- In this movie, I'll show you how to create
the first couple of shapes
that represent the nose cone of the rocket.
And we'll do so with precision control.
So I'll show you not only how to specify
the exact size of an ellipse and a rectangle
inside of Illustrator,
but also how to dial in their coordinate positions
inside the Transform panel.
I'll go ahead and switch over
to my document in progress here inside of Illustrator.
And then you wanna make sure
that your Smart Guides are turned on in the View menu.
So if you see a check mark
in front of the words Smart Guides, then all is well.
If you don't, then go ahead and choose the command.
Next, go the Shape Tool fly-out menu here
and select the Ellipse Tool.
And then, at least in the most recent version
of Illustrator, notice that, as you drag,
you're gonna see a heads-up display
that's gonna tell you the size of your ellipse,
in points, in our case, on the fly.
And if you wanna change its position,
then you can press and hold the spacebar
in order to move it to a different location, like so,
and then continue dragging.
Now, I want my ellipse to be exactly
104 pixels wide and 156 pixels tall,
which is precisely what I have at this point.
So I can just go ahead and release if I want to.
But there's another way to work.
And to demonstrate that,
I'll just go ahead and delete the existing ellipse
and I'll click someplace inside of the document
in order to bring up the Ellipse dialog box.
And you can see now that you can enter specific values.
So, 104 for the Width, 156 for the Height,
click Okay.
That's gonna create the ellipse
down into the right of where you clicked.
Let's say you wanna center it at a location.
Well, then I'll just go ahead and press backspace
or delete to get rid of the ellipse again.
And this time, I'll position my cursor
over that central guide and I'll press the alt key,
or the option key on a Mac,
and see how that changes the appearance of the cursor.
Now if I click, I'll once again
bring up the Ellipse dialog box,
I'll dial in those values,
104 for the Width value, 156 for the Height value.
Then I'll click Okay.
And you can see the ellipse is now centered
inside of the document.
Now I'm gonna go ahead and zoom in here
so I can see it up close and personal.
Now, in all likelihood, it's located horizontally
exactly where I need it to be.
But vertically, I have no idea.
And so, to confirm where that ellipse is,
I need to bring up the Transform panel.
And the easiest way to do that is
to click on the word Transform up here in the control panel.
And now notice in addition to these width and height values,
which are 104 and 156, respectively,
just as dialed in a moment ago,
we're gonna see X and Y coordinate values as well.
Make sure that little center point is selected
inside this reference point matrix,
in which case the X value is most likely gonna be
482 points, that is to say,
half of the full 964-point width
of this document.
The Y value, however, is a little bit off.
I want it to be 140 points.
And now I'll go ahead and press the Tab key
in order to scoot the ellipse up, like so.
And now you can just press the Enter key,
or the Return key on a Mac, to hide that panel.
Now I'm gonna scroll up a little bit.
And, in order to give the nose of the rocket
a little bit more of a point,
I'm gonna switch to my white arrow tool,
the so-called Direct Selection Tool,
which you can get by pressing the a key, for arrow.
Then I'm gonna go ahead and marquee
that top point right there independently of the others.
And, just to make sure that we're both on the same page,
go ahead and press control k, or command k on a Mac,
to bring up the Preferences dialog box
and make sure that the Keyboard Increment is set to 1 pt.
If not, change it, obviously,
and then go ahead and click Okay.
And now press shift up arrow twice in a row
in order to nudge that point 20 points upward.
All right. Now we need to add a rectangle.
And to do that, go ahead and switch to the Rectangle Tool
here inside the Shape Tool fly-out menu.
And then you wanna click at this location,
that is to say, the left-hand anchor point for that ellipse,
in order to bring up the Rectangle dialog box.
And this time, go ahead and dial in
a Width value of 104 points once again.
We want it to match the width of the ellipse.
And I also decided to match its height
by changing that height value to 156 points,
at which point I clicked Okay
in order to create that new shape, like so.
And by the way, as you work along with me,
you wanna make sure two things.
First of all, go up to the View menu
and turn off the Bounding Box,
because otherwise, its just gonna get in our way.
And so if the command reads Hide Bounding Box,
go ahead and choose that command.
If it reads Show Bounding Box, as in my case,
you can just press the Escape key
because everything's the way it should be.
Also notice here inside Illustrator CC
that I'm seeing a bunch of handles around my rectangle
as long as the Rectangle Tool is selected.
And if at any time that creates a problem,
then all you need to do is,
just press control shift a, or command shift a on a Mac,
to deselect that rectangle
and all of those handles will go away.
All right. Now, at this point,
I want the shapes to have strokes but no fill.
So I'm gonna switch back to my black arrow tool,
the Selection Tool, which has a keyboard shortcut of v,
I'll go ahead and marquee these two shapes, like so,
and then I'll go up to the control panel,
click on this first swatch,
and change it to None.
And that way, we can see through both of the paths
and thereby keep better track of what we're doing.
And I'll click off the shapes in order to deselect them.
And that's how you create two very simple shapes,
albeit with an exceeding degree of accuracy and control,
here inside Illustrator.