Illustrator Tutorial 01 : Creating Malaysia Flag
‘Stripes of Glory’.. or populary called ‘Jalur Gemilang’ in Bahasa Malaysia is an offical flag for my country, Malaysia. As a Malaysian.. I’m so proud of my country and its achivement so far. Since today was the Malaysia 50th birthday of independence celebration, I’ll share with you how to draw ‘Jalur Gemilang’ as my little contribution to the country and share with you guys How To Create A Vector Flag using Illustrator.
STEP 1 : Start by creating one Rectangle using ‘Rectangle Tool’.
STEP 2 : On the ‘Layers Palette’ name this Rectangle as ‘BASE’ and fill with White colour.
STEP 3 : Create another Rectangle into a new layer and name this layer as ‘RED’. Resize the height become shorter and fill the colour with Red from ‘Swatches Palette’ following the original Malaysia flag.
STEP 4 : Next, you have to copy the Rectangle (Mac: Apple+C / PC: Ctrl+C) and drag using ‘Selection Tool’ (press V) upwards while holding ‘Alt’ key.. Then you have to make a total of 7 RED Rectangles. This is the trick, once you drag the RED rectangle upwards while holding ‘Alt’ key just now, simply click (Mac: Apple+D / PC: Ctrl+D) 5 times and you’ll get another 5 RED rectangles.
STEP 5 : Again create a new rectangle simply by copy (Mac: Apple+C / PC: Ctrl+C) from a rectangle in BASE layer and paste it (Mac: Apple+F / PC: Ctrl+F) into a new layer call BLUE. Fill this new rectangle with Blue colour. Click the ‘Eye Icon’ on the RED layer.. Do this will make the Rectangle invisible. Now you will see only rectangle on BASE layer and the new Blue square in BLUE layer.
STEP 6 : Now we move to the ‘Moon’. Create new layer and name it ‘MOON’. On this layer start to create one round shape using ‘Ellipse Tool’ (press L) and fill it with Yellow colour. Resize it just nice to fit inside the Blue square.
STEP 7 : Next you need to create another round shape by selecting the round shape using ‘Selection Tool’ press V. Then copy (Mac: Apple+C / PC : Ctrl+C) and paste in front (Mac: Apple+F / PC : Ctrl+F), then drag the round shape towards right about this close not to far. Then resize the width only until become like this.
Tip : Click the ‘Eye’ icon on the Layers to make object invisibile and click again to make visible. Doing this prevent you from getting confuse by seeing many object on the screen instead of focus only to one object at one time.
STEP 8 : Select both round shape and go to the ‘Pathfinder’. Click ‘Subtrack From Shape Area’ icon.. and see the effect!
STEP 9 : Next come to the ‘STAR’ part (which was my favourite part). Start creating one Round shape on a new layer call ‘STAR’. Then select it using ‘Selection Tool’ (Press V) and go to Effect>Distort & Transform>Zig Zag. Now on the Zig Zag option, set the points to Corner and set the Ridges per segment to 6 (means each point it will develop 4 more sharp line on each anchor point, so you’ll get 14 sharp lines all together. 6 x 4 = 14). The original Star on the Malaysia flag was with 14 stripes.
STEP 10 : Now click the ‘Eye’ icon on every layer to make all visible. Then select all object using ‘Selection Tool’ (Press V) and press (Mac: Apple+A / PC: Ctrl+A) and set the ‘Outline’ to empty. There you go… complete Malaysian flag.
Yeah! Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka!
