Adobe Animate: Creating Shapes

I’m pleased to introduce animator, illustrator, and graphic designer Patrick Macauley and his upcoming tutorial series on Adobe Animate. Patrick is a recent graduate of the University of Central Florida, acquiring a BFA in Emerging Media, and is the owner of Mythic Design Graphics.

Updated March 4, 2019.

Almost* everything you can create in Animate is a referred to as a Shape. All the following tools are used to create Shapes:

Pen (P)                 Line (N)

Rectangle (R)    Oval (O)

Polystar               Pencil (Y)

Brush (B)            Paint Brush (Shirt+Y)

* The only tool from this section that does not create shapes is the Text Tool (T). To convert text to shapes, you must first Select (V) the text box and then Break Apart (Ctrl+B). Breaking Apart a text box once will split the letters into individual text boxes. Breaking Apart a second time will turn those letters into Shapes.

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Advertising for the children’s book “Jammie Cats™ Count!”

Jammie Cats™ Count! The Magical Forest, a preschool counting book that covers counting from 1 to 10, launched nearly a year ago.  In addition to writing the rhyming story, I illustrated, formatted, and self-published the book. Marketing is an ongoing and arduous task for any self-published writer because you need marketing materials plus an intelligent sales strategy. At least, as a graphic designer, I have the easy half of the battle licked.

Below are a few of the marketing materials and images I created for Jammie Cats™ Count! The Magical Forest.

For more information, visit the Jammie Cats™ website.

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Adobe InDesign: How to Create and Edit a Text Wrap

How to Wrap Text Around Images

Display the Text Wrap panel by choosing: Window > Text Wrap.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Display or toggle the Text Wrap panel:
Windows: Ctrl+Alt+W
Mac: Command+Option+W

To display additional options, click on the top-right corner and select Show Options:


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Adding a Favicon to Your Site

Including a favicon on your web site helps visitors recognize your site-brand in both their browser tabs and as a desktop icon, if they happen to drag your url onto their desktop.

I found a terrific Favicon & App Icon Generator on Dan’s Tools site. It’s just one of many amazing (and free!) webdev tools he provides. Click here to use the Generator.

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