IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! I'm Deke McClelland. Hello and welcome
to Illustrator CS5 One-on-One Advanced,
| | 00:10 | the second installment in my cradle-to-
grave, everything you need to know series
| | 00:14 | on Adobe Illustrator, and it's all new.
| | 00:17 | Every single bit of it.
| | 00:19 | If you enjoyed the exhaustive
fundamentals portion of this series, and I hope you
| | 00:23 | did, then you're going to
like this course even better.
| | 00:26 | First of all it's shorter,
95 movies shorter to be exact.
| | 00:30 | It's like a novella;
| | 00:31 | you are going to fly through it.
| | 00:33 | Second, this is where
Illustrator really comes alive.
| | 00:36 | In Chapter 13, Live Trace, we build a
real world project from sketch to execution.
| | 00:43 | Then I show you how to use gradients to
turn a basic line drawing into a teaming,
| | 00:47 | dare I say lustrous, illustration.
| | 00:50 | If the Gradient tool doesn't do it for
you, you can create custom gradients and
| | 00:54 | path sequences using Blends and Masks.
| | 00:57 | In Chapter 16, I show you how to
build a mind-bending M.C. Escher effect
| | 01:01 | using Tile Patterns.
| | 01:03 | Then we create a Celtic knot that
weaves in and out of itself with Live Paint.
| | 01:08 | If you're interested in Advanced Type
Effects and re-coloring your artwork
| | 01:12 | with the help of automated color
harmonies, which you are, spend some time
| | 01:16 | with chapters 18 and 19.
| | 01:18 | I devote an entire chapter to combining
the powers of Illustrator and Photoshop
| | 01:23 | to do things neither program can do on its own.
| | 01:26 | And I wrap things up with a look at
Transparency, Blend modes, and Opacity Masks.
| | 01:32 | These first few movies are set up, so
that you and I are on the same page.
| | 01:37 | If you already performed these
steps back in the fundamentals' course, you
| | 01:40 | can skip to Chapter 13 and get
started on Live Trace. And now, go ahead and
| | 01:45 | brace yourself to learn.
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| Linking AI and EPS files to Illustrator| 00:00 | Now the number one tech support
question we get here at lynda.com, at least
| | 00:03 | where my movies are concerned, is a
person is double-clicking on a file at the
| | 00:08 | desktop level, whether it's an
Illustration that ought to open in
| | 00:11 | Illustrator or an image file that ought
to open up inside of Photoshop or what
| | 00:15 | have you, and it opens in the wrong application.
| | 00:18 | Now there is nothing I
can do about that on my end.
| | 00:20 | I can't imbue the files
with any extra intelligence;
| | 00:24 | it's something that's going on on your end.
| | 00:26 | However, I can show you how to solve
the problem, and that's what I am going to
| | 00:30 | do right up front, inside of this video.
| | 00:32 | All right, if you are working along
with me and you have access to the sample
| | 00:35 | files, I want you to go to your
Exercise Files folder, and find the 00_setup
| | 00:40 | folder, and you will see a
series of three Welcome screens.
| | 00:43 | Now if you have extensions turned off,
they will all just be called Welcome,
| | 00:47 | Welcome, Welcome. I would like you to
go ahead and make sure that you have
| | 00:51 | extensions turned on.
| | 00:52 | Here in the PC you go over to
Folder and search options here, under the
| | 00:57 | Organize menu, or it may be located
under the tools menu, in older versions of
| | 01:01 | the operating system.
| | 01:02 | I'm working under Windows 7, by the way.
| | 01:04 | Then I am going to switch over to View,
here inside the Folder Options and
| | 01:08 | notice this check box right there
that says, Hide extensions for known file
| | 01:11 | types, that's On by default, go
ahead and turn it Off and then click OK.
| | 01:17 | And then you will see, Welcome.ai,
Welcome.eps, and Welcome.svg.
| | 01:22 | Now, on the Macintosh side of things,
you want to go your Finder menu, so go to
| | 01:26 | your desktop level, go to the Finder
menu, which is top left, and choose the
| | 01:31 | Preferences command.
| | 01:32 | It has a keyboard shortcut of Command+Comma.
| | 01:34 | Then switch over to the Advanced panel,
it has a little gear icon, so you click
| | 01:38 | on that gear, and you'll see a check
box right at the top called, show all
| | 01:43 | filename extensions, go ahead and
turn that On, it's Off by default.
| | 01:47 | Anyway, I want you to see the
extensions, because they are very important.
| | 01:50 | The .ai file tells you that it's an
Illustrator file, which is great for
| | 01:55 | just about all purposes.
| | 01:57 | You can place native Illustrator files
into InDesign for example, you can open
| | 02:00 | them up and rasterize them, meaning,
convert to pixels, inside of Photoshop.
| | 02:04 | They are extremely useful files, 99 times
out of 100, that's what you want to use.
| | 02:09 | We also have EPS, which
is Encapsulated PostScript;
| | 02:12 | it's an old-school placing format for printing.
| | 02:16 | It's the kind of thing you had
to use with your older versions of
| | 02:19 | QuarkXPress and so on.
| | 02:20 | You don't really need it anymore, you
can use .Ai files instead, but it's still
| | 02:24 | around and it's a classic Illustrator format.
| | 02:27 | And then finally we have Welcome.svg,
that's a scalable vector graphic file that
| | 02:32 | you might post on the web.
| | 02:33 | Not a very common format, but most
browsers support it, so you can use it.
| | 02:38 | Anyway, the only reason I have these
here, is so that we can make sure they all
| | 02:41 | open up inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:43 | All right, I am going to go to
Welcome.ai and right-click on it, this is
| | 02:46 | what you do on a Mac or PC, and then you'll
have an Open with... command that you'll see.
| | 02:51 | Now on the Mac, this will
bring up a submenu of a bunch of
| | 02:54 | different applications;
| | 02:55 | just make sure it's set to Illustrator.
| | 02:57 | And by the way, if you're seeing icons
like I am, and your icon appears as an
| | 03:01 | orange Ai, like mine does, you are already set.
| | 03:05 | This file will open up inside of
Illustrator, but I'd still want to go through
| | 03:08 | the motions just to make sure.
| | 03:09 | So I am going to right-click on this,
choose Open with, if you're working on the
| | 03:13 | Mac, you'll see a submenu of a bunch of
applications, if you go ahead and select
| | 03:17 | Illustrator from that list of
applications or if you can't find Illustrator, go
| | 03:21 | down to the bottom of the list, to the
other command, choose it, and find the
| | 03:24 | Illustrator on your hard drive.
| | 03:26 | In my case, I am working on the PC
though, so I will choose the Open with
| | 03:29 | command, and that brings up
this dialog box right here.
| | 03:32 | Hopefully I am seeing Illustrator in
the list of recommended programs, which I
| | 03:35 | am, so I just click on it, make sure that
| | 03:37 | Always use the selected program to open
this kind of file is turned On, so the
| | 03:41 | .Ai files always open up inside
of Illustrator, and then click OK.
| | 03:45 | If I don't see Illustrator up here in
recommended programs, I'd click this down
| | 03:49 | pointing arrowhead right there, and
then, hopefully inside the Other Programs
| | 03:53 | list, I would find Illustrator.
| | 03:55 | If I still can't find it, I'll click on
the Browse button, and then I'd have to
| | 03:59 | hunt around inside my Program Files folder.
| | 04:02 | Anyway, I've got it selected right
here at the top, I'll click OK, the deed
| | 04:06 | is done for that file.
| | 04:07 | And with any luck you will now see the
file opened up inside of Illustrator CS5,
| | 04:13 | welcoming you to my series, of course.
| | 04:15 | And notice, I just want you to be aware of this,
| | 04:17 | I've divided this big old series,
Illustrator CS5 One-on-One, into three parts.
| | 04:22 | Part 1, Fundamentals; Part 2,
Advanced; and Part 3, Mastery.
| | 04:26 | And I have got these little ski icons.
| | 04:28 | If you have ever engaged in any downhill
skiing, you might recognize these guys.
| | 04:32 | The green circle means a basic slope,
the blue square means an intermediate
| | 04:36 | slope, and the black diamond is an
advanced expert slope, and that's what we
| | 04:40 | have going for the series as well.
| | 04:42 | Now if you don't ski, don't worry about
it, I just wanted a little bit of visual
| | 04:45 | association going on here.
| | 04:47 | But this is how the series are put together.
| | 04:49 | I am going to go ahead and
close out of this Illustration.
| | 04:51 | When you do, you may see the Welcome screen.
| | 04:53 | I have it temporarily turned Off.
| | 04:55 | All right, I am going to switch back
over here to my 00_setup folder, and
| | 04:59 | there's my EPS document, I'll go ahead
and right-click on it, just to make sure,
| | 05:02 | again, I can tell that it's all ready
to go for Illustrator, because of the
| | 05:06 | orange EPS icon, but just want
to walk through these steps here.
| | 05:09 | Open with, we once again choose on the
Mac or the PC, then on the Mac you would
| | 05:14 | select of course Adobe
Illustrator CS5 from the list.
| | 05:17 | On a PC you go into this dialog box.
| | 05:19 | Hopefully, it's listed among the
recommended programs, if not, click the down
| | 05:23 | pointing arrowhead, and find it down
in the lower region of the dialog box.
| | 05:26 | If it's still not there,
click on the Browse button;
| | 05:28 | find it on your hard drive.
| | 05:29 | Once you're done, click OK, and that will
open the file once again inside of Illustrator.
| | 05:35 | I am going to close out of this,
once again, switch back to that folder.
| | 05:38 | Now I have got a larger problem here,
Welcome.svg doesn't think it's associated
| | 05:42 | with a darn thing.
| | 05:43 | So when I right-click on it, I don't
even have an Open with command. I could
| | 05:47 | choose the Properties command and dig
around inside of there, but the easiest
| | 05:50 | solution tends to be to just choose Open,
and then Windows is going to go ahead
| | 05:55 | and bellyache at you, and it's going
to say, hey, I can't figure out what
| | 05:58 | program to use to open this file, do
you want me to hunt around the web to find
| | 06:02 | the correct program? No.
| | 06:04 | Or do you want to select a program
from a list of installed programs? Yes.
| | 06:07 | So go ahead and select
that second option, click OK.
| | 06:10 | And then with any luck, you will see
Illustrator right there, if not, you click
| | 06:15 | the down pointing arrowhead, choose
it from that list or click the Browse
| | 06:18 | button, hunt around in your hard drive,
ultimately you will click OK and that
| | 06:22 | file will open up here inside of
Illustrator as well, and they are all the same
| | 06:25 | darn file, just expressed in
different file formats, incidentally.
| | 06:29 | Now when we return to that folder, we
should see an Illustrator icon associated
| | 06:34 | with the file, all is well and good.
That is how you make sure that you have the
| | 06:39 | correct file formats
associated with Illustrator.
| | 06:42 | In the next exercise, I'll show
you how to install my custom keyboard
| | 06:46 | shortcuts, dekeKeys.
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| Installing the dekeKeys keyboard shortcuts| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to show
you how to install some custom keyboard
| | 00:03 | shortcuts that I include along with
this series, that go by the name dekeKeys.
| | 00:07 | Now I want to make something clear,
even though I've been including these
| | 00:10 | keyboard shortcuts for years, they are
well tested, you don't have to install
| | 00:14 | them, it's not mandatory, you can
totally follow along with the series, whether
| | 00:18 | you install the shortcuts or not.
| | 00:20 | But I do recommend them, because they
offer quick access to some very common
| | 00:24 | useful features inside of Illustrator,
and here's the file, it's inside the
| | 00:29 | exercise_files folder, inside 00_setup,
and it's called dekeKeys AIcs5 1on1.kys.
| | 00:36 | Now, you have to put it in a very specific
location, and here's what I am going to do.
| | 00:40 | First, I am going to tell you what
that location is, but I want you to wait,
| | 00:44 | because then I am going to provide a
trick for getting to that location, that's
| | 00:48 | hopefully going to make things easier.
| | 00:50 | So here is the locations, they are
included in this file right there, dekeKeys
| | 00:54 | instructions.tif, which you can open up
inside of Photoshop if you want to, or
| | 00:58 | just watch what I am doing onscreen.
| | 01:00 | I am going to go ahead and switch over
to Photoshop, this is the file that I was
| | 01:03 | telling you about, the instructions.
| | 01:05 | And I am going to switch
to the Full Screen mode.
| | 01:07 | Notice that it says to copy that
dekeKeys AIcs5 1on1.kys file, to a location in
| | 01:14 | your hard drive, depending on the
platform, and this is a real pain in the neck,
| | 01:17 | that it varies from one
platform to the next, but it does.
| | 01:21 | And this all assumes that you installed
Illustrator in its default location, on
| | 01:26 | the C drive on the PC, specifically.
| | 01:28 | But if you have, under Windows XP, then here
is where you would put that dekeKeys file.
| | 01:34 | You'd go to your C drive, go to Documents
and Settings, go to User, and User is
| | 01:39 | your computer login name by the way,
so that's going to vary from one machine
| | 01:43 | to the next of course.
| | 01:44 | Application Data\Adobe\Adobe
Illustrator CS5 Settings\en_US.
| | 01:49 | This for the English US
version of the software by the way.
| | 01:53 | Ostensibly if you're working away in a
different country on a localized version
| | 01:57 | of the software, then this
would be something different.
| | 02:01 | Anyway, it's different entirely under
Windows 7 and Vista, both work the same
| | 02:06 | way, and it's going to be C then
Users then you go into the user subfolder
| | 02:11 | AppData, very important you go to the
AppData folder, this is another similar
| | 02:15 | folder there that you don't want to go into.
| | 02:17 | Roaming\Adobe\Adobe
Illustrator CS5 Settings\en_US.
| | 02:22 | So that part is the same again.
| | 02:24 | Localized versions in other countries,
this folder is going to be different, and
| | 02:28 | then finally on the Mac, you go to the
Finder level, which is the desktop level
| | 02:31 | of your computer, and you choose the
Home command from the Go menu, and then you
| | 02:36 | copy the shortcuts file to this folder,
which is Library\Preferences\Adobe
| | 02:40 | Illustrator CS5 Settings\en_US.
| | 02:43 | All right, so I just want you to know that.
| | 02:44 | I'm not suggesting for a second that
you go ahead and find that folder, because
| | 02:50 | among other things, it's difficult to
get to that folder on a PC, because it's
| | 02:54 | a protected folder and so on.
| | 02:56 | So it's easier to run a search, and here's
what I suggest you to do, easiest solution.
| | 03:00 | Let's go and switch over to
Illustrator, why don't we?
| | 03:04 | And I have this Welcome.ai file open, just
so we have something to look at onscreen.
| | 03:09 | I'm really going to go up to the Edit
menu and I am going to choose the Keyboard
| | 03:12 | Shortcuts command, which itself has a
keyboard shortcut, of mash your fist, K
| | 03:17 | that his Ctrl+Shift+Alt+K, here on the PC,
or Cmd+Shift+Option+K on the Mac.
| | 03:22 | A note about keyboard shortcuts, you
will note that I say them in the opposite
| | 03:26 | order that Illustrator lists them, and
that's because my convention is the more
| | 03:30 | popular convention, of listing either
the Ctrl key on the PC or the Cmd key
| | 03:34 | on the Mac first, then Shift, and
then Alt on a PC or option on a Mac.
| | 03:40 | Anyway, as I say, the keyboard
shortcut here would be Ctrl+Shift+Alt+K or
| | 03:44 | Cmd+Shift+Option+K on the Mac,
brings up the Keyboard Shortcuts command.
| | 03:48 | Then what we have to do is we have
to switch from Illustrator defaults to
| | 03:51 | something else, but there is nothing
else to switch to, and meanwhile we don't
| | 03:55 | have a Load button, which is
craziness, I don't know why we don't.
| | 03:59 | But here is what you can do.
| | 04:01 | You can click the Save button, I know
we haven't done anything, click Save
| | 04:04 | anyway, and let's go ahead and call
this guy, secret-agent-x, just so it's
| | 04:10 | easy to search for.
| | 04:11 | And in fact, go ahead and select it,
like so, after typing in the name and press
| | 04:14 | Ctrl+C on the PC or Cmd+C on
the Mac in order to copy that name.
| | 04:19 | That way we can run a
search for this exact same file.
| | 04:23 | Now click OK, you just created a
file called secret-agent-X on your hard drive.
| | 04:27 | Where is it?
| | 04:29 | Who knows, let's click OK.
| | 04:31 | I will go ahead and
minimize Illustrator for a moment.
| | 04:33 | And I am going to bring up a different
Window that I have created in advance.
| | 04:37 | What you want is a Search Window
here and that's what I have got.
| | 04:40 | And you can get to the search function
by pressing Cmd+F on the Mac, you
| | 04:44 | can also press F3 on the PC or you
can press the Windows key and the F Key
| | 04:49 | together, that works.
| | 04:51 | Anyway, however you decide to go.
| | 04:54 | You want to bring up a Search Window,
and then let's run a search for that file,
| | 04:57 | secret-agent-x, which I could paste
in if necessary by pressing Ctrl+V,
| | 05:02 | Cmd+V on the Mac, and then I will
say that I want to search in my computer,
| | 05:06 | you may be able to just press the Enter
key in order to begin your search of the
| | 05:10 | contents of your computer, and this
should hopefully look inside all the drives
| | 05:15 | that are connected at this point in time.
| | 05:17 | And notice that now I have found secret-
agent-x.kys here inside of this folder.
| | 05:24 | What I am going to do is right-click
on this item and I am going to choose
| | 05:28 | Open file location, so that I can go
ahead and locate that file on disk, and
| | 05:32 | here it is, inside that very same
folder I was telling you here on the PC,
| | 05:36 | which is as follows:
| | 05:37 | I am looking at the contents of my C
drive, I am inside of the Users folder, I
| | 05:40 | am inside that user folder which
in my case is called Me, and then
| | 05:45 | AppData\Roaming\Adobe, finally Adobe
Illustrator CS5 Settings and en_US here in the States.
| | 05:52 | And there is that secret-agent-x
file, notice that it ends with a .kys
| | 05:55 | extension, because after all
it is a keyboard shortcuts file.
| | 05:59 | All right, let's return to the 00_
setup folder here, and I am going to drag
| | 06:03 | dekeKeys AIcs5 1on1.kys into
this folder in order to copy it.
| | 06:09 | That's all there is to it, now let's
return to Illustrator once again, and by
| | 06:13 | the way, in case those of you who
are Windows 7, Windows Vista users, are
| | 06:17 | wondering what in the world I
am doing to switch programs here?
| | 06:20 | This is a function of pressing the
Windows key and Tab at the same time, and
| | 06:25 | then once you get to the desired
folder application, you just go ahead and
| | 06:29 | release the Windows key.
| | 06:31 | On a Mac you can switch between
applications by pressing Cmd+Tab.
| | 06:34 | All right, let's go up to the Edit menu,
choose the Keyboard Shortcuts command
| | 06:37 | once again or press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+K,
Cmd+Shift+Option+K on the Mac.
| | 06:41 | We no longer need secret-agent-
x, it has served its purposes.
| | 06:44 | Now I am going to choose from that
set menu, dekeKeys AIcs5 1on1, and to
| | 06:50 | confirm that everything worked, go
ahead and switch from tools here to menu
| | 06:53 | Commands, and I want you to twirl-open
File, and by twirl-open I mean click on
| | 06:59 | this little twirly triangle right there, which
expands the menu so that you can see its commands.
| | 07:04 | And then scroll down, and I am doing this
using the Scroll Wheel on my mouse, and
| | 07:08 | notice the Place command right here,
it should have a keyboard shortcut of
| | 07:11 | Ctrl+Alt+D or Cmd+Option+D on the Mac.
| | 07:15 | If you see that keyboard shortcut,
everything is good to go, just go ahead and
| | 07:19 | click on the OK button and you have
successfully loaded dekeKeys, my friends.
| | 07:24 | In the next exercise I am going to show
those of you who are Macintosh users, and
| | 07:28 | Macintosh users only, how to remap your
system-level keyboard shortcuts, so that
| | 07:33 | they don't overlap Illustrator.
| | 07:35 | Those of you who are Windows users, you
can skip to the exercise after that, in
| | 07:39 | which I tell you how to install
the best workflow color settings.
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| Remapping Mac OS shortcuts| 00:00 | All right, this exercise is
strictly for Macintosh users.
| | 00:03 | You Windows people can move
along to the next exercise.
| | 00:05 | I don't want you to feel excluded.
| | 00:07 | It's just that Windows doesn't happen
to suffer from this particular problem.
| | 00:11 | And the problem is this, even though
Adobe and its various applications have
| | 00:15 | been out there using a certain group
of keyboard shortcuts for about 20 years
| | 00:20 | now, a little more in the case of Illustrator.
| | 00:23 | Although of course, the keyboard
shortcuts set has grown up over time.
| | 00:26 | Apple, over the course of the last
decade, has decided to usurp many of those
| | 00:31 | shortcuts and assign
them to OS level operations.
| | 00:34 | Now you can defer to Apple if you
want to, and keep the keyboard shortcuts
| | 00:38 | exactly the way they are, but if you do
that you are going to limit your access
| | 00:42 | to Illustrator, and some of the
operations I show you won't work properly.
| | 00:46 | So I suggest you go ahead and modify
Apple shortcuts ever so slightly, as I'm
| | 00:51 | about to explain in this video.
| | 00:54 | Now I am looking at a series of images
that I've shot and prepared for you that
| | 00:57 | are found inside the 00_setup folder,
inside of a subfolder called Mac Fkeys.
| | 01:04 | If you want to open them up and follow
along, or you can just of course watch
| | 01:07 | what's going on inside the movie.
| | 01:09 | Now the first step is to go to the
Apple menu, the one that looks like an Apple
| | 01:14 | logo, and choose the System Preferences
command, in order to bring up the System
| | 01:18 | Preferences dialog box, which is this
thing right here that you see before you,
| | 01:21 | except it will be filled with icons.
| | 01:24 | Then you want to click on the icon that
says either Keyboard & Mouse or just Keyboard.
| | 01:30 | So under Leopard it's going to be
Keyboard & Mouse, under Snow Leopard and
| | 01:34 | later, it's going to be just Keyboard.
| | 01:36 | Then you will see this
panel of options right here.
| | 01:38 | So you start with the Keyboard tab highlighted.
| | 01:41 | Notice this check box. It says
| | 01:43 | Use all F1, F2, etc. keys
as standard function keys.
| | 01:47 | I want you to go ahead
and turn this check box on.
| | 01:50 | Now what this means is from now on,
if you have let's say, a MacBook or a
| | 01:55 | MacBook Pro, or a wireless keyboard
or some other keyboard that has various
| | 02:00 | icons on the function keys, by
which I mean that you can raise and lower
| | 02:04 | the volume or change screen brightness,
that kind of thing, by pressing function keys.
| | 02:09 | Now you will have to press the fn
key, which is the function key, a little
| | 02:14 | confusing, but the fn key along with
that F key, F9, F10 et cetera, in order to
| | 02:19 | change your volume and so on, and
now F9, F10 et cetera by themselves will
| | 02:25 | perform certain operations,
bringing up handles mostly inside the Adobe
| | 02:29 | applications, which is very useful by the way.
| | 02:32 | So I suggest you work this way,
it does take some getting used to.
| | 02:34 | All right, next I am going to move on
to Keyboard Shortcuts, so you want to
| | 02:38 | click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab
right there, and you'll switch over to your
| | 02:43 | Keyboard Shortcuts list.
| | 02:44 | This is how the Keyboard Shortcuts look
inside of Leopard, that is OS 10.5 and
| | 02:50 | earlier by the way, and you would scroll
down until you get to the Dock, Expose
| | 02:55 | and Dashboard list, and then you would
change Automatically hide and show the
| | 02:58 | Dock to Ctrl+D and you would change
all Windows to Ctrl+F9, and so on.
| | 03:05 | I am going to explain how
those work in just a moment.
| | 03:08 | But I want you to see that this is where
they're located in Leopard and earlier.
| | 03:12 | However, I'm guessing that most of you
are working with Snow Leopard or later,
| | 03:16 | that is OS 10.6 and later.
| | 03:19 | So I'm going to switch over to this
panel here, this is how things look now in
| | 03:23 | Snow Leopard, and notice that you have
a left-hand list of options that allow
| | 03:27 | you to switch between
different groups of shortcuts.
| | 03:30 | So we will start with Dashboard & Dock
and what I want you do is go to Turn Dock
| | 03:35 | Hiding On/Off and click on what will
appear as Cmd+Option+D, and by the way
| | 03:42 | Apple uses a standard of sort of
indecipherable symbols for these, the
| | 03:46 | cloverleaf symbol is Command.
| | 03:48 | You probably already know that.
| | 03:49 | Option looks like sort of a
line with a line next to it.
| | 03:53 | It's very hard to identify.
| | 03:54 | Anyway whatever that keyboard shortcut
is, click on it, make it highlighted, so
| | 03:59 | that it has a little bit of rectangle
around it, and then press Control, and by Control
| | 04:02 | I mean the Control key, that is spelled
down as the word Control, +D and it will appear
| | 04:08 | as ^D, and don't
press them sequentially.
| | 04:10 | Press those keys at the same time.
| | 04:12 | Then go to Dashboard here, click on it
to make it active and press Ctrl+F12, as
| | 04:18 | opposed to F12 by itself.
| | 04:20 | The next thing I want you to do is click
on Expose & Spaces and you will switch
| | 04:25 | to this group of options, and I want
you to change these guys, All windows for
| | 04:29 | example, from F9 to Ctrl+F9,
Application Windows from F10 to Ctrl+F10 and then
| | 04:36 | Desktop from F11 to Ctrl+F11.
| | 04:40 | Then I want you to drop all the way
down to Spotlight here, and this is very,
| | 04:45 | very important, unless you want to mess
up your zooming capabilities inside of
| | 04:50 | Illustrator, you will change these settings.
| | 04:52 | And so I recommend you click on whatever
the top keyboard shortcut is, something
| | 04:56 | like Cmd+Spacebar, and you change it
to Cmd+Ctrl+F1, and I am reading in
| | 05:02 | the order that is conventional, but for
those of you who would prefer I read in
| | 05:06 | the order of the symbols, it's Ctrl+Cmd+F1.
| | 05:10 | Either way you say it, just press it
and then go down to the next option here,
| | 05:13 | and this will be Ctrl+Option+Cmd+F1.
| | 05:17 | And then next, drop down to this guy,
Universal Access, and make sure that zoom
| | 05:22 | out and zoom in are set to these
keyboard shortcuts here, which happens to be in
| | 05:27 | this case, Ctrl+Option+Cmd+
Minus and Ctrl+Option+Cmd+Plus.
| | 05:32 | The Equals key and the Plus key or the same key.
| | 05:35 | And again, these are just my
recommendations, you can come up with something
| | 05:38 | different if you like, and then finally
what I like to do is go to Applications
| | 05:42 | shortcuts, and go ahead and assign
a shortcut to the System Preferences
| | 05:46 | themselves, so that you can bring up
System Preferences anytime you like.
| | 05:50 | This is outside the realm of
needing to work with Illustrator.
| | 05:53 | This is just a great Macintosh trick
in general, and for those of you who are
| | 05:57 | thinking, how would you know
you're working under Windows 7.
| | 06:00 | Actually I spent most my time
on a Mac, just so's you know.
| | 06:03 | All right, so Menu Title, what you
want to do is type in the word, System
| | 06:08 | Preferences, and you have to get the
spelling exactly right, the capitalization
| | 06:11 | as well, and then you can
either type dot, dot, dot
| | 06:15 | like this, the dots have to be there.
| | 06:17 | So period, period, period, three times
in a row, or you can enter an ellipses
| | 06:21 | symbol, which happens to
be Options+Semicolon.
| | 06:24 | I know, weird, but that also works, and
then I assigned a Keyboard Shortcut of
| | 06:29 | Ctrl+F1, and then from that point on
you can bring up the System Preferences as
| | 06:34 | easily as pressing Ctrl+F1.
| | 06:35 | When you're done, go ahead and click the
Close box here in order to close out of
| | 06:40 | System Preferences, and that should
take care of any overlap between Apple's
| | 06:45 | keyboard shortcuts and
Illustrator/Adobe's keyboard shortcuts.
| | 06:50 | In the next exercise, I am going to
show you how to install the all-important
| | 06:53 | best workflow color settings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Installing the Best Workflow color settings| 00:00 | In this exercise, which is designed
to suit the needs of Windows and
| | 00:03 | Macintosh people alike,
| | 00:05 | I'm going to show you how to install a
group of color settings that I've created
| | 00:09 | in advance for you, that go
by the name Best Workflow.
| | 00:12 | So here's the idea, in order to get
consistent colors across the various
| | 00:15 | Creative Suite applications, as well
as take advantage of the rich array of
| | 00:20 | colors that are available to you in
these powerhouse graphics programs like
| | 00:23 | Illustrator and Photoshop and so on,
and to give the colors that you see
| | 00:28 | onscreen half a chance of outputting
accurately, you need a suite-wide color
| | 00:33 | management engine, and Creative Suite
has just such an engine. It goes by the
| | 00:38 | name ACE or Adobe Color Engine,
which is a really great thing by the way.
| | 00:43 | The only little black cloud on the
horizon here is that Adobe has seen fit to
| | 00:47 | impose some default color settings that
don't ideally suit the needs of working
| | 00:52 | professionals or those who
aspire to achieve the best results.
| | 00:57 | So what I am going to have you do is
just switch things out ever so slightly, by
| | 01:01 | installing a file, and
let me show you that file.
| | 01:04 | It's this guy right there, Best Workflow CS5.csf.
| | 01:08 | We are going to install that, yet again,
in a very specific location, and I am
| | 01:13 | going to show you that location just
as I did when we installed dekeKeys.
| | 01:16 | I'll show you what those locations are
in the various platforms, and then I'll
| | 01:20 | show you a special trick that gets you
to that location more easily on a PC,
| | 01:25 | doesn't work on the Mac, but
that's okay, we'll get you there.
| | 01:28 | So to show you those locations, I am
going to open this image right here, it's
| | 01:31 | called Best Workflow instructions.tiff,
so let's open that up inside of
| | 01:35 | Photoshop, it's this file as you can see,
and I'll switch to the fullscreen mode
| | 01:40 | so that we can take it in in detail.
| | 01:42 | Copy the file Best Workflow CS5.csf
to a location on your hard drive
| | 01:47 | depending on your platform.
| | 01:48 | So this is where it's going to go on
the PC, on one of these two locations, but
| | 01:53 | as I say, I got a trick for you, so
you can hold on for a moment, but still,
| | 01:57 | might as well make yourself aware of it.
| | 01:59 | Under Windows XP, it's going to be
on the C drive inside Documents and Settings
| | 02:03 | inside the user folder, user is your
computer login name of course, inside the
| | 02:07 | Application Data folder, spelled out
under XP, and then you go into Adobe, then
| | 02:12 | into Color, then into Settings.
| | 02:14 | Under Windows 7 and Vista, it's C,
then the Users folder, then user - probably
| | 02:19 | your name - AppData instead of Application Data
spelled out, Roaming, Adobe, Color, and Settings.
| | 02:27 | So just bear that in mind, you Windows
people, I am going to show you a better
| | 02:30 | way in just a moment.
| | 02:31 | On the Mac you go to the Finder, the
desktop level of your computer, and you
| | 02:35 | choose the Home Command from the Go
menu, incidentally this has a keyboard
| | 02:39 | shortcut of Cmd+Shift+H,
in case you're curious.
