How to Create a Nice Emoticons Icon Set in Adobe Illustrator cc 2017

In the following tutorial you will learn to create an attractive emoticons icon set. Learn an easy to follow workflow for creating each of these little emotional character faces in Adobe Illustrator.

Step 1

Create a 60px by 60px, RGB document. First, turn on the Grid (View > Grid) and the Snap to Grid (View > Snap to Grid). Next, you'll need a grid every 1px. Go to Edit > Preferences > Guides & Grid, enter 1 in the Gridline every box and 1 in the Subdivisions box.
You can also open the Info panel (Window > Info) for a live preview with the size and position of your shapes. Do not forget to replace the unit of measurement to pixels from Edit > Preferences > Unit > General. All these options will significantly increase your work speed....

Step 2

Pick the Ellipse Tool(L), create a 40 by 40px shape and fill it with R=255, G=222, B=23.

Step 3

Select the shape created in the previous step and make sure that it's placed in the middle of your artboard. Enable the Rulers (Command + R) and the Guides (View > Guides > Show Guides), then drag a vertical and a horizontal guide as shown in the following image. Disable the Rulers and keep the guides visible. It will help in the following steps, as you add some new shapes.

Step 4

Disable the Snap to Grid, then go to Edit > Preferences > General and enter 0.5 in the Keyboard Increment box. Reselect the yellow circle and make two copies in front (Command + C > Command + F > Command + F). Select the top copy and hit the down arrow once (to move it 0.5px down). Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Fill the resulting shape with white.

Step 5

Re-enable the Snap to Grid. Reselect the yellow circle and go to the Appearance panel. Select the existing fill and click on the Duplicate Selected Item button located in the bottom of the Appearance panel. Obviously, this will create a copy of the selected fill. Select this new fill, lower its Opacity to 75% and fill it with the linear gradient shown in the following image.
Pay attention to the gradient image. The yellow "0" stands for opacity percentage. This means that you need to select the gradient slider and lower its opacity to 0%. Keep focusing on this yellow circle. Reselect it and add a simple stroke. Make it 1pt wide, align it to outside and set its color to R=237, G=147, B=39.

Step 6

Reselect the shape edited in the previous step. Go to the Appearance panel, select the yellow fill and go to Effect Stylize > Inner Glow. Enter the data shown below, click OK, then go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Again, enter the data shown below and click OK. In the end your shape should look like the following image. This will be the face shape that you will use for most of the emoticons.

Step 7

Now, let's add a mood for this face. First, re-enable the Snap to Grid, then select the Rectangle Tool (M). Create two 4 by 8px shapes and a 12 by 8px shape, then place them as shown.
The Snap to Grid and the Guides will ease your work. Fill them all with R=96, G=57, B=19, then go to Effect > Stylize > Rounded Corners. Enter a 2px radius, click OK, then go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Enter the data shown below and click OK.

Step 8

Pick the Ellipse Tool (L), create a 26 by 16px shape and place it as shown. Fill it with the linear gradient shown below, then lower its Opacity to 50%. Now, let's organize the existing shapes.
Go to the Layers panel, select the existing layer and click on the Create New Sublayer button from the bottom of the Layers panel. Select all the shapes created so far and move them inside this new sublayer. Double-click on this sublayer and name it "Not Amused." Now your first emoticon is complete.

Step 9

Select the sublayer created in the previous step and make a copy in front. Focus on this new sublayer, select the mouth shape and go to Effect > Warp > Arc. Enter the data shown below image #1 and click OK.
Name this second sublayer "Sad" and duplicate it. Select the mouth shape from this new sublayer, then go to the Appearance panel and open the existing Warp effect. Drag the Bend slider to -50%, then click OK. Name this third sublayer "Happy."

 

Step 10

Select the "Happy" sublayer and make a copy in front. Let's focus on this fresh sublayer. First, rename it "Grin," then select the exiting mouth shape and delete it. Pick the Ellipse Tool (L), create a 16 by 7px shape and place it as shown in the first image. Fill it with R=96, G=57, B=19. Then go to Effect > Warp > Arch. Enter the data shown below, click OK, then go to Object > Expand Appearance.
Select the resulting shape and make two copies in front, then disable the Snap to Grid. Select the top copy and hit the down arrow four times, then reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Fill the resulting shape with white.

Step 11

Re-enable the Snap to Grid. Pick the Pen Tool (P), draw three vertical paths and place then as shown in the first image. Add a 1pt stroke for these paths and set its color at R=39, G=170, B=225.
Group them (Command + G). Select the white shape created in the previous step, make a copy and bring it to front (Shift > Command + Right Bracket key). Select this fresh, white shape along with the fresh group and go to the Transparency panel. Open the fly-out menu and click on Make Opacity Mask

Step 12

Reselect the mouth shape and go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Enter the data shown below, click OK, then add a 1pt stroke. Align it to outside and set its color at R=237, G=147, B=39.

