[music] [Rob Zilla] Adobe MAX! Hey. Hi.
Welcome to my session. This is OS330, Top Plays, 10 Tools and Features You Should be Using in Adobe Fresco Right Now. And I'm your host, Rob Zilla. I am a illustrator, particularly a sports illustrator, former educator, and self-proclaimed vector art monster. That's me, Rob, and I've been using Adobe Fresco for a long time and it's many other iterations in the past. Now, what I want to do is I want to do a couple of housekeeping things first. So let's look at the UI for Adobe Fresco. Now, Adobe Fresco is a drawing application that combines vector drawing and painting along with raster, and they even have this element called Live Brushes. And there's a pinch of animation involved in there too. So if you look at my UI, it's going to be different than yours when you open it up. You're going to see a dot from my Apple Pencil, by the way. And that's simple. My tools are on the right, but if I click here and go to App settings, it's an easy switch for you if you want to follow along with me. I'm just more comfortable working for the right. That's just my thing. So if you want to follow along, go ahead and get your iPad ready and let's go on this adventure. And what we're going to do is we're about to start with our first element. Oh, get your lightning emojis ready. Whenever I say the word "Boom", I want you to flood that chat with lightning emojis. I need to feel that energy because this is virtual. You're on your end of the device, I'm on mine. So we gotta keep the energy revved up. So whenever you hear me say boom, get those emojis ready. Now let's jump into our first.
And boom.
Got you. Get those emojis ready. Lightning emojis, flood the chats completely with that lightning emoji. I need that. I need that energy from you. Lightning emojis, flood the chat. Let's do it. I need to feel it, I need to get energized. I need to get pumped up before I show you the first tool or feature that you should be using right now in Adobe Fresco. Now, if you see me looking down, that's because my iPad is right here. So I'm going to be looking down a lot during this presentation. Hopefully, it doesn't bother you too much. But let's jump into our first feature. I'm going to go into this layer stack over here on the left by double-tapping it.
And that brings up our first feature, and our first feature is Snap Line. Now, what is Snap Line? Snap Line is pretty simple.
Snap Line is a way to cure what has been ailing every regular person in modern history. You always hear somebody say, I can't draw a straight line to save my life. Well, Adobe Fresco fixed that. All you simply have to do is create a mark and hold it at the end and boom, it snaps right into place.
It can be as wavy as you want it to be, and boom, it will snap right into place. And it even works on circles and ovals.
So if I go here to the ball, start going around the ball, hold it at the end, I get a perfect circle, not only circles but triangles as well. I can go here and I can do a perfect triangle. All I gotta do is hold it at the end. And folks, that is Snap Line. Start using it right away if you haven't seen it before. But Snap Line is going to make a loud noise like boom when it comes to your workflow from now on. Get what I'm saying? So let's jump into number two. Number two is Squeeze. Now, when Apple came out with the new iPad Pro and Apple Pencil Pro, they added something in there, especially to the functionality of the Apple Pencil. Simply squeeze it and you can bring up a command. Now, what I have programmed into my Apple Pencil, and I forgot to tell you all about the subject. This is my son, Max, plays soccer, and I got him drawn. I drew him shooting a shot because he wants to be the world's greatest soccer player. I'm a supportive dad, so I'm gonna draw Max for Adobe MAX. Boom. So for this feature, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and use that brush that I used before.
But for fine lines, I want to squeeze it and it automatically switch to the Taper Brush.
See how that line has it tapered in? So that way I can go in here and I can trace all of these fine points and get everything I need to get done. So I'm going to speed things up and jump into the future. I'm going to trace all of my blue lines to get this outline of Max looking the best that it can look. And then we're going to talk about our third feature.
Stay tuned. Boom. Okay, so our third feature. Our third feature is going to be Vector Trimming. Now, what is Vector Trimming? Okay, let's take a look. Jump into this layer stack real quick, and let's look at the inking that I did for Max.
