By Brianna Williams

Adobe Illustrator CS3 is a graphics editor that features tools to create and manipulate illustrations. The software is designed to create vector graphics that could be easily manipulated with the available tools and artboards. Illustrations made with vector graphics are easy to manipulate and won’t blur if magnified. The lines and shapes retain their clarity no matter how much you magnify the image. It is easy to edit parts of an illustration made with vector graphics in Illustrator 3. You can stretch points and lines to create the shape you are aiming for. To make a plant grow before your eyes, you can use Illustrator CS3 to create the different parts of the plant and increase or decrease their shape.

1. Launch Illustrator CS3.

On your computer click the Illustrator CS3 icon to launch the program or go to the All Programs menu and then click the program from there.

2. Create the plant parts.

We will first create each part of the plant from stem to petal. On one layer we will assemble each part until we have the complete plant. First draw a stem using the pen tool and connect the points to create a rectangle shape. Determine how long you want the stem to be but you can easily change its size later if you find it is too short or too long. Remember to close the points on the stem part by connecting the ending point to the one you began with. Now use the fill tool and fill the stem with a green shade.

On each side of the stem create branches so there will be one on each side. Use the fill tool again and use the same color you used on the stem. Place a few leaves on the branches and fill with a slightly darker shade of green than the one you used for the stem.

At the top of the stem use a circular shape and place it on top of the stem. Fill the circle with a pink shade. Now create the petals around the circle, determine how many you need to go around the circle and then fill the petal shape with a red shade.

3. Duplicate layers.

At this point you need to duplicate the first layer you did. Select the first layer and go to the top right corner of the layer panel and click the menu icon and then select “Duplicate Layer 1”. Repeat the same procedure about nine more times or until you have about ten layers. Rename all your layers 1 to 10 from the bottom up.

Now the objective is to create a sense of growth using the opacity slider and resize tool. Your finished plant will be the tenth layer. Work your way down from the ninth layer, deleting one part of the plant for each layer and decreasing your opacity slider and your resize tool for each part left on the layer by ten percent. By the time you reach the first layer you will just have the stem part which will be smaller and less visible.

4. Export as an SWF file.

Now save the file as an Adobe Illustration file and then Export the project as an SWF file. On the SWF options menu select the “AI Layers to SWF Frames” option on the “Export As:” field next to it. Click ok and then you can preview your plant with your browser.