Spaceship

My spaceship going to the Moon.

For this project we had to create a spaceship in Illustrator, following steps from This Tutorial shown to us by our teacher. The blog, Create a simple Spaceship in Illustrator, layed out how to make the spaceship in steps categorized by each part of the ship. I first made the body, the main red oval, and from there every other part of the space ship, except the gray engines, are made from copies of the main ship. I made the window by sizing down a copy and deleting an anchor. The fins were made from using copies of the main ship and cutting parts of squares out. The flames were the last part of the actual spaceship made, and I made them by using 4 copies of the original main ship, then cutting down parts to make the flame shape, changing the color, and then making a copy and sizing it down to fit inside.

Tools I used and for what:

• Ellipse tool, Delete Anchor Point tool, Rectangle tool, Convert Anchor Point tool, Pathfinder: Intercept shape areas/Subtract from shape areas, Gradient, and Star tool
• Delete Anchor Point tool:
• take away anchor point on the window to change it from an oval to a window shape
• Convert Anchor Point tool:
• change the shape of the engines
• Pathfinder:
• Subtract and put together different objects
• Gradient:
• coloring in the background and on ship body
• Star tool:
• stars in the background
• Rectangle tool:
• fins, background, and engines
• Ellipse tool:
• Body, flames, shadows, moon, and window

I think that overall it wasn't hard to make the spaceship, it was more difficult to navigate around Illustrator. Other people in the class helped each other with parts that they couldn't do as well, and I think that helped me complete my spaceship. It took me about 2 days to complete it, so overall it was a pretty fast project.

I would give myself a 9/8 (participation/product) because I was focused while I made the spaceship, but it took me a while to make this post, and I'm pleased with my final project, but some things could be tweaked, like the background gradient is backwards, and little parts along the spaceship aren't lined up perfectly.

Illustrator Project Days 1-5

Click to enlarge

This project was to get used to Illustrator by creating different images using different tools. You had to read a tutorial posted on our teacher's blog, MrBoothyby.net, and then follow the steps listed at Vectordiary for using certain tools to make first basic shapes, then more complex shapes with different tools. I started with making the square and rectangle with the rectangle tool, then the circle and oval with the ellipse tool. Next I made the 20-point star with the star tool, and the triangle an pentagon with the polygon tool. I used the pencil tool to make the right and left hands, then used the pen tool to make everything else. The hardest tool to get used to was the pen tool, but by the time I got to the rabbit and the puzzle piece I was pretty comfortable with using it.

Tools I used and for what:

• Shape tools: Rectangle tool, Star, Ellipse, Polygon

•  Used them for the rectangle, square, triangle, pentagon, 20-point star, oval, and circle
•  Drawing tools: Pencil, Pen, and Change Anchor Point tool
• Used them for heart, hands, old key, dog bone, shamrock, clover, leaf, speech bubble, puzzle piece, and (my favorite) the rabbit

I think that I got better with the tools towards the end of the project, and I went back and changed some of the objects once I was used to tools like the pen tool. It took me a while to figure out the pen tool and drawing/tracing the hands took the most time. I think I could have done some of the objects better, like the dog bone or the speech bubble, but overall I think the images I made are good.

My personal evaluation of how I did is a 9/8 (participation/product), because I think I completed the project well, but some of the images could have been better. I was focused for most of the project,with maybe some minor lapses.