So those blue lines are ink now. These are the lines that I'm going to keep. But there's something wrong. If we look at this, you see, I overshoot most of my lines. That's what I do, I overshoot my lines. The way to cure that, we're going to have to introduce a nice little friend of mine, and that is the touch shortcut. So you see the circle that's over here? I'm moving it around. This circle has two areas once I put my finger in it. It has an inner area and it has an outer area. And what it does is it changes the nature of the tool that you're using at that point in time. Gives it a different personality. So think of it as your keyboard, and on your keyboard, hitting things like Command, Control, or even Optional Alt changes the nature of whatever you're using. In this instance, it changes the nature of my Vector Paintbrush. I gotta get that right, Vector Paintbrush. You say that three times. All right, so when I press on it, hold in the middle and the inner is selected, my Vector Brush then becomes a, or an eraser.
Whenever I drag to the outside, that's when the magic happened. And that's the magic is called Vector Trimming. Now, I don't want to draw with two hands holding my left on and my right. I don't want to do that. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to lock it. What I'm going to do is I'm going to double-tap the Touch modifier, I mean, the Touch shortcut, then I'm going to tap it one more time just to select the outer. And when I do that and I cross over any vector path that I don't want, it automatically trims it and it gets it out of the way.
This allows me to draw more fluently when it comes to the inking stage and not worrying about having to stop on a dime at any virtual traffic lights that I may have on Adobe Fresco. So this could be a tedious process. I don't think it's very exciting to watch too much. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to jump right ahead and we're going to go on to our next one, which is number four.
Boom. Put lightning rods if you like Vector Trimming, if you think it's a good thing to have, get those lightning rods. And as you put those lightning rods down, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to jump to the next one.
Number four, Reference Layers. That's what we're dealing with next. We're dealing with Reference Layers for number four. Let's jump into the stack and find out what we have ahead of us. Two tap the stack.
Two tap the stack. And we go inside of that stack. And you can see I fully trimmed this of Max. Reference Layers allow me to color or fill in spaces without disturbing my line work. It's a non-destructive way to work. I can even do it on a different layer if I want to. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to create a layer between my blue line sketch and my line work. And all I'll do is, I hit this "+" button right here on the side.
I'm going to go up to my line work layer and I'm going to set it as a reference layer. So boom, I set it as a reference layer. I said boom.
Then I'm going to go to this empty one and I'm going to select the Paint Bucket tool over on the right-hand side.
Now, I have Xs in all the places that I want to fill. That marks the spot. So all I have to do in this new layer, and it asks me if I want vector or not, is to come into these different spaces and start laying down or filling in all of these different spots with the color that I want. And it's totally separated from my line work.
It even works when I get ready to do my flat color stage, which is coming up pretty soon. So what do you think? Reference Layers is a game changer because you don't have to have everything on one layer now. You can put your blues, your reds, your yellows, or whatever color that you decide to use and have them separate it layer by layer just in case you change your mind about that color later. And that, my friends, is Reference Layer. We got to move quickly. Boom. So get those lightning emojis ready as I get ready to proceed to the next feature.
I feel all that energy, man. All those lightning bolts, I love it! The best thunderstorm ever! You guys out there, y'all really got some energy. We need to put that in the form of a drink. We can have our own energy drink, so to speak. But let's go ahead and jump into number five. Number five is going to be Lasso, or what I refer to as Ted Lasso. I have a personal relationship with this tool, and I love it. Now, Lasso tool allows us to draw freehand and select whatever areas we want to select. But I use it differently than what it was intended for. I use it to draw with. Let's get into it. So the fill or the inking for Max's illustration is already done. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go between that fill that I just completed and the blue line sketch, and I'm going to add a layer. So I go to the blue line sketch and I add a layer, and I already have the Lasso tool selected. With the Lasso tool selected, all I have to do now is I need to come here into all the areas, and I can tap if I want, nice straight lines, or I can freehand and just draw in everywhere that I want there to be a shadow area or on all the areas that I want to push back and recede. I'm creating these shadows or the shading in order to create form.
So I will go around this, and this is one of those segments where my head stays down. You get to look at the top of my supreme hat.
So generally when I have that space occupied, I go to the layer, have it selected. I select this thing here that you see beeping. That's my layers property. In my layers property, I will drop my opacity down to probably like 30.
