TUTORIAL ARTICLEBeginner1 min

How to Make a Modern Holiday Card with Adobe Illustrator

Make smooth adjustments to parts of your vector drawings and keep other areas unchanged.

View tutorial in Illustrator

Follow along in the app

Qué necesitas

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Add some pins as scaffolds

Open the sample file or use your own artwork.

You’ll need to add the Puppet Warp tool to your Toolbar. Click the Edit Toolbar button at the bottom of the Toolbar (three dots).

Scroll in the All Tools menu to locate the Puppet Warp tool. Drag it over the Toolbar and release it when you see a blue line appear.

Press the ESC key to dismiss the All Tools panel.

With the Selection tool, click or drag a marquee to select artwork.

Select the Puppet Warp tool. Some pins are added automatically based on the artwork you selected.

Click to add additional pins in areas you want to transform, and in areas you want to anchor in place.

To delete a pin, click to select it and press Delete.

Tip: The mesh overlay acts as a guide to help you place pins. You can turn off the mesh if you find it distracting—deselect Show Mesh in the Properties panel.

Start modifying your artwork

We deleted the pin in the middle and used just two pins to manipulate the leg—one in the ankle area and the other in the hip area.

You can now move pins to reposition parts of your drawing. We dragged the pin at her ankle to raise her leg up.

Select other areas of your artwork with the Selection tool to continue making adjustments.

Tip: Press Option (macOS) or Alt (Windows) while dragging a pin to constrain movement to the selected pin.

Rotate a part of your drawing

You can rotate a selected pin for perfect placement.

Select a pin with the Puppet Warp tool, and then move the pointer over a pin to see the dotted circle surrounding it. Drag the dotted circle to rotate the pin to position your artwork.

Tip: You can add pins in your artwork to anchor some parts before rotating sections.

Modify multiple pins at a time

Select an object, and then select the Puppet Warp tool and place additional pins if required. Press Shift and click all the pins you want to manipulate. Now you can move or elongate the areas together.

Start afresh

Keep adjusting until you’re satisfied. If you’d like to reset the artwork, it’s easy to remove all pins in one step.

With the Puppet Warp tool selected, click Select All Pins under Quick Actions in the Properties panel and press Delete.

Make digital puppets

Easily pose a character. When repositioning the limbs of a character, add extra pins where the limb meets the body at a joint. Select Show Mesh, and then use the Expand mesh option in the Properties panel to increase the affected area. This step is helpful when there are gaps in your artwork.