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Recently I saw an old romantic movie called „Roman Holiday” for the hundredth time, and a great idea came to my mind. After that, I decided to create a modern illustration of a boy on a scooter. Then I browsed many scooter images on GraphicRiver to remind myself (actually to learn) how this form of transportation looks. After adapting the illustration to a beginner’s level, I came up with this idea.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a boy on his scooter using basic shapes and warp effects.
Let’s have a look and get started.
1. How to Create the Scooter
Step 1
After opening Adobe Illustrator, create a New Document with 850 x 850 px Width and Height. Using the Ellipse Tool (L), draw an oval. In the image below, you can see which Fill color you need. Behind the oval, create the same colored rounded rectangle by using the Rounded Rectangle Tool.
To align these two shapes, open the Align panel (Window > Align). Set Align To:Align to Selection (open the fly-out menu and go to Show Options if you don’t see the Align To: section shown here), make sure that your shapes are selected, and click the Horizontal Align Center and Vertical Align Center buttons. In the end, your rounded rectangle should be in the middle of the oval.
Create a grey rectangle using the Rectangle Tool (M). Place it behind (Control-X, Control-B) the existing shapes.
For the handles, create a pink rectangle with the Rectangle Tool (M) and place it in front of the grey rectangle on the left side. Create a Copy of this rectangle: select it and while holding the Shift and Alt keys, drag it to the right. This way, you’ll create a second copy of this rectangle which will be horizontally aligned. Group the two handles (right-click > Group) and Align all the shapes by pressing the Horizontal Align Center and Vertical Align Center buttons.
Finally, add a grey oval in the middle of the dark yellow one.
Step 2
Create a new rectangle and attach it below the existing shapes. Next, add a large rounded rectangle by using the Rounded Rectangle Tool, and slightly deform it. Select the large rounded rectangle and go to Effect > Warp > Inflate. Enter the options you see below. This is the front of our scooter.
Step 3
This may seem like a lot of text, but it’s not too hard to do if you read it carefully.
Let’s add the front wheel. First, create a small dark grey rectangle. In the first image you can see the zoomed in shape. In the middle of the top and bottom sides of the rectangle, add two new anchor points. To do this, select the Pen Tool (P) and simply click on the middle of each side of the rectangle.
Next, we need to move these anchor points down. Select these anchor points with the Direct Selection Tool (A), and move them down using the Down Arrow key on your keyboard until you get a result similar to the one in the second image below.
Create a grey rounded rectangle and place the V-shape on top of it.
Next, we will make a Copy of the V-shape. Select it and drag it down while holding the Shift and Alt keys. While the newly created V-shape is selected, press the Control-D buttons the required amount of times (in my case it is six) to repeat the previous step to create a new group of these shapes exactly the same distance from each other.
Now we need to cut off the unnecessary parts of the V-shapes, which are out of the boundaries of the rounded rectangle. Make a Copy of this rounded rectangle in front (Control-C, Control-F), cut it off (Control-X), and place it in front of everything (Control-F).
Here is a short explanation of such manipulations: when you create a copy in front of the rounded rectangle, this copy will appear just in front of the original. Keep in mind that it’s not in front of the V-shapes we already created. Then we need to cut off the copy and place it in front of everything so that it now appears in front of the original rounded rectangle and V-shapes.
Keeping this copy and all V-shapes selected, press the Crop button on the Pathfinder panel (Window > Pathfinder).
Step 4
Now we will add a cover above the front wheel. For this purpose we will need a rounded rectangle, which will have exactly the same shape as the wheel, but slightly larger in its size. If we simply enlarge it, the rounded corners will be not proportional. Therefore we will use the Offset Path.
So, keeping this copy selected, go to Object > Path > Offset Path. Set the parameters Offset: around 10 px, Joins: Miter; Miter limit: 4. All these values are approximate, and it depends on the size of your original shape. Set the color of the newly created rounded rectangle to light brown. Next, place it in front of the image (Control-X, Control-F).
