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June
3 , 2000
Creating Perspective
Shadows
This tip will be focusing on the Perspective
Grid and how you can create Perspective Drop Shadows. It can be
a bit awkward at first because you are going to have to get used to
how FreeHand scales objects on the perspective Grid, but hopefully this
will help you on that road.
There is a great resource on the web that
covers the basics on Perspective drawing. It's at the Southern Arkansas
University web site located here: http://www.saumag.edu/art/studio/chalkboard/draw.html
It's a good lesson on all things Perspective,
including some of which I'll be showing you below.
Version: 9 and above
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In this exercise, I'll be adding
a perspective shadow to the two objects above. You can use just
about anything for this tutorial, as it is very versatile.
As you can see they sit on a 1
point perspective plane. The shadow will be falling on the
floor plane and be cast from a single light source.
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1)
It's pretty important to figure out where your light source
is going to be as it helps determine how "long" or "short"
the shadows will be cast from the objects.
For a 1 point perspective grid such
as this, it must be exactly on the vertical plane above the vanishing
point like shown above. The higher up it is, the shorter the shadows
are and it's the opposite for a lower light source.
If you want a different shadow angle,
just move the single convergent point to a new location. Make
sure to move that light source with it.
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2)
Next, if your objects are
oddly shaped, draw a square that exactly surrounds the objects.
After you've done that, select them then click on the Guides layer
to turn them into Guides.
Grid hidden for clarity.
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3)
Turn on Snap to Point. Next draw a line from the center
of the light source down to and beyond the innermost top
corner of each of the Guide boxes.
When I say innermost, I mean
use the top corner that is closest to the light source like shown
above. Select these lines, and click on the Guide layer. Again
these lines will be turned into Guides to be used later.... you'll
see.
For now, hide those Guides.
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4)
Next create a new layer and name it Shadow. Put this layer
below any others like shown above at left.
Second, select and Clone
the objects casting the shadow and put it on this new layer. Give
this clone a Basic fill containing your shadow color and
set your strokes to None or use that shadow color again.
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5)
While this clone is still selected, choose the Perspective
tool. Click-Hold on the clone and tap the Down Arrow
key to project it to the floor plane of the grid like shown
above.
Don't worry about the size yet...
you'll be enlarging it in a moment.
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6)
Now we are going to flip this clone. Click-Hold on the
clone again, and tap the Space Bar to flip it vertically
like shown above.
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7)
Now to enlarge the shadow you must use some Perspective
Grid modifier keys while holding the mouse down on the object.
First Click-Hold on the shadow
and press the 2 key to enlarge it both x and y. To speed
up the enlarging process, you can hold the key down and
watch it enlarge. This could take a while to happen depending
on how large you need the shadow to be.
You can move the shape around
while you are doing this to get a better idea of how much more
you need to go. Also, letting up on the mouse once in a while
will help with placing the shadow like shown above.
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8)
Now turn those Guides back on. You'll be using the vertical
line guides for determining how far out that shadow will fall
on the floor plane.
Since you used the top innermost
corner of the square as a guide point, you'll be using the bottom
innermost point of the projected shadow bounding area.
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9)
Using a similar method as in step 7, instead we'll be using
the 7 key to enlarge the shadow in the y direction only.
With the Perspective tool, Click-Hold
the shadow and press the 7 key to start enlarging the shadow.
When you extend the bottom innermost point of the object to hit
the vertical guide (highlighted above), you're finished.
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10)
Now repeat steps 4-9 on any other objects you want shadows
for. Like I did for the second person shown above.
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When you are all finished, you can
select the shadows and go in the View menu and choose Perspective
Grid -> Release with Perspective.
After that, you can give the shadows
special touches like gradient fills or even use Lens fills
if they cast over other things.
Other modifications to this include
raising the objects casting the shadows to appear as if they're
floating.
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You can use this method for creating shadows
on 2 or 3 point Perspective Grids as well. I may expand this tutorial
at a later time to demonstrate other methods of creating Perspective
Shadows when objects are on different perspective planes. It gets a
bit confusing, but works very much the same way.
Make sure to visit that link mentioned
at the top for more information on the subject of Perspective.
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