| | 02:42 | Then you go ahead and open this folder,
the Library folder, which you'll see
| | 02:46 | inside of Home, Application Support, then go into Adobe,
then into Color, and then into the Settings folder.
| | 02:52 | And then go ahead and copy that Best
Workflow CS5.csf file from the 00_setup
| | 02:58 | folder to this settings folder right there.
| | 03:01 | All right, so there we have it, everybody,
Macintosh and Windows people, I want
| | 03:05 | you to go to Illustrator.
| | 03:07 | Let's go over to the Illustrator
application here and then go up to the
| | 03:11 | Edit menu and choose the Color
Settings command, or you can press
| | 03:14 | Ctrl+Shift+K, Cmd+Shift+K on a
Mac, that brings up the color settings
| | 03:19 | dialog box right here.
| | 03:20 | Now by default settings will
probably say, North American General Purpose
| | 03:24 | 2, which goes ahead and uses the
sRGB workspace, which is not an ideal
| | 03:28 | space for professionals.
| | 03:30 | I'll just put it that way, we'll get
into more detail about it in the next
| | 03:33 | exercise, but here's what you do.
| | 03:35 | Those of you were working on
the Mac just wait a moment.
| | 03:38 | You PC people go ahead and click on the
Load button and you'll go right to that
| | 03:43 | folder I was telling you about, notice
we are looking at the contents of the
| | 03:46 | Deke McClelland folder, that's my user
folder, inside of AppData, Roaming, then
| | 03:50 | we are inside the Adobe
folder, Color, and then Settings.
| | 03:54 | So we are right where we
need to be, under Windows 7,
| | 03:57 | Windows Vista, or Windows XP. It's
going to be a different path on XP, but you
| | 04:01 | will be at the right location.
| | 04:03 | Then I want you to go ahead and bring
up that 00_setup folder right there, and
| | 04:09 | grab Best Workflow CS5.csf and drag it
and drop it into that dialog box window.
| | 04:17 | So go ahead and drop it in there, and
then you go ahead and copy that file to
| | 04:21 | the desired location just like that.
| | 04:24 | Now at this point you would click on the
open button, and that will go ahead and
| | 04:28 | open the Best Workflow
Settings as you see right there.
| | 04:31 | Now, if you're working along with me
on a Mac, because you already copied the
| | 04:34 | file to the proper location, what you
need to do is click this down pointing
| | 04:38 | arrowhead and choose Best Workflow CS5
from the list and that will go ahead and
| | 04:43 | load the base settings that you need
to be using, click OK in order to apply
| | 04:47 | those settings to Illustrator.
| | 04:49 | In the next exercise, I am going to
run through the color settings that we
| | 04:52 | just modified.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The color settings explained| 00:00 | In the previous exercise I showed you
have to load the Best Workflow Color Settings.
| | 00:04 | In this exercise I am going walk you
through how I created those settings, so
| | 00:08 | that you have a sense of what's going on.
| | 00:10 | Now this may seem like it's a bit over
your head at this point in time, after
| | 00:14 | all I haven't showed a thing about
how Illustrator works at this point.
| | 00:18 | However it's very important to
have a sense of what's going on in the
| | 00:21 | background, even if you don't fully
understand it, because these color settings are
| | 00:25 | at work inside of all of the Adobe applications.
| | 00:28 | Once you come to terms with them, you'll
understand a lot more about what you're doing.
| | 00:32 | So here inside Illustrator I'm
going up to the Edit menu and I'm going to
| | 00:36 | choose the Color Settings command, again,
Ctrl+Shift+K, Command+Shift+K on the
| | 00:40 | Mac, and I am going to switch my
settings back to their defaults, which is North
| | 00:43 | America General Purpose 2, here in the
States, and by the way, this will show
| | 00:49 | you how I put these settings together,
as well in case you were having any
| | 00:52 | problems whatsoever loading Best Workflow CS5.
| | 00:55 | Now notice these working spaces,
CMYK, which is the color space of the
| | 00:59 | pre-press world, meaning
cyan, magenta, yellow, and black,
| | 01:03 | black being K, the key color. Most of
your illustrations are going to be CMYK
| | 01:09 | illustrations, because Illustrator makes
the assumption that you ultimately want
| | 01:13 | to print your graphics, that may or may
not be true, but that is the assumption
| | 01:17 | Illustrator is making.
| | 01:18 | RGB would be red, green, blue, the
color space of your screen, and that's the
| | 01:23 | color space for Web graphics and so on as well.
| | 01:26 | Also if you intend to print your
artwork locally, meaning, to a printer that's
| | 01:31 | hooked up your computer or somewhere
in your home or office, it's a color
| | 01:35 | composite printer, such as a color
inkjet printer or a color laser printer or
| | 01:38 | the like, then you typically
want to work in RGB as well.
| | 01:42 | More important at this point, because
we are going to get into CMYK and RGB and
| | 01:46 | all kinds of detail in later chapters.
| | 01:49 | More important for now is that you
understand that these are fly-by-night
| | 01:53 | spaces, meaning that they are device-dependent.
| | 01:56 | A CMYK graphic that you output on one
device might look altogether different
| | 02:01 | from that same CMYK illustration that
you print on another device, just as an
| | 02:06 | RGB illustration that you view on one
screen, is going to be look quite a bit
| | 02:10 | different than that same RGB
illustration viewed on a different screen.
| | 02:14 | So every device outputs CMYK
and displays RGB differently.
| | 02:20 | So what Illustrator and the other
Creative Suite applications are trying to do,
| | 02:24 | is they're trying to nail down that
space, so it doesn't vary like crazy, and
| | 02:28 | they do that by using profiles.
| | 02:31 | So the profile tells the source of your
colors, so at least what you know, even
| | 02:37 | though they may vary from one device to
another, at least the program that's at
| | 02:42 | work on that device knows that the
variety of RGB that it should be employing
| | 02:47 | is, for example, sRGB.
| | 02:49 | Well, that's where we run into our
first problem, is that sRGB is designed to
| | 02:53 | simulate your run-of-the-mill, old-style
PC monitor, and you probably have a much
| | 02:59 | better screen than that.
| | 03:00 | sRGB was designed, by the way, back in the
days before modern LCD screens, back in
| | 03:05 | the days when we had those big giant CRT
tubes, and so it really is a worst-case
| | 03:11 | scenario space, where you're working
inside of a best-case scenario application.
| | 03:16 | Illustrator is nothing if not
exceedingly powerful, so you want to take
| | 03:20 | advantage of that power
by switching to Adobe RGB.
| | 03:24 | Now some of you may be worried, okay, if
I switch to Adobe RGB, and I'm creating
| | 03:28 | Web graphics, which really ought to be
output to RGB, so that they're ready to
| | 03:33 | display on those worst-case scenario
of your monitors, is that a good idea?
| | 03:37 | And the answer is yes.
| | 03:38 | You should be creating your artwork in
Adobe RGB, because that's going to give
| | 03:42 | you the most flexibility in
the richest array of colors.
| | 03:44 | And then when you output your image
for the Web and there is a specific
| | 03:49 | command that allows you to do that,
it will automatically convert your
| | 03:52 | illustrations to sRGB.
| | 03:54 | All right, so we'll come to that later,
but for now, just go ahead and choose
| | 03:57 | Adobe RGB there, or of course, if
you've already loaded Best Workflow, you're
| | 04:01 | just watching along with me to
get a sense of what's going on.
| | 04:04 | Next, we drop down to these options,
and you leave of all of the check boxes
| | 04:09 | off, so that you don't have
Illustrator bugging you all the time, every time
| | 04:12 | it runs into a profile mismatch, and
that is, by the way, what happens when you
| | 04:18 | open an illustration that's profiled one way
inside of a workspace that's profiled another.
| | 04:24 | Now if that doesn't make any sense,
don't worry about it, but I'm just telling
| | 04:27 | you that Illustrator is capable of
handling multiple color profiles at the same
| | 04:31 | time, so it doesn't need to
bug you all the time about them.
| | 04:35 | However, dropping down to the CMYK
option right there, I would go ahead and
| | 04:39 | switch it from Preserve Numbers (Ignore
Link-Profiles), to Preserve Embedded
| | 04:44 | Profiles. That's the way I prefer to
work, and you're going to get fewer error
| | 04:48 | messages, these little alert messages
that come up, when you load my sample
| | 04:52 | artwork, if you switch CMYK to
Preserve Embedded Profiles just like that.
| | 04:56 | However, you may go ahead and see
alert messages when you open your old
| | 05:01 | graphics. Doesn't matter if you see
one of these weird CMYK Preserve Embedded
| | 05:06 | Profiles error messages when you
open up an illustration, just click OK.
| | 05:10 | It can be irritating, but
it's nothing to worry about.
| | 05:13 | All right, anyway, I'm going to turn on
the advanced mode check box and notice
| | 05:16 | that forces a redraw of the
dialog box, that's just the way it is.
| | 05:20 | You want these options set the way they
are, except for Intent. Now, here's the
| | 05:25 | deal, if you're working with
Illustrator and only Illustrator or a combination
| | 05:29 | of Illustrator and InDesign and
Flash, let's say that's your workflow.
| | 05:33 | Then Relative Colorimetric is your best
bet, because that's going to keep your
| | 05:37 | colors as close to possible, when you
switch between radically different color
| | 05:43 | environments, such as RGB and CMYK.
| | 05:46 | So what Illustrator is going to do is
it's going to try to find the closest
| | 05:49 | color equivalent to every color inside
your graphic, and switch over to that
| | 05:54 | equivalent, which sounds like a great
thing by the way, that's going to keep
| | 05:56 | your colors as close as humanly
possible to looking the way they looked in RGB
| | 06:01 | say, when you switched over to CMYK,
or the way they looked in CMYK when you
| | 06:06 | switched over to RGB.
| | 06:07 | However, what you may find happens is
your gradients exhibit a little bit of
| | 06:11 | banding or stair stepping, and you
may see similar problems inside your
| | 06:15 | continuous tone photographs.
| | 06:17 | If you tend to work with a lot of
photographic images or Photoshop in general,
| | 06:22 | then I recommend you switch away
from relative colorimetric and switch to
| | 06:26 | perceptual, which is generally your
better bet for smooth color transitions.
| | 06:32 | And that's what I've set up by
the way inside of Best Workflow.
| | 06:35 | So if you switch back up here to Best
Workflow CS5, you will notice that you
| | 06:39 | have RGB set to Adobe RGB, you have
intent set to perceptual, and then finally,
| | 06:45 | we still need to switch from Preserve
Numbers (Ignore Link Profiles), to Preserve
| | 06:50 | Embedded Profiles, and then we are done.
| | 06:52 | That is going to change your settings
to Custom, don't worry about it, that's
| | 06:56 | perfectly okay. Click OK in order to
accept that modification, and Illustrator is
| | 07:01 | now right ready to go.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Preserve Numbers vs. embedded profiles| 00:00 | Now as I mentioned in a previous
exercise there is a potential when you're
| | 00:03 | opening up your graphics that you're going
to see an alert message related to CMYK color.
| | 00:08 | And I want to show you how to address
this message if it becomes overly irritating.
| | 00:13 | Here I am inside the Color
Settings dialog box once again.
| | 00:16 | Drop down here to color management
policies to CMYK, and remember that we just
| | 00:21 | changed the setting to
Preserve Embedded Profiles.
| | 00:24 | I am going to cancel out, and I am
going to go ahead and open that graphic that
| | 00:30 | we've seen a few times now, Welcome.ai.
| | 00:34 | When I open this file now, I get this
warning, and it tells me Your current
| | 00:37 | color settings honor CMYK profiles in
linked content, but profiles were set to
| | 00:42 | be ignored when this document was created.
| | 00:44 | Now this is going to seem like so much
gobbledygook or it's going to be one of
| | 00:49 | those things that you just say,
Continue, go away, Cancel, whatever.
| | 00:53 | Don't say Cancel, that's going to cancel the
opening of the graphic. Just say Continue.
| | 00:57 | It is completely a no-harm situation.
| | 00:59 | It's nothing whatsoever to worry about.
| | 01:02 | So you just click Continue and you move on.
| | 01:04 | Now from this point on you will not
see that message associated with my
| | 01:08 | graphics, the ones I provide for you.
| | 01:11 | However, you may see it with your
own archived graphics. That's okay.
| | 01:15 | Once you make changes to those
graphics and save off those changes, you won't
| | 01:19 | see that error message from this point on.
| | 01:22 | However, let's say you're dealing not
with just 10 or 20 archived graphics, but
| | 01:27 | you're dealing with thousands of them
and you keep seeing that error message
| | 01:31 | over and over again, and
you just want it to stop.
| | 01:34 | Why then, you would go up to the Edit menu,
| | 01:36 | you would choose Color Settings, Ctrl+
Shift+K, Cmd+Shift+K on the Mac.
| | 01:41 | And you would switch CMYK from
Preserve Embedded Profiles to Preserve
| | 01:45 | Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles),
and this is specifically for linked
| | 01:49 | graphics, incidentally.
| | 01:51 | Anyway, go ahead and choose that command.
| | 01:52 | You will get this little lock icon
on top of a tiny little CMYK strip.
| | 01:58 | Go ahead and click OK in
order to accept that modification.
| | 02:02 | Now I will go ahead and close out of
this graphic like so, and notice that my
| | 02:06 | welcome screen is currently hidden.
| | 02:07 | Don't worry about that.
| | 02:08 | I am going to switchover to that 00_
setup folder again, and I'm going to
| | 02:12 | double-click on Welcome.ai and
it opens up with no error message.
| | 02:17 | So I just want you to see now that error
message that you kept on seeing, it was
| | 02:20 | driving you nuts, will go away,
but I will close out of there.
| | 02:25 | When you open my graphics now, you
will see a different kind of alert.
| | 02:30 | So I will go ahead and double-click
on it and it says, your current color
| | 02:33 | settings discard CMYK profiles in linked
content, but profiles were set to be
| | 02:38 | honored when this document was created.
| | 02:40 | Well, I would love it if there was a
button that said, never ever bug me about
| | 02:46 | this again, Illustrator, go away, it
doesn't matter, but instead, you have a
| | 02:51 | Continue button and you will continue
to need to click that Continue button when
| | 02:56 | you load my graphics in the future.
| | 02:57 | So pick your poison.
| | 02:59 | I just want you to know what's going on.
| | 03:01 | I'm going to go back up to the Edit
menu, choose the Color Settings command,
| | 03:04 | Ctrl+Shift+K, Cmd+Shift+K on the
Mac, and switch from Preserve Numbers to
| | 03:09 | Preserve Embedded Profiles, which is
the better way to go, in my opinion.
| | 03:14 | Click OK and we are ready to get
some honest-to-goodness work done, here
| | 03:18 | inside Illustrator CS5.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
13. Live TraceConverting pixels to vectors| 00:00 | Illustrator offers this thing called Live Trace.
| | 00:03 | It takes a piece of pixel-based artwork,
which might be something you created in
| | 00:07 | Photoshop, or maybe you drew it on
a piece of paper and scanned it.
| | 00:10 | Anyway, Live Trace takes the
pixels and converts them to vectors.
| | 00:14 | The advantage is that you can take even a
small drawing and enlarge it as much as you want.
| | 00:19 | For examples, in this chapter you and I
will take this smallish sketch and blow
| | 00:24 | it up to create this ginormous pirate flag.
| | 00:28 | This is the actual product of this chapter.
| | 00:30 | It's flat-out amazing. But don't for
a second think that Live Trace is an
| | 00:35 | automatic art creation feature.
| | 00:37 | It doesn't replace the Pen tool,
it doesn't replace hard work, it
| | 00:40 | doesn't replace anything.
| | 00:42 | If you have a rotten little GIF image
and you want to convert it to something
| | 00:45 | smooth and beautiful,
Live Trace will not do that.
| | 00:49 | As usual, garbage in garbage out.
| | 00:52 | Good stuff in, awesome stuff out.
| | 00:54 | Here, let me show you what I'm talking
about, as well as the best way to exploit
| | 00:59 | this really amazing feature.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracing an imported image| 00:00 | The topic of Chapter 13 is Live
Trace, and Illustrator's Live Trace
| | 00:04 | feature allows you to
automatically convert pixel-based imagery into
| | 00:09 | vector-based artwork.
| | 00:10 | There are a couple of
different approaches you might take.
| | 00:12 | You might start with a
continuous tone photograph.
| | 00:14 | You can trace digital photographs if you like.
| | 00:17 | That's not the common approach, and that's not
an approach we are going to see in this chapter.
| | 00:21 | Rather, we'll take a look at how you
can trace Photoshop artwork, like these
| | 00:24 | letters right here, and I'll come back
to this illustration in just a moment. Or,
| | 00:29 | how you can start with
traditional tools such as pen and paper,
| | 00:32 | go ahead and scan in your artwork, and
then develop it inside of Illustrator, as
| | 00:37 | in the case of this artwork right here.
| | 00:39 | It's called Very large flag.ai.
| | 00:41 | And this illustration, it's huge, by the way.
| | 00:44 | It's 5 feet wide and 3 feet tall so that
we could actually output an enormous flag.
| | 00:50 | It's a piece of vector-based artwork,
but it started off looking like this.
| | 00:54 | I worked together this initial sketch
using a ballpoint pen and a piece of
| | 00:57 | paper, and then I
ultimately scanned it into Photoshop.
| | 01:01 | We will see how that entire process worked.
| | 01:03 | Finally, I was able to develop this
artwork into this flag art right there.
| | 01:08 | So you can make some amazing
progress using this Live Trace feature.
| | 01:13 | Now, a lot of teachers, very early on when
they're teaching Illustrator, they will
| | 01:16 | start off with Live Trace, because it
is a highly automated feature and it does
| | 01:22 | create path outlines for you and
eliminates a lot of that manual labor
| | 01:26 | associated with the Pen tool and the
other tools that we looked at in the
| | 01:29 | Fundamentals portion of this series.
| | 01:31 | The reason I don't start with Live
Trace is that it's not applicable to most of
| | 01:35 | the artwork you create inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:38 | For example, I've got this guy
open here, Pen tool creature.ai.
| | 01:42 | Remember this is the final piece of
artwork that we created back in Chapter 9 in
| | 01:46 | the Fundamentals series.
| | 01:48 | And there is just no way that you're
going to create this artwork using Live Trace.
| | 01:52 | For one thing, we have these
incredibly smooth path outlines, so some
| | 01:56 | very precise curves.
| | 01:58 | We also have these uniform strokes, we
have these differently colored areas.
| | 02:03 | This is absolutely a piece of Pen tool art.
| | 02:06 | You're not going to get anything
like this using the Live Trace feature.
| | 02:10 | However, for a piece of artwork like
this where we are trying to simulate
| | 02:14 | real-world tools and we are not
interested in creating a lot of different path
| | 02:18 | outlines, that is, we are not trying
to distinguish different areas of color
| | 02:21 | using strokes and the like, we just
have a few different fill colors going on.
| | 02:26 | This kind of artwork is
absolutely ideally suited to Live Trace.
| | 02:31 | I need to tell you though, even
though this is an automated feature, and
| | 02:34 | you'll see how splendidly it works
in just a moment, that does not mean it
| | 02:38 | creates automatic artwork.
| | 02:40 | This piece of art that we are looking at
right now took me several hours to create.
| | 02:44 | So I don't want you to think that
Live Trace creates absolute pieces of art
| | 02:48 | lickety-split, that's not the way it works.
| | 02:50 | Anyways, we will see this one shortly.
| | 02:52 | Let's go back to the letters, for
starters here, and the name of this file is
| | 02:55 | Hand-drawn characters.ai and these are a
series of brushstrokes that I created
| | 02:59 | inside Photoshop, once
again using a Wacom Tablet.
| | 03:03 | Then I went ahead and placed the image
into Illustrator by going up to the File
| | 03:07 | menu and choosing the Place command,
or if you loaded dekeKeys, you've got a
| | 03:11 | keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Alt+D,
Cmd+Option+D on the Mac.
| | 03:15 | However, I've already done this
in advance inside of this file.
| | 03:18 | So if you go over to the layers
panel you'll see a layer called Image.
| | 03:21 | If you twirl it open therein is the
linked image which is called Alphabet.psd.
| | 03:26 | I am going to go ahead and meatball it
to select it, and then in order to trace
| | 03:29 | these characters, and you may very
well wonder, well, why didn't I draw these
| | 03:32 | characters inside of
Illustrator in the first place?
| | 03:35 | Why did I create them in Photoshop and
now I am going to trace them in Illustrator?
| | 03:38 | For the simple reason that I drew these
characters years ago and I'm too lazy to
| | 03:42 | go back in Illustrator and redraw them
right now, because that will take an
| | 03:46 | awful lot of time, whereas as you will
see, tracing them happens very quickly.
| | 03:51 | Now I will go out to the Live Trace
button, which is now available to me in the
| | 03:54 | Control panel, and I should also show
you, by the way, that here in the Control
| | 03:58 | panel you can see not only the name of the
linked file, but you can also see its resolution.
| | 04:03 | So in this case the
resolution is 72 pixels per inch;
| | 04:06 | a very low resolution file.
| | 04:07 | It's actually a fairly large file though.
| | 04:10 | This illustration measures about
22 inches wide, about 16 inches tall.
| | 04:14 | So we've got a lot of pixels available to us.
| | 04:16 | It's just that the resolution is set quite low.
| | 04:19 | And Illustrator likes this,
Illustrator rewards you when you work with low
| | 04:22 | resolution files by not bugging you.
| | 04:24 | Basically, it gives you very fast results
and it doesn't deliver any alert messages.
| | 04:29 | As you'll see you will get a warning
if you work with high-resolution art.
| | 04:32 | However, you're going to get better
results with high-resolution art as well,
| | 04:35 | but for now we are going to start low.
| | 04:37 | Then I will go over to this Live Trace button
and all I have to do is click on it, and bang!
| | 04:42 | Illustrator goes ahead and
traces the artwork, and it's done.
| | 04:46 | It's actually converted the image to a
Live Trace object, so that I can edit my
| | 04:50 | tracing settings anytime I like.
| | 04:52 | Now I want you to see that by default
Illustrator goes ahead and generates a
| | 04:55 | black-and-white tracing.
| | 04:56 | So we don't have any of the
colors we had a moment ago.
| | 04:59 | And, I've lost a line of type.
| | 05:01 | So I will go ahead and Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z on
the Mac, so you can see what I am talking about.
| | 05:05 | That will reinstate my
original multicolor image here.
| | 05:08 | You can see that this orange line of type
went away as did this yellow background.
| | 05:14 | That's because those colors are
closer to white than they are to black.
| | 05:17 | But you can change that.
| | 05:18 | You can force Illustrator
to trace those elements.
| | 05:21 | I will press Ctrl+Shift+Z or Cmd+
Shift+Z to redo the tracing and then notice
| | 05:26 | up here inside the Control panel there
is this Threshold value and if you hover
| | 05:30 | over it, it says this is the value
used to separate black from white.
| | 05:34 | All pixels lighter are converted to white,
all pixels darker are converted to black.
| | 05:39 | Well, a Threshold setting of 128 is medium gray.
| | 05:42 | So 0 is black, 255 is White.
| | 05:45 | This is the world of
luminance inside of Photoshop.
| | 05:48 | So if you want to trace lighter colors
with black, then you need to increase
| | 05:52 | that Threshold value.
| | 05:53 | I am going to go ahead and set the
Threshold to 200 and then press the Enter key
| | 05:58 | or the Return key on the Mac.
| | 05:59 | That goes ahead and traces the
orange text without tracing the yellow
| | 06:04 | background behind the numbers.
| | 06:06 | And we get this nice black-and-white rendering.
| | 06:08 | So that's the simplest way to
trace inside of Illustrator.
| | 06:12 | I will show you three more ways to
apply the Live Trace feature in the
| | 06:15 | next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Other ways to trace| 00:00 | I've restored the original version of
Hand-drawn characters.ai and it contains a
| | 00:04 | multicolor image that I
created inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:07 | Now in the previous exercise I showed
you how you can go ahead and trace that
| | 00:10 | image by clicking on the Live Trace button.
| | 00:12 | Basically, you just cross your
fingers and hope for the best.
| | 00:15 | After tracing the image you have access to
a few options up here in the Control panel.
| | 00:19 | If you want more control over your
traced artwork then you go over to this
| | 00:23 | little dialog box icon, click on it,
and then you have a variety of additional
| | 00:28 | settings that you can apply.
| | 00:29 | After modifying the settings
you click on the Trace button.
| | 00:32 | Now we will come back to how these
settings work in a future exercise.
| | 00:36 | For now I am just going to cancel out,
because there is a few other ways to
| | 00:39 | approach tracing inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:41 | I will go ahead and press Ctrl+Z,
Cmd+Z on the Mac, so I reinstate my
| | 00:44 | original untraced image.
| | 00:46 | Another thing you can do,
| | 00:48 | if you want to bring up the dialog
box right off the bat, you can click on
| | 00:51 | this down pointing arrowhead right next to
Live Trace button and choose Tracing Options.
| | 00:56 | That way you can specify exactly
what tracing settings you want to apply.
| | 01:01 | For example, you could say, no, I
don't want to trace with black-and-white, I
| | 01:04 | want to trace my image in color.
| | 01:07 | Let's say I want to trace 12 colors,
just to start things off and then I will
| | 01:11 | click on the Preview button
in order to see what I've done.
| | 01:15 | It might take a few moments to apply the
preview, but eventually you'll see what
| | 01:18 | your traced artwork is going to
look like and then you click on Trace.
| | 01:21 | All right I am going to cancel out.
| | 01:23 | That's another way to work, but I
want to reinstate my original image here.
| | 01:26 | You can also click this down
pointing arrowhead and choose a preset.
| | 01:29 | For example, Comic Art is ideally
suited to this artwork here, because it will
| | 01:35 | not only trace the letters in black-and-
white as opposed to color, but it will
| | 01:39 | also trace them with a Threshold setting of 200.
| | 01:42 | That exact same Threshold setting that
we applied in the previous exercise and
| | 01:45 | that way it will keep all of the text
and drop out all of the background. As you
| | 01:50 | can see as soon as I choose Comic
Art all lines of type are intact.
| | 01:54 | So again that's an ideal setting
assuming that we don't want to retain the color
| | 01:58 | inside of the illustration.
| | 02:00 | I will press Ctrl+Z or Cmd+
Z again to reinstate that image.
| | 02:03 | Another way to work is to press the
Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and
| | 02:07 | click on the Live Trace button.
| | 02:09 | If you do that, then it will go
ahead and trace all of your artwork using
| | 02:12 | static path outlines.
| | 02:14 | So notice, if I twirl-open the image
layer that I no longer have that image
| | 02:19 | available to me anymore.
| | 02:20 | I don't have a Live Trace object either,
instead I've got this group of path outlines.
| | 02:26 | Notice that I went ahead and
lost that one line of type.
| | 02:29 | Well, what if you want to go
directly to path outlines like this?
| | 02:32 | It's unlikely that you do, let's say
you want to go direct to path outlines
| | 02:35 | and you want to work with a higher
Threshold setting so that you retain that
| | 02:39 | one line of type there.
| | 02:41 | Well, I will press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z
on the Mac to once again undo the Live
| | 02:44 | Trace feature and I will press-and-
hold the Alt key or the Option key on the
| | 02:47 | Mac, click the down pointing
arrowhead and choose Comic Art.
| | 02:51 | And that way, I will automatically apply
the Comic Art settings and create static
| | 02:57 | path outlines, all at once,
as you see me doing right here.
| | 03:00 | So this way I end up
preserving each and every line of type.
| | 03:04 | So a few different ways to work here
when you're applying the Live Trace feature.
| | 03:07 | In the next exercise I am going to
show you how to compare the Live Trace
| | 03:10 | vectors to the original pixel-based
image, so you can gauge the accuracy of
| | 03:15 | your results.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Raster and vector previews| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to show you
how to compare the so-called raster and
| | 00:03 | vector previews, so that you can
gauge the accuracy of what the Live Trace
| | 00:08 | feature has come up with.
| | 00:09 | So I've gone ahead and once again
restored the original version of
| | 00:12 | Hand-drawn characters.ai.
| | 00:14 | I've selected the image, and I'm going
to click on this down-pointing arrowhead,
| | 00:17 | next to the Live Trace button up here
in the Control panel, and I'll choose
| | 00:21 | Comic Art once again in order to apply
the Comic Art setting. That will go ahead
| | 00:26 | and trace all of my letters using black
and white, and it will keep that one
| | 00:30 | orange line of text so that
we don't lose it. All right!
| | 00:33 | What I want to do now is zoom in on some of
the characters, such as the D and E, let's say.
| | 00:38 | So I'll Ctrl+Spacebar+Drag, Cmd+
Spacebar+Drag around those characters to
| | 00:43 | zoom in on them, and might even zoom
in a little further, because I'm really
| | 00:47 | wondering why Illustrator has come
up with some of these path outlines.
| | 00:50 | Why does the D wrap around like this and
then do this little sort of loop on the
| | 00:55 | bottom of the Serif, and where
has this little dig come from?
| | 00:59 | And then, when we're looking at the E,
notice it kind of flops back and forth,
| | 01:03 | it has this curious sort of bow on the
left-hand side and then it has got this
| | 01:08 | notch cut out of it as well.
| | 01:09 | Well, what I can do is I can press Ctrl
+Z or Cmd+Z on the Mac in order to
| | 01:14 | undo the tracing and take a look at my
original pixel-based letters, and I can
| | 01:18 | see, sure enough, there is this bump
over here on the left-side of the E, but
| | 01:22 | there is no hitch down here at the bottom.
| | 01:25 | And this looks nice and smooth on
the underside of the D, so I don't know
| | 01:29 | what's going on there, and there
really isn't that kind of wave going on
| | 01:33 | underneath the Serif. So what gives?
| | 01:36 | Well, if you really want to get a sense
of what's going on and why Illustrator
| | 01:39 | has made the determinations it has
made, you need to compare the pixels
| | 01:43 | side-by-side with the Vector Art.
| | 01:45 | And here is what you do.
| | 01:46 | I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Shift+Z
or Cmd+Shift+Z in order to reinstate
| | 01:51 | the Live Trace that I applied a moment ago.
| | 01:53 | And notice these two pyramids right
here in the Control panel, this smooth
| | 01:58 | pyramid represents the vector preview, and
the jagged pyramid represents the raster image;
| | 02:04 | that is the pixel-based image.
| | 02:05 | So the first thing you do, so that you
can see through the vectors, you go ahead
| | 02:09 | and click on the smooth pyramid,
| | 02:10 | the white one, and you change it to Outlines,
so that you can see through those outlines.
| | 02:15 | You can also choose Outlines with
Tracing by the way, which is going to dim
| | 02:18 | out the Tracing Result and show your
outlines then, your path outlines in
| | 02:22 | cyan, but I just want to see the
path outlines and nothing more, so I'll
| | 02:25 | switch to Outlines, like so.
| | 02:27 | Now, initially that's going to give us a
very poor preview, because we're seeing
| | 02:31 | cyan against white, it's
hard to tell what's going on.
| | 02:33 | That's why we're now going to
bring back our original raster art,
| | 02:36 | that is the pixel-based artwork, by
clicking on the jagged black pyramid and
| | 02:41 | switching this option to Original Image.
| | 02:43 | So once I've done that I can see the
vector-based outline is tracing on top of
| | 02:48 | the pixel-based image,
which is pretty illuminating.
| | 02:51 | Now, it's a little hard to see some
of those divots this time around, but
| | 02:54 | they are still there.
| | 02:55 | We've got the divot on the underside
of the E, which really doesn't make any
| | 02:58 | sense, because it's nice and smooth
there, and then we've got this jag on
| | 03:02 | the underside of the D as well, and
this kind of wave, and all this other
| | 03:05 | stuff going on here. What gives?