We will need just the upper part of this shape, so cover its lower part with any color rectangle. Keeping these two shapes selected, go to the Pathfinder panel and press the Minus Front button. There you go! You have just created the front wheel.
Step 5
Place the wheel in front of the scooter. Then we will add one more detail. Using the Rectangle Tool (M), create a thin dark yellow rectangle and place it in front of the scooter as shown in the image below. Make a Copy of this rectangle (drag it down while holding the Shift and Alt keys) and use the Control-D buttons to repeat copying this shape three more times.
Step 6
And now for the final detail for our scooter—the mirror. For the mirror holder, we will use a thin grey rectangle, slightly inclined to the left and attached to the left handle of the scooter. Attach the mirror (yellow ellipse) slightly rotated clockwise.
To make a Copy of this mirror select the mirror with its holder, right-click your mouse and select Transform > Reflect. Once you get a dialogue box, select Axis Vertical, Angle 90 degrees, and press Copy. Move the newly created mirror to the right.
Our cool scooter is ready to ride!
2. How to Create the Boy’s Head
Step 1
Let’s begin illustrating the boy’s head. Using the Ellipse Tool (L), draw an oval. In the image below, you can see which Fill color you need. Then go to Effect > Warp > Inflate. Enter the options you see below.
Step 2
Using the Ellipse Tool (L), create a small ellipse and Rotate it to the left. This is the left ear, so we’ll put it on the left side of the head. While it’s selected, take the Reflect Tool (O), hold down the Alt key, and click the forehead in the center of the face. In the new dialogue window, select Vertical, Angle 90 degrees and press Copy. Voila! We have two ears now.
Step 3
Now let’s create the neck. Using the Rectangle Tool (M), draw a small rectangle under the head. While it’s selected, go to Effect > Warp > Arc Lower and enter the following options:
Step 4
To create the mouth, draw a white ellipse. Cover the upper half of this ellipse with any Fill color rectangle. While keeping the rectangle and ellipse selected, go to the Pathfinder panel and press the Minus Front button. The boy is smiling now!
Step 5
Select the head, and make a Copy behind (Control-C, Control-B). Make this copy bigger and change its Fill color. Add an ellipse onto the top of the head with the same Fill color.
We will use the Warp Tool (Shift-R) to style his hair. Double-click on the Warp Tool (Shift-R) and enter the options you see below in the second image. Note that the arrows in the first image show how to move your mouse, but you can actually create any hairstyle you want. It is very important to select the object before you use the Warp Tool (Shift-R)—otherwise you will affect other objects surrounding it.
This way you can also create a woman with a girlish hairstyle.
Step 6
Since the boy rides his scooter during the summer, let’s give him a pair of sunglasses. Create an oval with a dark grey Fill color. To create the sunglasses shape shown below, go to Effect > Warp > Arch and enter the options shown. Expand this shape (Object > Expand Appearance).
Make a vertical reflection of this shape. Then add an arc using the Arc Tool between the two glasses as a bridge.
With the help of the Arc Tool again, draw the left temple of the sunglasses. Be sure to check the Round Cap on the Stroke panel.
Create a vertical reflection of the left temple to get the right temple. The sunglasses are ready!
Then place the sunglasses on.
3. How to Create the Boy’s Body
Step 1
Using the Rounded Rectangle Tool, create a pink rounded rectangle and attach it to his head. Place it behind the image of the scooter.
Step 2
To create the arms, we will start with an arc. First, Delete the Fill color and set the Stroke color the same as the body color (Shift-X). Check the Round Cap on the Stroke panel and make the Weight of this stroke very thick (around 30-40 px).
Now, using the Arc Tool, draw the boy’s left arm. Move the handles of the anchor points using the Direct Selection Tool (A) to achieve the result you need. Make a Copy of the arm through Transform > Reflect. Move the newly created arm to the right.
Step 3
To add the boy’s fingers, Delete the Stroke color and set the same Fill color as the face (use the Eye Dropper Tool (I)). Draw a rounded rectangle which will be multiplied with the Shift and Alt keys as well as the Control-D button. We just created the fingers for his right hand.