You know, just a random generated number. I will go back to my Vector tool, I will select the Round tool, and I will adjust the size to its maximum size.
And then all I have to do whenever I have these areas selected is swipe over and fill it in. Now, the thing I love about this Lasso tool is that it's intuitive. So let's say I come here and I start to do the shadows for this portion of the arm. And let's say I get the whole entire composition done using the Lasso tool. And, oh, my gosh, by accident, I hit the Deselect.
I feel like I got to draw everything again, which I don't. If I go into the Lasso tool menu at the bottom, you'll see Load last selection. I'll click on Load last selection, and the last thing that I had selected is selected again. That's what makes it a wonderful tool. And of course, I will come with my Vector tool and I will just white right over it and it makes it look like movie magic. So I'm not going to bore you with having to go around and trace all these different areas just so I can add shadow to it. We're going to use the magic of movie and technology to fast forward to the future. And that's going to bring us to our next feature or tools. So boom, let's get to it.
Number six, we have Shapes, and I still have a shape there with the marching ants marching around it. It carries on from layer to layer, even layer group to layer group. Double tap in this layer group, and let's see all the progress I made with shading when it comes to Max's illustration. He's going to be so exciting when he see it. So there, we got some form going on here. But this is the area we're going to have to address. Now, my son is very particular about his haircuts. It's almost sickening how particular he is about his haircuts.
So with the use of Adobe Capture, I took a sheet of paper and I stippled on that sheet of paper to create a gradient because gradients aren't in Adobe Fresco, but that gradient makes a nice fade for a haircut. What I'm going to do is I'm going to select that Lasso tool again. I'm going to open a new layer above my Ink layer, my Ink Fill layer, and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to stamp in the shape of where his fade for his haircut is supposed to hit.
So with that area selected, I'm going to go over to the triangle and circle diagram here. I'm going to click on it and you automatically see it, it's right here. It'll bring up that shape that I want right there. And all I did was stipple to get that. I did that in Adobe Capture and I saved it to a library. What I'm going to do is take this stamp, I'm going to put it in place, make it a little bit smaller and a little bit up, and I'm going to go to the bottom where it says Fill. When I hit Fill, it's going to ask me whether I want Vector or Pixel. I want Vector. And I click it and boom.
Go back to my Lasso. Deselect Max has a tight fade, a drop fade. Pretty cool, huh? Now, I use this various different ways. For Jersey, since I draw sports. For fire suits, for NASCAR. I put all the different logos on there using shapes that I created from the assets that teams give me. It speeds up my workflow. I don't have to draw a logo. They're not hiring me to draw a logo, they hire me to draw their players.
And all I simply have to do is just place it onto the clothes and distort it, and it's right where I want it to be. Pretty simple, huh? Pretty cool. Now, we're about to jump into number seven.
Number seven is Symmetry.
But before I get into number seven, we're going to need more lightning emojis. Put them in the chat, let's get them going. Let's get those lightning emojis going. Come on, I feel it. Come on, I feel it. Come on, I feel it.
All right, y'all, convince me. Jump into this layer stack, and boom. We have all of our shadowing and everything done. We got the fade done using Shapes. Now we're going to get into Symmetry. So I have a skull there at the bottom. Max has been working on his shots, but I want to convey that his shots is very deadly to the game right now. So I want to put a skull and crossbones on the actual ball that he's kicking or just kicked.
So down here I have half of a skull drawn. And what I want to do is I want to draw a whole skull without having to draw a whole skull because I'm lazy. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go right above the outline. I'm going to create a new layer and I'm going to hit this little grid that's here.
Then it's going to give me the options to show the grid or for Symmetry. I'm going to hit Symmetry. And whoo! We got all these beautiful, different reflective, rotational, and they even got some more guides that's in there. I'm going to go ahead and go with the mirror. Whatever happens on the right, I want to happen on the left and vice versa. I go and I select my Vector Paintbrush, the round one, and I'm going to make this a little bit thinner. So I go to 3.5. From here, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to start to go over my blue line work.
And it's going to be sloppy at first.
