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Drug Animation, Phase 1 (Draw man and house)

source: http://www.nicolasrapp.com/pharmawater_update/

In this lab (which consists of several phases), you'll recreate a simple but elegant animation which explains how pharmaceutical drugs end up in drinking water. You'll learn a few more useful tools in Illustrator and some important strategies for creating animations in Flash.

Phase 1: Draw the little guy

Step 1: Watch the video

a. Go to this site: http://www.nicolasrapp.com/pharmawater_update/ and watch the video that explains how drugs get in the water supply (by the end of this lab, you'll have watched it many times so if any one asks you how drugs get into the water supply, you'll have it nailed 8-).

There's a lot going on in this video and you'll end up using a number of Illustrator and Flash techniques to reproduce it.

Ultimately, you'll be drawing all of the elements in a long strip that will look like this:

screen shots of video

We'll start with the animation involving the little guy at the beginning of the video.

b. Download this Illustrator file which contains a series of screenshots which include all the elements you'll want to draw:

screen shots

Step 2: Draw the the man facing forward

At the end of this step, you'll have a drawing that looks like this:

little man

a. Create a layer above the screenshot layer and call it 'man'

b. His head is a circle so use the ellipse tool and hold down the shift key to draw a circle.

c. Use the pen tool to draw his torso.

d. Watch this video to learn how to merge or intersect shapes using the  ‘pathfinder’ panel

e. Merge the head and torso. Use the eye-dropper tool to make it the correct color.

f. Use the ellipse tool to draw the circles of his glasses

When you hide the screen shot layer, you should now see this:

little man

 

Step 3: Draw the house, table and toilet

a. Create a new layer called "house toilet table" and use the pen tool to draw these three elements:

house, table and toilet

b. Lock this layer.

Step 4: Draw the man eating a pill

a. Create a new layer called "man with pill"

b. Scroll over to the screenshot that shows the man eating the pill. This drawing is a little more complex because there are several elements that ovelap (the pill, the mouth, the arm, and the head). I found myself working with layers and sublayers to create this. Go ahead and figure it out yourself and/or watch this video:

man with pill

c. Lock this layer.

 

Step 5: Draw the bathroom door, bathroom wall & glasses

a. Create a layer called "bathroom door," scroll to the screenshot that shows the bathroom door, and draw it:

bathroom door

c. Create a layer called "glasses" and draw the glasses:

glasses

b. Create a layer called "bathrom wall," scroll to the screenshot that shows the bathroom wall, and draw it:

bathroom wall

 

Step 6: Align all of the elements

Hide the "screenshot" layer. You now have an array of elements spread out over the page like this:

g. Move these elements in place so they overlap like this:

all elements, overlapping

i. Delete the screen shot layer and adjust the artboard so house just fits:

artboard adjusted

Final Illustrator Product: DrugAnimation_Man.ai

SUMMARY

Pathfinder panel (video)