Illustrator® CS4 For Dummies®

Chapter 4. Shaping Up, Basically

In This Chapter

• Creating objects the easy way

• Customizing basic objects

• Combining objects to create other objects

• Spewing objects onto a page with the Symbolism tools

A regrettably large number of people avoid using Illustrator because they find the whole point/path thing so intimidating. This situation is unfortunate but not surprising. When most people look at artwork, they see it as complete shapes, not as the lines that form the shapes. Working with points and paths, though, forces you to see your artwork in a way that many people have never thought of before, which creates enough of a hurdle to scare people away from Illustrator.

Fortunately, Illustrator offers shape-creation tools as a way to get a running start to clear that hurdle. With these six tools, you can create basic shapes, such as rectangles, ellipses, stars, and polygons. You can even create graphics without ever having to think about points and paths! (Don't be fooled — the points and paths are still there, but the tools create them all for you with just a single click-and-drag. Ah, progress.)

In this chapter, you discover how to use the shape-creation tools, giving you a good foundation for understanding and using the more complex features of Illustrator. You also find out how to combine simple shapes. Although you use the shape-creation tools to create basic elements, they are by no means ...