| | 03:07 | Well, what we're doing here is we're
tracing black-and-white artwork, and that
| | 03:10 | might make you think, okay, so
Illustrator is delivering to me black-and-white
| | 03:14 | vectors, which is true, but
it's doing one thing more.
| | 03:18 | It's converting the image itself to
black-and-white before it traces it, and
| | 03:23 | that's a very important step to bear in mind.
| | 03:26 | So anytime you're choosing the number
of colors, you're telling Illustrator to
| | 03:29 | go ahead and reduce the image to
that number of colors and then trace it.
| | 03:34 | And you can see what that looks like
by going up to the jagged pyramid once
| | 03:37 | again and choosing Adjusted Image.
| | 03:40 | Adjusted Image is the one
that's really getting traced.
| | 03:43 | And as soon as you choose that, you'll
see that we have this very jagged image
| | 03:47 | that Illustrator is trying to work with,
and that's why we have this divot on
| | 03:51 | the underside of the E, because we have
a big jag right there at that location.
| | 03:55 | We have this tiny little jag up here
on the underside of the D as well, on
| | 03:59 | the upper-left corner.
| | 04:00 | Now, you may wonder why it's doing that,
given that it manages to smooth out
| | 04:05 | this transition, and there's all
sorts of jaggies going on here.
| | 04:08 | However, it does explain what's going on.
| | 04:11 | It even better explains what happens
when you trace this image in color.
| | 04:15 | So I'm going to go ahead and switch
back to No Image right here, and also,
| | 04:21 | I'll switch this guy, the smooth
pyramid, to Tracing Result, so that we can
| | 04:25 | see the traced artwork.
| | 04:26 | And this whole time, by the way,
the tracing is actually selected.
| | 04:30 | So if I go over to the layers panel and
twirl open Image, you can see that the
| | 04:33 | Tracing object is active, it's meatballed.
| | 04:36 | I just want you to notice that, that's
why this artwork keeps updating for us.
| | 04:39 | I'll go ahead and switch the preset from
Comic Art to Color 16, and notice that,
| | 04:45 | that takes a few moments to apply,
so we'll see a Progress bar go by.
| | 04:48 | And we end up getting very different
results than I would have expected, and
| | 04:52 | it's even weirder when I zoom out.
| | 04:54 | I'll go ahead and zoom out quite a bit
here so that we can take in more of the
| | 04:56 | illustration, and notice that all of
the letters are surrounded by these kind
| | 05:00 | of gray outlines, and then something like the
8 right there, I'll go ahead and zoom in on it.
| | 05:06 | Notice that it has
multiple outlines right there.
| | 05:09 | So Illustrator has gone ahead and
created several path outlines around the 8.
| | 05:13 | Why in the world has it
done that? I don't want that.
| | 05:15 | I just want one 8, not a bunch of them.
| | 05:17 | Well, let's go ahead and see
what Illustrator had to work with.
| | 05:20 | Once again, I'll switch the smooth
pyramid to Outlines, and then I'll switch the
| | 05:24 | jagged pyramid to not Original Image,
which will go ahead and show us what we
| | 05:29 | thought we were tracing.
| | 05:30 | Notice that the 8 has these
nice soft edges around it.
| | 05:34 | This is known as Anti-Aliasing by the
way, and this goes ahead and smoothes out
| | 05:38 | the transitions between
the colored portion of the 8,
| | 05:42 | the interior of the 8, and the exterior,
the yellow area, in the background.
| | 05:46 | However, Illustrator is going ahead
and reducing the number of colors to 16
| | 05:51 | colors in this case before it applies
the tracing, and as a result we get this
| | 05:56 | adjusted image right here, which is a
dark 8 inside of a lighter 8, inside of an
| | 06:02 | even lighter 8, every one of which
Illustrator traces independently.
| | 06:05 | So you might be getting a sense now
then that you don't necessarily want to
| | 06:10 | trace a piece of artwork in color and
that would be exactly right, this artwork,
| | 06:15 | for example, we're better off tracing in
black-and-white, and if we want to keep
| | 06:18 | those colors, then we can
apply them after the fact.
| | 06:22 | So I'm going to go ahead and change my
preset from Color 16 back to Comic Art so
| | 06:27 | that we get the black-and-white result.
| | 06:29 | And you can see it happens
much more quickly as a result.
| | 06:31 | It takes Illustrator way less time
to trace two colors than 16 colors.
| | 06:36 | And now let's go ahead and switch our
artwork back, so that we can see the
| | 06:39 | traced version of the illustration.
| | 06:41 | I'll click on the jagged pyramid and
choose No Image, and I'll click on the
| | 06:45 | smooth pyramid and change it to Tracing
Result, and there is the traced version
| | 06:50 | of the illustration, for better or for worse.
| | 06:52 | Now, that doesn't mean you have to
accept the results, Illustrator provides all
| | 06:55 | sorts of options for refining your
traced artwork, and I'll show you those
| | 06:59 | options over the course of the next exercises.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Threshold, Min Area, and Max Colors| 00:00 | I've saved my changes as
Comic Art characters.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise I'm going to review
the three numerical options that might
| | 00:07 | appear up here in the Control panel,
and they include Threshold, we've already
| | 00:11 | seen a preview of that one.
| | 00:13 | Threshold is applicable just to black-
and-white tracings and nothing more.
| | 00:17 | Then we have Min Area, which determines
the minimum area that Illustrator will trace.
| | 00:22 | And if you're tracing an image in color,
then instead of Threshold you'll see Max Colors.
| | 00:27 | All right!
| | 00:28 | So let's start things off by
selecting the traced object, which I have, and
| | 00:33 | adjusting the Threshold option.
| | 00:34 | The lowest Threshold value you can
assign is 1, and if you assign a Threshold
| | 00:39 | value of 1, and you just have to
remember that 0 is black and 255 is white,
| | 00:45 | then you're saying, just those
portions of the original image that are less
| | 00:49 | than that Threshold value, that are
absolutely black, will get traced, nothing
| | 00:53 | else will get traced.
| | 00:55 | Whereas, if you raise this value to
its maximum, 255, then you say, trace
| | 01:00 | absolutely everything, and by the
way, you have to change the value and
| | 01:04 | then press the Tab or Enter or Return
key in order to apply your setting to
| | 01:09 | the traced artwork.
| | 01:10 | Now, notice in this case that I'm
saying trace absolutely everything that's not
| | 01:14 | white, in which case I trace all of
the letters and I also trace that yellow
| | 01:18 | area down there at the bottom of the image.
| | 01:21 | I also thicken up all the letters.
| | 01:23 | So notice how much thicker all the
letters are at Threshold value of 255 than
| | 01:27 | they are at say 100.
| | 01:28 | If I go ahead and change that value to
a 100 and press the Tab key, not only do
| | 01:32 | I lose the orange line of type, but all of
my other text becomes thinner as well.
| | 01:38 | So what I want to do is I want to set
this Threshold value to the absolute
| | 01:41 | maximum I can without revealing yellow,
which turns out to be, I just figured
| | 01:45 | this out through trial and
error, turns out to be 222.
| | 01:49 | And then I'll press the Tab key, and
that thickens up the letters as much as
| | 01:52 | possible, leaves the
yellow out in the background.
| | 01:54 | Notice if I were to click inside that
value and press the Up Arrow key and then
| | 01:59 | press the Tab key, then I get yellow back.
| | 02:01 | So I go ahead and trace that
yellow area at a Threshold of 223.
| | 02:05 | Anyway, that's why I want 222.
| | 02:07 | Then we have this Min Area value,
that when I'm working with the Comic Art
| | 02:10 | preset, which I was, then the
Min Area is set to 4 pixels;
| | 02:14 | that's saying that any little spec in
the artwork that takes up 4 pixels or
| | 02:18 | more will get traced.
| | 02:20 | If you have a lot of dust in your
original image, if you scanned it and
| | 02:24 | brought it directly over into
Illustrator without modifying the image in
| | 02:27 | Photoshop, which is a rotten idea by
the way, you should go ahead and clean up
| | 02:30 | the image inside Photoshop first, and I'll
show you what I mean by that in a later exercise.
| | 02:35 | But I actually drew this particular
image inside of Photoshop, so it doesn't
| | 02:39 | have any dust particles,
it doesn't have any noise.
| | 02:42 | But if you're trying to watch out for
the noise, you can raise that Min Area
| | 02:45 | value, as high as 3000.
| | 02:47 | I'm going to go ahead and take it to
1000 pixels and then press the Tab key, and
| | 02:51 | you can see that that rules out all
kinds of letters that don't take up 1000
| | 02:56 | pixels inside of my original image.
| | 02:59 | Where this image is concerned, I
think I'm better off setting the Min Area
| | 03:02 | value to about 2 pixels.
| | 03:04 | So very tiny indeed, and that way I
preserve all the little holes inside of
| | 03:09 | the various letters.
| | 03:10 | Now let's say I'd prefer to go ahead
and trace this image in color, why then I'd
| | 03:15 | change my Preset to one of the Color
Presets such as, let's go ahead and switch
| | 03:18 | it to Color 6 for now, and then I could
go ahead and change that Min Area value
| | 03:24 | back to 2 pixels again, if I want to.
| | 03:27 | Notice that Threshold has been replaced
with Max Colors, and right now it's set
| | 03:31 | to 6, because that's what I chose,
I chose to trace with 6 colors.
| | 03:35 | But I could lower this value to 3.
| | 03:39 | And by the way, you have to include black
-and-white when you're working this way.
| | 03:42 | I'll show you how to rule out white in a
later exercise, but right now we've got
| | 03:46 | to include black-and-white, and
then 3 would say one other color.
| | 03:50 | So 1 for black, 2 for white,
3 for, let's check it out.
| | 03:54 | I'll go ahead and press the Return key
or the Enter key here in the PC, in order
| | 03:58 | to change that Max Colors value to 3,
and the third color becomes yellow,
| | 04:02 | because that's the most plentiful sort
of compromise color inside of the image.
| | 04:07 | Now I am going to go ahead and zoom in so
that we can see our artwork more closely.
| | 04:12 | And notice how weird the line just
above the orange line appears here.
| | 04:17 | I'm not sure what color
that line was originally.
| | 04:20 | Let's go ahead and switch that smooth
pyramid options to Outlines, and I'll
| | 04:23 | change the jagged pyramid to
Original Image, and that's the green text.
| | 04:27 | So the green text gets converted to
black with some yellow around it, which is
| | 04:32 | a little bit weird.
| | 04:33 | So let's see how to fix that.
| | 04:34 | I'll change the smooth pyramid back
to Tracing Result, so that we can see
| | 04:38 | the Tracing Result.
| | 04:39 | Notice I didn't bother to change
the jagged pyramid back to No Image,
| | 04:43 | because the Original Image is
currently being covered up by the vector
| | 04:46 | preview, so that's fine.
| | 04:48 | We end up seeing the vector
preview by itself that way.
| | 04:51 | Now I'm going to increase the Min Area
value from 2 to let's try 20, and I'll
| | 04:56 | press the Tab key in order to apply that
value, and we get much smoother results
| | 05:01 | when we're tracing in color.
| | 05:04 | So that's how those values work.
| | 05:05 | Just remember that you have access up
here in the Control panel to Threshold,
| | 05:10 | when you're tracing a black and white image,
or Max Colors, when you're tracing in color.
| | 05:14 | You also have Min Area, whether you're
tracing black and white or color images.
| | 05:18 | In the next exercise, I will begin to
tour you through the many additional
| | 05:22 | settings that are available to you
inside the Tracing Options dialog box.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracing options: The raster functions| 00:00 | In this exercise, we are going to
begin the tour of the settings that are
| | 00:03 | available to you inside the
Tracing Options dialog box.
| | 00:06 | Those settings are divided into two groups.
| | 00:08 | First, you've got the Raster settings,
which determine how Illustrator converts
| | 00:12 | the pixel-based artwork before tracing it.
| | 00:15 | Then you have the Vector settings, which
determine how Illustrator generates the
| | 00:19 | vector-based path outlines.
| | 00:20 | So we are going to start with the
Raster settings inside this exercise, then
| | 00:24 | move on to the others in subsequent exercises.
| | 00:27 | I have saved my progress as Black
white & yellow.ai, found inside the
| | 00:31 | 13_live_trace folder.
| | 00:33 | I will go ahead and select that Live
Trace object by marqueeing around it with the
| | 00:37 | Black Arrow tool, and then in order to
further modify this artwork, in order to
| | 00:41 | customize my Live Trace settings,
I'll click on this little dialog box icon
| | 00:46 | available to me in the Control panel,
which brings up the Tracing Options dialog box.
| | 00:50 | Now notice here at the bottom of the
dialog box that we have these preview
| | 00:54 | options, they are divided into the
Raster preview settings, which are the exact
| | 00:57 | same settings that are available to us
from this jagged pyramid up here in the
| | 01:02 | Control panel, and then we've got the
Vector settings, which are those settings
| | 01:05 | that are available from the smooth pyramid.
| | 01:07 | Now not only are the preview settings
divided into Raster and Vector down here
| | 01:12 | at the bottom of the dialog box, but
they're divided in exactly the same way,
| | 01:16 | that is, the settings throughout the
dialog box are divided into Raster over here
| | 01:21 | on the left inside and Vector
over here on the right-hand side.
| | 01:24 | So every one of these left side
adjustments effect how the image is
| | 01:29 | converted before tracing it.
| | 01:31 | So right now the image is left in color,
we could convert it to Black and White
| | 01:36 | if we wanted to, which would wake up
the Threshold option and make dim the
| | 01:40 | palette and Max Colors options.
| | 01:42 | However, I am going to leave
the image set to Color for now.
| | 01:44 | You can change the number of colors
using this Max Colors option, which works
| | 01:48 | exactly the same as it
does in the Control panel.
| | 01:51 | I am going to skip Palette for now,
because if you were to click on Palette, you
| | 01:55 | are only going to see Automatic, you
are not going to see Twelve plus B&W yet.
| | 01:59 | We are going to come to that in a moment.
| | 02:00 | You'll only see Automatic until you
load another Swatches palette and I'll show
| | 02:04 | you how that works in just a moment.
| | 02:05 | But for now, we'll skip this option.
| | 02:07 | You can Output to Swatches by the way,
after you get done Tracing however many
| | 02:12 | colors you decide to work with, then
you can output those colors as swatches
| | 02:16 | inside the Swatches panel.
| | 02:18 | You also have the option -
| | 02:20 | I am going to drop down here - of changing
the number of pixels inside the image.
| | 02:25 | So I could go ahead and actually
increase the number of pixels if I want
| | 02:28 | to, and let's say I decide to change this
value to 200 pixels, and then press the Tab key.
| | 02:34 | I can either click the Preview check
box in order to see what's going to happen
| | 02:38 | in advance or I could just click Trace,
I could just decide in advance that I am
| | 02:42 | going to trace my artwork, because
what I want to do is I want to not only trace
| | 02:46 | the artwork, but I also
want to go ahead and zoom in.
| | 02:49 | Now that's going to cause Illustrator
to do this on this particular machine.
| | 02:53 | It's not only showing me a Progress bar,
but for a moment it's showing me that
| | 02:56 | it is not responding.
| | 02:57 | If you have that problem, just go ahead
and click inside of Illustrator, seems
| | 03:01 | to take care of the problem, and
the program gets back in business.
| | 03:04 | Anyway, I am going to go ahead and zoom
in on my artwork here, kind of down in
| | 03:08 | the lower portion, and notice that
increasing the resolution of my artwork in
| | 03:13 | advance of the image has not
done me any good whatsoever.
| | 03:16 | It's in fact, it's made my letters
much more jagged, and that's because
| | 03:20 | essentially what I am telling
Illustrator is to trace each and every pixel in
| | 03:25 | detail, instead of applying any of
its smoothing algorithms and that's not
| | 03:30 | what I want at all.
| | 03:31 | So up sampling your image is a
very bad idea when you're tracing.
| | 03:35 | You may want to down sample, but that's it.
| | 03:37 | In other words, you may want to
reduce that resolution value, you will not
| | 03:40 | want to increase it.
| | 03:41 | Anyway, I am going to go back up here
to my Tracing Options icon, click on it,
| | 03:46 | and I'll change that Resample value to
72, and to see the difference, this time
| | 03:51 | I will turn on the Preview check box,
and notice that all of my letters go ahead
| | 03:54 | and smooth out quite dramatically.
| | 03:57 | They also have this Blur value,
| | 03:58 | it is set to 0.2, because I start
things off using that Comic Art preset.
| | 04:04 | What Blur is doing is it's blurring the
original image in order to smooth over any defects.
| | 04:09 | Once again, if you have dust and
scratches from your scanned artwork, why then,
| | 04:13 | you can blur some of
those dust and scratches away.
| | 04:16 | I consider that to be a very sloppy solution.
| | 04:20 | You're much better off cleaning up
the artwork in Photoshop in advance.
| | 04:23 | If you apply much of a Blur value, for
example, I'll take this buy you up to 4
| | 04:28 | and press the Tab key, then you are
going to round off these letters like crazy.
| | 04:32 | They are going to get extremely gummy
indeed, and that goes for all of your
| | 04:36 | other artwork as well.
| | 04:37 | I would never, ever, ever take this
Blur value beyond 0, leave it set to 0 and
| | 04:42 | you're going to get the best results.
| | 04:44 | All right, there is one option
outstanding, over here on the left-hand side,
| | 04:47 | and that's palette.
| | 04:48 | Let me show you how that works.
| | 04:49 | I am going to go ahead and click the Trace
button in order to apply my settings so far.
| | 04:53 | Now you may recall, when we bumped up
the number of colors, we got all kinds
| | 04:57 | of weird colors inside of our traced artwork.
| | 05:00 | For example, if I take this Max Colors
value up to let's say 14, which is the
| | 05:05 | number of colors I really need, that's how
many colors are used in the original image.
| | 05:09 | So I'll go ahead and apply that value
and then we get all these Progress bars
| | 05:13 | and all these weird colors with all these sort
of additional edges going on that I don't want.
| | 05:19 | For example, around this 9, we
have got a couple of different edges.
| | 05:23 | Well, if you really want to isolate
exactly the colors that you used, it's a lot
| | 05:27 | of work, but what you can do is you can
turn off your Tracing results, you can
| | 05:32 | switch to Outlines or No Tracing
result whatever, and then bring back your
| | 05:36 | original image, which I already
have displayed, so that's good.
| | 05:40 | And then you would switch to the
Eyedropper tool, and you would click inside of one
| | 05:44 | of these characters in order to lift
its exact color, and that would nail that
| | 05:49 | color here inside the Color panel.
| | 05:51 | Then you would switch over to the
Swatches panel, you would add a new swatch for
| | 05:54 | that color and so on, and
add one swatch after another.
| | 05:58 | As I say, it's a big pain in the neck,
and then you have to save those swatches
| | 06:01 | out as an independent Swatch palette,
which you do by go into this little Folder
| | 06:06 | icon right there in the bottom-left
corner of the Swatches panel and then you
| | 06:10 | choose this very first command, Save Swatches.
| | 06:13 | What I want you to do is instead of
going through all those steps, might as well
| | 06:16 | just load the swatches I've created for
you, and it's a file called Twelve plus
| | 06:20 | BW, you'll go ahead and select the
Other Library command by the way.
| | 06:24 | Navigate into the 13_live_trace
folder, and then open this file, Twelve
| | 06:29 | plus B&W.ai. I am going to go ahead
and just select this option, because
| | 06:33 | I have opened the file in advance
and that gives me this palette of
| | 06:37 | swatches right here.
| | 06:38 | Now then, I can switch back to
Tracing Result, so I can see my tracing.
| | 06:43 | I can click on this little Tracing
Options dialog icon and I can say, okay, I
| | 06:49 | want to go ahead and use that Twelve
plus B&W palette, and that is 12 colors
| | 06:53 | plus black-and-white for a total of 14.
| | 06:55 | Max Colors is now going to be set to 14,
and it's going to be dimmed, because
| | 07:01 | that's the number of swatches that
are available inside this palette.
| | 07:05 | If I turn on the Preview check box, I
may or may not see some kind of change
| | 07:09 | happen in the background, in fact, I
do actually, and it's a good change.
| | 07:12 | So I have given the 9 a better color.
| | 07:15 | That isn't to say, I am necessarily
not to going to have any intermediate
| | 07:18 | paths, I may, but at least I will go
ahead and assign the proper colors to
| | 07:22 | the proper path, and now I'll click
on the Trace button, in order to apply
| | 07:27 | those settings for real, and let's go
ahead and zoom out from the artwork and
| | 07:29 | see what we have come up with.
| | 07:30 | Now it's very important that I not
only nailed every single color inside of
| | 07:36 | this image using that Eyedropper and
adding swatches to the Swatches panel, and
| | 07:40 | the whole number, but it was also
very important that I added a swatch for
| | 07:43 | black and for white.
| | 07:45 | You have to have those two swatches
in order to make this technique work.
| | 07:49 | Now I am not suggesting you are
going to do it very often, but those are
| | 07:53 | the various Raster settings that are
available inside the Tracing Options dialog box.
| | 07:57 | In the next exercise, I will
begin to show you the Vector settings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Ignore White option| 00:00 | I have saved my progress
as Letters in 14 colors.ai.
| | 00:04 | In this exercise I am going to
demonstrate what I consider to be the most
| | 00:07 | significant setting inside of the
Tracing Options dialog box, it's a check box
| | 00:11 | that goes by the name of Ignore White.
| | 00:14 | And it's very useful when you have a
bunch of black objects or colored objects
| | 00:19 | as well, against a white background.
| | 00:21 | Because otherwise what happens when
that check box is turned off as by default,
| | 00:26 | you trace the white areas as
well as all of the other colors.
| | 00:30 | So let me show you what that means,
I'll go up to the Expand button here in the
| | 00:34 | control panel and click on it.
| | 00:35 | So my live trace object is selected.
| | 00:38 | To convert it to static path outlines,
I will click on Expand and you can see
| | 00:42 | that along with all of my other path
outlines, I have this big rectangle
| | 00:46 | around my entire image.
| | 00:48 | Now if I twirl open the image layer,
I will see that I've got a group.
| | 00:51 | I want to get rid of that group, so I
can gain access to my individual objects.
| | 00:55 | So I will go up here to the Object
menu and I'll choose Ungroup or press
| | 00:59 | Ctrl+Shift+G, Cmd+Shift+G on the Mac
in order to ungroup my various objects.
| | 01:03 | Then I'll click off of the artwork to
deselect it, and I will hover over the
| | 01:08 | location where that
rectangle used to be a moment ago.
| | 01:11 | Then I can see a little black square
next to my cursor, so that tells me that
| | 01:14 | there is something under the cursor
that I can click on and select, and sure
| | 01:17 | enough it's this big huge mass of whiteness.
| | 01:20 | And notice if I move it to a different
location, I end up covering up some of
| | 01:24 | these letters such as the
black letters up at top.
| | 01:26 | There is no reason to have this path
outline, it's just a waste of time and it
| | 01:31 | would make editing my
artwork a lot more difficult.
| | 01:33 | So I could just press the Backspace Key or
the Delete Key on the Mac to get rid of it.
| | 01:36 | And then set about editing my remaining
letters or I could just not create that
| | 01:41 | path in the first place, so
let me show you how that works.
| | 01:45 | I will go up to the File menu and
choose the Revert command or press F12, then I
| | 01:48 | will say yes, I want to revert the
artwork to the saved version and that will
| | 01:53 | reinstate my traced object right there.
| | 01:55 | So I will go ahead and marquee it to select it.
| | 01:57 | Then I will go up to the control panel
and click on that Tracing options icon to
| | 02:01 | bring up the dialog box and
there's Ignore White right there.
| | 02:04 | But I want you to notice
something, before I turn it on;
| | 02:07 | I want you to see the statistics that are
located over here on the right side of the dialog box.
| | 02:12 | So I can see the number of path
outlines that I'll be creating if I were
| | 02:16 | to expand the artwork.
| | 02:18 | I'll see the number of anchor points,
that's fairly interesting I guess, that I
| | 02:21 | have 2800 and change anchor
points inside my artwork.
| | 02:25 | I've a total of 13 colors, even
though I specified 14, for some reason
| | 02:29 | Illustrator's seen fit to just apply 13
of them, one of them is white by the way.
| | 02:34 | I've got 261 areas. Now areas are areas
that have to be traced inside of the artwork.
| | 02:41 | Areas that Illustrator has computed, that is,
that it's isolated and it knows it needs to trace.
| | 02:46 | But it needs to trace them using 470
different path outlines, some of which are
| | 02:51 | sub paths inside of other paths.
| | 02:54 | And we will see that these numbers
change, well at least one of them does.
| | 02:57 | The paths number will change
dramatically when we turn on Ignore White.
| | 03:01 | And then we can see image PPI, that is
the image resolution is 72 pixels per inch.
| | 03:05 | All right, so I am going to turn on
Ignore White, and that's going to tell
| | 03:08 | Illustrator not to trace the white
regions, that didn't change my values at all
| | 03:13 | or my artwork and that's because
the Preview check box is not on.
| | 03:17 | In order to see the results of your
changes and in order to update the stats,
| | 03:21 | Preview has to be turned on.
| | 03:22 | So turn on that check box and
watch these values right here.
| | 03:25 | Watch how the Areas doesn't change at
all, because those are the areas that
| | 03:29 | need to be traced no matter what,
however, the number of paths just dropped
| | 03:32 | precipitously and we have far fewer anchor
points as well and we have one fewer color.
| | 03:37 | So instead of 13 colors, we now are
tracing 12 colors, because we're no
| | 03:41 | longer creating white.
| | 03:43 | And now if I go ahead and click the
Trace button in order to apply that setting,
| | 03:48 | then I am going to go ahead and
zoom in on my artwork right here.
| | 03:51 | And I want you to see how we can see
some pixels around each one of the letters.
| | 03:55 | I will go ahead and zoom in even
farther, that's because if I go up to the
| | 03:59 | jagged pyramid, I have the
original image lurking in the background;
| | 04:03 | that is where the preview is concerned.
| | 04:05 | And because there's no white to cover
up those edges, we can see those pixels.
| | 04:10 | All right now however, if I go ahead
and click on the Expand button, let's go
| | 04:14 | and zoom out a little bit here
so that we can see the results.
| | 04:17 | As soon as I click on Expand, where
formerly we had that big rectangle around
| | 04:22 | all the artwork, when I click on
expand now, there is no rectangle, the white
| | 04:26 | totally disappears, and we are just
left with our significant pieces of artwork
| | 04:30 | which are the letters themselves.
| | 04:32 | And the letters are treated as compound
paths, so Illustrator is not tempted to
| | 04:36 | fill the area inside the D for example
with white, not that it necessarily would
| | 04:40 | do that, but now it has no option other
than to create compound paths, that is
| | 04:46 | this area inside the D
cuts a hole in the outer path.
| | 04:49 | And that's how you use
that Ignore White check box.
| | 04:52 | I recommend that you go ahead and give
that one a try any time you are tracing
| | 04:56 | artwork, but particularly when you're
tracing black or colored objects against
| | 05:01 | a white background.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracing options: The vector functions| 00:00 | I have gone ahead and restored the saved
version of Letters in 14 colors.ai, and
| | 00:04 | in this exercise, I am going to
demonstrate the other vector settings inside of
| | 00:08 | the Tracing Options dialog box, those
settings that determine how Illustrator
| | 00:13 | generates the vector-based artwork.
| | 00:15 | So with my artwork selected, with the
tracing object selected, that is, I'm
| | 00:19 | going to go ahead and zoom in on my
artwork a little so I can see it with a
| | 00:23 | little more clarity here, because we
are going to have to see some of these
| | 00:26 | letters a little more closely
to understand what's going on.
| | 00:29 | And then I will click on this Tracing
Options icon in the Control panel to bring
| | 00:32 | up the Tracing Options dialog box.
| | 00:34 | You may recall these options on the
right side of the dialog box, determine
| | 00:38 | how Illustrator generates
the vector-based path outlines.
| | 00:42 | We will start things off by turning on
Ignore White, so that we're no longer
| | 00:46 | tracing the white portions of the image.
| | 00:47 | We've already seen minimum area,
that's that option right there, Min Area, that
| | 00:51 | appears in the Control panel.
| | 00:53 | We are going to address the others in
the opposite order that they appear.
| | 00:56 | Starting with Corner Angle, now to see
how these options affect the artwork, we
| | 01:00 | need to turn on the Preview check box.
| | 01:02 | That's going to allow us to see
through to the image in the background, so I
| | 01:06 | need to change my view here, the Raster
pop-up menu setting, from Original Image
| | 01:11 | to No Image so that image is
hidden, so its not getting in the way.
| | 01:15 | Corner Angle determines where
Illustrator creates corner points.
| | 01:19 | So right now it's set to 20 degrees, which
is saying, if any two portions of the
| | 01:24 | image meet at 20 degrees or greater,
Illustrator will go ahead and assign a corner
| | 01:30 | point at that location.
| | 01:31 | If you want fewer corner points, that is,
more smooth points, you could raise this value.
| | 01:35 | For example, I could take it all the way
out to 180, which would be fairly insane,
| | 01:39 | because that means that some portion of
the image has to immediately backtrack
| | 01:43 | on itself in order to get a corner point.
| | 01:46 | And if I press the Tab Key, then we are
going to get some very doughy results.
| | 01:50 | So we get smooth points throughout the artwork.
| | 01:52 | We are also very possibly going to get
more anchor points inside the artwork as well.
| | 01:57 | So that's probably going to
take the anchor point's value up.
| | 02:00 | In my case, I really don't want
the letters to be that rounded, so I am
| | 02:02 | going to take the value down to 45 degrees,
so a diagonal portion of the artwork will
| | 02:07 | get a corner point and we do get
fewer anchor points as a result.
| | 02:12 | Also, move up to Path Fitting.
| | 02:13 | Now this value here determines how
closely Illustrator has to match the
| | 02:18 | pixel-based artwork.
| | 02:19 | Right now, it can round off any two pixels.
| | 02:23 | So obviously if I take this value up,
let's say I take it up to 10 pixels, then
| | 02:27 | we are going to get more
generalized artwork as you're seeing here.
| | 02:30 | We are also going to get fewer anchor points,
so that's going to simplify the artwork.
| | 02:33 | What you might figure is because this
is a no noise image that I created inside
| | 02:39 | of Photoshop, so there's really no
portion of the artwork that I want to ignore.
| | 02:42 | You might assume that you'd want to
take the Path Fitting value down to
| | 02:46 | its absolute minimum.
| | 02:47 | So we are matching the bitmapped
information as closely as possible.
| | 02:51 | But if I take that Path Fitting value
down to zero, notice that Illustrator goes
| | 02:55 | ahead and takes the anchor points,
notice right now it's 1127, it takes the
| | 02:59 | anchor points up, so we have
way more anchor points now.
| | 03:02 | And we have very jagged results,
because Illustrator is tracing each and
| | 03:07 | every pixel meticulously.
| | 03:09 | That's not what we want at
all, you want some rounding.
| | 03:12 | So I recommend, unless you are
otherwise, inclined that you leave this Path
| | 03:15 | Setting value at 2 pixels.
| | 03:17 | All right, now finally, we have got
these Fills and Strokes options up here and
| | 03:21 | they are kind of odd.
| | 03:22 | Notice that Fills is turned on by
default and that means that you're tracing path
| | 03:26 | outlines that are filled with
some color, no stroking is applied.
| | 03:30 | Currently, these options are not
available to me, they're dimmed, and that's
| | 03:34 | because mode is set to color.