Make another Copy of the fingers. Simply hold the Shift and Alt keys and drag them to the right to place them on the right handle of the scooter. This is his left hand.
Step 4
Let’s create the boy’s legs. Here we will use the Line Segment Tool (\). Draw a grey horizontal line. To get it straight, hold down the Shift key as you draw the line. Remember to Delete the Fill color and choose a Stroke color similar to the one shown in the image below. Before drawing, be sure to check the Round Cap button on the Stroke panel and adjust the appropriate Weight of the stroke.
The next thing we’ll do is bend this line. While keeping it selected, go to Effect > Warp > Arc. In the new dialogue window, adjust the options you see in the second image below. Place it behind the scooter.
Step 5
To finish creating the legs, add another line on the left side by using the Line Segment Tool (\). Make a Copy of this line by using the vertical reflection options we previously used for the creation of the arms.
4. How to Create the Background
Draw a square behind everything at 850 px Width and Height. That’s all we want!
Awesome Work, You’re Done!
Great job, you’re done! I hope you had fun creating this illustration of a boy who’s hurrying somewhere in a good mood. I also hope you learned some new tricks for creating your own illustration. Let’s see what you can create!
To begin with, it would be wise to understand what is meant by the acronym CMS. Depicted as Content Management System, it simply implies that you can deal with content right from your website. It does not really matter how small or big your business is; the CMS software is not something you would wish to miss out on, especially in the current digital world.
At https://www.magenet.com/best-cms-2017/, we do believe that in order for you to enjoy the services of a great CMS, you do not need to focus only on content upload and management, but use it as a smart way of personalizing your content as well. As far as we are concerned, CMS come into main categories namely:
Open source
Closed source
What you mustn’t forget is that each of the two categories comes with its own advantages and drawbacks. Attributing to their setting options and competitive prices, the open source systems are the most commonly applied. However, these very systems tend to be the most ineffective and do not support customization.
On the other hand, while they may not flexible when it comes to settings, closed source systems are not only costly but safe and come with a customization feature. One good thing about the CMS systems is that they are available in an array of choices from which you can pick what suits your content marketing needs. The incorporated ready-made themes and plugins allow for easy use of the CMS software by people with little coding know-how. But if you understand coding, it is our bet that you will find the open source CMS along with its setting options very enjoyable.
CMS vs blogging platforms
Certain individuals have no idea about the difference that exists between the blogging platforms and CMS. Well, this is something that has eluded them considering that certain CMS platforms may have started as blogging platforms. However, the most important point to note here is that the CMS software is more urbane and comes with numerous options. With an endless list of plugins that widens your online scope, you can easily relay emails; take control of your content or trademark your site.
Besides, CMS differs from blogging platforms due to their varying hosting domains. Normally, while CMS platforms incorporate web hosting services, any blog on a given platform is hosted by the same platform. In this case, you must be prepared to remit some fee before your site is hosted.
That said and done, you will definitely find CMS platforms very handy when it comes online business.
Suitable CMS for different applications
Presently, the most commonly used CMS platform is Best blog CMS WordPress. While WP popularity may have declined in the recent times, it still plays a critical role in CMS. Looking at our analysis at https://www.magenet.com/best-cms-2017/, approximately 60 % users of CMS depend entirely on WP. Good examples of WordPress users include MTV News, BBC America, and Variety. This is attributed to the fact that WP is an open source and therefore does not require certification before using it.
Quite a good number of developers are consistently enhancing the open source platform through the inclusion of the latest plugins and themes. It is easy to personalize CMS to suit your site’s convenience.
Best e-commerce CMS
Are you an online shop owner? If yes, then you must be sure to choose a particular set of plugins for your business. Although there are numerous CMS systems offering unique e-commerce plugins; however, you can still look for the specific CMS systems designed with your e-commerce needs in mind. A good example is Magento which is mostly used by Cisco Systems, Nike, and 3m. It is basically among the top-rated ecommerce CMS in the business world.
