Animal-print patterns: Tutorial

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Animal-print patterns

Here are some animal prints you can use in your Adobe® Illustrator® artwork for a beautiful safari effect. Download the prints as a swatch library, and then fill objects with them or use them in backgrounds. When you apply a pattern to an area, Illustrator tiles with the pattern to fill the space.

Downloading and opening the patterns

Download the pattern file for Mac® or Windows® to install the patterns on your system. You’ll be asked where to put the file — we recommend putting it in the Swatch Libraries folder in your Illustrator 10 folder. That way, the library will appear in the Swatch Libraries submenu in Illustrator.

After downloading the patterns, you can open them in Illustrator by choosing Window > Swatch Libraries > Animal Prints. (Or use Other Library in the submenu if you didn’t put the file in the Swatch Libraries folder.)

Creating more patterns

You can add a pattern to your Swatches palette by creating artwork for the pattern and then moving it to the palette.

When Illustrator tiles a pattern, it repeats the pattern in rows until it fills the space. You want to be sure your pattern tiles will line up seamlessly, so plan ahead for this when creating a pattern. Let’s look at a simplified giraffe pattern so you can see how we designed the animal prints to line up properly.

First, draw a square to create a bounding box. Then set the keyboard increment in General preferences to be the same width as your box. Create a pattern along the left edge and bottom of the box. Don’t worry if part of the pattern goes outside the box; Illustrator tiles using only the objects inside the box. Now copy your pattern to the other edges. Select the pattern objects on the left edge, and press Alt (Windows®) or Option (Mac OS) and the right arrow key. Illustrator copies your selection and places the copy one keyboard increment over — to the right edge of the box because you set the box size as your increment. Select the objects along the bottom of the box, and press Alt/Option and the up arrow key to copy the pattern to the top of the box.Fill in the box with the rest of your pattern, and add colors if you’d like. Make sure the box is the backmost object, and give it a stroke and fill of None. Select the box and the pieces of the pattern, and drag them to the Swatches palette or use Edit > Define Pattern to add it to the palette.