| | 03:35 | I have to change the mode to Black and
White for those options to be available to me.
| | 03:39 | So I will go ahead and switch to Black and White,
which is what I ultimately want anyway.
| | 03:43 | I am going to take the threshold
value up to 222, that magic number that
| | 03:47 | ensures that we don't trace the yellow, but
we thicken up the letters as much as possible.
| | 03:50 | I will leave these other values set
as is, and then I am going to switch
| | 03:55 | from just Filled artwork to just Stroked
artwork, so we can see the big difference here.
| | 04:00 | I will turn off Fills, and when I do,
one of these check boxes has to be on, you
| | 04:04 | can have both on, but one of them has to be on.
| | 04:06 | So if you turn off Fills, then Strokes
will turn on automatically, and now we
| | 04:10 | have just Stroked artwork, no
Fill is going on whatsoever.
| | 04:13 | So we either have big thick strokes or
very thin strokes outlining the letters.
| | 04:18 | If you want to have more thick strokes
then you can raise this Max Stroke Weight
| | 04:22 | value, and I am going to take it up
to 30, and then press the Tab Key.
| | 04:26 | Down here, this guy is Min Stroke Length,
notice that its not weight, its length
| | 04:30 | this time, and what that does is
it tells Illustrator that it can go ahead
| | 04:34 | and trace very short outlines, because
otherwise, notice what's happened to the
| | 04:38 | Ks over here, in this row and the
one above it, they've become very dinky
| | 04:42 | indeed and I've lost my Hs as well
and a bunch of other letters over here.
| | 04:46 | If you set this Min Stroke Length
value to 0, then you will trace as much as
| | 04:51 | possible inside of the artwork.
| | 04:53 | And so we go ahead and
reinstate those missing letters.
| | 04:56 | Problem is that all we have is Strokes,
and that's going to make our artwork
| | 05:00 | very difficult to edit,
| | 05:02 | for one thing. And also, not quite
representative, because all the strokes are
| | 05:05 | uniform, so we have these thick,
clumpy letters, which is not what I want.
| | 05:10 | So I am going to turn Strokes off,
which is going to automatically turn Fills
| | 05:13 | back on, and these are, by the way, the
values that I want to assign throughout
| | 05:18 | this artwork, except for our
Min area, should be taken down.
| | 05:22 | I am going to take that value down to
2 pixels and then press the Tab Key in
| | 05:25 | order to update my artwork.
| | 05:26 | So I will be creating 208 paths altogether.
| | 05:29 | And I'm only tracing black this time
around, I am not tracing white, so there is
| | 05:33 | just one color, and because I really
favor these settings, I think they are
| | 05:37 | going to work out very well for me.
| | 05:39 | I would like to go ahead and save a preset.
| | 05:40 | So I will click on the Save Preset button,
and this is a preset that will appear
| | 05:45 | here at the top of the
Tracing Options dialog box.
| | 05:48 | It will also appear here inside the
Control panel, and I am going to call this
| | 05:52 | guy Compound blacks.
| | 05:53 | Now that may seem like a strange name,
but basically because I have Ignore White
| | 05:58 | turned on, each and every path
outlined where a hole occurs, is going to be
| | 06:02 | treated as a compound path.
| | 06:04 | And I'm only tracing black, so that's
why I am calling it Compound blacks.
| | 06:07 | I will click OK, Compound blacks now
appears as a present in the top left
| | 06:12 | corner of the dialog box.
| | 06:13 | I will now click on the Trace button in
order to apply that setting and I'm also
| | 06:18 | seeing Compound blacks up
here in my Preset pop-up menu.
| | 06:22 | So I have now traced the letters
exactly the way I want them to be traced.
| | 06:26 | You might look at this and say,
well, what about the colors Deke?
| | 06:28 | You just dropped out all of those colors
that were assigned to the original image.
| | 06:32 | Well, I'll show you how to reinstate
those colors to the expanded path
| | 06:36 | outlines in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Expanding traced artwork| 00:00 | I saved my progress as Compound blacks.ai,
so called, because I have traced my
| | 00:04 | image using the Compound blacks Preset that I
created at the end of the previous exercise.
| | 00:10 | In this exercise, we are going to go
ahead and expand this live trace object
| | 00:14 | and modify the results, so that we regain the
colors that were associated with all the letters.
| | 00:18 | We've lost the yellow background,
but everybody else is intact here.
| | 00:23 | So with the live trace object selected,
I'll go up to the Control panel and
| | 00:26 | click on the Expand button and now we've got
our individual path outlines right ready to go.
| | 00:31 | I will go ahead and twirl open the
Image layer, so that you can see that
| | 00:35 | we have a group going.
| | 00:36 | So I will go up to the Object menu, it's
just going to make things easier if I
| | 00:39 | ungroup these letters by choosing the
Ungroup command, or pressing Ctrl+Shift+G,
| | 00:43 | Cmd+shift+G on the Mac, and
then I will select the various rows and
| | 00:48 | reassign their colors.
| | 00:49 | So for example, the top couple of rows
were already black, so we can leave them
| | 00:53 | alone, but I will marquee this
next row down and it should be red.
| | 00:57 | But I don't have access to that red
here in the Swatches panel, I went ahead
| | 01:00 | and saved that off as an independent
Swatches palette, and to get to that I'll go to
| | 01:06 | my little folder icon down here in
the bottom left corner of the Swatches
| | 01:09 | panel, and I'll choose Twelve plus BW, that's
Twelve plus BW.ai file that's available to you.
| | 01:16 | If you need to open it up, you can choose
Other Library and navigate to that folder.
| | 01:20 | I will just go ahead and choose this
command though, because I've already opened
| | 01:23 | it up in advance and I've also switched
my display to medium thumbnail view, so
| | 01:28 | that I can better see
each one of my swatches here.
| | 01:31 | And I am going to make my panel a little
wider, I think, so that I can see every
| | 01:35 | single one of the swatches in a single row.
| | 01:37 | All right, with these letters selected,
I will make sure that my Fill is active,
| | 01:42 | which it is, here inside the Color panel,
and I will click on this first swatch
| | 01:45 | in this folder, which is called red type,
and that will go ahead and assign the
| | 01:49 | correct shade of red.
| | 01:50 | Then I'll go ahead and select the next
row down and assign the blue color to
| | 01:54 | that, and then I will select the next row
after that and assign green, you get the idea here.
| | 01:59 | This guy is a little more complicated to select,
it looks like I might have got it actually.
| | 02:04 | It's the three little items above the
O here that are kind of hard to select
| | 02:09 | without selecting
something up above, but I got him.
| | 02:11 | So now I will just go ahead and
assign orange, and where the punctuation is
| | 02:14 | concerned, I assigned this color right
there, which is called violet punc, so
| | 02:19 | I'll go ahead and assign that color.
| | 02:21 | And then I will grab these symbols
including the ampersand, this alternate
| | 02:25 | ampersand there, and I
will assign purple symbols.
| | 02:28 | And then all these browns are
assigned to the numbers, so both 1 and 6 are
| | 02:33 | colored with brown 1 or at least they
should be, and then 2 and 7 should be
| | 02:38 | colored with brown 2, and so forth.
| | 02:41 | So we've got 3 and 8, which need to be
colored with brown 3 right there, and then
| | 02:46 | 4 and 9, which need to be colored with
brown 4, and then I'll grab 5 and 0, and I
| | 02:52 | will go ahead and assign brown 5.
| | 02:54 | Now it wasn't necessary that I assign
each and every one of those colors, but
| | 02:57 | that's how the artwork looked
when I created it inside of Photoshop.
| | 03:01 | So it's right ready to go.
| | 03:02 | Now, the question at this point
becomes, do you want to do anymore editing?
| | 03:05 | Do you want to go into the
path outlines and modify them?
| | 03:08 | For example, let's check out this S
right here, notice by the way that the D has
| | 03:14 | come out fairly smooth, we don't have
that little nick at the top of it, we
| | 03:17 | don't have the nick at the bottom of
the E, so somehow along the way we lost
| | 03:20 | those little items, which is great.
| | 03:22 | I am going to click on the outline of the S,
and notice how it kind of bobs up right there?
| | 03:26 | Well, you could go in there with the
White Arrow tool and modify that anchor
| | 03:30 | point independently of the others, or
you could delete it if you wanted to.
| | 03:33 | If you just wanted to get rid of that
weird anchor point, you can click on
| | 03:36 | it with the Pen tool.
| | 03:37 | I am going to show you another
tool that's available to you.
| | 03:39 | Here in the Pencil tool slot, there's
this great tool on the flyout menu called
| | 03:43 | the Smooth Tool, and what it allows you
to do, is just drag over an area in order
| | 03:48 | to smooth out any lumps
inside of the path outline.
| | 03:52 | And you may have to drag repeatedly
along your path outline in order to smooth
| | 03:57 | away the lumps that you don't want, but
it's a lot easier than having to figure
| | 04:01 | out what to do with your White Arrow
tool and your Pen tool, because it doesn't
| | 04:05 | require any thought, you just sit there
and drag a bunch of times, until you
| | 04:08 | get the results you are looking for.
| | 04:10 | So for example, consider the B, notice
that it has this weird corner right there
| | 04:13 | on the interior of the bottom outline.
| | 04:15 | I am going to go ahead and select
that B by Ctrl+clicking on it or
| | 04:19 | Cmd+clicking, so you have to select
the path outline before you smooth it.
| | 04:23 | Then you just kind of drag in the
general sort of direction of your smoothing,
| | 04:28 | you don't have to drag exactly along the
path outline, what you really do is you
| | 04:31 | drag more or less along the area that
you would like the smoothing to occur.
| | 04:35 | Anyway, that just gives you a sense
for the various things you can do to your
| | 04:40 | path outlines after you get done tracing them.
| | 04:42 | What I would now recommend you to do is
go to the File menu and choose the Save
| | 04:46 | As command, so that you can save
your artwork under a different name.
| | 04:49 | That way you still have your live trace
object saved inside of one illustration
| | 04:54 | and then you have your static path
outlines that you can edit to your heart's
| | 04:58 | content saved inside of another document.
| | 05:01 | In the next exercise, we are going to
begin work on the Pirate Flag project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sketching and drawing for Illustrator| 00:00 | Over the course of this project we're
going to assemble a vector-based pirate
| | 00:03 | flag inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:06 | I'm currently viewing the flag,
the final piece of flag art.
| | 00:08 | It measures 5 feet wide by 3 feet tall.
| | 00:11 | So it's very large.
| | 00:12 | It's ultimately a product of
Illustrator's Live Trace feature, but if you've
| | 00:17 | ever thought of Live Trace as being some
sort of automatic art creation tool, it
| | 00:21 | is nothing of the kind,
as you're about to learn.
| | 00:24 | This project involves every bit as
much artistic labor as working with
| | 00:29 | something like the Pen tool.
| | 00:30 | Note that this is an entirely original project.
| | 00:33 | So you are more than welcome to use it
any way, shape, or form that you see fit,
| | 00:37 | with one provision, you've got to earn
it, you've got to create this project
| | 00:41 | along with me from the very beginning.
| | 00:44 | So I'm going to show you how I sketched
this artwork in the first place and how
| | 00:47 | I assembled the imagery inside of
Photoshop before we bring it over into
| | 00:52 | Illustrator for tracing.
| | 00:53 | So I'm going to switch over
to Photoshop right now in fact.
| | 00:56 | I have it running in the background.
| | 00:57 | I have got open a series of five images
that represent my progress as I developed
| | 01:03 | this image here inside Photoshop.
| | 01:05 | I started things off with this image here.
| | 01:07 | It's a ballpoint pen sketch.
| | 01:09 | So I just took a pen and began
sketching this on a piece of paper.
| | 01:13 | I was working from a few photographs
that I had of skulls, but I had to sort of
| | 01:17 | mix and match the skulls
to come up with this image.
| | 01:20 | And notice that some of the
contours along this goal are fairly
| | 01:22 | realistically rendered.
| | 01:24 | For example, the eye sockets, and the
cheekbones, this hole for the nose and so on.
| | 01:29 | I didn't really pay that
much attention to the teeth.
| | 01:31 | I just kind of whipped them in.
| | 01:32 | I don't even know how many teeth there are.
| | 01:34 | Obviously, an object without any ears isn't
really going to be able to hold on to earrings.
| | 01:39 | So I took some artistic license. We have
some ghost eyes on the inside and so on.
| | 01:44 | Now, I couldn't just work with this
ballpoint pen sketch, even though I did go
| | 01:48 | ahead and scan it in, just so that you
can see it here, I didn't actually bring
| | 01:52 | it into Illustrator, because
Illustrator's Live Trace feature would try to trace
| | 01:56 | each and every one of these scribbly lines.
| | 01:58 | So somehow I had to take this sketch
and turn it into an ink drawing that
| | 02:04 | featured all of the scribbly stuff
in black and everything else in white.
| | 02:08 | And that's how I came up
with this rendering here.
| | 02:10 | So this is a separate piece of paper,
just laid it on top of the first one and
| | 02:14 | traced the skull using a Sharpie, and
that's all that's going on in this case.
| | 02:18 | Now, I didn't even have a light table to
work with, so I ended up having to lift
| | 02:22 | the page several times in order to keep
track of the original sketch, so that I
| | 02:25 | was matching the details.
| | 02:27 | That doesn't mean that I necessarily
came up with an impeccable piece of art.
| | 02:30 | You'll notice here, among other things,
that this eye is slightly smaller and
| | 02:35 | sort of more scrunched than the
eye over here on the right-hand side.
| | 02:38 | So I needed to open it up and make
some alterations to the image in general.
| | 02:42 | I also needed to blacken up the lines.
| | 02:44 | If I zoom into this artwork, you'll
see that the lines aren't exactly black,
| | 02:49 | they're very, very, dark gray, but
we do have some light area showing up.
| | 02:53 | And the page isn't absolutely white either.
| | 02:55 | It's a very light gray.
| | 02:57 | So I needed to increase the contrast and
make some alterations all the way around.
| | 03:01 | We have some paper wrinkles
back here inside the earring.
| | 03:05 | And if I zoom all the back out, you'll
see that I captured the edges of the page
| | 03:09 | as well when I scanned this piece of artwork.
| | 03:12 | The other big thing that's missing here,
you may notice, is there are no sabers.
| | 03:17 | I've got the skull drawn but I do not
have the sabers rendered in the background.
| | 03:21 | I knew I wanted to use sabers, I
wanted to have nice sharp sabers instead of
| | 03:25 | crossbones, for example.
| | 03:26 | However, I didn't have room to add them
to the piece of artwork, because I drew
| | 03:29 | the face too big in the first place.
| | 03:31 | Now, I could have drawn on a bigger
piece of paper, which would require me
| | 03:35 | taking a second approach to the
project, I didn't want to do that.
| | 03:38 | But also, this was a small scanner.
| | 03:40 | It only accepted letter-size pieces of paper.
| | 03:42 | So I had to fit everything on that
page, which means that what I ultimately
| | 03:47 | needed to do was take this skull and
shrink it, which is something that's
| | 03:50 | hard to do in the real world, whereas, once
you take it into Photoshop, it's no problem.
| | 03:55 | So I went ahead and took this original
piece of Sharpie art and I converted it
| | 03:59 | into this here inside Photoshop.
| | 04:02 | So it doesn't look all that different,
however, the lines are nice and black,
| | 04:05 | the paper is nice and white.
| | 04:07 | We don't have any of those paper edges
showing up, and the eyes are rendered a
| | 04:11 | little more proportionally vis-a-vis
each other and the larger skull as well.
| | 04:15 | I did that using the Liquify command,
and we'll see how that works later, I'll
| | 04:19 | run you through the entire process.
| | 04:21 | But the other thing I wanted you to see
was, at this point I went ahead and took
| | 04:24 | this image, and I went up to the
File menu and I chose the Print command.
| | 04:29 | And it's very important that
you use a halfway decent printer.
| | 04:32 | I tried printing this to one of
the black-and-white laser printers here
| | 04:34 | inside the building and I ended up
getting a bunch of white lines through the
| | 04:38 | black art, and that wasn't going to
work at all, because ultimately, I need to
| | 04:42 | shrink this guy down and then
draw the sabers in the background.
| | 04:46 | So I ended up going with this Ricoh
printer, this full-color printer in the
| | 04:49 | building and it worked out spectacularly well.
| | 04:52 | Also, notice that I scaled the image to
76% roughly, and I also turned off the
| | 04:59 | Center Image check box, and I moved the
image around to center it on the page,
| | 05:03 | so that I would have room to draw my
sabers, and then I went ahead and printed
| | 05:07 | the artwork, and then I drew on that.
| | 05:09 | Anyway, I'm going to click Done for now,
just to escape out of that dialog box,
| | 05:12 | and I'll switch to the next piece of artwork.
| | 05:14 | So this one shows the skull as it
appeared when printed, and then I painted the
| | 05:19 | sabers in using the Sharpie once again.
| | 05:22 | Notice I also filled in the mouth.
| | 05:24 | So if I zoom in on that mouth, you can
see that this area was drawn in using the
| | 05:28 | Sharpie, where the rest of the
black was created by the printer itself.
| | 05:32 | That doesn't mean anything is quite black,
and again, the paper isn't quite white.
| | 05:37 | So we still need to darken up the details.
| | 05:39 | And I wanted to make some
additional modifications to the art.
| | 05:42 | For example, I'm not happy with the
fact that the handle of this saber is
| | 05:47 | touching the jaw, that's not
something I meant to see happen.
| | 05:50 | And there's a few other
details that need adjustments.
| | 05:53 | The eye is still not quite right.
| | 05:54 | This blade is too thin, you may notice.
| | 05:57 | And so there were some changes I
needed to make inside of Photoshop before I
| | 06:01 | got this final piece of artwork here,
with the nice black lines, the white areas
| | 06:06 | inside the skull, the red background, the red
eyes as well, and a few other details going on.
| | 06:11 | What I am going to do is I am going
to walk you through the process of
| | 06:14 | converting this piece of artwork here,
my final Sharpie drawing, to this final
| | 06:20 | imagery here inside of
Photoshop, in the very next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing scanned line art| 00:00 | In this movie I am going to
demonstrate how to take a traditional line
| | 00:03 | drawing and develop it inside of Photoshop
so that you can later trace it in Illustrator.
| | 00:08 | So what we will be doing is we will
take this image and you may recall that it
| | 00:13 | was a two-part process.
| | 00:14 | I drew the skull first and then I
scanned it in the Photoshop, made some
| | 00:17 | modifications, printed the skull at a
reduced size so that I could draw these
| | 00:21 | sabers in the background in a second pass.
| | 00:24 | Everything was rendered with a Sharpie, however.
| | 00:26 | So we don't have as much contrast as I
would like, and not only that, I want to
| | 00:30 | make some modifications too.
| | 00:31 | This is the time to do it inside of
Photoshop before you trace the line art
| | 00:36 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:37 | You can always make more modifications
inside Illustrator if you want to, but
| | 00:41 | you might, as well get things as close to
right as possible inside of Photoshop now.
| | 00:47 | I ultimately want to come
up with this result here.
| | 00:50 | Now you might look at this image once
again here inside Photoshop and think well
| | 00:54 | gosh, this looks just fine.
| | 00:56 | Why do we need to take it
into Illustrator at all?
| | 00:59 | Well, recall that I drew this image on
an 8.5x11 inch sheet of paper, and I want
| | 01:04 | to print the flag 5 feet wide by 3 feet tall.
| | 01:07 | That's a huge increase in size.
| | 01:09 | So if I were to go up to the Image menu,
for example, and choose the Image Size
| | 01:13 | command, and I turn off the Resample
Image check box for a moment, so I can
| | 01:18 | just dial in a different size without
adding pixels, I will change this value
| | 01:22 | to 60 inches, let's say, which is 5
feet wide and that reduces the resolution
| | 01:27 | to 60 pixels per inch.
| | 01:29 | Well that's just not enough resolution.
| | 01:32 | So I am going to Cancel out of there.
| | 01:34 | Photoshop allows you to up sample an
image, but it's not going to do a good job
| | 01:37 | of inventing pixels, especially, if the
transitions between the existing pixels
| | 01:41 | are a little soft in the first place.
| | 01:43 | So I have zoomed in to 100% here, and
you can see these are typical Sharpie
| | 01:47 | lines, that is the ink is bleeding into
the paper a little bit and we have sort
| | 01:51 | of these thick and gooey edges.
| | 01:53 | I would rather these edges be absolutely
razor-sharp, and that is a service that
| | 01:58 | Illustrator affords me.
| | 01:59 | That's what we get from vectors.
| | 02:00 | All right, I am going to zoom
back out of this illustration.
| | 02:04 | We are going to start
things off inside of this one.
| | 02:06 | So I am going to develop this
guy, and I am going to make a few
| | 02:09 | different modifications.
| | 02:11 | I'm going to adjust the angle of this
handle so that it's not touching the
| | 02:14 | jaw of the skeleton, and then, I'm
going to basically finesse the structure
| | 02:20 | of the skull using the Liquefy command,
and then finally we'll go ahead and
| | 02:24 | increase the contrast.
| | 02:25 | So I am going to zoom in on the handle
of this saber, and I am going to go ahead
| | 02:30 | and select it using my Lasso tool.
| | 02:32 | Now one of the great things here is
that because I output the skull from a
| | 02:37 | printer and then I drew the handle
using a Sharpie, I can see the distinction
| | 02:43 | between those two areas.
| | 02:44 | So I can just follow that.
| | 02:45 | I can actually trace that edge using the Lasso.
| | 02:47 | So I'm Alt+clicking or Option+
clicking along this edge in order to take
| | 02:51 | advantage of the Polygonal Lasso
function and I will just go ahead and cut
| | 02:54 | through the first few millimeters of
the blade there around the handle, and
| | 02:59 | that's okay, because I can always
rebuild those details in just a moment, and
| | 03:02 | then I will go ahead and drag down to
here and complete my selection, like so.
| | 03:07 | Now I am working on a Background
layer, so what that means is as long as the
| | 03:11 | background color is white, which it is
in my case, I will leave some whiteness
| | 03:15 | behind as I rotate this
handle into a better position.
| | 03:19 | So I am going to zoom out just so I
can see the angle of the saber blade a
| | 03:22 | little bit better, and then I'll go up
to the Edit menu, and I will choose the
| | 03:26 | Free Transform command.
| | 03:28 | This one command is how you scale and
rotate and otherwise transform selections
| | 03:33 | and layers inside of Photoshop.
| | 03:34 | You can also press Ctrl+T,
that's Cmd+T on the Mac.
| | 03:37 | I am going to move this central target
point to right about there, so that we
| | 03:41 | are rotating along that edge of the
blade, and now, I will move my cursor
| | 03:45 | outside of the selection, and I will
drag like so in order to apply that
| | 03:49 | rotation and I want to rotate it as far
as I can essentially, because I really
| | 03:54 | want to get this edge away from the jaw,
but I don't want to rotate it so far
| | 03:58 | that it looks like the angle
no longer matches the blade.
| | 04:01 | So I think right about here looks
pretty darn good actually, and I will just
| | 04:04 | go ahead and press the Enter or the Return on
the Mac in order to accept that modification.
| | 04:08 | Then I will click outside of the
selection in order to deselect it.
| | 04:12 | Now I have got to rebuild
these details right here.
| | 04:15 | I am going to do that just by
selecting some areas and either pressing
| | 04:18 | Ctrl+Backspace or Cmd+Delete on
the Mac to fill that area with white, or
| | 04:24 | I could draw around here, this areas
that should be black, and I've got my
| | 04:28 | foreground and background colors set to
their defaults, which are black and white.
| | 04:31 | You can assure that that's the way it
is by pressing the D key as in Default.
| | 04:35 | And then press Alt+Backspace or Option
+Delete to fill that area with black.
| | 04:39 | Now you might look at that and say,
well, that's not a good match Deke.
| | 04:42 | We have got this jet black area that
you just filled, and then out here we have
| | 04:46 | this dark gray area.
| | 04:47 | Well, the dark gray area
will be black before we're done.
| | 04:51 | We will increase the contrast of this
image using Levels command, just not yet.
| | 04:55 | It's better to get his
other work done beforehand.
| | 04:57 | I will go ahead and drag around this
area and maybe I'll try to firm that up a
| | 05:02 | little bit by Alt+dragging or Option+
dragging to deselect that region there, and
| | 05:07 | I will fill that area with black
as well by pressing Alt+Backspace or
| | 05:09 | Option+Delete, and I'll go
ahead and connect this area.
| | 05:13 | You might wonder why am l using the
Lasso tool and filling by pressing
| | 05:17 | Alt+Backspace or Option+Delete?
| | 05:18 | Why don't I just grab Paintbrush
tool and paint with it instead?
| | 05:22 | Well, I just find, for this kind of
work that the Lasso tool gives me greater
| | 05:26 | control, because I can specify the size
of the area that I want to fill before I
| | 05:30 | go and apply the color.
| | 05:31 | Anyway, now I have gone ahead and added
the color that's necessary to fuse those
| | 05:36 | areas together and that should work out okay.
| | 05:38 | We have got some weird little edges going on
there, but nothing that troubles me too much.
| | 05:42 | Now then, I need to make some changes using Liquefy, and
here's a little trick, and this is an old-school trick.
| | 05:49 | Basically the idea is as you develop a
piece of artwork, as you're drawing it,
| | 05:53 | you tend to become accustomed to it.
You sort of fall in love with it.
| | 05:57 | You grow to know the good things about
it, but you don't necessarily see the
| | 06:01 | defects. And a way to wake up the image,
so that you're taking a new look at it,
| | 06:04 | it's very simple technique.
| | 06:06 | You go up to the Image menu, you
choose Image Rotation, and you choose Flip
| | 06:10 | Canvas horizontal, and what that does
is it just forces you to take a new look
| | 06:16 | at this image, because it doesn't
really matter if it's flipped one direction
| | 06:20 | or flipped the other direction, that
doesn't change the basic composition of
| | 06:22 | the image, but it does force you to
reappraise it, and this is true for
| | 06:26 | portrait shots as well.
| | 06:27 | It's a great thing to do if
you're retouching a portrait.
| | 06:30 | Just go and flip it horizontally,
forces you to take a new view of that image,
| | 06:34 | and then go ahead and modify
the flipped version of the image.
| | 06:37 | Now I am going to do that by going to
the Filter menu and choosing the Liquefy
| | 06:41 | command or pressing Ctrl+Shift+
X, Cmd+Shift+X on the Mac.
| | 06:44 | We usually think of this command as
being useful for adjusting portrait shots
| | 06:49 | and models and that kind of thing.
| | 06:50 | It's actually exceptionally well
suited to modifying line art like this.
| | 06:56 | So I will go ahead and choose the command.
| | 06:57 | And the first thing I noticed when I
was working here inside of Liquefy is
| | 07:01 | that the blade over your right-hand side is
much thicker than the blade on the left-hand side.
| | 07:06 | So I increased the size of my cursor
quite a bit and I am doing that by pressing
| | 07:11 | Shift along with the Right Bracket
key, and then I grabbed this tool right
| | 07:15 | there, the Bloat tool, and you don't
want to just drag with this tool because
| | 07:19 | you get that kind of horrible effect there.
| | 07:20 | Instead what you do, I undid that by
pressing Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z on the Mac,
| | 07:24 | you just kind of click every so often in order
to basically bulge out certain areas at a time.
| | 07:32 | So you just click very gently on
the blade, you have to be pretty
| | 07:36 | deliberate about it.
| | 07:37 | You do have to be patient as well in
order to get the results you are looking for.
| | 07:41 | I also went ahead and increased the
size once again of my cursor and I used the
| | 07:46 | traditional Warp tool up here in
order to move some details around.
| | 07:51 | So I decided this eye over here on
the left-hand side was looking too small,
| | 07:55 | vis-a-vis the one over on the right-hand
side, and I wanted to draw out some of
| | 07:59 | these cheek details as well, and I
wanted to make the jaw a little taller like
| | 08:04 | so, and I took it a little easier than this.
| | 08:07 | I actually probably painted inside of
this dialog box for a good 15 minutes.
| | 08:12 | I did go and ahead and save out my settings.
| | 08:14 | I saved my mesh, which is always a good idea.
| | 08:17 | Once you get some decent results out
of this filter, you want to click on the
| | 08:20 | Save Mesh button before you click OK,
before you accept the results, and that's
| | 08:24 | going to save you a lot of effort in the future.
| | 08:27 | Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and load
that mesh right now, the one that I saved
| | 08:30 | in advance, and I called my
mesh skeletal adjustments.msh.
| | 08:33 | So I will go ahead and click on a
saved mesh file and then I will click on
| | 08:36 | the Open button in order to apply it and
there is the final meshed version of the image.
| | 08:42 | So to give you a sense of what I did, I
will press Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z on the Mac.
| | 08:45 | This is the before version, what we were
looking at just a moment ago, and if I
| | 08:49 | press Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z
again, that's the after version,
| | 08:52 | thanks to my modifications
here inside the Liquefy filter.
| | 08:55 | I will go ahead and click OK in order
to apply those changes. And then finally,
| | 08:59 | I'll go back up to the Image menu, I
will choose Image Rotation again and I will
| | 09:03 | choose Flip Image Horizontal.
| | 09:05 | And note that flipping is a
nondestructive operation inside of Photoshop.
| | 09:09 | So I will go ahead and choose the
command in order to reinstate the skeleton
| | 09:13 | looking to the right.
| | 09:14 | We still have yet to increase the
contrast of the image, and we need to add the
| | 09:18 | red background, and those are changes
that we will make in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding contrast and color| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to take this
skull, this adjusted skull art, and we are
| | 00:04 | going to increase the contrast so that
we have jet blacks against an absolutely
| | 00:08 | white background, and then we're going
to add in all the red that's required to
| | 00:12 | paint the background flag.
| | 00:13 | The red that occurs out here in the
larger background that shows up inside of
| | 00:18 | the various elements here, inside of the
handles of the saber, inside of the earrings,
| | 00:22 | and then of course the ghostly red eyes.
| | 00:25 | We need to paint those in as well.
| | 00:27 | I've gone ahead and saved my
changes from the previous exercise as
| | 00:30 | Adjusted line art.tif.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to take this artwork and the
first thing I'm going to do is increase
| | 00:35 | its contrast by going up to the Image
menu and choosing adjustments and then
| | 00:39 | choosing the Levels command or you
can press Ctrl+L, Cmd+L on the Mac.
| | 00:43 | Bear in mind that this
applies a static color adjustment.
| | 00:47 | So that we're really modifying the
pixels inside of this image, which is
| | 00:51 | perfectly acceptable.
| | 00:52 | There's no reason to resort to an
adjustment layer for this effect.
| | 00:56 | Now, I want you to check
out this histogram here.
| | 00:58 | The histogram shows all the
luminance levels from black over here on the
| | 01:01 | left-hand side to white
over here on right-hand side.
| | 01:05 | These lumps are populations of Luminance levels.
| | 01:08 | So we have a lot of dark Luminance
levels right over here and then we've got a
| | 01:12 | bunch of light ones over
here on right-hand side.
| | 01:14 | What we want is absolute blacks and whites.
| | 01:17 | So we want to clip all of this shadow
detail and all this highlight detail.
| | 01:21 | So when you're increasing the Contrast
of a piece of line art like this one,
| | 01:25 | you want to go ahead and take this
black point slider all the way over to the
| | 01:29 | right-hand side of the shadow lump.
| | 01:32 | So you want to isolate where that
shadow lump is and take this guy well to the
| | 01:36 | right of it, so a few clicks over.