Bottom line: There are actually many types of CMS systems and what you need is pick what suits your business needs. Visit us by clicking on the above link to learn more of these and how you can best utilize the CMS systems.
When it comes to marketing in the digital realm, there needs to be a perfect blend of technology and creativity. In days gone by it was usually the marketer with the most creative sales copy that won the race. In the hi-tech world of today, most marketing is now conducted on the Internet or through SMS messages via mobile phones and technology is a huge part of those techniques. Successful San Francisco SEO digital marketing professionals, for example, should have a place inside their heads where the right and left brain intersect.
Understanding Left Brain Activity
According to the anatomy of the human brain and what we’ve come to know about it, thanks to years of study and huge advances in technology, each hemisphere of the brain takes on differing responsibilities, biological functions if you will. The left brain is the left hemisphere and is responsible for taking what you hear and processing it, as well as handling most of what goes into speech. The left side of the brain is the side that is responsible for logical thinking and mathematical calculations, so that is the side that would handle the technology inherent in creative digital marketing.
Creating in the Right Hemisphere
The right hemisphere, on the other hand, is responsible for special abilities. A musician is said to be right hemisphere dominant because that is the side where creativity resides. A little bit of math can be handled in the right hemisphere, but very basic levels that are far inferior to what is needed for a sound understanding of technology. In terms of language, the right brain interprets what it hears based on tone and, sometimes, even intuition, which is based on memories it extracts from deeper levels.
A Good Marketer Needs the Perfect Right/Left Connection
What you will find when it comes to marketing is that both sides have a role to play and creativity needs to intersect with logic to produce a strategy that is appealing enough to be effective. Those statistics analyzed on the left side are carried over to the right so that a creative strategy can be developed.
It’s amazing how the two work in tandem to accomplish great feats. Even so, everyone has a dominant side and that is why so many marketing firms delegate some members of the team to the technological side of the firm, while those dominated by right-brain activity comprise the creative element of the team.
In life, you will always find times when one or the other side of your brain needs to step into a position of dominance, and so it is in marketing. The two need to work in conjunction, back and forth, until a suitable strategy is planned and developed. The perfect digital marketing strategy will begin with a technical understanding that measures metrics, calculates a statistical projection, and then turns that information over to the right side so that a creative approach can be developed. There probably isn’t another industry on earth that requires so much interoperability between the right and left hemispheres of the human brain. This is why it really pays for a marketing pro to understand this connectivity. It’s simply amazing.
Sometimes you just need a bit of POP to attract attention to your logo, and nothing pops quite like a splash of color. Added color can actually scientifically increase your logos attention. Check out these 10 quick facts about color from UCREATIVE:
The world’s most popular color is blue./li>
Red is the first color a baby sees.
Anger management issues? Use pink!
Yellow + Red = Hunger
There was once a law prohibiting the use of a color.
For the last four or five years, responsive design has been the go-to approach for most webmasters looking to optimize their sites for mobile. There are good reasons for this, which we touch on in this article, but it’s not necessarily the ideal solution in when creating a positive mobile browsing experience. Despite widespread perception that responsive design is now the optimal approach, there are still valid reasons to consider a different way: a dedicated mobile site. In this article we address some of the benefits of mobile sites that you may not have considered, as well as a reassessment of the strengths and weaknesses of responsive design. The purpose is not to dispute the general efficacy of responsive design, but rather to highlight the fact that it isn’t the de facto ‘best’ choice in all applications.