But who doesn't like a little sloppy? Drawing does not have to be perfect. If so, it would have been a photograph.
And if you notice, I don't follow my blue lines exactly, letter for letter, because I don't want anything dictating how I create the way that I create. I want to have that natural flow happening.
And sometimes, you end up with better things that way.
Make quick work out of this skull.
I don't like the top portion of that. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab my touch shortcut. I'm going to double tap the middle and I'm going to erase out that top portion of it. Then I'm just going to come back here and I'm going to finish drawing that skull in. He's a pointed head skull. And let's put a femur over here.
Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to use that Lasso tool. I'm going to select my femur on one side. It automatically selects it on the other side. I'm going to tap on that layer and I want to duplicate the selection that I have.
And it automatically prompts me to duplicate it. I simply just flip that over like such, and then I simply drag it down to where I want it to go onto the skull.
Done. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually use the Lasso tool again and I'm just going to cut off the extra that I don't want.
Erase.
And we have a skull and crossbone completed. And what I'm going to do is with the magical movie, I'm going to go ahead and put it on the ball right now. So the skull and crossbone will be on the ball by the time you see the next phase that we're going to go into. In the meantime, lightning emojis. Let's get it. Put them down in the chat. Let's flood it. Let's get the lightning emojis going right now. Ooh, that lightning, that lightning is going. That lightning is going! Oh, man! I guess that's time for me to go ahead and expose what number eight is. And number eight is going to be, folks, the Vector Outline Brush. You're going to love this. So let's get into it. Double tap on that stack. Boom. We have that here. And what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and hide the title and we're going to look at our drawing thus far. And it came right back again. I'm not understanding what's going on here. Boom. Alright, so I took the skull and cross bone and I made a pattern on the ball.
Pretty nice. I like it. There's some other things that I did too behind the scenes. I use the reference layer of the outline to fill in color. So Max actually has color now. He plays on the team right now called The Sharks. Their uniform is black and he has these orangish goldish boots or cleats that he loves so much. Alright, so what I want to do is I want to introduce y'all to the Outline Brush. So let's get into it. I'll go to my Vector Brush menu and it has its own category. What I like to use is I like to use the Light one because I can modify it and I can adjust it according to what I want to use it for.
The unique thing about this brush is that it has a fill and it also has a stroke. Sounds familiar? Alright, so with this, I want to change the stroke color to the orangish color that I have for his boots, his soccer cleats. I'm going to adjust the size. Let's get a good little reading on the size. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to come above all layers and I'm going to create a new layer plus.
And that layer could be used for something just as simple as--- It's too thick. Let's go ahead and adjust it. You see what I'm getting here? You see where I'm going? I can come right along the edge of this boot.
And what I can do is I can go ahead and add some little wonky laces in places.
Real quick. Now his boots have laces and it's been exposed. Those laces have been exposed. That's pretty cool. Now I got some areas popping up that should not be, but just ignore it. There's something else I want to use this brush for. I'm going to change the inside the stroke to white. Change that stroke to white. And since we already in the Symmetry, and that's why it popped up because I was still in Symmetry mode.
And all I have to do is just erase it. No harm, no file. It's on its own layer. I'm going to be creating something else on its own layer. And I'm going to be going right above the Sketch layer and I'm going to hit the "+" sign. And what I want to do is I want to activate the grid now. And I'm going to go back to that brush, the outline brush that I have, just to size up a little bit. And I'm going to use the cells of the grid to create this. So I'm going to start here. I'm going to go down and make sure I hit the corners. And it doesn't have to be perfect. As you can tell, I'm going pretty fast and I'm going to make one more pass and boom. And what I'm going to do is, for all the areas on the right, I'm going to put this little notch right here. Notch is going down, that notch is there. Perfect. Now, not only am I going to do that, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to go and put two notches there as a matter of fact. I'm going to go to the same layer. I'm going to tap on it. It's going to bring up the actions and I want to duplicate that layer.
Then I'm going to take the Move tool and I'm simply going to move the bottom of the duplicate layers over.
