it worked but looks faded compare to the first i made(which was not ungrouping) i will used the faded one to continue the series but has anyone found a solution for this in 2018.. plz help
my expand thing never goes away, when i click unite, it just creates one big solid shape and everything inside disappears
Your outer skull must have fill in it (often white so you didnt notice). After you copied the entire skull to new artwork change fill in the outer skull to no fill and do the tutorial. Cheers
the exclude dosn't work with me
Same problem for me. Not sure why.
@@pjdoxopoulos Did you try with pressed alt?
When I "unite" the parts of the drawing, the pupils fill with black. Anyone else experience this and know how to prevent it?
the same :[
Awesome;-)
Why when I'm pressing unite the whole shape fills with black
Thanks a lot!
I cannot ungroup. Any solution pls
darn.. 8 years ago.. shoulda seen that before I watched every episode..
I can't ungroup after making compound shape. Help!
Problem resolved! Press ALT+click when Excluding. Maybe it's because of the old version.
@@sintadewir3382 can you tell me, how to ungroup? i am not able to ungroup them, even after using object menu?
Actually u can change the colour of the strokes without any compunding...
so what is the use behind that compunding technique? :/
can you tell me, how to ungroup? i am not able to ungroup them, even after using object menu?
Thanks
Hi is there a way to reverse this? @TastyTuts