The industry standard
The introduction of responsive design as a way to easily accommodate a range of screen sizes was revolutionary. As the number of people using mobile devices for internet browsing grew so rapidly, the ability to accommodate a variety of formats was a huge bonus for webmasters. Now that mobile browsing has overtaken desktop, it’s no surprise that responsive design is considered by many to be the industry standard. So much so that website building packages, designed to be accessible for a layperson, often include integrated responsive design to bring this advantage to non-experts. The hosting company 1&1 is a prime example of this. For a quick refresher, here are a few core advantages to responsive design:
Versatile
Ready to adapt to any size of screen automatically
One website
Because it doesn’t require a separate website, responsive design sites are easier to maintain and promote
One URL
Eliminates confusion of having a different URL for a mobile site for both users and search engines
Prepared for the future
Responsive design can handle the dimensions of new devices with ease
The Unsung Hero
In the eyes of some, mobile websites (usually denoted with ‘m.’ in the URL) are old hat – why go to the effort of creating two sites when you can stick to one? It’s true that having to develop a separate mobile site with a different URL poses some challenges. For instance, you have to maintain two websites simultaneously, which is not only more time consuming but can also create complications for search engine visibility if not managed correctly. However, it’s not quite as simple as that. Not all websites are alike, and there are compelling reasons to consider a mobile-dedicated site, depending on the nature of your project.
User experience
A major advantage of a mobile-dedicated site is that it’s bespoke. That is, because it’s distinct you’re your main website, you can tailor it specifically for mobile use without affecting the desktop browsing experience. The difficulty with responsive design is that any design changes you make to improve the mobile UX will also affect users browsing on larger screens, sometimes negatively. This is a tricky balancing act, and can result in trying to please both mobile and desktop users, but achieving neither. Mobile sites allow you to separate these concerns.
That said, the significance of this issue largely depends on how complex your website is in terms of content and functionality. For example, relatively simple and streamlined websites without many complex design elements or applications won’t have much of an issue. On the other hand, large online stores would struggle to implement design elements for their entire stock and payment processing in way that satisfies both mobile and desktop UX. Particularly for a business like this, a hassle-free user experience is crucial to optimizing conversion rates. This is where a mobile site comes into its element.
Speed
Responsive sites tend to be slower than dedicated mobile sites, which can also negatively impact user experience. This is because a responsive site still has to load virtually all HTML elements and content, no matter if a desktop or mobile device is being used. So, either you have to significantly reduce the size of your site – and risk diluting the desktop user experience – or accept slower loading times on mobile. On the other hand, mobile sites allow you to streamline mobile performance completely independently of your desktop site. This way, you can ensure both sites load as quickly as possible.
SEO
In the past, search engines weren’t as good at ranking mobile sites effectively, so responsive design was regarded as more SEO-friendly. This is changing, and search engines are now much more able to appropriately recognize them. Having a mobile site also offers you the potential to optimize for mobile-specific search intention. This means you can more precisely target mobile users and direct them to a website that’s created specifically for them. Furthermore, the greater freedom to tailor the mobile user experience can be beneficial for SEO, as UX is a tangible ranking factor.
Summary
Responsive design is an extremely useful method of mobile optimization, no doubt about it. It excels in its role for many websites, but can be complicated to implement for necessarily more bloated and complicated sites. Mobile sites offer more design freedom, allowing you to maximize the user experience of more complex web projects. Mobile optimization is not a case of choosing the ‘best’ method – it’s a matter of selecting the most appropriate method for your individual needs.
Mike Dorsey is a tattoo artist who also creates stunning artworks in the style of Japanese ukiyo-e prints. Despite the large inspiration from Middle-Age Japan, his prints keep their own specificities, because the artist includes lots of elements from modern day Western society. You can see a glimpse of his work below, but you should head to his portfolio to see more.
Clockwise circular (cyclic) distribution with partially overlapping items.
At first, this doesn’t seem too complicated. We start with 12 numbered items:
- 12.times do |i|
.item #{i}
We give these items dimensions, position them absolutely in the middle of their container, give them a background, a box-shadow (or a border) and tweak the text-related properties a bit so that everything looks nice.
Now all that’s left is to distribute them on a circle, right? We get a base angle $ba for our distribution, we rotate each item by its index times this $ba angle and then translate it along its x axis:
However, on closer inspection, we notice that we have a problem: item 11 is above both item 0 and item 10, while item 0 is below both item 1 and 11:
Highlighting the issue we encounter with our circular distribution.
