2.1 Setting Up Our Document
Hi there. In this video, we are going to set up our documents that we can start redrawing this cute little sheriff penguin using all our shapes. We're gonna create a new document, show you how to bring in and use layers to lock this pencil drawing in the background so that we can redraw over the top of it. All right, let's get started. All right, first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna create a new document to draw our penguin on. Let's go to File, let's go to New. Now in here we've got a bunch of pre-sets, okay. Along the top here you've got like if you wanted to design a mobile phone, kind of a website.
We're gonna start with print, okay. And in here we're gonna pick letter, and along here we're gonna change our units to inches. We're gonna make it landscape, and what you'll find is yours is probably twirled up down at the bottom here. See where it says advanced options, click on that word and this little extra option opens up, okay? And we'll change our color mode to RGB. And we're not gonna cover the full differences between RGB and CMYK. But, just so you know, if you're new, RGB gives you a bigger color field, okay? More richer colors. CMYK is a little bit more washed out. But if you're gonna eventually become a commercial illustrator or commercial designer using illustrator. You probably need to research a little bit more the differences between the two. But the short version is just use IGB, even if you go into commercial print, printers have some amazing software to convert it to IGB, which they need and often it can give you a better result. So RGB, perfect for pretty much all circumstances these days.
Let's click create, all right. Next thing we gotta do is save our document. So next up let's go to File and let's Save our document. And what I want to do is, now if you're on a Mac, like I am, okay. You might have to click this little arrow to see a few more of the options here, okay. If you're on a PC, things are very similar but a little different, okay? Now, depending on your ability you might just save onto this top and just leave it at that. What I'm gonna do is be very organize and click on New Folder. And I'm gonna put it into files.
Okay, I'm gonna put a folder coolest one, my penguin. I'm not sure if that's how you spell penguin, looks good enough for me. If you're on a PC it's slightly different, I think there's just an icon along the top here, that says New Folder, hover above them. Create a new folder called class files, name our document penguin, and let's click Save. Okay, these Illustrator options, just leave them all by default and click OK. So, to get started, what we've got is, I've drawn, hand drawn a penguin, and we're gonna redraw over the top of it, and that's a really common way that I work, and a lot of illustrators work. Is that it's easier to draw in my notebook, take a photo of it or rescan. And actually just draw on top of it in illustrator. So how everyone works?
You can go straight into illustrator but it's gonna give us at least template to draw over the top of, just to make it a bit easier for us now. So to make that happen, let's go to File and let's go to Place. Place is the word, it's interchangeable with import. Illustrator likes to call it Place, though, so File, Place, we'll bring in our image. Let's find the exercise files that you've downloaded, and in there should be one called penguin.jpg.
Now, before you click Place, what we're gonna do is click on this word Template. I'll show you what it does. Let's make sure a template is clicked, let's cut and place, and what ends up happening is, with my black arrow, if I click off in the background. Can you see? I can't move this image. So what it does is, it brings it in, it puts it on its own layer. It locks that layer and dims it down a little bit, so it's easier to draw over the top of. And mines put in the middle of this document. Yours is probably off to the side here a little bit. So, let's look at unlocking that layer and moving it around. So, up here in your layers panel. Layer one is where we're gonna do our drawing.
This layer, here, called Template, you can kinda see Template Penguin. What it's done is, it's created a layer, and has locked it, okay? So it means I can't move it around, which is super handy. But let's say I wanna move it over a little bit, let's click on the locking icon. Click on this now, and now, okay. Just using my black arrow. Just clicking and dragging the center anywhere, okay? Now it's unlocked, okay? So I hope you can see the benefits of using the template. I can lock it again now, we're back to my layer one, okay? Make sure it is highlighted, and I can do my drawing on that layer. And this helpful little liar is just underneath dimmed down a little bit. The capacity is down a little bit and it's locked making it easier to draw. All right, that's it for setting up our document, just getting ready for drawing over the top of. What we'll do in the next video is that we'll start drawing with our shapes, okay. Lines and rectangles to make our cute little penguin. That, for some unknown reason, is a sheriff. Mainly because I needed to show you how to draw a star. But let's do that in the next video.
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