Square smiley

A day without a smile is a day not lived!

The above sentence is my inspiration to take my time to share the little experience I have with you all. Today, I will be showing you how simple it is to create a smiley image in Fireworks.

Give me a big smile while you open fireworks.

1. Create a new 30 x 30 px white canvas.

2. Use the rectangle tool (Ctrl + U) and draw a 20 x 20 rectangle and in the "Properties pane", change the "rectangle roundness from 0 to 15. Change the color to Orange (#ff9900). You will now have something like this. Note that the image below is bigger than the one you're working on.

3. Clone the rectangle you just created (Ctrl + Shift + D) and then press (Ctrl + Shift + T) to bring up the Numeric transform window. Select "Resize" and change the size of the rectangle to 18. Remove the color of the newly created rectangle and give it a "white" stroke and set the "Opacity" in the properties pane to 50. Something like this.

4. Now select the orange rectangle and go to the Properties pane and in the color from solid to "Gradient > Linear" and apply the color like the image below

5. Now use the pen tool (Ctrl + P) to create the eyebrow like I did below. If you're doing this for the very first time, you might encounter some difficulties doing that. Keep on trying and you will finally get it right.

6. Click on the eyebrow and press (Ctrl + Shift + D) to clone it and move it to the right as shown in the image below. You can play with it a bit to get a fierce look.

7. We will now create the eyes. Select the rectangle tool (Ctrl + U) and create an 8 x 8 px rectangle. Change the "rectangle roundness" to 30 and change the color to black. Clone the newly created rectangle (Ctrl + Alt + D) and move it as I did in the image below.

8. We're almost finished, now its time to create a mouth. You can use the pen tool and create the form you like or take the line tool (Ctrl + N) to draw a mouth similar to the one below.

That is it folks! With the basic in your hands and with a creative mind, you will surely be able to now design a far much better Smiley than this one.