There are a number of ways to get around this, but they feel kind of hacky and tedious because they involve either duplicating elements, cutting corners with clip-path, adding pseudo-elements to cover the corners or cut them out via overflow. Some of these are particularly inefficient if we also need to animate the position of the items or if we want the items to be semi transparent.
So, what’s the best solution then?
3D to the rescue! A really neat thing we can do in this case is to rotate these items in 3D such that their top part goes towards the back (behind the plane of the screen) and their bottom part comes forward (in front of the plane of the screen). We do this by chaining a third transform function – a rotateX():
At this point, nothing seems to have changed for the better – we still have the same problem as before and, in addition to that, our items appear to have shrunk along their y axes, which isn’t something we wanted.
Let’s tackle these issues one by one. First off, we need to make all our items belong to the same 3D rendering context and we do this by setting transform-style: preserve-3d on their parent (which in this case happens to be the body element).
The result after ensuring all our items are within the same 3D rendering context (live demo).
Those on current Firefox may have noticed we have a different kind of issue now. Item 8 appears both above the previous one (7) and above the next one (9), while item 7 appears both below the previous one (6) and below the next one (8).
Screenshot illustrating the Firefox issue.
This doesn’t happen in Chrome or in Edge and it’s due to a known Firefox bug where 3D transformed elements are not always rendered in the correct 3D order. Fortunately, this is now fixed in Nightly (55).
Now let’s move on to the issue of the shrinking height. If we look at the first item from the side after the last rotation, this is what we see:
First item and its projection onto the plane of the screen, side view.
The AB line, rotated at 40° away from the vertical is the actual height of our item (h). The CD line is the projection of this AB line onto the plane of the screen. This is the size we perceive our item’s height to be after the rotation. We want this to be equal to d, which is also equal to the other dimension of our item (its width).
We draw a rectangle whose left edge is this projection (CD) and whose top right corner is the A point. Since the opposing edges in a rectangle are equal, the right edge AF of this rectangle equals the projection d. Since the opposing edges of a rectangle are also parallel, we also get that the ∠OAF (or ∠BAF, same thing) angle equals the ∠AOC angle (they’re alternate angles).
Creating the CDFA rectangle.
Now let’s remove everything but the right triangle AFB. In this triangle, the AB hypotenuse has a length of h, the ∠BAF angle is a 40° one and the AF cathetus is d.
The right triangle AFB
From here, we have that the cosine of the ∠BAF angle is d/h:
cos(40°) = d/h → h = d/cos(40°)
So the first thing that comes to mind is that, if we want the projection of our items to look as tall as it is wide, we need to give it a height of $d/cos(40deg). However, this doesn’t fix the squished text or any squished backgrounds, so it’s a better idea to leave it with its initial height: $d and to chain another transform – a scaleY() using a factor of 1/cos(40deg). Even better, we can store the rotation angle into a variable $ax and then we have:
The above changes give us the desired result (well, in browsers that support CSS variables and don’t have 3D order issues):
The final result after fixing the height issue (live demo).
This method is really convenient because it doesn’t require us to do anything different for any one item in particular and it works nicely, without any other extra tweaks needed, in the case of semitransparent items. However, the above demo isn’t too exciting, so let’s take a look at a few slightly more interesting use cases.
Note that the following demos only work in WebKit browsers, but this is not something related to the method presented in the article, it’s just a result of the currently poor support of calc() for anything other than length values.
The first is a tic toc loader, which is a pure CSS recreation of a gif from the Geometric Animations tumblr. The animation is pretty fast in this case, so it may be a bit hard hard to notice the effect here. It only works in WebKit browsers as Firefox and Edge don’t support calc() as an animation-delay value and Firefox doesn’t support calc() in rgb() either.
The second is a sea shell loader, also a pure CSS recreation of a gif from the same Tumblr and also WebKit only for the same reasons as the previous one.
The third demo is a diagram. It only works in WebKit browsers because Firefox and Edge don’t support calc() values inside rotate() functions and Firefox doesn’t support calc() inside hsl() either:
