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[treehouse presents] [♪♪]
[light switch pulled, electricity buzzing]
[Exercise Your Creative]
In this episode of Exercise Your Creative,
we're going to perform a process called sprinting.
Sprinting is when you take a task or project and break it up into steps.
We call these steps sprints.
Let's get started.
In most cases when we are given a task,
we are overwhelmed with the outcome of the project.
When we break the project up into segments and perform these segments in a timely fashion,
the overall project doesn't seem so overwhelming.
To start, we're going to need a pencil, a stack of blank paper, and a timer.
To track time, I'm going to use a traditional cooking timer.
For this exercise we are going to create iconography
which displays skills we have mastered.
We are going to break this project up into 3 sprints.
The first sprint will be 10 minutes.
We will simply make a list of things we have mastered.
The second sprint we will sketch icons per our mastered list.
This will take 10 minutes.
Lastly, we will fine-tune our icons and vectorize them.
With our first sprint we want to work with 2 parameters,
the first being our materials--pencil, paper, and timer--
the second being time--10 minutes.
Besides that, let your imagination do the work.
Simply ask yourself, "What have I mastered?"
If you automatically say, "I'm not good at anything," I don't believe you.
Did you get up this morning or did you sleep in?
Maybe you're the master at sleeping in.
Did you have breakfast this morning?
Are you the master at brewing coffee, or are you the master at ordering coffee?
From there, let's work up to your web skills.
Are you the master at Photoshop, Illustrator, jQuery, or WordPress?
Maybe you're the master at web design or perhaps Ruby.
Let's get a solid list together and fully use these 10 minutes.
[♪♪] [timer dings]
Time's up.
Let's take a break before our next sprint and gather our thoughts.
During this time, you simply want to clear your head.
This might take 5 minutes or 5 hours.
Take a walk, run an errand, jump some rope, or even trim a bonsai tree.
When running sprints, we want to separate what I like to call limbo time
or time when really nothing gets done,
whereas action time is where we execute our tasks effectively.
In this creative world, running sprints are very similar to track and field sprints.
You don't run sprints back to back.
You take time in between to recoup and prep for the next sprint.
This allows for better performance.
In our next sprint we're going to sketch icons that visually represent our mastering skills.
We have 3 parameters in this sprint,
the first being materials, same as before--pencil, stack of paper, and a timer--
the second being time--again, 10 minutes.
Lastly, we want to use a continuous contour line style.
This is when you use 1 line for the whole composition.
As seen in this example, I'm drawing a wristwatch with 1 line.
Notice how I'm not picking up the pencil at all.
The whole drawing is done with 1 line--1 beginning point and 1 end point.
The reason for this technique is to complete the sketch quickly
and still acquire the object's shape.
Once I feel my head is clear, I'm then ready for the next sprint.
Before I begin, I'm going to choose 10 mastering skills
that truly define me as a designer and my personality.
With our parameters set, let's begin our sprint.
Remember, 10 minutes and 10 iconic representations of the selected mastering skills.
Some sketches might take longer than others.
Also, you might have multiple ideas or sketches per skill.
This is all perfectly fine.
Ding! Time's up. Pencils down.
Next let's take some snapshots of our work and bring our content into Illustrator.
To begin, we simply want to open up Illustrator and bring in the image we took with our phone.
We are simply going to use the shape tools and pen tools for the majority of our icons.
Since I used the contour technique, I am able to see the shape of the objects very easily.
When constructing my icons, I want to keep them very simple and very minimal.
I'm only going to use 1 color for all the icons.
Basically, I'm creating the shape's silhouette and then adding some detail
to make the icon very recognizable to what it is.
Now let's complete the rest of the icons in the same manner.
[♪♪]
Lastly, I'm going to add a colored background to the icons,
then I'm going to make all the icons white.
I do this by turning all the paths into outlines and expanding all the objects.
Then I'm going to fill all the objects with the white and merge them together.
Next we're going to open up Photoshop and output all of our icons.
Please note you can do this in Illustrator.
I just prefer Photoshop for web image output as it does a great job compressing images.
To begin, simply create a Photoshop file that is 500x500 pixels at 72dpi
then copy and paste each icon as a smart object into Photoshop from Illustrator.
Next organize all of your layers.
Once you are complete, save out all of your images for web for each icon as a PNG
and then put them in a folder called Images.
Congratulations. You've just mastered the art of the sprint.
Next time we will create a simple web application incorporating our mastering icons.
Until then, have fun and exercise your creative.
[electricity buzzing]