Move it over. I want to nudge it, so let's use the nudge. That's what this little thing is, it's me nudging it over, ever so gracefully. Nudging it, nudging it, nudging it, nudging it. Boom. I click Done, and I'm going to go to that top layer. I'm going to tap it. Layer actions. I'm going to merge it down.
Then I'm going to duplicate it again.
I'm going to go to the bottom one and I'm going to move it over to the right. I'm going to hold down the touch shortcut as I do this so it keeps it lined up perfectly.
Do you see that? Let's take the grid away. Do you see the soccer net? Pretty amazing, right? Boom, a soccer net. Lightnings in the chat. I need that. All right, let's go ahead and jump to our next one. Let's see how this thing progresses as we use these different tools. So that's the Outline Brush, and I love it to death.
We get to number nine. And number nine, ladies and gentlemen, is the Jitter Vector Brush, okay? Jitter Vector Brush. That means that it randomly makes thick and thins and it can make, add some different characteristics to your line work, but I use it way differently.
I use it. I'll show you. Let's get to it.
Okay, so we got the net behind Max. The only changes that I made is I used that same outline brush to add poles to the soccer net and even the shadows at below. Like, I didn't neglect the shadows at all.
So the Vector Jitter Brush, what I want to do is I want to come between Max and the actual net. I will hit the net, add a layer to the top of it, go to my Vector brushes, and I will go to vector jitter brushes. I will go to the Medium jitter and I want white. So I will select white. I can adjust any brush on here the way that I want it because each brushes have settings, so you can create the brushes that you want. You don't have to own a bunch of brushes. You can have your own set of custom brushes. Now, the way that I'm going to use this. Oh, I forgot some other stuff.
I added a background, too.
Nothing major, just added blue at the top, green at the bottom. Pretty simple. But I want this ball that Max is kicking to look like it's actually smoking.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to come behind the brush, I mean, come behind the ball with this brush and what I'm going to do is I'm going to make it look like plumes of smoke coming off of this action that he used. And this brush just randomly gets thicker and thinner as we go along. And that's what I like about it. But for some reason, it seems like I am in the background. No biggie. I take this layer and I just drag it above where I want it to be.
And the cool part about this is I can get those thin little smoke pieces to connect and look like they're really streaming off of this.
And it takes a lot of power to kick this hard. And he's been working on his shot, so I want him to really feel like he's doing it. I even can put this in front of his form, too. And what I'll do is I'll adjust the opacity and everything and make it look nice, make it look good.
Now, that's the Jitter Brush. You can use it as an outline brush just so you can get something different than just your stagnant thick or thins. You can have them randomized, but I use this in this format. Pretty cool, right? Let's go. We're running out of time. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to jump out of this layer stack. I'm going to hide it. Barrel Roll is our last one, and this is a world premiere. Barrel Roll was added with the new Apple iPad and Pencil Pro. And what it allows you to do is you can roll your pencil to control the direction or angle of the brush that you're using. But today, I'm going to do something out of characteristic.
Normally, I always brag about how I only use vectors.
Today I am going to use this with a raster. We have it for vector, but I just want to use a raster brush. And the raster brush I want to use is a soft cloud brush. So look at the shape of that brush right now. And I can rotate it and I can change the direction of that any way that I want to. I'm going to zoom out, and I want this to be behind the net, and I can add these beautiful clouds to this composition, and I can turn it any way I want just to add a little bit more character to these clouds.
And that's Barrel Roll. And, ladies and gentlemen, my drawing of Max is almost complete, but that's all I have time for to cover.
Let's review real quick. Here's what we went over.
We went over Snap Line Squeeze, Vector Trimming, Reference.
We went over so much. The whole list is right here. Now, what is your favorite tool in Adobe Fresco? Did I miss it? Let me know about it. You can connect with me on social media.
Zap that QR code and that's everything Zilla does right there. I want to thank y'all for spending 30 minutes with me. Hopefully, next year I'll be there in person to feel the energy from you. We can shake hands, we can hug, but we can have a great time at Adobe MAX, wherever it's going to be.
My name is Rob Zilla. This has been Fresco Top 10 Plays. Enjoy the rest of Adobe MAX.