Step 13

Select the "Grin" sublayer and make a copy in front. Let's focus on this fresh sublayer. First, rename it "Winking," then select the right eye shape and delete it. Pick the Rectangle Tool (M), create a 5 by 3px shape and place it as shown.
Fill it with R=96, G=57, B=19. Then go to Effect > Stylize > Rounded Corners. Enter a 2px radius, click OK, then go to Effect > Warp > Arc. Enter the data shown below, click OK, then go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Again, enter the data shown below then click OK

Step 14

Select the "Winking" sublayer and make a copy in front. Let's focus on this fresh sublayer. First, rename it "Weeping," then select the eyes and the mouth components and delete them. Pick the Rectangle Tool (M), create two 6 by 4px shapes and place them as shown in the following image. Fill them with with R=96, G=57, B=19. Then go to Effect > Stylize > Rounded Corners. Enter a 2px radius, click OK, then go to Effect > Warp > Arc. Enter the data shown below, click OK then go to Object > Expand Appearance.
Select the left eye shape and go to Object > Transform > Rotate. Enter a 45 degrees angle, then click OK. Select the right eye shape and go to Object > Transform > Rotate. Enter a -45 degrees angle, then click OK. Reselect both eye shapes and go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Enter the data shown in the final image, then click OK

step No 16 Select the shape made in the previous step and duplicate it. Select these two heart shapes, resize them, and place them as shown. Now go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Enter the data shown below, click OK, then add a 0.75pt stroke. Align it to inside and set its color to R=190, G=30, B=45.

 

Step17

Once again, pick the Pen Tool (P), draw two vertical paths (6px tall) and place them as shown. Add a 1pt stroke for both of these paths, set the color at R=0, G=104, B=56, and go to the Stroke panel (Window > Stroke). Click on the Round Cap button, then go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow.
Enter the data shown below, click OK, then select only the left path. Go to Effect > Warp > Arc, enter the data shown below, click OK. Now select the right path. Again, go to Effect > Warp > Arc, enter the data shown below and click OK

To be Continued................

Welcome to the course Illustrator for UX Design

About this video🔃

Learn how to use Adobe Illustrator for web and app design. This course shows how wire frames and design layouts can be made using art boards, shapes, layers, guides, text, symbols, masks, styles, and more.....

Author:Shah Faisal

5/4/2017

Adobe Work smarter and faster with Adobe Illustrator to design your next web or app project, starting with wireframes. Brian Wood shows how, in this course, building upon what you already know—making shapes, working with layers, and using guides—and focusing on the features needed to effectively work with text, symbols, libraries, and a lot more. Brian demonstrates how to set up your art boards and use grids, masks, and styles to fulfill common UX design needs, from organizing content and buttons to making a layout responsive. He concludes by taking you through the export process.

Topics include:

• Setting up artboards
• Using guides, grids, and snapping
• Working with text and shapes
• Creating reusable artwork
• Formatting
• Organizing content
• Exporting assets

Create a Windows 10 USB Bootable Flash Drive (Updated) 2017

Usually, when we cover creating bootable USB drives for Windows, we recommend the  Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool  (time to update that name Microsoft), but I’ve had some problems creating one and started looking for a different option.
So this time around, I thought I would try the free utility called Refuse. Here’s a look at using it, and in the end, I had a faster experience using it than the older Microsoft tool.
Update 4/29/2017 (Windows 10 Day): To get the ISO for the official release of Windows 10, head to this Microsoft page and download the 64 or 32-bit version of the media creation tool. It will allow you to upgrade your Windows 7 SP 1 or Windows 8.1 PC, or download the ISO to use later for a clean install.
For more on that, 
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Create Windows 10 Technical Preview USB Drive

First of all, make sure you download the Windows 10 Technical Preview by joining the windows installer  as explained in. Also, make sure you’re using a USB drive that is at least 4 GB for the 32-bit version and 8 GB for the 64-bit version.
One of the first cool things about Rufus is that no installation is necessary, which means you can stick it on a network location, or another external drive to run it. When you run it, setting it up is simple. Select the USB drive you want to use, select your partition scheme – it’s worth noting that Rufus also supports a bootable UEFI drive.
Then select the disc icon next to the ISO drop-down and navigate to the location of your official Windows 10 ISO.

 

After that click Start and you should be good to go, within minutes. If you want to be extra careful, check the option to check device for bad blocks. I didn’t do that, and my bootable drive turned out fine.

In my experience, using the older USB 2.0 port and drive, it took less than five minutes to create the drive. If you use a USB 3.0 set up, I would love to know how fast that works! Anyway, after it’s created, you can go ahead and install the Windows 10 Technical Preview on a spare computer.
Let us know what you think of this tool over Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool, for me; I am going to continue to use Rufus – at least until Microsoft updates or recreates a new utility – if it does at all.
And yes, of course, you can use this to create other versions of Windows or a Linux distros from an ISO you can......

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