| | 01:38 | So in my case I'm settings this black
point value to a 100, which means that any
| | 01:42 | Luminance level of a hundred or darker is
going to become black, which is zero, by the way.
| | 01:48 | Then I am going to take this white
point slider all the way to the left-hand
| | 01:51 | side of the big highlight
hump over here on the right.
| | 01:55 | So, I'll take it over to about 200 let's say.
| | 01:59 | So anything with a Luminance level
of 200 or brighter is going to become
| | 02:02 | white and as a result we have some very
black line art against a very white background.
| | 02:07 | I'll go ahead and click OK in
order to accept that modification.
| | 02:10 | Then what you want to do is go ahead
and zoom in on your art and make sure that
| | 02:14 | you don't have any jagged transitions.
| | 02:17 | There should be nice sharp transitions
but you don't want any jagged pixels.
| | 02:21 | In our case we're fine.
| | 02:22 | If you do have jagged pixels, you
would want to go ahead and undo the
| | 02:25 | application of Levels and take a new
approach in which you don't quite make as
| | 02:30 | much black or white.
| | 02:32 | So you'd want to clip fewer colors, so
that you'd have more gray pixels in between.
| | 02:35 | All right, I am going to go ahead and
zoom out to that Fit in Window display
| | 02:39 | once again and I need to
clean up this background junk.
| | 02:43 | I'm going to do that by grabbing my
Lasso tool and I am going to Alt+Click to
| | 02:47 | take advantage of the polygonal
function there, this is an Option+Click on the
| | 02:51 | Mac, and I'm just more or less
surrounding my artwork like so, so that I am
| | 02:56 | isolating the good part of my art from
the bad stuff out here in the background.
| | 03:00 | Now let's go ahead and select the bad
stuff by going up to the Select menu and
| | 03:04 | choosing the Inverse command or press
Ctrl+Shift+I, Cmd+Shift+I on a Mac.
| | 03:08 | Now you've selected that area that was
formerly deselected and you want to fill
| | 03:12 | it with white which is a background color.
| | 03:14 | So you press Ctrl+Backspace or Cmd+
Delete and now we have black line art
| | 03:19 | against an absolutely white background.
| | 03:22 | Now at this point, we still need to
fill in the red and we're going to do that
| | 03:25 | using independent layers, because
that's going to be the best approach.
| | 03:28 | But first of all, I remember painting
this at the time or drawing it that is, I
| | 03:32 | remember that I took this edge a little too close.
| | 03:35 | So I am going to carve it out a
little bit using my Lasso tool, like so.
| | 03:39 | That's really great that you have
this kind of control inside of Photoshop.
| | 03:43 | So you can altogether modify your
artwork after having created it.
| | 03:46 | I'll press Ctrl+Backspace or Cmd
+Delete on the Mac in order to fill
| | 03:50 | that area with white.
| | 03:51 | So we get that thicker
highlighted edge right there.
| | 03:54 | You might also want to select a few of
these little sort of light schnivels that
| | 03:58 | are showing up inside the image.
| | 03:59 | I'll go ahead and press Alt+Backspace
or Option+Delete to fill that area with
| | 04:03 | black, and I believe we've got
another little guy right there.
| | 04:06 | So you can sort of hunt him down if
you want to, that's a Ctrl+Backspace or
| | 04:09 | Cmd+Delete to fill that one with white.
| | 04:12 | So it's up to you how much you
decide to sort of finesse these edges.
| | 04:16 | It can be useful, although
Illustrator is liable to get rid of most of
| | 04:20 | these little blemishes here,
because they'll fall under its live trace
| | 04:25 | threshold as we'll see.
| | 04:26 | Anyway, I'll press Ctrl+Backspace,
Cmd+Delete to fill that area with white
| | 04:30 | just to touch it up a little
and I'm going to zoom back out.
| | 04:34 | What we want to do is we want to select
this black line art, I'll show you why.
| | 04:38 | I'll switch to the final version of
the image right here and notice that the
| | 04:42 | black lines are isolated on one layer,
so we are seeing black against this
| | 04:46 | checkerboard background.
| | 04:47 | Checkerboard represents transparency.
| | 04:49 | So if I turn off the red we can see
just the black and if I turn off the
| | 04:53 | background layer then we are
seeing just the black line art against a
| | 04:57 | transparent background.
| | 04:59 | All the white is being contributed by
the background layer here and then we've
| | 05:02 | got this red layer in between.
| | 05:04 | Well, what I need to do is select those
black lines independently of the rest of
| | 05:08 | the art. And the mistake a lot of folks
make, is to whip out the Magic Wand tool
| | 05:13 | and think, okay I'll grab my Magic Wand,
and then I will click inside the black
| | 05:17 | lines and that will enable me to select them.
| | 05:19 | Not so, what you're going to do is you're
going to lose the integrity of those edges.
| | 05:23 | Those nice sharp but not jagged
edges will turn either dull on you or very
| | 05:29 | possibly jagged as well.
| | 05:30 | It can go either way.
| | 05:33 | In any case you are not
going to get the right results.
| | 05:34 | What you want is to use
the image to select itself.
| | 05:37 | So the image is effectively already
selected, just sitting there waiting for you
| | 05:41 | to use the selection that
it's made available to you.
| | 05:43 | To get to that selection you
go over to the Channels panel.
| | 05:46 | This is a grayscale image because I scanned
it in grayscale to keep the file size down.
| | 05:50 | So I just have one channel of Gray.
| | 05:52 | What I am going to do is press the
Control key or the Cmd key on the Mac and
| | 05:56 | click on that channel and that goes
ahead and selects all the white stuff.
| | 05:59 | It does not select the black,
it just selects the white.
| | 06:02 | So let's go back to the layers panel
and I am going to go up to the Select menu
| | 06:06 | and I am going to choose Inverse or
press Ctrl+Shift+I, Cmd+Shift+I in order
| | 06:11 | to reverse that selection.
| | 06:12 | Now I've selected all the black stuff
and I haven't selected the white, the
| | 06:16 | white is deselected.
| | 06:17 | I'll create a new layer and the
easiest way to do that is to press
| | 06:20 | Ctrl+Shift+N or Cmd+Shift+N on
the Mac and I'll call this line art and
| | 06:26 | then I'll click OK.
| | 06:28 | Now I'll fill the selected area with Black.
| | 06:31 | Black is my foreground color so I press
Alt+Backspace or Option+Delete in order
| | 06:35 | to fill this selection with black.
| | 06:36 | You can see that I have the black
line art now here on the line art layer.
| | 06:39 | I need to get rid of those black
outlines here on the background layer.
| | 06:43 | So I'll just press Ctrl+D or Cmd+D
on a Mac after selecting the background
| | 06:48 | layer, to deselect my artwork.
| | 06:49 | So nothing's selected.
| | 06:51 | Now I'll fill the entire layer with
white by pressing Ctrl+Backspace or
| | 06:55 | Cmd+Delete on the Mac.
| | 06:57 | So we've got a white background layer,
the line art is now isolated to this line
| | 07:01 | art layer and we should have exactly
the same visual results as we had before.
| | 07:07 | If you're curious you can zoom in on
your artwork and test those edges, make
| | 07:10 | sure that they still look good, which they do.
| | 07:12 | All right, the next thing to do is to
fill in the red and we are going to need
| | 07:15 | another layer for that once again.
| | 07:17 | So I am going to click on the
background layer to make it active.
| | 07:20 | Press Ctrl+Shift+N, Cmd+Shift+N on
the Mac in order to create a new layer,
| | 07:23 | call it red fill and then I'll click OK.
| | 07:27 | Now the red that I am looking for
would be nice if I could dial it in, but I
| | 07:31 | can't get to it here inside the Color
panel. RGB sliders and all the other
| | 07:35 | color sliders are unavailable to me to
because I am working inside of a grayscale image.
| | 07:39 | So I need to go to the Image menu,
choose mode and switch out to RGB Color.
| | 07:45 | At which point in time Photoshop is
going to gripe at me and it's going to
| | 07:48 | suggest that I flatten my artwork.
| | 07:50 | After all this I am supposed to flatten
my artwork and that is the highlighted
| | 07:53 | button, I don't think so. Don't Flatten.
| | 07:56 | It's not going to change the
appearance of a single layer.
| | 07:58 | So go ahead and click Don't Flatten and
everything is going to look the same as
| | 08:02 | it did before, so no changes whatsoever.
| | 08:05 | Now I'm going to switch in the Color
panel, I am going to switch to my HSB
| | 08:08 | sliders just because I find that to
be the easiest way to dial in colors.
| | 08:12 | The Hue value is already at 0 degrees, so
that's fine, which is red, incidentally.
| | 08:15 | I'm going to change the Saturation value
to a 100 and the Brightness value to 65
| | 08:20 | and then, and this is
going to really surprise you,
| | 08:22 | I am going to grab the Paint Bucket of
all things, which is located in the same
| | 08:27 | flyout menu as the Gradient tool.
| | 08:28 | I will grab the Paint Bucket and I
want to make sure that I'm filling with the
| | 08:32 | foreground color, so that's fine.
| | 08:33 | Normal, Opacity 100%.
| | 08:35 | I've raised the Tolerance value to a 100,
so you really want it cranked up there.
| | 08:39 | Anti-alias is on by default, turn it off.
| | 08:42 | Leave Contiguous on, and then turn on
All Layers as well, that's not going
| | 08:46 | to affect all layers that's going to
take all layers into consideration as
| | 08:50 | you paint away here.
| | 08:51 | Then you just click in the
areas that you want to fill.
| | 08:54 | Now you're going to notice these
little white edges around your fills, don't
| | 08:57 | worry about them, we'll take care of those.
| | 08:59 | Then I'll click inside of that wedge.
| | 09:01 | Click there as well, click there and
then inside of the eyes need clicking, and
| | 09:07 | then inside of this earring as well.
| | 09:10 | All right, the next step is to
fill in the slight white edges.
| | 09:14 | I will go ahead and zoom in on them, so
we can see them, and the way that we are
| | 09:17 | going to do that is by stroking
this red fill. And so I am going to drop
| | 09:21 | down to my fx icon, click on it, choose
the Stroke command, and then inside this
| | 09:27 | Layer Style dialog box, I am going to
change the color from black to that same
| | 09:31 | color we were just using a moment ago,
that is, the Saturation of 100% and a
| | 09:35 | Brightness of 65%. Hue is
zero as by default, click OK.
| | 09:40 | Then I'm going to take the Size of my
stroke up to something like 10, let's say,
| | 09:45 | and make sure that I am stroking to the outside.
| | 09:47 | Now I don't want the stroke to get so
thick that it starts showing through other
| | 09:50 | portions of my artwork, but this is
looking good, I am not seeing it poke through
| | 09:54 | inside the earrings or anywhere else.
| | 09:56 | I will go ahead and click OK.
| | 09:58 | If I want to test that layer I could
drag it on top of line art, like so, and
| | 10:03 | then I could just sort of hunt around
and make sure that the stroke never creeps
| | 10:08 | beyond the black outlines.
| | 10:09 | This actually looks very good.
| | 10:11 | So I will go ahead and zoom back out.
| | 10:13 | Then I don't want to leave things that
way, I don't want the stroke encroaching
| | 10:17 | on the black outlines, so once I've
confirmed that everything looks good, I'll
| | 10:20 | go ahead and move it back
in back of the line art layer.
| | 10:23 | And I now have created something that's
worthy of tracing inside of Illustrator.
| | 10:27 | Next time around we'll see
how to make that tracing happen.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Live Trace and resolution| 00:00 | In this movie we are going to take this
piece of artwork that we have prepared
| | 00:03 | inside of Photoshop and we are going
to bring it into Illustrator and use the
| | 00:07 | Live Trace feature in order to convert
this pixel-based image into a piece of
| | 00:11 | vector-based artwork.
| | 00:12 | I have opened in front of me, Skull 03 edit.psd.
| | 00:16 | This is a layered piece of artwork,
| | 00:18 | so I need to start things off by flattening it.
| | 00:20 | So I'll go up to the Layer menu and
choose the Flatten Image command, which will
| | 00:24 | go ahead and get rid of all the layers.
| | 00:26 | So it's very important that you make
sure that you've saved your layers in
| | 00:29 | advance of applying this command.
| | 00:31 | Then what you would do is you go up
to the File menu and choose the Save As
| | 00:35 | command, so you don't overwrite the
original, or you can press Ctrl+Shift+S,
| | 00:39 | Cmd+Shift+S on the Mac, and I
recommend that you save the image to the TIFF
| | 00:44 | format, just because that way you're not
applying any lossy compression and TIFF
| | 00:48 | will generate a small file
that's compatible with Illustrator.
| | 00:51 | So I am going to go ahead and save
this image as High res art.tif, which I've
| | 00:56 | already created in advance, but I'll
go ahead and save over, it's not
| | 00:58 | going to do any harm.
| | 00:59 | Click the Save button, yes, I want to
overwrite it, and then here's what I want to show you.
| | 01:03 | I want you to set the Image Compression to LZW.
| | 01:06 | That's a lossless compression scheme
that will do a great job of compressing
| | 01:10 | these large areas of color.
| | 01:12 | Otherwise, leave the settings as is,
Pixel Order should be Interleaved, Byte
| | 01:16 | Order actually does not matter.
| | 01:18 | It can be IBM PC or Macintosh regardless
of the platform that you're working on.
| | 01:22 | Then go ahead and click OK
in order to save that file.
| | 01:26 | Now, you might want to do one more thing.
| | 01:28 | You might want to go up to the Image
menu and choose the Image Size command or
| | 01:32 | press Ctrl+Alt+I, Cmd+Option+I on
the Mac, and then leave the Resample Image
| | 01:37 | check box turned on and go ahead and
set the Resolution from 300 down to 72.
| | 01:42 | I want you to note while we're here,
that the size of this image is 12 inches
| | 01:46 | wide by 8 1/2 inches tall.
| | 01:48 | So, just remember that for now.
| | 01:50 | But you may wonder, why in the
world would I downsample this image?
| | 01:53 | That is, reduce the number of pixels
from 300 down to 72, that sounds like a
| | 01:58 | disastrous idea, and indeed, it is;
| | 02:01 | I'll show you that in a moment.
| | 02:02 | The thing is, Illustrator
recommends you work this way.
| | 02:05 | Illustrator will tell you that you should
be working with a lower resolution image.
| | 02:09 | It happens to be wrong, but I thought
I'd demonstrate that to you right now.
| | 02:13 | So I'll go ahead and click OK in order
to reduce the number of pixels in the
| | 02:17 | image and now I am going to zoom in, and you
can see this is the image at 100% view size.
| | 02:21 | So we don't have any resolution beyond this.
| | 02:24 | Once we zoom in beyond 100%,
we're going to see big chunky pixels.
| | 02:27 | Then you go up to the File menu,
choose Save As once again, so as not to
| | 02:31 | overwrite the original, and I would
save this image as Low res art, which I've
| | 02:36 | already done in advance.
| | 02:37 | So, there's no point in doing it now.
| | 02:38 | All right, so I am going to Cancel out.
| | 02:40 | Now, let's go over to Illustrator, and
I'm going to go up to the File menu.
| | 02:43 | Notice I have nothing opened right now.
| | 02:45 | I am going to go the File menu and
choose the New command or press Ctrl+N,
| | 02:48 | Cmd+N on the Mac, and I am
going to dial in those settings that I
| | 02:52 | mentioned a moment ago;
| | 02:53 | 12 inches wide by 8 1/2 inches tall.
| | 02:56 | I am working in points right now, which
is the default setting here in the States.
| | 02:59 | So I am going to overwrite that by
just entering 12in for the Width value.
| | 03:05 | Tab down to the Height value, 8.5in.
| | 03:08 | Notice when I press Tab, that Illustrator
goes ahead and converts inches to points on the fly.
| | 03:13 | Otherwise, one of the changes I am
going to make, I'm working with Print
| | 03:16 | profile, but I am going to
change the Color mode to RGB.
| | 03:21 | So what I am going to do is expand open
Advanced, this Advanced area down here,
| | 03:25 | and I am going to switch Color
mode, as I have in advance, to RGB.
| | 03:29 | Normally, it's CMYK, but because this
is an unusual print job, RGB is going
| | 03:33 | to work better for me.
| | 03:34 | Now, we are going to get this warning,
| | 03:35 | this puzzling warning, because it's
kind of difficult to make the hint show up,
| | 03:39 | but once you do, once you hover over
there and the hint appears onscreen, what
| | 03:43 | it says is that the chosen space, RGB,
may not be compatible with some of the
| | 03:48 | stuff that's in the panels.
| | 03:49 | So, in other words, our swatches
aren't really going to be RGB swatches,
| | 03:53 | they are going to be CMYK swatches,
and our symbols are going to be designed
| | 03:56 | for CMYK and so on.
| | 03:57 | Anyway, it doesn't matter for this art.
| | 03:59 | So I am going to go ahead and click
OK in order to create my new document.
| | 04:03 | All right, now it's perfectly sized
ready to go for my images that I've created
| | 04:08 | in advance, of course, in Photoshop.
| | 04:10 | I'm going to rename this layer, Images.
| | 04:12 | So I'll double-click on it, change its
name to Images, change the Color to a
| | 04:16 | complementary color, that is something
that we can easily see against the red
| | 04:19 | background, such as Grass
Green, and then I'll click OK.
| | 04:23 | Now I'll go up to the File menu and
I'll choose the Place command, and inside
| | 04:27 | this folder, I've got my High res art.tif
file, as well's Low res art.tif.
| | 04:31 | I am going to start with the Low res file.
| | 04:32 | So I'll click on it and then click
the Place button in order to place that
| | 04:35 | on the Images layer.
| | 04:37 | So there is the Low res art right ready to go.
| | 04:40 | And then I'll take the
precaution of deselecting the image,
| | 04:43 | so I don't replace it.
| | 04:44 | Then I'll go up to the File menu,
choose the Place command, and I'll grab High
| | 04:49 | res art.tif and click
Place, so that it's in front.
| | 04:52 | All right, now it's selected.
| | 04:54 | Notice that High res art.tif is the
selected piece of artwork, because we can
| | 04:58 | see that the meatball is highlighted
right there, the circular meatball.
| | 05:02 | So now I am going to go up to the
Control panel and click on the Live Trace
| | 05:06 | button, that would just, by the way,
apply a black-and-white trace, and I really
| | 05:10 | want to go ahead and trace all the colors.
| | 05:11 | So you know what I should do, is
click this down-pointing arrowhead and
| | 05:14 | choose Tracing Options,
| | 05:16 | so I can define my settings
inside the Tracing Options dialog box.
| | 05:19 | Once I choose the command, however,
Illustrator is going to bark at me.
| | 05:23 | It's going to say, hey, tracing
may proceed slowly with this large
| | 05:26 | high-resolution image of yours,
are you sure you want to continue?
| | 05:30 | You should resample to a lower
resolution or blur, don't blur that's a
| | 05:34 | ridiculous idea, or reduce the number of colors.
| | 05:36 | Well, I only have three ,
Illustrator, so it's not that big a deal.
| | 05:40 | That might improve the tracing speed.
| | 05:42 | Well, as we are going to see,
this is going to trace ultra-fast.
| | 05:45 | So this message is for nothing.
| | 05:47 | You may want to go ahead and say, don't
show again, and then click on the OK button.
| | 05:52 | Now, what I am going to do is I'm going
to switch the mode to Color here inside
| | 05:55 | the dialog box and I am going to dial in
a maximum colors value of 3, for white,
| | 06:00 | black, and red, and we are going to go
ahead and trace white this time around.
| | 06:04 | So don't turn on the Ignore White check
box, because I'm not really sure how the
| | 06:08 | printing process is going to work.
| | 06:10 | They might print my flag on a big
piece of white fabric in which case they'll
| | 06:14 | add the black and the red, or they may
print it on a big piece of red fabric, in
| | 06:18 | which case they are going to
add the black and the white.
| | 06:21 | So I want to leave all those objects
there so the printer can determine what
| | 06:25 | they need and what they don't need.
| | 06:26 | Otherwise, my settings are fine as is;
| | 06:28 | Path Fitting of 2 is great, Minimum
Area of 10, as long as I can get this
| | 06:33 | little red sliver down here below this
bit of fabric and above the saber handle
| | 06:39 | on the left-hand side, as long as that survives,
then I can leave the Minimum Area value alone.
| | 06:43 | Corner Angle is just fine as is as well.
| | 06:45 | So, I'll turn on Preview just to make
sure that I'm getting the results that
| | 06:48 | I think I should get.
| | 06:50 | Notice how relatively quickly things move along.
| | 06:53 | That wasn't a super-slow process,
so there was no reason for Illustrator
| | 06:57 | to grump at me there.
| | 06:58 | I am going to go ahead and save out a
preset by clicking on the Save Preset
| | 07:02 | button, and I'll call this one Black white
& red, let's say, and then I'll click OK.
| | 07:08 | Now, I'll go ahead and click the Trace
button in order to apply the tracing effects.
| | 07:13 | So we've now gone ahead and
converted the imagery to vector artwork.
| | 07:18 | Now let's see what it would look like,
because it looks pretty darn good.
| | 07:21 | I'm going to zoom in on this a little bit.
| | 07:22 | You can see that we have all
kinds of reticulated results.
| | 07:25 | I am going to turn off that tracing
object for just a moment and let's go ahead
| | 07:30 | and do what Illustrator recommended.
| | 07:32 | Let's trace the low resolution artwork instead.
| | 07:34 | So I'll go ahead and click on the
meatball for Low res art.tif, that
| | 07:38 | circle right there.
| | 07:40 | And then I'll go up to the Live Trace button,
click the down-pointing arrow right
| | 07:42 | next to it and I am going to choose
Black white -space- red, apparently the ampersand
| | 07:47 | doesn't survive.
| | 07:48 | So, I am applying the exact same
settings as I did before and I end up
| | 07:52 | getting this effect.
| | 07:53 | Now, you ask me, that looks terrible.
| | 07:56 | I am going to go ahead and turn on Tracing;
| | 07:58 | this is Tracing high-res;
| | 07:59 | below is Tracing low-res.
| | 08:01 | I'll turn on the top tracing object.
| | 08:02 | Notice how much better it looks.
| | 08:04 | Notice all that detail inside of the
skull and throughout the teeth, and so on
| | 08:10 | that's to be found inside of this
image because I started with 300 pixels per
| | 08:14 | inch in the first place, I gave
Illustrator a lot to trace from.
| | 08:18 | But when I turned that off and I
showed the low-res tracing, it looks like an
| | 08:21 | old school, from the bad old days auto-
tracing, and we've got all these just sort
| | 08:27 | of wicked corners going on, this
over-smoothing, this looks terrible.
| | 08:31 | This is not something I would be
proud to create from Illustrator.
| | 08:35 | So you know what, I am going to
grab this thing and throw it away;
| | 08:38 | it is worthless to me.
| | 08:40 | Then I'll turn on Tracing, because
it's great, it's in fantastic shape.
| | 08:44 | I am going to have to make some
alterations though, and in order to do that, I am
| | 08:47 | going to have to expand the artwork,
and I want to expand the artwork in such a
| | 08:51 | way that all the red items are on one
layer, all the black items on another
| | 08:55 | layer, all the white items are on a
third layer, so that my printer can
| | 09:00 | determine exactly which colors they
need in order to print my final flag, and
| | 09:04 | And I'll show you how that
works in the very next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Expanding and separating paths| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to take
that Live Trace object that I created
| | 00:03 | previously here inside of Illustrator
and we are going to expand it into a
| | 00:07 | collection of path outlines so that
we can gain full control over our newly
| | 00:11 | minted piece of vector-based artwork.
| | 00:14 | I've saved my progress
as Live Trace flag art.ai.
| | 00:17 | I am going to start things off by selecting
this Tracing object here inside my layers panel.
| | 00:22 | So I'll go ahead and expand open the
images and then I'll meatball this tracing
| | 00:26 | object to make it selected.
| | 00:27 | Then I'll go up to the Expand button
and click on it and that goes ahead and
| | 00:31 | converts the Live Trace object into
a collection of static path outlines,
| | 00:35 | meaning that I can't edit the Live
Trace object numerically anymore but I can
| | 00:39 | adjust each and every path
outline to suite my exacting needs.
| | 00:43 | Now, notice that the path
outlines appear inside of a group.
| | 00:45 | That doesn't help me out at all.
| | 00:47 | So I am going to go up to the Object
menu and I am going to choose the Ungroup
| | 00:50 | command or press Ctrl+Shift+G and that
goes ahead and separates every single one
| | 00:54 | of those path outlines.
| | 00:55 | Now, what I want to do because, again,
I am not sure exactly how the printing
| | 00:59 | process is going to work here.
| | 01:00 | We might be printing on a big white
flag, and that means that the printer will
| | 01:05 | apply black and red inks, or we may be
printing on a red flag in the first place,
| | 01:10 | so the fabric might start out red, in
which case the printer is going to have to
| | 01:14 | apply black and white pigment.
| | 01:15 | So I am not sure what's going to happen.
| | 01:17 | I want to be prepared for either eventuality.
| | 01:20 | So I am going to divide all the black
paths onto one layer, and all the white
| | 01:23 | paths onto another layer, and all the
red paths onto still a third layer so
| | 01:29 | that my printer can decide
which paths they need very easily.
| | 01:32 | So for starters, I'll click
off the paths to deselect them.
| | 01:35 | Then I'll select one of these paths.
| | 01:37 | I'll click on its outline and then
I'll go to the Color panel, note the fill,
| | 01:41 | this must be a black path.
| | 01:43 | So let's go ahead and grab all the
other black paths as well by going up to this
| | 01:47 | similar icon here inside the Control panel.
| | 01:51 | I could click the down-pointing
arrowhead and choose All or Fill Color.
| | 01:54 | Either is going to work.
| | 01:55 | So I'll just go ahead and
go with All this time around.
| | 01:58 | Then I am going to create a new
layer by pressing Ctrl+Alt+L or
| | 02:02 | Cmd+Option+L on the Mac.
| | 02:04 | That's the keyboard shortcut for
creating layers in Illustrator.
| | 02:07 | I am going to name this layer black,
and I am going to leave the color set to
| | 02:10 | red actually, just because that will set
off the black shapes nicely. I'll click OK.
| | 02:15 | We've got a new black layer to
house the black objects, all of which is
| | 02:18 | selected right now.
| | 02:19 | I'll grab that little green square
that's next to the Images layer, not next to
| | 02:23 | any one of the selected paths.
| | 02:25 | So go ahead and grab that guy and drag
it up into the black layer and that will
| | 02:29 | move all of the black objects onto that black
layer as you can see right there. All right.
| | 02:33 | Now I am going to lock that layer down
so that we can easily select through it
| | 02:37 | and I am going to click on one of
these white objects, and then I'll confirm
| | 02:41 | that it's white here in the Color panel
because it could be the interior of a black shape.
| | 02:45 | So the black shapes, and the white shapes,
and the red shapes, they all run into
| | 02:49 | each other because, for example, where
this eye appears, this red eye, it's not
| | 02:53 | a red shape against a black
background, the way you might think it is.
| | 02:56 | Instead, it's a red shape, of course,
but there's also a hole clipped out of the
| | 03:01 | black background that exactly
matches that red shape right there.
| | 03:05 | So you have to be a little careful.
| | 03:06 | That's why I locked down the black layer.
| | 03:08 | I grab that white object.
| | 03:09 | I am just going to click on the Select
Similar Objects icon this time around
| | 03:13 | because it will go ahead and
duplicate the last behavior.
| | 03:15 | It will select all of the white objects.
| | 03:17 | I'll create a new layer called white by
pressing Ctrl+Alt+L, Cmd+Option+L on the Mac.
| | 03:22 | I will call it white, change
its color to light blue I think.
| | 03:26 | We definitely don't want to leave it
green because we already have a light green
| | 03:28 | layer going on and I'll click
OK in order to create that layer.
| | 03:32 | Now, for some reason, Illustrator's
seen fit to go ahead and throw that to the
| | 03:35 | back of the stack, that's not what I want.
| | 03:38 | That happens every once a while.
| | 03:39 | Sometimes it throws
things in the wrong direction.
| | 03:40 | I am going to go ahead and twirl close Images.
| | 03:43 | I am going to drag white on top of it, like so.
| | 03:47 | Then notice that the objects here, the white
objects are still selected on the Images layer.
| | 03:51 | So I'll grab that green square and
I'll drag it up onto the white layer.
| | 03:56 | We've now isolated all the
white objects onto the white layer.
| | 03:59 | Now, the red objects are a little trickier.
| | 04:03 | The reason is that there is a lot of
little slivers of red all over the place.
| | 04:08 | The Live Trace feature sometimes gets
mixed up when it's looking at transitional
| | 04:11 | colors, when it's looking at those
transitional grays and it decides that they
| | 04:14 | ought to be red because there
is no other color to choose from.
| | 04:19 | So a lot of these red objects, and you
can see that there's just tons of them
| | 04:22 | and we really shouldn't see that many at all.
| | 04:24 | There should be a big background item
and then maybe about six or seven items
| | 04:30 | inside of these various sort of
crevices here and then a couple for the eyes.
| | 04:34 | Instead, we have got something like
maybe 30 or 40 of these path outlines, most
| | 04:39 | of which we don't need.
| | 04:40 | So if I clicked on one of them, if I
meatball one of these guys, then I could see, oh,
| | 04:44 | Look at that.
| | 04:45 | This is some little red
thing right next to its tooth.
| | 04:48 | Well, we don't want that so I could
throw it away or, this is going to sound
| | 04:51 | crazy, I am going to
throw away this entire layer.
| | 04:54 | I don't want any of the red objects
because all the work is being done now
| | 04:58 | by black and white.
| | 04:59 | I can just draw a big red triangle in
the background and be done with it.
| | 05:02 | So I am going to grab this layer and I
am going to throw it in the trash and I
| | 05:06 | am just going to get rid of all the red.
| | 05:08 | Then I am going to draw a new red
shape in the background, but before I do, I
| | 05:12 | might as well expand the size of this artwork.
| | 05:15 | It shouldn't be just 12
inches wide by 8.5 inches tall;
| | 05:19 | it needs to be 5 feet wide by 3 feet tall.
| | 05:22 | So let's change the size of the artboard.
| | 05:25 | We'll do that by dropping
down to this artboard tool.
| | 05:28 | You can also press Shift+L, and that
goes ahead and selects the artboard in the
| | 05:32 | background and I am going to go up to the Width
and Height values up here in the Control panel.
| | 05:36 | Make sure the chain is turned off, by
the way, because I want to change these
| | 05:39 | values independently, and I am going to
change the Width value to 60in, because 12
| | 05:44 | inches times 5 feet is 60 inches. So 60in wide;
| | 05:48 | that's a lot wider than it was before.
| | 05:50 | In fact, if I start zooming out, you'll
see just how much bigger the artboard is now.
| | 05:55 | I'll change the Height value to 36in,
because 12 times 3 is 36, and I'll press the
| | 06:00 | Enter key, or the Return key on the Mac,
and that's how big our flag needs to be.
| | 06:04 | Now, in order to apply my changes, I'll
press the Escape key and that will take
| | 06:08 | me out of that artboard mode
back into the standard drawing mode.
| | 06:12 | I also need a bleed, since I want
the red to go all the way to the edge,
| | 06:15 | assuming that I have to
print red on a white flag.
| | 06:18 | Again, I don't know how it's going to
work but I might a well give myself a bleed.
| | 06:22 | So, I'll go up to the File menu and
I'll choose the Document Setup command or
| | 06:25 | you can press Ctrl+Alt+P, Cmd+
Option+P on the Mac, and make sure, there's
| | 06:30 | the Bleed value right there, make sure
that the chain icon is turned on and then
| | 06:34 | change any one of these items to 72,
| | 06:36 | which is 72 points. That's the same as 1
inch, by the way, and click OK.
| | 06:42 | Now, we've got a big
bleed around the entire image.
| | 06:44 | I am going to create a new layer
by pressing Ctrl+Alt+L, once again,
| | 06:47 | Cmd+Option+L on the Mac, and I am
going to call this deep red, because I am
| | 06:52 | going to actually going to change the red color;
| | 06:54 | I am going to make it darker.
| | 06:54 | I am going to change the color of the
layer to gold and then I'll click OK, and
| | 06:59 | I want this guy at the back.
| | 07:00 | So I'll drag it to the
bottom of the stack there.
| | 07:04 | Then I am going to create a big, huge,
red rectangle by grabbing my Rectangle
| | 07:09 | tool, which I can get by pressing the
M key, and I am going to click in this
| | 07:13 | top-left corner of the bleed.
| | 07:16 | That will bring up my Rectangle dialog
box and these are the values I will enter,
| | 07:20 | that is 62in, and then I'll
press the Tab key, and 38in.
| | 07:24 | Now you may wonder why 62 and 38, because
the bleed is an inch all the way around.
| | 07:31 | So we have to add 2 inches
to each of the other values.
| | 07:34 | So that is 2+60 is 62 and 2+36 is 38.
| | 07:39 | Press the Tab key in order to convert
those values to points, which are the
| | 07:42 | default measurements for Illustrator
here in the States, and then click OK in
| | 07:45 | order to create that
ginormous, big, huge rectangle.
| | 07:49 | Then finally, I am going to
change the color of the rectangle.
| | 07:52 | It's active here in the Color panel and
notice that I am looking at the HSB sliders.
| | 07:56 | The Hue value is 0 for Red, the
Saturation value is 100%, so fully
| | 08:00 | saturated, and the Brightness value
is 65.1, where that comes from I don't
| | 08:05 | know, but I want it to be 45.
| | 08:07 | So I am going to darken things
up and we'll get this effect here.
| | 08:11 | And this is the artwork so far.
| | 08:12 | You may look at it and say, well, that
pirate is kind of lost, even though, by
| | 08:17 | the way, he does look great
against this red background.
| | 08:20 | So that takes care of filling
in all the proper red areas.
| | 08:22 | We didn't need those jillion or so paths.
| | 08:25 | However, he is getting a
little sort of lost in the shuffle.
| | 08:28 | He's less a piece of flag art, then a tiny
little icon against this big red field.
| | 08:32 | Well, obviously, we've got to scale
the art, and we've got to modify it
| | 08:36 | here inside of Illustrator as long as
we've got the chance. And those are things
| | 08:39 | that we will do in the next and final movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Scaling and editing traced art| 00:00 | In this movie, we're going to finish up
our great big 5 foot wide by 3 foot tall
| | 00:05 | vector-based pirate flag
here inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:08 | Now, I've already gone ahead and made
this red field in the background exactly
| | 00:12 | the right size, so it's 5 feet wide,
with a little extra, we've got an inch on
| | 00:16 | each side for the bleed, and it's 3
feet tall, with an inch at the top and the
| | 00:20 | bottom for the bleed as well.
| | 00:21 | However, our skeleton
sabers are way too tiny.
| | 00:25 | In fact, this is what we're looking for,
this final piece of artwork right here.
| | 00:29 | So I've not only made the core artwork
much larger, but I've also gone ahead and
| | 00:34 | tweaked the location of the eyes a
little bit, the ghost eyes in the center
| | 00:37 | here, and I've modified the color of the scarf.
| | 00:40 | So let's see how that works.
| | 00:41 | I'm going to switch back to my art in
progress, which I've called Tiny flag
| | 00:45 | insignia.ai, and I'm going to go over
to the layers panel and I'm going to
| | 00:48 | unlock the black layer because we want
to modify the contents of that layer, and
| | 00:52 | I'm going to lock down deep red,
because the big field of red in the background
| | 00:56 | is exactly where it needs to be.
| | 00:58 | Then I'll press Ctrl+A or Command+A
on the Mac to select everything that's
| | 01:02 | unlocked, that is the entire
contents of the black and white layers.
| | 01:05 | I don't want to see all these anchor
points, so I'm going to press Ctrl+H or
| | 01:09 | Command+H on the Mac to
hide the selection edges.
| | 01:12 | Then I'll switch to the Scale tool,
which I can get by pressing the S key, and
| | 01:16 | there's my transformation origin right
there in the pirate's eye, but I want to
| | 01:20 | move my cursor about 45 degrees
away from that origin point.
| | 01:24 | So I might start dragging at the base
of this right hand saber handle, and I'm
| | 01:28 | going to drag down into the right in
order to increase the size of this artwork.
| | 01:32 | Now, if I press the Shift key, I'll
also constrain the proportions, but you
| | 01:35 | know what, just because we have so much
width associated with this flag, I want
| | 01:40 | to actually make him a little wider than I
drew him, in proportion to his height of course.
| | 01:44 | So I'll just make sure, I'll press the
Shift key here and I can see that, that
| | 01:49 | would be the normal proportions right
there, and so if I release the Shift key
| | 01:53 | and drag out a little bit,
that's going to be wider.
| | 01:56 | Now, I'll release in order to
increase the size of that art.
| | 01:59 | Now, what we just saw was an absolute
minor miracle, because that's the kind of
| | 02:03 | thing you can't do in Photoshop with pixels.
| | 02:07 | If we were trying to scale up the pixels,
then we would soften the transitions,
| | 02:11 | we would not necessarily do ourselves
any good, because we would just add pixels
| | 02:15 | for the sake of adding pixels, we
wouldn't add better detail, whereas when you
| | 02:19 | scale this artwork as vectors
inside of Illustrator, then you retain these
| | 02:23 | razor-sharp edges, no matter
how much scaling you apply.
| | 02:29 | So this artwork is going to look
absolutely fantastic at its new, larger size.
| | 02:33 | All right, I'm going to zoom back out,
because now I want to go ahead and
| | 02:35 | color in that scarf.
| | 02:37 | So I'm going to grab my Black Arrow
tool from the top of the toolbox, and I'm
| | 02:41 | going to select these white paths that
should be filled with red if I want to
| | 02:45 | color the scarf red.
| | 02:46 | So I'll press Ctrl+H, by the way,
or Command+H on the Mac to bring back
| | 02:49 | my selection edges.
| | 02:50 | Then I'll click off my artwork to
deselect it, and I'll go ahead and click on
| | 02:54 | one of those path outlines, and what
that does is it grabs black, in my case.
| | 02:59 | So I'm going to lock down black once
again, so that doesn't get in my way.
| | 03:02 | And I'm going to click now on
the white shapes to select them.
| | 03:04 | So I'm clicking and Shift+clicking on
these various white shapes in order to
| | 03:08 | select each one of them.
| | 03:09 | This is the most tedious part of the
process, quite frankly, is grabbing all
| | 03:12 | these shapes, because at a point it's a
little difficult to determine who should
| | 03:16 | be part of this scarf and who shouldn't,
but if you follow my lead here, you'll
| | 03:20 | get everything that I regard to be
part of the scarf, because this part back
| | 03:24 | here, for example, is a bit of the saber.
| | 03:27 | This is a part of his jaw.
| | 03:28 | This is part of the earring right there.
| | 03:30 | This is part of his skull and so on.
| | 03:32 | So some of these shapes
I absolutely do not want.
| | 03:35 | All right, so those are all the scarf
shapes, and now what we want to do is
| | 03:39 | create yet another new layer, again,
just to keep all the colors and different
| | 03:42 | layers, so that the printer can decide
what he or she needs to get the job done.
| | 03:46 | I'll press Ctrl+Alt+L, Command+Option+
L on the Mac to create a new layer, and
| | 03:50 | I'll call this light red, and then
I'll change the color back to that grass
| | 03:55 | green that we were using
earlier, and I'll click OK.
| | 03:58 | I'll move this below white actually,
and then I'll go ahead and take this blue
| | 04:03 | square right there to the right of
the white layer, that represents all the
| | 04:07 | selected items, and I'll drag
it down onto the light red layer.
| | 04:10 | Now, that doesn't change the color of
those objects, it just changes their location.
| | 04:14 | Now, to change the color, up here in
the Color panel, the Hue value is already
| | 04:17 | 0, that's what I want.
| | 04:18 | The Saturation value should be 100
once again, and I'm going to take the
| | 04:21 | Brightness value down to 65, so it's
just a little bit lighter than the deep
| | 04:26 | red of the background.
| | 04:27 | Then I'll click off of that
artwork in order to deselect it.
| | 04:29 | Now, finally, I want to go ahead and
move the eyes to a slightly different
| | 04:33 | location, the ghost eyes in the center,
and there's all kinds of modifications
| | 04:36 | you could make from this point if
you want to here inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:40 | You can go nuts on these path outlines
if you want to customize this art, but I
| | 04:44 | just want to move the eyes around a little.
| | 04:46 | First of all, this red inside the
eyes is actually part of the black layer,
| | 04:50 | because we've got a compound path here,
we've got the big eye path filled with
| | 04:54 | black, with this area of red carved out of it.
| | 04:57 | So I have to unlock the black layer to
get to it, but then if I click on it with
| | 05:00 | the Black Arrow tool, I select both
the inside and the outside of the eye,
| | 05:04 | because they're all combined
together into one compound path as I say.
| | 05:08 | So I'm going to click off the shapes
in order to deselect them and I'm going
| | 05:12 | to grab my White Arrow tool, the
Direct Selection tool, which you can get by
| | 05:15 | pressing the A key, and then I'll Alt+
click or Option+click on that eye path
| | 05:20 | in order to select it.
| | 05:21 | And now I'm going to move it a little bit.
| | 05:23 | I'm going to do that by the way by
double-clicking on the Black Arrow tool to
| | 05:27 | bring up my Move dialog box, and I'll
change the Horizontal value to -16, the
| | 05:33 | Vertical value to 0, and then press the Tab key.
| | 05:35 | And make sure Preview is turned on.
| | 05:37 | So this is the location of the path
outline before and this is its current location.
| | 05:42 | So I'm just moving that path outline.
| | 05:44 | And of course I could have just dragged
it if I wanted to or nudge it from the
| | 05:48 | keyboard, but I wanted a very specific
modification, so that's why I brought up
| | 05:53 | the Move dialog box.
| | 05:54 | I'll click OK, and then I'll Shift+Alt
+click or Shift+Option+click with the
| | 05:59 | wrong tool, so that's not going to do it.
| | 06:00 | I've got to switch back to the White Arrow tool.
| | 06:02 | All right, let's try that again.
| | 06:04 | I'll Alt+click or Option+click on
this path to select the whole thing, then
| | 06:08 | Shift+Alt+click or Shift+Option+click
on this path, and then double-click again
| | 06:13 | on the Black Arrow tool to
bring up the Move dialog box.
| | 06:17 | And this time I don't want to move
this horizontal, I'm going to press 0 for
| | 06:19 | the Horizontal value.
| | 06:20 | I'm going to move both of
these paths down 16 points.
| | 06:23 | So I'll enter 16 for the Vertical value,
and I could take that value even higher.
| | 06:27 | Let's try 24. My gosh!
| | 06:29 | That looks great!
| | 06:30 | All right, I'll click OK in
order to accept that modification.
| | 06:33 | So you get the idea, you can do
anything at this point with these path
| | 06:37 | outlines, and every step of the way,
every modification you make is going to
| | 06:41 | deliver super smooth results.
| | 06:43 | For example, let's say I want to take this little divot
in his skull and I want to move it closer to his nose.
| | 06:48 | Well, if I just drag the black path,
notice I leave a hole, because there's
| | 06:52 | always a corresponding hole in the
white paths for the black paths, so I've got to
| | 06:56 | undo that modification there.
| | 06:58 | So what I need to do is just go ahead
and marquee around those two, and in this
| | 07:03 | case, I go ahead and select the entire path.
| | 07:05 | I forget of course this is a compound
path, so I'm going to grab them both.
| | 07:08 | And by the way, that little marquee
trick is only going to work if you press
| | 07:11 | Ctrl+K, Command+K on the Mac, and then
you go here to Selection & Anchor Points
| | 07:17 | Display and you turn on Object
Selection by Path Only, that's very important,
| | 07:21 | otherwise you're going to
drag that white path around.
| | 07:24 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and Cancel out of
there because mine was already turned on.
| | 07:27 | I'll grab the White Arrow tool, click
off the shapes, then I will Alt+drag or
| | 07:31 | Option+drag around those two paths in
order to select them both, that is, they
| | 07:35 | are two coincident paths;
| | 07:36 | one right on top of the other.
| | 07:37 | Then I'll just go ahead
and drag it over, like so.
| | 07:39 | So again, no end to the modifications
you can make, the finessing that you can
| | 07:44 | apply to this flag. Everything, no
matter what, is going to come out super
| | 07:48 | smooth, as impeccably smooth as
it ever was in the first place,
| | 07:52 | thanks to our meticulously step-by-step
approach to this project - every one of
| | 07:57 | those steps, by the way, is extremely
important - and the power of the Live Trace
| | 08:01 | feature here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
14. Gradients and the Gradient ToolGradients are good| 00:00 | Sometimes when I think of gradients,
I think of Microsoft PowerPoint.
| | 00:04 | You know, you slap a bunch of type on a
slide and then that seems a little boring.
| | 00:09 | So you put a gradient in the background,
because it's colorful. Or maybe there's
| | 00:13 | a wall back there that's shaded,
where the sun is rising or something.
| | 00:17 | I mean what's that gradient supposed to be,
| | 00:20 | other than this thing you
didn't use to be able to do with an
| | 00:23 | overhead projector?
| | 00:24 | My point is, gradients are wildly
overused by folks who don't have even the most
| | 00:29 | rudimentary design experience.
Nothing against those people.
| | 00:32 | They can be quite self-deprecating on
the subject, but they cannot be forgiven,
| | 00:37 | because they are ruining
the good name of gradients.
| | 00:40 | See, when properly employed,
gradients are amazing resources.
| | 00:44 | They impart dimension, they suggest
light sources, they add shading and
| | 00:48 | highlights and volumetric form, and
darn it, Illustrator not only rocks at
| | 00:52 | gradients, but it offers the
best gradient tool in the business.
| | 00:55 | You can even blend multiple interacting
gradients inside a single path outline,
| | 01:00 | as we will by the way.
| | 01:02 | So PowerPoint, do us all a favor and
stop calling what you do gradients. Flowing,
| | 01:07 | fountainous backgrounds, that's fine.
| | 01:09 | You can call it that, but please,
leave the gradients to Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assigning a gradient fill| 00:00 | Now, ass you know, the topic of this
chapter is gradients, and we're going to be
| | 00:03 | assigning gradients to this illustration.
| | 00:05 | It's called Raw cat head.ai.
| | 00:08 | So called, by the way, because it
contains all of the raw elements we need, all
| | 00:12 | of the path outlines we need
to build the final illustration.
| | 00:15 | And the final illustration is also opened,
it's right here, it's called Gradient
| | 00:19 | cat.ai and the only difference
between these two illustrations, with the
| | 00:24 | exception of the text, which is there,
but just hidden in the Raw cat head file.
| | 00:28 | The only other difference is a few
drop shadows and a whole lot of gradients.
| | 00:32 | And so those gradient fills, as you can
see, make a tremendous contribution to
| | 00:37 | the overall illustration.
| | 00:38 | They really allow you to very quickly
and easily create the appearance of depth.
| | 00:43 | Now that's all pretty
straightforward stuff as you'll see.
| | 00:46 | Gradients aren't super
complicated inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:49 | There is just a whole bunch of different ways
to apply them and manipulate them and so on.
| | 00:53 | However, I do have some extra
stuff going on inside the eyes.
| | 00:57 | So there are actually multiple
gradients assigned to each of the eyes that are
| | 01:01 | blending together, and we'll
see what that looks like shortly.
| | 01:04 | Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and
switch over to Raw cat head here, and we're
| | 01:08 | going to start things off by
working on this forehead shape.
| | 01:11 | Now I should say, because there are so
few shapes inside of this illustration,
| | 01:15 | and just to make it very easy to
navigate, if you twirl open the black cat
| | 01:18 | layer here inside the layers panel,
you'll find that every single one of the
| | 01:22 | items is labeled for you.
| | 01:24 | So cheek L is the left cheek and cheek
R is right cheek and so on, so that you
| | 01:28 | can quickly and easily navigate
your way through this illustration.
| | 01:31 | Anyway, I've got the forehead selected,
and notice up here in the Control panel,
| | 01:35 | you can see that it's got a black fill.
| | 01:37 | This actually happens to be a rich
black fill, and then we've got a red stroke.
| | 01:42 | Well, the only reason the stroke is
there is just to help you find the path
| | 01:45 | in the first place.
| | 01:46 | We don't want that red stroke.
| | 01:47 | So let's go ahead and get rid of it
by clicking on the Stroke icon and
| | 01:50 | setting it to None.
| | 01:51 | Then what I'm going to do is assign a gradient.
| | 01:54 | Now there are few different ways to
assign gradients inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:58 | I don't find the process to be all that
intuitive. That's not to say it's hard,
| | 02:03 | it's just not necessarily the kind of
thing you're going to find very easily
| | 02:06 | when you're first struggling inside the program.
| | 02:08 | I'll go ahead and expand my
toolbox so I can see the bottom of it.
| | 02:11 | You can see down here that
there are three Fill icons.
| | 02:14 | One is color, and that would be a
solid color, by the way, that you could apply
| | 02:18 | from the Color panel.
| | 02:19 | You also have, next-door,
Gradient and then you have None.
| | 02:23 | And notice that they also have keyboard
shortcuts that are right in a row on your
| | 02:27 | keyboard in the lower right-hand corner
of the keyboard, that is to say, and they
| | 02:31 | appear as Less Than and then Greater Than.
| | 02:34 | They are really Comma, Period,
| | 02:36 | and then finally Slash.
| | 02:37 | So if you hit the Period
| | 02:39 | key or click on this icon, you're going
to assign a gradient, and it's going to
| | 02:42 | be either the default gradient, if you
haven't applied one so far, or it's going
| | 02:46 | to be the last gradient you assigned.
| | 02:48 | In our case, it's the default gradient, which
goes from white to black. And that's a weak black.
| | 02:53 | I'll come back to that in a second.
| | 02:55 | We'll need to fix that.
| | 02:56 | Anyway, that's one way to work.
| | 02:57 | I'm going to Undo the
application of that gradient.
| | 03:00 | I'm also going to restore my toolbox to
the single column display there, and I'm
| | 03:04 | going to move over to the Gradient panel,
which you can get, by the way, by going
| | 03:08 | to the Window menu and
choosing the Gradient command.
| | 03:10 | You have also got a keyboard shortcut
of Ctrl+F9, Cmd+F9 on the Mac, and
| | 03:15 | when you first bring up the panel, it
will appear as just a sliver, and if you
| | 03:19 | click on that sliver, why then
you'll apply the gradient to the shape.
| | 03:23 | Another way to work, I'll go ahead and
expand the Gradient panel by clicking on
| | 03:27 | this Up-Down icon a couple of times.
| | 03:29 | If I press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z on the Mac,
you've also got this little icon right there.
| | 03:33 | You can click on it in order to apply
the default gradient or you can choose
| | 03:37 | one of the predefined gradients from
this pop-up menu, and these are the
| | 03:41 | gradients that appear in a new print
document inside of Illustrator, so you can
| | 03:46 | apply one of those as well.
| | 03:47 | Here's the problem, though, in my mind.
| | 03:49 | None of these gradients have rich
blacks. Every single one of them includes a
| | 03:53 | weak black, if it includes
black at all, and I don't want that.
| | 03:56 | That's going to look weird against my
rich black background, because everything
| | 04:00 | else inside this
illustration is filled with rich black.
| | 04:02 | So what do you do if you've already
got a color set up, and you want to
| | 04:05 | integrate it into your new gradient?
| | 04:08 | Why then, you go ahead and drag the color
swatch from the Color panel and you drop
| | 04:12 | it into the Gradient panel, like so.
| | 04:15 | I'll go ahead and grab this Fill
Swatch, and I'll drag it down here into the
| | 04:18 | gradient, and if I drop it at this location,
it'll become a new color-stop in the gradient.
| | 04:23 | If I want to replace white, I would
drag to the beginning of the gradient.
| | 04:26 | If I want to replace black, which is
what I do want to do, then I drop it at the
| | 04:30 | end of the gradient, like so.
| | 04:32 | And now we have a white-to-rich black
gradient, which is a lot more satisfactory.
| | 04:37 | I'm also going to change the angle of
my gradient here to -90 degrees so that
| | 04:42 | the gradient is going from the top downwards.
| | 04:45 | Now I could just as easily set it to 90
degrees if I wanted to, because I want
| | 04:50 | the white to appear on top, notice that.
| | 04:52 | I could change the angle to 90 degrees
and then I could click on the Reverse
| | 04:55 | button in order to reverse the order of
the colors, and that would work for me too.
| | 05:00 | You also have the option of changing the
location of your color-stops if you like.
| | 05:04 | So let's say I want to
nudge the black up a little bit.
| | 05:07 | Since it's my first color, I'll go
ahead and click on it to select it, and then
| | 05:11 | I could change its Location value to 10%,
10% of the way into the path outline,
| | 05:16 | that is, and now we'll go
ahead and nudge black upward.
| | 05:19 | You also have the option of changing a
color by double-clicking on it and that
| | 05:23 | will bring up this pop-up panel.
| | 05:24 | You can switch between your color
sliders and your swatches, so you can
| | 05:28 | work either way there.
| | 05:29 | You also have control over Opacity,
so you can change the Opacity of the
| | 05:33 | color-stop, and we'll see a lot of
these options later on, by the way.
| | 05:37 | Here's another thing you can do, I just
want you to know this up front, you can
| | 05:39 | duplicate a color-stop by pressing the
Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, and
| | 05:44 | dragging like so, and that will
create an exact duplicate of that color.
| | 05:48 | If you want to get rid of a color-stop,
you can select it and click on the
| | 05:51 | Trashcan icon, but that's kind of a
waste of time, when all you have to do
| | 05:54 | is grab it and drag down, and that will
basically rip the color-stop off of the gradient.
| | 06:00 | And that's it, that is our first
look at gradients inside of Illustrator.
| | 06:04 | In the next exercise, I'll
introduce you to the Gradient tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the gradient annotator| 00:00 | I have saved my progress as Shiny forehead.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise, I'm going to
introduce you to the Gradient tool and its
| | 00:07 | partner in crime, the Gradient Annotator.
| | 00:09 | So I'm going to start things off by
duplicating the gradient we've already
| | 00:13 | assigned to all the other shapes that
require gradients, and they are these.
| | 00:18 | Go ahead and click on anyone of the
paths that has a red stroke assigned to it,
| | 00:21 | and then go up to the Select Similar
Objects icon up here in the Control panel.
| | 00:26 | Click on the down pointing arrowhead
next to it and choose All, just to make
| | 00:29 | sure that you're matching all the
attributes, which in this case include both
| | 00:34 | Stroke and Fill Attributes.
| | 00:35 | We don't want those red strokes, so
let's get rid of them now by going up here
| | 00:39 | to the Stroke Swatch in the
Control panel and changing it to None.
| | 00:42 | And then I'll press the Enter or
Return key in order to get rid of that panel,
| | 00:45 | and I'll Shift+Drag right around this
area here, around the nose and the brow,
| | 00:49 | and the muzzle in order to select those shapes.
| | 00:52 | Don't select the whiskers, and you don't
need to select the outside head, either.
| | 00:55 | All right, now I'm going to go ahead
and lift the assigned gradient by pressing
| | 00:59 | the I key to get the eyedropper down
here, and you can do one of two things.
| | 01:04 | One would be the wrong thing to do,
but I'll show it to you first.
| | 01:06 | You could just click inside the shape,
and notice if you do that, you're going
| | 01:09 | to get rid of those white strokes that
formerly appeared around the brow, and
| | 01:13 | the nose, and the muzzle, and we want to
keep those white strokes, so that's a problem.
| | 01:17 | Also notice that all the gradients are
going from black over on the left hand
| | 01:21 | side to white on the right-hand side,
just like they appear inside the Gradient
| | 01:24 | panel, but not in keeping with the way
they were assigned to the forehead, which
| | 01:28 | I think is peculiar.
| | 01:30 | So we lost the angle information in other words.
| | 01:32 | I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z,
Cmd+Z on the Mac to undo that mistake.
| | 01:37 | Make sure that the fill is active here
in the Color panel or at the bottom of
| | 01:40 | the toolbox, then press the Shift key
and click inside that forehead gradient.
| | 01:45 | And what that does is it goes
ahead and lifts just the gray.
| | 01:50 | I didn't mean to do that.
| | 01:51 | That's because I clicked inside
of a color inside that gradient.
| | 01:54 | So I just lifted the gray
and assigned it as a flat fill.
| | 01:58 | Don't want that, press Ctrl
+Z, Cmd+Z on the Mac.
| | 02:00 | Instead, I'll Shift+Click on the
outline of the gradient, of the path, that is, in
| | 02:05 | order to lift the entire gradient and
assign that gradient to my path outlines.
| | 02:10 | And notice now that I have also
retained the angle information, in addition to
| | 02:14 | the fact that I did not replace the strokes.
| | 02:16 | So the strokes remain intact.
| | 02:18 | All right, so that's a Shift+Click once
again, and you have to do it right there
| | 02:21 | on that path outline.
| | 02:23 | Now next, I'm going to go over here
to the Gradient panel and I'm going to
| | 02:26 | restore this black color stop to a
location of 0%, and then I'm going to reverse
| | 02:31 | the angles of the gradients, just by
clicking on this Reverse Gradient icon, and
| | 02:35 | we'll get this effect here.
| | 02:36 | All right, so far so good.
| | 02:38 | I'll press the V key in
order to get my Black Arrow tool.
| | 02:40 | Click off the shapes to deselect them.
| | 02:42 | And let's get to work first on this brow.
| | 02:45 | So basically all these paths to which
I've assigned gradients, they all need
| | 02:48 | gradients, but all the
gradients have to be finessed.
| | 02:51 | None of them are proceeding at the
right pace or the right angle right now.
| | 02:54 | So we're going to start things off
with the brow, and that's this shape right
| | 02:57 | there, that goes around the
eyes and down into the nose.
| | 03:00 | Click on the path outline to select it
and then switch over to the Gradient tool.
| | 03:04 | And as soon as you do, you should see this
Gradient Annotator here inside of the illustration.
| | 03:10 | Now if you don't see the Gradient
Annotator, go up to the View menu and choose
| | 03:14 | what should be the Show
Gradient Annotator command.
| | 03:17 | You also have the shortcut, which is
Ctrl+Alt+G or Cmd+Option+G on the Mac,
| | 03:21 | and that allows you to toggle the
gradient annotator on and off, just if you
| | 03:26 | want to be able to see your
paths better onscreen, for example.
| | 03:29 | Now notice how this Gradient Annotator
is constructed. When you move your cursor
| | 03:33 | away from it, it appears as a bar and
then when you hover your cursor over the
| | 03:38 | Annotator it shows you the colors, and
the color stops inside of the gradient.
| | 03:42 | Down here at the bottom, we see a circle,
and that indicates the gradient origin,
| | 03:47 | the point at which the gradient begins.
| | 03:49 | Up at the top you are either going to
see a diamond, or if you move away you're
| | 03:52 | going to see a square, and that's the gradient
terminus, that indicates where the gradient ends.
| | 03:57 | So the final color in the gradient
appears at the terminus, the first color in
| | 04:01 | the gradient appears at the origin.
| | 04:03 | Now these two points work
differently than each other.
| | 04:06 | So one of the things you can do is
drag the entire Annotator by dragging the
| | 04:11 | origin like so, and if you start
moving it away, away from the center of the
| | 04:15 | shape that is, then you're got to see
this rectangle. And what that rectangle is
| | 04:20 | telling you, is that the current
location of your annotator isn't where it's
| | 04:24 | really going to land.
| | 04:25 | It's going to land at that
parallel dotted line location.
| | 04:28 | So in other words, right in the
center of the nose, as soon as I release.
| | 04:33 | And so it's worth paying attention to,
even though it doesn't make a lot of
| | 04:36 | sense necessarily when you first
start using this tool that you get this
| | 04:39 | dotted box all the time.
| | 04:41 | It's worth watching what's going on with it,
because it tells you what's up as you work.
| | 04:46 | The end point right here, the Terminus
point, if you drag it, you're going to
| | 04:50 | move the last color in the
gradient with respect to the first color.
| | 04:53 | So dragging the origin point moves
both the first and last colors around, as
| | 04:57 | well as any intermediate color stops,
dragging the last guy right here changes
| | 05:02 | the length of that gradient and the
location of the endpoint of the final color.
| | 05:07 | If you move your cursor slightly away from
that terminus, not the origin, notice this.
| | 05:12 | You have got to move your cursor away
from the terminus, then you'll get this
| | 05:15 | little Rotate icon, and that means you can drag
in order to change the angle of the Annotator.
| | 05:20 | Notice you're going to get that
dotted outline once again, that dotted line
| | 05:24 | that's parallel to the annotator is
where the annotator is going to land.
| | 05:28 | So as soon as I release, it's going
to spring back to this location here.
| | 05:32 | All right, what I want, however, is
a nice straight up-and-down gradient.
| | 05:36 | So I'm going to drag the Origin point
down to the chin of the cat and then go
| | 05:41 | ahead and release it, and that doesn't help.
| | 05:43 | And this is one of the reasons you
have got to pay attention to that dotted
| | 05:46 | outline, because it shows you where the
gradient is really going to land, and it
| | 05:51 | ain't going to be down here no matter
how hard you try, until you go ahead and
| | 05:55 | rotate the gradient back to an upright position.
| | 05:57 | And you can do that by changing the
Angle value back to what it should be, which
| | 06:01 | I believe is something like 90 degrees or -90,
or you can go ahead and move your cursor
| | 06:06 | to just beyond the terminus and drag
around like so, and press the Shift key in
| | 06:12 | order to constrain the angle to
exactly vertical, and then release.
| | 06:16 | And now you will go ahead and move that
annotator to the middle of the gradient,
| | 06:20 | then you go ahead and drag it
down into position, like so.
| | 06:23 | So even though the Gradient Annotator
is pretty intuitive, because it allows
| | 06:26 | you to edit the gradient right there
inside the illustration, it does often
| | 06:31 | time involve a handful of steps in order to get
that annotator exactly where you want it to be.
| | 06:35 | So this is the effect I'm looking for.
| | 06:37 | I want you know a few other things. If
you want to change the color of one of
| | 06:40 | your color stops, there they are, you
have got to hover over the Annotator and
| | 06:44 | then you'll see the color stops and
then you can double-click and that will
| | 06:46 | bring up either the Color panel or the
Swatches panel, so you can switch back
| | 06:51 | and forth between those.
| | 06:52 | If you want to add a color to the
gradient you just click, notice that your
| | 06:55 | cursor changes to a white arrow
with a little Plus sign next to it.
| | 06:59 | When you move your cursor just
slightly beyond the edge of that annotator,
| | 07:04 | you click and that will create a
new color stop, and notice it's an
| | 07:07 | intermediate color stop.
| | 07:08 | The same thing happens when you click
under the Gradient Bar here inside the
| | 07:12 | Gradient panel, and you can also
Option+Drag or Alt+Drag one of these color
| | 07:17 | stops in order to duplicate it, you can
drag a color stop away like so, in order
| | 07:22 | to delete it from the gradient.
| | 07:24 | And that my friends, is how you use the
Gradient tool and the Gradient Annotator
| | 07:28 | here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing multiple gradients| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as Many gradients.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise, I am going to show you
how to change the size and angle of
| | 00:06 | multiple gradients at the same
time using the Gradient tool.
| | 00:10 | But first I want to show you a
limitation of the Gradient tool and one of its
| | 00:14 | excellent advantages,
| | 00:15 | something that you can do with the
Gradient tool that you just can't do from
| | 00:18 | the Gradient panel.
| | 00:20 | So, first the limitation. I am going to
select the cat head, let's say, and
| | 00:25 | imagine that I want to
assign a gradient to the head.
| | 00:27 | I don't, I want it to remain solid black,
but let's say I want to assign a gradient.
| | 00:31 | Why, you would naturally assume that given
that the Gradient tool could do everything
| | 00:36 | else that it would let you assign a gradient.
| | 00:38 | Well, that would be the wrong assumption.
| | 00:39 | If you grab the Gradient tool and you
drag, you are going to create an annotator,
| | 00:43 | so that's going to make you think,
| | 00:44 | Yup, I am going to create a gradient here,
and then you release and nothing happens.
| | 00:49 | And we have not assigned a gradient, the
Color panel is still showing us a solid fill,
| | 00:54 | and if I go up to the Edit menu, there's
nothing to undo. So I didn't do a darn thing
| | 00:58 | using the Gradient tool.
| | 00:59 | So you've got to assign a gradient
first and then modify it using the tool.
| | 01:04 | Here is a great thing though about the tool.
| | 01:06 | I am going to Ctrl+Click or Cmd+
Click on the nose here to select it and I am
| | 01:11 | pressing Ctrl or Cmd so I can
temporarily get my Black Arrow tool, and then
| | 01:14 | when I release, I go back to my Gradient tool.
| | 01:17 | Let's say you want to darken up this
gradient, and, normally what you'd think is
| | 01:22 | that you've got to go over here to the
Gradient panel and you'd have to change
| | 01:25 | white to some other color to darken things up.
| | 01:27 | Well, what you can do instead is move
the color stop out of the shape, so out
| | 01:33 | beyond the end of the path.
| | 01:34 | So the gradient can actually be much
larger than the path, in other words.
| | 01:37 | That's not something you can make happen
inside the Gradient panel, you can make
| | 01:41 | it happen however by just
dragging this origin point downward.
| | 01:46 | Now, I've dragged the gradient so far
down that it doesn't actually occur inside
| | 01:50 | of the path outline.
| | 01:51 | So the entire path is now black and now
if I drag that terminus point up then I
| | 01:57 | will introduce a little bit of
gradient into the tip of that nose.
| | 02:00 | Now, we are not seeing it very well
because it's hidden by the annotator so
| | 02:02 | I could press Ctrl+Alt+G or Cmd+Option+
G on the Mac in order to hide the annotator.
| | 02:07 | Here's another thing you could do
by the way, I'll press Ctrl+Alt+G or
| | 02:10 | Cmd+Option+G to bring it back.
| | 02:12 | You can just press and hold the Ctrl
key or the Cmd key on the Mac, because
| | 02:15 | that temporally switches you to
Black Arrow tool and the annotator
| | 02:18 | automatically hides.
| | 02:19 | And then as soon as you release the
Ctrl or Cmd key it comes back.
| | 02:23 | All right, I am going to
move this guy up a little bit.
| | 02:25 | I don't want the nose to be quite that
dark. And then I am going to drag this
| | 02:28 | point down and in like so, so
that we end up with this effect here.
| | 02:32 | I'm showing you the effect once again
by pressing Ctrl or Cmd on a Mac.
| | 02:37 | All right, let's grab these two muzzle shapes.
| | 02:39 | I've got Control down still so
Ctrl+Click or Cmd+Click on one,
| | 02:42 | Ctrl+Shift+Click or Cmd+Shift+
Click on the other to select both of them.
| | 02:46 | Now, notice as soon as I release,
I get two independent annotators.
| | 02:50 | So you get an annotator for each and
every path outline, which makes it difficult
| | 02:55 | if you want to get exactly the
same results from both gradients.
| | 02:59 | You want one gradient to course
through both paths, for example, or to course
| | 03:04 | in the same direction.
| | 03:05 | So, what you might figure is well, you
got to be careful with what you are doing.
| | 03:09 | You've got to edit these two guys
independently of each other like so, and then
| | 03:13 | I'd have to extend this guy backup
if I wanted to like so, and so on.
| | 03:18 | Well, what you can really do instead is
you just start dragging from a neutral point.
| | 03:22 | So, let's say I want the gradient to
start right about here under the animal's
| | 03:26 | eye and end at the muzzle.
| | 03:28 | So, I am going to drag down like so,
and I am pressing the Shift key as I do.
| | 03:32 | Notice I am creating a new gradient
annotator as I draw, because I drew from
| | 03:36 | a new location, and that annotator is going
to affect both path outlines at the same time.
| | 03:41 | You can also make a gradient go
through multiple paths and you do that by
| | 03:45 | dragging through the paths, like so.
| | 03:47 | So in another words, in this case it
starts over here on the right side of the
| | 03:51 | right muzzle and continues all the way
over to the left side of the left muzzle,
| | 03:55 | without any break in between the
two paths except, for the break that's
| | 03:59 | created by the stroke.
| | 04:00 | If I were to get rid of the stroke we
would have a smooth continuous gradient.
| | 04:04 | Anyway, that's not what I
want, this is what I want.
| | 04:06 | So, I'll go ahead and drag once again,
and press the Shift key as I drag to
| | 04:09 | constrain the angle to
exactly vertical, like so.
| | 04:12 | Now, I have a single
gradient annotator to work with.
| | 04:15 | If you want to break the shapes so that
they have their own unique gradients,
| | 04:19 | then you would want to deselect one
of them and then modify the gradient
| | 04:24 | annotator that remains for the selected shape.
| | 04:26 | So that's how you go about changing
the angle of multiple gradients at once.
| | 04:30 | In the next exercise, I'll show you a
few other ways to assign symmetry to your
| | 04:34 | gradients inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Establishing symmetrical gradients| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as Nose and muzzle.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise, we are going to create
some more symmetrical gradients, and the
| | 00:08 | idea here is that we want to create
gradients that go in the opposite direction
| | 00:12 | of each other, and then gradients
that go in reflective directions.
| | 00:16 | I'll show you what I mean as we
work our way through this exercise.
| | 00:19 | Let's start things off using the
Black Arrow tool by selecting both of the
| | 00:22 | cheek shapes right here and then the two
eyelids, which are the shapes outside of the white eye.
| | 00:28 | So, all four of those shapes should be selected.
| | 00:30 | Then what I want you to do is grab
the Gradient tool, which you can get by
| | 00:34 | pressing the G key, of course.
| | 00:36 | And notice we now have four
annotators showing up inside of the
| | 00:39 | Illustration window.
| | 00:40 | If I want all four annotators to go in
the same direction, then all I have to do,
| | 00:44 | of course, is the same thing we
did in the previous exercise.
| | 00:47 | Just drag from a neutral location,
and then I'll press the Shift key as I
| | 00:51 | continue to drag so I get a vertical gradient.
| | 00:53 | And I am creating my gradient from above
the eye down to just below the cheek, like
| | 00:58 | so, and then I'll go ahead and release,
which works beautifully for the two cheek
| | 01:01 | shapes but I actually want the
eyelids to go in the opposite direction.
| | 01:05 | So I am going to grab my black
arrow tool once again and I'm going to
| | 01:08 | Shift+Click on one of the cheeks and
Shift+Click on the other to deselect them
| | 01:11 | so just the eyelids are selected now.
| | 01:14 | Then I'll just go over here to the
Gradient panel and reverse the direction by
| | 01:17 | clicking on the reverse
direction icon. And it's that simple.
| | 01:20 | So, bear in mind that the Gradient tool
and the annotator aren't your only ways
| | 01:23 | of modifying gradients.
| | 01:24 | You've got all these all these
options in the Gradient panel as well,
| | 01:27 | some of which are actually easier to
work with than having to drag a bunch
| | 01:32 | of annotators around.
| | 01:33 | All right, next I am going to change
the angle of the ear by clicking on
| | 01:36 | this left ear up here.
| | 01:38 | Now, I could try to change the angle
of both ears at the same time but that's
| | 01:41 | not going to work and I'll just show you.
| | 01:42 | Might as will go ahead and Shift+Click
on the other ear shape right there and
| | 01:46 | then I'll go ahead and
grab my Gradient tool again.
| | 01:48 | I want the tips of the ears to
be bright and the base to be dark.
| | 01:52 | So I am going to drag from
about here down toward the head.
| | 01:56 | This time I am not going to press the
Shift key, I am just going to draw an
| | 01:59 | angled gradient this time around.
| | 02:00 | So, the Shift key is going to
constrain the angle of the gradient annotator
| | 02:04 | to the nearest 45 degrees, but again I don't need
any constraints so I'll just drag to here.
| | 02:08 | That affects this ear beautifully but
just wipes out the gradient inside the
| | 02:12 | other ear and the whole
thing is appearing black.
| | 02:15 | So, then I could drag a new gradient.
| | 02:17 | I'd have to deselect this ear and
draw a new gradient inside the other ear.
| | 02:21 | But how do I make sure that they are
both exactly opposite of each other?
| | 02:25 | Well, I could check the angle value
over here and I could it to something
| | 02:28 | like -45 degrees, for example.
| | 02:32 | Then I could grab the other guy and
notice we've got this gradient up here, this
| | 02:36 | annotator way up here, for the other ear now.
| | 02:40 | So, we could grab it, then we could try
to change it's angle so that it goes an
| | 02:43 | presumably 45 degrees instead of
negative, or you could try this instead.
| | 02:48 | This is by far the simplest thing to
do and it's a fairly obvious technique.
| | 02:51 | But I'm going to switch back to the
Black Arrow tool, click off ears, click on
| | 02:55 | this guy to select it and get rid of
it by pressing the Backspace key or the
| | 02:58 | Delete key on the Mac.
| | 02:59 | Click on this ear in order to select it.
| | 03:01 | Go ahead and get yourself the
Reflect tool, which you can select from a
| | 03:05 | Rotate tool flyout menu, and then we need to
reflect around the center of the illustration.
| | 03:10 | Now, I have marked the center using a
guideline but that may not appear onscreen
| | 03:15 | for you if your guides are
hidden, as they are for me.
| | 03:17 | So I am going to go to the View menu,
choose Guides, and then choose Show Guides
| | 03:20 | or just press Ctrl+Semicolon,
| | 03:21 | Cmd+Semicolon on a Mac.
| | 03:24 | Now, we have that guideline right
through the center of the document.
| | 03:27 | I'll press the Alt key or the Option
key and click right at that location and
| | 03:32 | I'll set Reflect to Vertical so that
I'm reflecting across the vertical axis to
| | 03:37 | create a horizontal reflection and then
I'll click the Copy button in order to
| | 03:41 | create that other ear.
| | 03:42 | And not only does the ear flip, but
the gradient flips along with it.
| | 03:46 | Then I'll press Ctrl+Semicolon, or Cmd+Semicolon
| | 03:49 | on a Mac, in order to hide those guidelines.
| | 03:51 | All right, the last thing I want to do
in this exercise is assign a little bit
| | 03:55 | of additional depth using some Drop Shadows.
| | 03:58 | Drop Shadows are another form of
gradient inside of Illustrator, it's just
| | 04:02 | that you apply them using a command.
| | 04:04 | They are dynamic effects that
you can change anytime you like.
| | 04:07 | And, instead of going from one color to
another color, they go from one color to the
| | 04:11 | same color but they fade away.
| | 04:13 | They go from Opacity or some level of
translucency to absolute transparency.
| | 04:18 | So what I'd like you to do if
you are working along with me, is
| | 04:20 | select the brow, then Shift+Click on the
nose and Shift+Click on each one of the
| | 04:25 | eyes using the Black Arrow tool, and
those are the white eye shapes, not the
| | 04:29 | eyelids, in order to select those four shapes.
| | 04:32 | Then, go up to the Effect menu, choose
Stylize, and choose Drop Shadow, or you can
| | 04:37 | press my keyboard
shortcut if you loaded dekeKeys.
| | 04:39 | That's Ctrl+Alt+E or Cmd+Option+E on a Mac,
and these are the values I want you to apply.
| | 04:45 | Mode should be set to Multiply, then
Opacity is 100%, X Offset is 0, Y Offset
| | 04:50 | is 5, and Blur is 5. And then the Color radio
button should be selected and set to black.
| | 04:55 | Darkness, by the way, is going to
create a gradient variation that is some
| | 05:00 | translucent level of the colors that
are already found inside of your selected
| | 05:05 | paths, so that becomes a more
complicated operation for Photoshop.
| | 05:09 | Anyway, I am going to turn on the Preview
check box so we can see what we've done.
| | 05:12 | There it is, looks great, click Ok, and
we've now assigned even more depth to our cat.
| | 05:17 | In fact, we've gone a long distance
toward creating this final effect, but we
| | 05:21 | still have a lot of work to do, including
creating this Gradient Backdrop, which is the
| | 05:25 | topic of the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a radial gradient| 00:00 | So far all the gradients that we
have created have been linear gradients.
| | 00:03 | Meaning, that they start at
one color, end at another color;
| | 00:06 | you can add as many
colors in-between if you like.
| | 00:09 | However, all the colors are
arranged along a straight axis.
| | 00:12 | There is another kind of gradient
though that's available to you inside of
| | 00:15 | Illustrator, and that's a radial
gradient, in which the colors are arranged
| | 00:19 | in concentric rings.
| | 00:20 | I am going to show you how that works
by assigning a radial gradient to the
| | 00:24 | background behind the cat,
| | 00:25 | as you see here in the
finished Gradient cat.ai file.
| | 00:29 | Let's go ahead and switch over
to the illustration in progress;
| | 00:32 | it's called highly polished cat.ai.
| | 00:34 | I am going to back off a little bit by
zooming out, so I have a little room to work here.
| | 00:38 | I am going to click on the big
rectangle to select it with my Black Arrow key.
| | 00:42 | Then I'll go over to the Gradient
panel and I want to use the rich black that
| | 00:46 | I've already assigned to
fill inside my new gradient.
| | 00:49 | So, I'll go ahead and grab this color
swatch here in the Color panel and I'll
| | 00:53 | drag it down to the gradient bar
and drop it at the end right there.
| | 00:56 | So I have a white to rich black gradient.
| | 00:59 | As you can see the colors are arranged
horizontally, that is along a horizontal axis.
| | 01:04 | So what they really are is
vertical strips of color at this point.
| | 01:08 | So we have a bunch of vertical
lines of different shades in this case
| | 01:13 | coursing from white on one side of the
shape to black on the other side, to a
| | 01:17 | rich black, that is.
| | 01:18 | However, if you'd rather arrange your
colors in concentric rings, then you just go
| | 01:22 | to the Gradient panel and you
switch from Linear to Radial, like so.
| | 01:26 | Now, notice that the gradient begins
in the center of the shape and ends near
| | 01:31 | the outside of the shape and it
actually ends with a gigantic circle as
| | 01:35 | you're about to see.
| | 01:36 | So, the first color is going to be at
the center and the last color is going to
| | 01:39 | be around the perimeter of that circle.
| | 01:41 | Typically, when you are creating radial
gradients they start bright and they end dark.
| | 01:45 | If yours is going the wrong direction
then you can just click on the reverse
| | 01:49 | gradient button, which is a heck of a tool.
| | 01:51 | I just got to say, it's a really convenient option.
| | 01:54 | Anyway, I am going to reset it to
where it was before, and then I'm going to
| | 01:57 | ahead and bring up my Gradient tool. As
long as the shape is still selected I
| | 02:00 | should see a gradient annotator.
| | 02:02 | It looks a lot like the annotator
we've seen so far, the one that's associated
| | 02:06 | with the linear gradient.
| | 02:07 | The big difference is that when you move
inside of this giant circle you can see
| | 02:12 | the perimeter of the gradient.
| | 02:14 | So this outside circle shows the location
of all of the last colors, the entire
| | 02:19 | big circle of the last color, and
anything beyond that circle is just going to
| | 02:24 | be rich black in our case.
| | 02:26 | So, what I suggest we do is we go
ahead and modify this circle a little bit.
| | 02:30 | Now, you can drag the origin point, once
again, the big circle there, in order to
| | 02:35 | change the location of the entire gradient.
| | 02:37 | I am going to leave it centered inside
the backdrop and I am going to change
| | 02:41 | both the angle and the location of the
last color by dragging this diamond, which
| | 02:45 | is the terminus, of course, of the
gradient, and I am going to drag it up and over,
| | 02:49 | at least that's what I'd like to do.
| | 02:51 | I am not changing the angle;
| | 02:52 | I am just changing the
positioning at this point.
| | 02:54 | So, I'm just changing the location of that
point, which actually works out pretty nicely.
| | 03:00 | I can now see that the circle is every
bit as large as the rectangle itself.
| | 03:04 | Now, if you want to change the angle of
the gradient then you go ahead and move
| | 03:08 | your cursor slightly outside the
terminus once again and you drag like so with
| | 03:12 | that little rotate cursor.
| | 03:13 | Going to notice, however, that that's not
going to do anything. As long as you don't
| | 03:18 | change the location of that point,
| | 03:20 | then changing the angle doesn't have
any effect on the gradient because after
| | 03:23 | all you're changing the
angle of a ginormous circle.
| | 03:27 | And a circle is always a
circle regardless of its angle.
| | 03:30 | So what we need to do if we want to get
different results out of this is we need
| | 03:34 | to bend the shape into an ellipse.
| | 03:36 | You can do that by going up to
this little icon right there.
| | 03:39 | Notice that guy, that's sitting at the
top of the circle, and it's angled over,
| | 03:44 | which is why it's at its current location.
| | 03:46 | Go ahead and drag that down like so
and that will go ahead and slim the
| | 03:51 | circle into an oval.
| | 03:53 | You can determine the exact dimensions,
that is at least the proportions of that
| | 03:57 | ellipse, by changing this value
right here inside the Gradient panel.
| | 04:01 | So, I might change it to 70% if I
want absolute control over how big that
| | 04:06 | ellipse is or at least numerical control.
| | 04:08 | I am also going to change the angle to 135
degrees, which is going to send this line in
| | 04:14 | exactly the opposite direction, or more
or less the opposite direction, anyway.
| | 04:18 | So that the gradient begins in the center of
the rectangle and it ends down and to the left.
| | 04:23 | Now, finally, I am going to do one
more thing, and this applies only to radial
| | 04:28 | gradients inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:30 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in so
I can better see what I am doing, and
| | 04:33 | notice that next to the origin circle
there is yet another circle, and that
| | 04:38 | circle determines the center of our
gradient, that is, the location at which the
| | 04:42 | gradient truly begins and it allows
you to offset that initial color with
| | 04:46 | respect to the outside perimeter.
| | 04:48 | So let me show you what that looks like.
| | 04:49 | As I drag up, and I've got to be careful
at first when I am dragging because
| | 04:54 | Illustrator has a tendency to make this
line just go wonky as heck when you are
| | 04:58 | right next to the origin point.
| | 04:59 | But as you drag away you'll
have a little more control.
| | 05:02 | Then once you get that starting point
to some place inside the ear you can
| | 05:06 | go ahead and release.
| | 05:08 | So, what's happening is now the
center point of the gradient is offset
| | 05:11 | with respect to the perimeter, so the
perimeter's remained at exactly the same position.
| | 05:15 | So if you drag this guy all the way up
here you'd have quite the spotlight effect.
| | 05:20 | The gradient would race from this
starting point to the endpoint right there
| | 05:24 | and it would go very slowly from the
starting point to the endpoint down and to left.
| | 05:29 | Anyway, I don't want things to be quite that
radical so I am going to move this point
| | 05:32 | back inside the ear like so and
release, and then I'll go ahead and zoom in.
| | 05:36 | Then I'll press the V key to switch back
to the Black Arrow tool, click off of
| | 05:40 | the path in order to deselect it,
and that is how you work with radial
| | 05:43 | gradients inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the midpoint skew| 00:01 | In this exercise, we are
going to begin work on the eyes.
| | 00:03 | I am zoomed in on the final Gradient
cat.ai file, and each one of the eyes
| | 00:08 | contains a total of four gradients.
| | 00:10 | So there is one gradient on top of the
pupil that represents the highlight, and
| | 00:14 | then in back of the pupil, there is three
gradients working together inside of a single shape.
| | 00:18 | One of the gradients starts light on the inside,
| | 00:20 | works its way toward darkness on the
outside, and you can even see each one of
| | 00:24 | these gradients listed right now
here inside the Appearance panel.
| | 00:26 | So the base gradient looks like this,
| | 00:28 | white on the inside, dark on the outside.
| | 00:30 | The next gradient up is dark on the
inside, and light on the outside, so they
| | 00:34 | are working in opposite
directions of each other.
| | 00:36 | And then finally, we have a linear
gradient that starts here at the brow, and
| | 00:40 | works its way downward.
| | 00:42 | As a result, we get something of
a volumetric form out of this eye.
| | 00:45 | All right, I am going to go ahead and
switch over to the file in progress,
| | 00:49 | which I have called Radial grad
background.ai, and I am zoomed in on the right
| | 00:53 | eye, for what that's worth, and I am
going to go ahead and select this eye with
| | 00:57 | the Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:58 | Let's start things out with the base
radial gradient, again, bright on the
| | 01:02 | inside, dark on the outside.
| | 01:04 | So the first color is going to be white,
but the second color is going to be a
| | 01:07 | shade of brown, and I am going to go
ahead and dial in that brown here in the
| | 01:10 | Color panel by setting the Cyan value
to 0, the Magenta value to 50, 100 for
| | 01:16 | Yellow, and then 50 for Black, and then
I will press the Enter key or the Return
| | 01:19 | key in the Mac in order to accept that color.
| | 01:21 | Now then I'll take this brown color
swatch and I will drag it down into the
| | 01:25 | Gradient panel and drop it at the final
position here, so it will replace black.
| | 01:30 | So we have a white to
black gradient, as you can see.
| | 01:32 | By default, it's going to come in
as a Linear gradient so I am going to
| | 01:35 | change it to Radial.
| | 01:37 | Then I am going to make some
adjustments using my Gradient tool.
| | 01:39 | So I'll press the G key to get the
Gradient tool like so, and then I'll drag the
| | 01:44 | center of that gradient to right there
in the middle of the pupil, so that the
| | 01:48 | pupil represents the center of the eye,
which is the way it works actually, even
| | 01:53 | if that's not quite the center of the shape.
| | 01:55 | Then I am going to change the angle
value here to 45 degrees, and I will press the
| | 01:59 | Return key or the Enter key in the
Mac, and I am going to drag this guy
| | 02:02 | outward, just a little bit.
| | 02:04 | The only reason I'm rotating this circle
is so that I can see exactly where this
| | 02:08 | terminus point here aligns
to the outline of the eye.
| | 02:11 | And then finally, I am going to select
this guy right here, the midpoint skew, is
| | 02:16 | what this little diamond at the top of
the gradient is known as, and it appears
| | 02:20 | not only above the gradient in the
Gradient panel, but it also appears at the
| | 02:24 | top of the gradient
annotator, when you hover over it.
| | 02:27 | What this represents is the
midpoint between any two color stops.
| | 02:32 | So we only have two color stops that
work in this gradient, white and brown, and
| | 02:36 | this is the middle point between them.
| | 02:38 | Now the reason this control exists is so
that you can adjust the speed of the gradient.
| | 02:42 | So in other words, it could fade very
quickly at the beginning and then very
| | 02:47 | slowly after the midpoint, or the exact opposite.
| | 02:50 | It could fade very slowly at the
beginning, giving us a big, huge, bright area in
| | 02:55 | the center of the eye, and
then fade very quickly at the end.
| | 02:59 | And I want to set the location of that
midpoint skew, so you can see that that
| | 03:02 | diamond is selected.
| | 03:03 | I want to set it to exactly 80%, just
so that you can match my values here.
| | 03:09 | Now, I'll press the Enter key or the
Return key on the Mac to apply that change.
| | 03:12 | All right, so that represents the
first gradient inside of our shape.
| | 03:16 | In the next exercise, we'll create two
more gradients and assign Blend modes in
| | 03:19 | order to create a gradient interaction.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mixing gradients with blend modes| 00:00 | All right, one gradient out of the way,
two more to go inside of this eye shape here.
| | 00:04 | Each one of the gradients is going to
cover up the gradient below it, so we need
| | 00:08 | to create some kind of interaction
between the gradients and we are going to do
| | 00:11 | so using a Blend mode.
| | 00:13 | I've saved my progress as First eye gradient.ai.
| | 00:16 | I have the right-hand eye shape
selected with my Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:19 | I am going to move over to the
Appearance panel, and if you can't see it
| | 00:22 | onscreen, go to the Window menu and
choose Appearance or press Shift+F6, and then
| | 00:27 | I want you to go ahead and click on the
existing Gradient Fill, notice that we
| | 00:30 | have one fill, which is Radial gradient;
| | 00:32 | we don't have any stroke, and the Radial
gradient is covering up the Drop Shadow below it.
| | 00:37 | Now we want to add yet another radial
gradient and I am going to do that by
| | 00:40 | dropping down to the Add New Fill icon.
| | 00:42 | I can click on that icon or I
can press its keyboard shortcut,
| | 00:45 | Ctrl+Slash, or Cmd+Slash on
the Mac, in order to create a duplicate
| | 00:49 | of the existing fill.
| | 00:50 | So, we should see two identical
radial gradients on top of each other.
| | 00:54 | Now, I want to reverse
the order of this gradient.
| | 00:56 | The reason being, if you take a look
at a cat's eye, and we are not going to
| | 00:59 | exactly match a cat's iris, but the
way it basically works is that it starts
| | 01:04 | dark right on the outside of the pupil,
and then it lightens up in the middle of
| | 01:08 | the iris, and then it grows dark
again as it's shaded by the eyelids.
| | 01:12 | So that's the effect we are trying to mimic.
| | 01:14 | So I am going to create that darkness in the
center by reversing the order of this gradient.
| | 01:18 | So I'll click the Reverse Gradient
button so that the dark point's in the inside
| | 01:22 | and the light point's at the outside.
| | 01:23 | I am going to click on that midpoint
skew right there and reset it to 50%, so
| | 01:28 | that the speed of the
gradient is uniform throughout.
| | 01:30 | And then I am going to double-
click on that final color stop,
| | 01:33 | the one that's currently white, and I'm
going to click on the flyout menu icon,
| | 01:36 | switch it to CMYK, and I am going
to dial in 50% yellow, that's it.
| | 01:41 | Everything else stays 0, and we end
up getting this affect right here.
| | 01:45 | Now, I need to adjust the speed
of the gradients and so forth.
| | 01:48 | So I am going to press the G
key to get my Gradient tool.
| | 01:50 | That center point should still be
right there at the center of the pupil.
| | 01:54 | However, I want to go ahead and
drag this guy down a little bit in this
| | 01:58 | direction here, and I am going to move
it in as well to about this location,
| | 02:03 | because I want a short amount of
darkness there, maybe a little more than that.
| | 02:06 | And then finally, I am going to change
that angle value, just so that you and I
| | 02:10 | are getting the same results.
| | 02:11 | I am going to change it to -35 degrees, like so.
| | 02:14 | Then finally, we need to create the
interaction, because notice, this Fill, if I
| | 02:18 | turn off its eyeball, it's just
totally covering up the fill below it.
| | 02:21 | So, we have two opaque gradients
sitting on top of each other, that's not
| | 02:24 | going to do any good.
| | 02:25 | So, I will turn the Fill back on once
again by clicking in that eyeball column,
| | 02:30 | and then I'll switch over to the
Transparency panel, and you can also get to it
| | 02:34 | by choosing Transparency from the Window menu.
| | 02:36 | It's going to be down toward the bottom,
of course, because these guys are in
| | 02:38 | alphabetical order, and then finally,
I am going to change the Blend mode
| | 02:42 | from Normal to Multiply.
| | 02:44 | We'll be learning a lot more about
blend modes in a future chapter, but for now,
| | 02:48 | what they do is they allow you to
create complex interactions between objects,
| | 02:52 | so you can blend different objects
together with each other or different
| | 02:55 | attributes in this case because we are
working with Fills. And when I set this
| | 02:59 | Fill to Multiply, it burns in to the
gradient below it, so that one gradient is
| | 03:04 | darkening the other gradient.
| | 03:06 | So as a result, we get this darkness on
the inside that fades toward lightness
| | 03:11 | in the middle right there, and
then fades toward darkness again.
| | 03:14 | Now, the great thing about expressing
these two pieces as separate fills, because
| | 03:18 | you might figure, well gosh, couldn't
we have used one gradient that started
| | 03:22 | dark, got light, and then got darker again?
| | 03:25 | Yes, we could have, but we
wouldn't have the same degree of freedom.
| | 03:27 | For example, I can move this guy up or
I can move it down so I can change its
| | 03:32 | position where the gradient begins
independently of the other gradient.
| | 03:36 | So this guy I definitely want to have it
begin right there at the center of the
| | 03:41 | pupil, but then I may turn around and
decide, you know this outside gradient, it
| | 03:44 | doesn't need to begin at
the inside of the pupil.
| | 03:46 | It can shift up a little bit and move
out a little bit as well, just so that
| | 03:51 | it's covering up the entire
portion of this eye, that is it's better
| | 03:55 | matching the eye path.
| | 03:56 | So it's really up to you how you
decide to work but I often find that
| | 03:59 | working with independent Fill
attributes set to different blend modes gives
| | 04:03 | me a lot more freedom. All right!
| | 04:04 | Now, I am going to add one more
gradient and this one is going to be a
| | 04:07 | totally different gradient.
| | 04:08 | So there is no way I could simulate it
by adding another color stop to one of
| | 04:11 | these gradients because it's going to
be a Linear Gradient that starts dark at
| | 04:15 | the top and gets lighter.
| | 04:17 | Currently, we have a little bit of
darkness at the top, thanks to the Drop
| | 04:20 | Shadow that's being cast by the brow,
but that's also a black drop shadow.
| | 04:24 | So it's producing a slightly muddy effect.
| | 04:27 | We can essentially add a little bit of
vibrance here by throwing in another gradient.
| | 04:32 | So that's what I am going to do.
| | 04:33 | I will drop down to the bottom of the
Appearance panel once again, and click on
| | 04:36 | Add New Fill, or press that keyboard shortcut,
| | 04:38 | Ctrl+Slash, Cmd+Slash on the
Mac, and then this happens to be the very
| | 04:42 | gradient that I want to create.
| | 04:44 | That is, it has exactly the colors I want
to use, but it's the wrong kind of gradient.
| | 04:48 | So, I am going to switch to the Gradient
panel and I am going to change the Type
| | 04:51 | from Radial to Linear.
| | 04:53 | Now, it runs in the right order.
| | 04:54 | It starts dark and it ends light,
but it's the wrong direction.
| | 04:57 | So, still armed with my Gradient tool,
| | 04:59 | I am going to go ahead and drag that
end point down, that terminus point right
| | 05:04 | there, like so, and the
ultimate angle I want is -60 degrees.
| | 05:10 | So I am just going to go ahead and dial that in.
| | 05:11 | Again, I am working numerically
just so that you can follow along.
| | 05:14 | But if you were really crafting this
file on your own, you'd be more likely to
| | 05:18 | drag that terminus manually.
| | 05:20 | Anyway, I am going to go ahead and
press the Enter key or the Return key on the
| | 05:23 | Mac to accept that angle value, and
then, I am going to move the top point, the
| | 05:27 | origin point, down just a little away
from that eyebrow, and then I am going to
| | 05:31 | drag the terminus quite high, actually to
about here, so that we are casting just
| | 05:37 | a little bit of the shadow as you can see.
| | 05:38 | Now, it's not a shadow,
because this is an opaque gradient,
| | 05:41 | it's covering up everything below it.
| | 05:43 | In order to make it a shadow, we need
to apply that very same Blend mode we
| | 05:47 | applied a moment ago.
| | 05:48 | So you go over to the Transparency panel,
click on Normal, and then switch it to
| | 05:53 | Multiply, which again goes ahead and
burns the active gradient into the ones
| | 05:56 | below, and we end up achieving this affect here.
| | 05:59 | So I will go ahead and switch back to
the Black Arrow tool, click off the shape
| | 06:02 | to deselect it, and there you have it,
| | 06:04 | one shape filled with three gradients
interacting with each other to create the
| | 06:08 | effect of a shaded eye.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making a transparent gradient| 00:00 | In this exercise we're going to create
the highlight on top of the pupil using
| | 00:04 | yet another gradient, and this time
we won't be using a Blend mode, instead
| | 00:08 | we're going to create a gradient that
starts off opaque and ends up trailing
| | 00:12 | away to transparency.
| | 00:13 | But before we go there, we need to go
ahead and replicate this three-gradient
| | 00:18 | eye that I've created onto the left-
hand side, and it's found inside this
| | 00:21 | progress file called Three-gradient eye.ai.
| | 00:24 | I'm going to select this white eye over
here on the left-hand side and I'm just
| | 00:28 | going to delete it, by pressing the
Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac.
| | 00:32 | And then I'll select the right-hand eye,
the one that I want to duplicate, and
| | 00:35 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Semicolon or Cmd+Semicolon
| | 00:38 | on a Mac in order to bring up my Guides.
| | 00:40 | I'll press the O key in order to get
the Reflect tool, and then I'll Alt+click
| | 00:45 | or Option+click on that Vertical
Guide to bring up the Reflect dialog box.
| | 00:49 | Go ahead and select Vertical and then
click on the Copy button in order to copy
| | 00:53 | the eye to the other location.
| | 00:55 | That goes ahead and flips the
gradients as well, which is absolutely what we
| | 00:58 | want, because we want that top gradient,
the linear gradient, to be flowing in
| | 01:02 | exactly the opposite direction that it
flowed inside the right eye, so we end up
| | 01:07 | getting the proper shading
effect. S o, so far, so good.
| | 01:10 | Next, I'm going to switch back to my
Black Arrow tool and I'm going to click on
| | 01:13 | the right eye once again, because
we're going to build a highlight on the
| | 01:16 | right-hand side, and then
I'll press Ctrl+Semicolon or Cmd+Semicolon
| | 01:20 | to get rid of my Guides, just so I can
better see what I'm doing, and I'll go
| | 01:24 | ahead and press Ctrl+C or Cmd+C on
the Mac in order to copy that eye shape.
| | 01:29 | Next, I'm going to click on the
outline of the pupil in order to select it,
| | 01:32 | because we need to create the
highlight on top of the pupil, and I can't
| | 01:35 | really take a shape and wedge it
into the center of a bunch of attributes
| | 01:40 | inside of another shape.
| | 01:41 | So we're going to have to use
separate shapes for this one.
| | 01:43 | And I'll press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F on
the Mac in order to paste a copy of the
| | 01:48 | eye, with all of its gradients
still intact, on top of the pupil.
| | 01:52 | Well, I don't want all of its gradients and
I sure as heck don't want that Drop Shadow.
| | 01:56 | So here in the Appearance panel, I'm
going to click on the flyout menu icon and
| | 01:59 | I'm going to choose Clear Appearance,
just to get rid of everything that's
| | 02:03 | assigned to that shape.
| | 02:04 | So it has no Fill, no Stroke.
| | 02:06 | Now, we do want it to have a Fill.
| | 02:07 | So I'm going to switch back to the
Gradient panel, and I'm going to change
| | 02:11 | the Fill color that's at work here
just to white, like so, just by clicking
| | 02:15 | on the white swatch.
| | 02:16 | And then I'm going to drag white,
that white color swatch, down into the
| | 02:20 | Gradient panel, and I'm going to make
it the first color in the gradient, and
| | 02:24 | then I'm going to grab white again and I'm
going to drag it down onto the last color.
| | 02:28 | So we now have a gradient that goes
from white to white, which may seem like it
| | 02:32 | makes no sense whatsoever.
| | 02:33 | Why in the world would I do that,
that's just a complex way of making a
| | 02:36 | solid white color Fill.
| | 02:38 | Well, the reason is, if you're going to
create a fading gradient that fades to
| | 02:41 | transparency, then it needs to start
and end with the same color, unless you
| | 02:46 | want the colors to change as the Opacity
changes, which usually is not what you want.
| | 02:51 | So typically you work with the
exact same color on both sides.
| | 02:54 | And then in my case, I'm going to switch
from Linear to Radial, and I'm going to
| | 02:58 | take this last color stop, which is
already selected, and I'm going to change
| | 03:01 | its Opacity to 0, like so, so that
we end up getting this effect here.
| | 03:05 | So we have a gradient that starts out
nice and bright and fades to transparency.
| | 03:10 | That's exactly what we want, except I
do want to adjust the placement a little
| | 03:13 | bit, like usual, so I'll press the G
key in order to get my Gradient tool.
| | 03:17 | I'm going to drag this guy up a
little bit to set the highlight on the top
| | 03:21 | side of the pupil, maybe even move it
just slightly over to the left, like so,
| | 03:27 | and I'm going to change my Angle value,
which just helps me with the placement
| | 03:30 | of this final point.
| | 03:31 | I'm going to change that angle to -40
degrees, and then I'm going to drag the point
| | 03:36 | inward a little bit, that is,
that terminus of the gradient.
| | 03:39 | And finally, I'm going to take this
first color right there and I'm going to
| | 03:43 | change its location to 5, and that's
going to increase the size of the hotspot
| | 03:48 | at the center of the eyes.
| | 03:49 | So I'll change that value to 5, so
that means 5% of the area covered by the
| | 03:53 | gradient is covered with a white circle,
which creates a pretty nice effect I think.
| | 03:57 | If we go any higher, I think it starts to
look clumsy, but at 5% I think it looks nice.
| | 04:01 | And then I'm going to select that
midpoint skew and I'm going to reduce its
| | 04:05 | value, so that we have less white
going on, just sort of a compressed area of
| | 04:09 | white highlight, to 35%.
| | 04:12 | That way we get a nice bright
spotlight inside of that pupil.
| | 04:15 | All right, next, I'm going to go
over here to the left-hand eye.
| | 04:19 | So instead of selecting the right eye
and cloning it onto the left, which would
| | 04:23 | also reverse the placement of my
gradient, I want to go ahead and create a new
| | 04:27 | left eye and then match its fill
to the one on the right hand side.
| | 04:32 | So the direction information is the same.
| | 04:34 | So I'll select this left-hand
eye with the Black Arrow tool.
| | 04:37 | I'll press Ctrl+C, Cmd+C
on the Mac to copy it.
| | 04:40 | I'll click on the pupil in order to
make it active, and then I'll press Ctrl+F
| | 04:44 | or Cmd+F on the Mac in
order to paste the eye in front.
| | 04:47 | Then I'll go back over to the Appearance
panel and I'll click on the flyout menu
| | 04:51 | icon, choose Clear Appearance, in
order to clear away all those attributes,
| | 04:55 | the Drop Shadow, the Stroke, and the Fill.
| | 04:57 | And then finally, I'm going to grab my
Eyedropper, and I'm going to click inside
| | 05:01 | the right-hand eye, and that goes
ahead and loads that gradient in.
| | 05:04 | However, notice that the center of the gradient
appears exactly in the center of the eye shapes.
| | 05:09 | So Illustrator lifted the colors and
the gradient information, but it didn't
| | 05:12 | lift the angle value or the origin or
the terminus or any of that stuff, and
| | 05:17 | that's because of this weird little setting.
| | 05:20 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z on the
Mac to undo the application of that gradient.
| | 05:24 | Then I'll go down to the Eyedropper
tool, and I'll double-click on its icon
| | 05:28 | there in the toolbox, and
notice we've got two columns:
| | 05:31 | Eyedropper Picks Up and Eyedropper Applies.
| | 05:34 | Well, we're picking up a color with
the Eyedropper, and we're getting all of
| | 05:38 | this stuff, notice this:
| | 05:39 | Color, Transparency, Overprint, all
associated with the focal Fill, but that's
| | 05:43 | the problem, it's one of our problems anyway.
| | 05:46 | If we had multiple Fills, we'd only
be selecting one of them, we'd only be
| | 05:49 | lifting one of them.
| | 05:51 | And also, we're not lifting any of
that other information, because we need
| | 05:55 | Appearance turned on.
| | 05:57 | So that one check box at the very
outset needs to be on for the Eyedropper to
| | 06:01 | really function the way that
you think it should function.
| | 06:04 | Then go ahead and click OK, and now
click inside of this iris in order to lift
| | 06:10 | that color, and notice now we're
matching the origin point, the terminus point,
| | 06:13 | the angle, and all that other stuff.
| | 06:15 | Now, it might not align exactly right
with the new pupil, so we'll have to
| | 06:20 | manipulate it by pressing the G key to
get to the Gradient tool, and then I'm
| | 06:24 | just going to drag straight over to
the right here, as carefully as I can, so
| | 06:28 | that I end up getting that effect
right there, I think that looks good.
| | 06:31 | And then I'll click on the Black Arrow
tool to select it and I will click off
| | 06:35 | the shapes in order to deselect them.
And there we have the completed eye
| | 06:38 | gradients, including the
highlights inside the pupils.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drop shadows and dynamic effects| 00:00 | In this exercise, we're going to apply
a few more Drop Shadows, so that you can
| | 00:03 | get a sense of how to edit Drop
Shadows inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:06 | We'll also experiment with another
variety of dynamic effects, which is the
| | 00:10 | category into which Drop Shadows fit,
and that dynamic effect is called Zig Zag.
| | 00:15 | And what it's going to let us do is
take these arching whiskers and turn them
| | 00:19 | into wiggly whiskers like you see here.
| | 00:21 | All right, so I am working away inside
of White highlights.ai, and I'm going to
| | 00:27 | start things off by going over to the
layers panel, and twirling open the black
| | 00:30 | cat layer, and you'll see text at top here.
| | 00:33 | Go ahead and click in the eyeball
column to turn it on, so that we can see this
| | 00:36 | group of two blocks of point text.
| | 00:38 | All right, now using the Black Arrow
tool, I'll click on the baseline of either
| | 00:43 | of those lines of point text
in order to select both of them.
| | 00:46 | Then I'll Shift+click on these whiskers
here, which selects all of them, because
| | 00:50 | they're grouped together as well.
| | 00:51 | And then finally, I'll Shift+
click on the head to select it.
| | 00:55 | Now I'll go up to the Effect menu,
choose Stylize, and then choose Drop
| | 00:58 | Shadow, or if you loaded
dekeKeys, you can press Ctrl+Alt+E or
| | 01:02 | Cmd+Option+E on the Mac.
| | 01:03 | And then I'll turn on the Preview
check box so I can see what I'm doing.
| | 01:07 | Notice that Multiply Blend mode,
once again, it worked there, and that's
| | 01:10 | because Multiply burns in those shadows, so it
is the Shading Blend mode inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:16 | The Opacity value should be 100%.
| | 01:18 | Leave X Offset set to 0 points, if
you've been working along with me that's what
| | 01:22 | it should be, and then raise the Y
Offset value to 10 points, take that Blur
| | 01:26 | value up to 10 points as well, and as
soon as you press the Tab key, because
| | 01:30 | Preview is turned on, then Illustrator
is going to do its thing, and you'll see
| | 01:33 | it applying Gaussian Blur a bunch of
different times, and that's because it's
| | 01:37 | going in there and blurring those Drop Shadows.
| | 01:39 | All right, so good enough, I'll click
OK in order to accept that modification.
| | 01:43 | Now, then, let's say once I get done
waiting for the progress bars, I'll click
| | 01:49 | off of the paths in order to deselect them.
| | 01:51 | Now, I think the Drop Shadows look
great for the letters and for the cat's
| | 01:55 | head, however, they're pretty much
lost where the whiskers are concerned,
| | 01:59 | because whiskers are so thin that once we
apply a Gaussian Blur of 10 points, we lose them.
| | 02:04 | So let's modify the Drop
Shadow that we've applied.
| | 02:06 | I'll click on the whiskers to select
them, and then I'll go up to the Effect
| | 02:10 | menu and I'll choose Stylize, and
I'll choose Drop Shadow, or press that
| | 02:14 | keyboard shortcut once again.
| | 02:16 | If you work this way though, and
that's the way it works in just about every
| | 02:18 | other program, if you go back to the
command, then you're going to get this
| | 02:22 | error message that says, hey, you're going
to apply yet another instance of this effect.
| | 02:26 | So you're going to have two Drop
Shadows if you keep working this way.
| | 02:30 | That's not what we want.
| | 02:31 | We want to edit the Drop
Shadow we've already assigned.
| | 02:33 | So we Cancel out, switch over to the
Appearance panel, and it's going to tell us
| | 02:38 | that we've got a Group selected here,
and that the Drop Shadow is applied to the
| | 02:41 | Group, not the Contents of the Group.
| | 02:43 | If you double-click on Contents, you
will not see a Drop Shadow, you'll see that
| | 02:46 | we've got Strokes applied to every
single one of these whiskers, and apparently
| | 02:50 | I scaled them slightly, because the
line weight is 2.191 points thick.
| | 02:54 | But I'm not seeing a Drop Shadow, that's
because Drop Shadow, the fx right there,
| | 02:59 | is applied to the Group.
| | 03:00 | So I'd have to double-click on Group
to go back to it, just to make sure that
| | 03:05 | the Group is targeted, just as if we
had meatballed it inside the Layers panel.
| | 03:09 | And then I'll click on Drop Shadow in order
to bring up the existing Drop Shadow Effect.
| | 03:14 | And this time I'm going to change the Y
Offset value to 3 points and I'm going
| | 03:18 | to change the Blur value to 3 points as
well, and we're not getting the delays
| | 03:22 | because I didn't turn on Preview.
| | 03:23 | So now I'll turn on the Preview check
box just to make sure that everything
| | 03:27 | looks the way I want it to,
it does, and I'll click OK.
| | 03:30 | Well, I also want those whiskers to
wiggle, and so I'm going to apply yet
| | 03:34 | another dynamic effect, that's what this
little fx icon represents, to this group.
| | 03:40 | And I could do that by either going
back to the Effect menu, or I can drop
| | 03:43 | down here to this little fx icon,
which offers me another way to get to that
| | 03:47 | exact same Effect menu, and then I'm
going to choose Distort & Transform, and
| | 03:52 | I'll choose Zig Zag.
| | 03:53 | And when I do, I get this dialog box.
| | 03:55 | Now, to get a sense of what's going on,
you've really got to turn on the Preview
| | 03:58 | check box, so that you
can see this guy in action.
| | 04:01 | And you'll see, because I have
Points set to Corner, which is the default
| | 04:04 | setting, that we end up getting these
polygonal lines right here, that look like
| | 04:08 | lightning or something like that,
flaring out from the cat's face.
| | 04:12 | That's not what I want.
| | 04:13 | So I'm going to turn on Smooth in order
to smooth out those outlines, like so.
| | 04:17 | Now, the lines are waving too severely.
| | 04:20 | That's a function of the Size value right here.
| | 04:22 | So I'm going to take that Size value
down from 10 points, which lets the lines
| | 04:26 | vary 10 points away from their original
path outlines, I'm going to take it down
| | 04:31 | to 2 points, and then I'll press the Tab key.
| | 04:33 | And I'll leave this option set to Absolute.
| | 04:35 | That way we're working in points.
| | 04:37 | If I were to switch to Relative,
we'd be working in percentages.
| | 04:41 | Now I'm going to change
the Ridges per segment to 7.
| | 04:43 | So I'm going to increase that value in
order to get these slightly waving lines,
| | 04:48 | as you see right there, and then I'll
click OK in order to accept that effect.
| | 04:53 | Now, there's two really great
things about this dynamic effect;
| | 04:56 | first, it's being applied on the fly.
| | 04:57 | So if I press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on the
Mac to switch to the Outline mode, then
| | 05:03 | I will see that my path outlines remain
in exactly the same shape they ever did.
| | 05:07 | So I haven't permanently modified the
outline, which means that I can continue
| | 05:11 | to edit these outlines just by
dragging one of two anchor points on either
| | 05:16 | sides, so it's very easy to edit these things.
| | 05:18 | Also, if I press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y to
switch back to the Preview mode, I can
| | 05:23 | edit the extent to which these paths
wiggle just by going over to the Appearance
| | 05:27 | panel, as long as the paths are still
selected, and clicking on Zig Zag, and
| | 05:31 | that brings up the Zig Zag dialog box.
| | 05:33 | And now I could say, you know what, I
really want the size to be 3 points.
| | 05:36 | I want a little more wiggleture going
on there, and you can adjust any of the
| | 05:40 | other settings as well.
| | 05:41 | Anyway, I was happy with 2, so I'm
going to Cancel out, but I just want to
| | 05:44 | give you a sense of how infinitely flexible
even the simplest of the dynamic effects is.
| | 05:50 | All right, I'm going to click off
the path outlines to deselect them.
| | 05:53 | In the next exercise, we're going to
take a look at how you assign a gradient
| | 05:56 | to text.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assigning a gradient to editable text| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to show
you how to assign a Gradient to live
| | 00:03 | editable type, which is a lot
more difficult than it ought to be.
| | 00:07 | Illustrator gives you some pretty poor
feedback in this department, and it's
| | 00:10 | even going to seem like you've got to
convert the text to outlines in order to
| | 00:14 | fill it with a Gradient, and that's the
way a lot of folks recommend you work.
| | 00:18 | That's actually not necessary.
| | 00:19 | You can keep live editable type
and you can fill it with a Gradient.
| | 00:23 | You just have to approach
things in the right order.
| | 00:26 | You actually have to heap a Gradient on top
of the existing Fill, and here's how it works.
| | 00:30 | I've saved my progress as All drop
shadows.ai, and I'm going to switch over to
| | 00:34 | the layers panel, so that I can select
these lines of type independently of each
| | 00:38 | other, because I need independent control.
| | 00:41 | I want to fill each one of the lines of
type with a Radial Gradient, that begins
| | 00:44 | bright in the center and
progresses toward darkness on the outside.
| | 00:48 | And if I assign a Gradient to the
entire group, which is possible, then the
| | 00:52 | center of the Gradient is going to be
down here in the cat's head, in other
| | 00:56 | words, I'm going to have only one
annotator to work with for both lines of type.
| | 01:00 | Anyway, so what I want to do is twirl
open this black cat layer right there, and
| | 01:05 | then I'm going to twirl
open the text group as well.
| | 01:07 | Then I'm going to meatball the top
line of type, THE NEW CHAT IS, and now I'm
| | 01:12 | going to assign a Gradient to it.
| | 01:13 | So I'll go ahead and click on the
Gradient swatch here inside the Gradient
| | 01:16 | panel, and Illustrator acts like it's
assigning that Gradient, it even brings up
| | 01:20 | that Progress bar to show me
that it's adjusting the Drop Shadow.
| | 01:23 | And we see that we have assigned a
Gradient here inside the Color panel, we just
| | 01:27 | don't see it out here in the
illustration, it's just a solid black Fill, and
| | 01:32 | that's because Illustrator is lying to us.
| | 01:34 | We can't apply a Gradient in this way.
| | 01:37 | What we have to do is go over to the
Appearance panel and we have to add a new Fill.
| | 01:42 | So I'm going to undo that last
adjustment I just applied by pressing Ctrl+Z or
| | 01:47 | Cmd+Z on the Mac, which is going
to bring up this Progress bar again.
| | 01:50 | And that's because each and every time
we make any kind of change, Illustrator
| | 01:54 | has to update that Drop Shadow.
| | 01:56 | That's a big pain in the neck.
| | 01:57 | So let's switch back to the Group for a
moment by double-clicking on it here in
| | 02:01 | the Appearance panel, and let's
turn off that Drop Shadow temporarily.
| | 02:05 | So I'm going to click the eyeball to
turn it off, and that way we aren't going
| | 02:08 | to be bothered by those Progress bars anymore.
| | 02:11 | Now I'll switch back to the Layers panel, and
I'll once again meatball that top line of type.
| | 02:16 | Now, I'll switch back to
Appearance, and here's what you do.
| | 02:18 | Make sure that the Type object is
active, not the individual characters.
| | 02:22 | If you double-click on Characters,
then you'll actually select the
| | 02:25 | Characters with the Type tool.
| | 02:27 | Instead what we want to do is we want
to gain control over the Fill, and so far
| | 02:31 | I'm not even seeing a Fill here in the
Appearance panel, so I need to add one,
| | 02:34 | and I do that by clicking on Add New
Fill or pressing that keyboard shortcut
| | 02:38 | Ctrl+Slash, Cmd+Slash on the Mac, and
that adds a solid black Fill. Fine!
| | 02:43 | Now we're going to switch that Fill
to a Gradient by clicking in the little
| | 02:47 | Gradient swatch, and
this time it actually works.
| | 02:49 | This time we see a Gradient here inside
of the illustration, and the reason is
| | 02:53 | that this Gradient Fill is
heaped on top of the type.
| | 02:56 | So whether that makes any sense or
not, that's the way it works here
| | 02:59 | inside Illustrator.
| | 03:00 | White is my starting color. That's just fine.
| | 03:02 | I'm going to change this ending color by
double-clicking on that color swatch to
| | 03:07 | bring up my Color panel, so I'll click
on the little palette to make sure I'm
| | 03:10 | working inside the Color panel.
| | 03:11 | Then I'll click on the flyout menu and
switch over to CMYK, and the values that
| | 03:16 | I'm going to dial in are 25 for Cyan,
then 25 for each of the others as well,
| | 03:21 | Magenta and Yellow, and then for Black,
I'm going to take it down to 75%, so 25,
| | 03:26 | 25, 25, and 75 are the
values that I'm looking for.
| | 03:30 | That just keeps this shade of black
a little darker than the color of the
| | 03:33 | background, and now I'll press the
Enter key or the Return key on the Mac to
| | 03:37 | accept that modification.
| | 03:38 | Now I'm going to change the type of
Gradient from Linear to Radial, and I'm
| | 03:43 | going to press the G key in order
to switch to my Gradient Annotator.
| | 03:46 | Now, I want that beginning point to be
right there at the center of the illustration.
| | 03:51 | So I'm going to press Ctrl+Semicolon or Cmd+Semicolon
| | 03:54 | on the Mac in order to bring up my
Guides, and I'm going to drag that origin
| | 03:59 | point, so it aligns to the Guide, like so.
| | 04:01 | And then I'll drag the terminus
outward like that, and I'll press the Shift
| | 04:06 | key, so that I'm constraining the angle
of this Gradient to exactly horizontal,
| | 04:09 | and then I'll release.
| | 04:11 | And then finally, I want to make
this an elliptical Gradient instead of
| | 04:14 | absolutely circular.
| | 04:16 | So I'm going to change its Aspect Ratio
value to 70%, and then press the Enter
| | 04:20 | key or the Return key on
the Mac to apply my change.
| | 04:23 | Now I'll switch back over to the
Layers panel and grab the lower line of type
| | 04:28 | by meatballing it, and I'll get my
Eyedropper by pressing the I key, and I'll
| | 04:33 | click on that top line of type in order to
lift its attributes and assign them to the text.
| | 04:38 | Unfortunately, I just changed the
Type size as well, so I'll undo that
| | 04:42 | modification by pressing
Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z on the Mac.
| | 04:45 | I'll double-click on the
Eyedropper tool in order to bring up the
| | 04:48 | Eyedropper Options dialog box.
| | 04:50 | And I'll turn off Character Style
and Paragraph Style inside of this
| | 04:53 | Eyedropper Picks Up column. I'll click OK.
| | 04:56 | And then I'll try it again
and see if it works this time.
| | 04:58 | I'll click on that text, and sure enough,
I just lifted the Gradient, I didn't
| | 05:02 | lift any of the formatting attributes.
| | 05:04 | Now, having done that, having filled
this type exactly the way I want it, I will
| | 05:08 | go ahead and switch back to the Group,
which I can do from the layers panel, by
| | 05:12 | meatballing this text item.
| | 05:14 | Then I'll switch over to the Appearance
panel, a lot of back-and-forthing here,
| | 05:18 | and I'll turn on the Drop Shadow once
again, so that we can see the Drop Shadow
| | 05:22 | at work in the background.
| | 05:24 | And then finally, I'll go
ahead and press Ctrl+Semicolon or Cmd+Semicolon
| | 05:27 | on the Mac in order to hide those Guides,
and I'll get my Black Arrow tool and
| | 05:31 | I'll click off the text in order to deselect it.
| | 05:34 | And that is the many-step process
required to apply a Gradient to live editable
| | 05:39 | text inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing text that includes dynamic effects| 00:00 | Now, the great thing about
keeping my type editable is I can make
| | 00:03 | modifications to it.
| | 00:04 | The client comes to me and says, the
name of our product is not black chat, it's
| | 00:08 | black cat chat, and so I have to go
ahead and modify this lower line of type.
| | 00:12 | In this exercise, I'm going to
demonstrate a trick for editing type that has a
| | 00:16 | bunch of effects assigned to it,
because it can be awfully doggone slow, as
| | 00:21 | you're about to see.
| | 00:23 | I've saved my progress as The gradient type.ai.
| | 00:25 | I'm going to switch to my Type tool,
and I'm going to click in front of Chat
| | 00:29 | right there, and I'm going
to enter capital CAT space.
| | 00:33 | And then I'm going to sit there
and watch Illustrator do nothing.
| | 00:37 | It brings up a Progress bar for a
second and enters the first C, and that's it.
| | 00:41 | The other characters get lost in the shuffle.
| | 00:44 | And it doesn't even render the Drop
Shadow properly, it's rendering the Drop
| | 00:48 | Shadow with hard edges.
| | 00:49 | So what I need to do if I hope to get
any work done, because otherwise I'm
| | 00:53 | going to have to enter each letter
laboriously, painfully slowly, like so, and
| | 00:58 | I'm going to have to wait for that Progress bar,
and I may or may not get the right results.
| | 01:02 | This time I do, because I
didn't enter a bunch of characters.
| | 01:05 | Anyway, it's horribly painful.
| | 01:06 | Once I get all the characters in
here, I'm going to have to modify the
| | 01:10 | formatting and that's going to just take
forever, every single little formatting
| | 01:13 | modification I make, it's
going to bring up a Progress bar.
| | 01:16 | So I'm going to press the Escape key in
order to escape out of the Text Entry mode.
| | 01:20 | I have got my first two letters,
so I have made some progress.
| | 01:23 | I'm going to select the Group by
double-clicking on it here inside the
| | 01:26 | Appearance panel and I'm going
to turn off that Drop Shadow.
| | 01:29 | So if you run into these kinds of
situations where you're trying to edit text
| | 01:33 | that's got some dynamic effects
assigned to it and it's taking just absolutely
| | 01:37 | forever, turn the effects off,
that's really the meat of this exercise.
| | 01:41 | And then I'll press the T key
to switch back to the Type tool.
| | 01:44 | I'll click to set the entry point after
the A, and I'll enter T Period, like
| | 01:49 | so, and now everything
happens much more quickly.
| | 01:51 | I can't see the Drop Shadow,
but I think I can imagine that.
| | 01:54 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+A or
Cmd+A on the Mac to select this entire
| | 01:58 | line of type, and I'll press
Ctrl+Alt+Left Arrow, this would be
| | 02:02 | Cmd+Option+Left Arrow on the Mac
several times, in order to move those
| | 02:07 | characters more closely together.
| | 02:10 | I have to tell you, if the Drop Shadow
was on, I hate to belabor this, but every
| | 02:14 | single time I press that keyboard
shortcut, I would be waiting for that Progress
| | 02:18 | bar once again, and if I rushed it,
then I wouldn't get the right results, I
| | 02:22 | wouldn't get a good preview.
| | 02:24 | So having edited the text the way I
want it, and if you want to see the change,
| | 02:27 | then I'll bring up the Character panel,
and you can now see that that tracking
| | 02:31 | setting is set to 350,000th of an m space.
| | 02:35 | So I'll go ahead and hide the panel.
| | 02:36 | I'll press the Escape key in
order to accept my modifications.
| | 02:39 | And then finally, I will switch back
up to the Group by double-clicking on
| | 02:43 | the Group item here in the Appearance panel,
and I will turn that Drop Shadow back on.
| | 02:47 | So once again, the real moral of the
story here is, turn off your dynamic
| | 02:51 | effects before you edit the text,
| | 02:53 | then when you're done, turn them back on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assigning a gradient to a stroke| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to show
you how to assign a Gradient to a Stroke,
| | 00:03 | which I will tell you upfront
is not possible in Illustrator.
| | 00:06 | The one thing that Strokes don't
accommodate, even though they've gotten so
| | 00:11 | immensely powerful inside of CS5,
they do not accommodate Gradient.
| | 00:15 | So what we're going to have to do is
take these whiskers, which I propose that
| | 00:19 | we fill with a Gradient, and we're
going to convert them to filled path
| | 00:22 | outlines, and then we're going to
assign the Gradient to the Fill, but it gets
| | 00:26 | even more complicated than that as
you're about to see, because somehow we need
| | 00:30 | to reconcile the fact that these
whiskers are wiggled using the Zig Zag Effect.
| | 00:35 | I've saved my progress as Black Cat Chat.ai,
and I'm going to start things off by
| | 00:40 | clicking on these
whiskers in order to select them.
| | 00:42 | They're all grouped together, so just
click on any one to select them all.
| | 00:46 | And you have to watch out for that
little square next to the arrow cursor,
| | 00:50 | because that tells you where the path
outline really is, since it's pretending
| | 00:54 | to wiggle back and forth, but you have to
click right on the path outline to get it.
| | 00:58 | So anyway, go ahead and select all the
whiskers, and then let's just experiment
| | 01:02 | with assigning a Gradient Stroke.
| | 01:04 | I'll switch to the Stroke attribute
here inside the Color panel, and I'll click
| | 01:07 | on a Gradient here inside the
Gradient panel, and that goes ahead and assigns
| | 01:11 | the Gradient to the Fill.
| | 01:12 | So Illustrator is effectively saying,
you can't assign a Gradient to a Stroke
| | 01:16 | you silly person, I know what you want to do.
| | 01:19 | You want to assign it to a Fill.
| | 01:20 | Well, obviously that's not what we want to do.
| | 01:23 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z
on the Mac to undo that modification.
| | 01:28 | Anytime you're trying to do something
to a Stroke that Illustrator refuses to
| | 01:32 | do, the solution is to go up to the
Object menu, choose the Path command, and
| | 01:37 | then choose Outline Stroke.
| | 01:39 | Or if you loaded dekeKeys, you can
press that keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Backslash,
| | 01:43 | Cmd+Backslash on the Mac.
| | 01:45 | But that really wrecks things, as you
can see here, and the reason is that
| | 01:49 | Illustrator went ahead and outlined the
actual Strokes, and then it's applying
| | 01:54 | Zig Zag on top of that.
| | 01:56 | So it didn't outline the Zig
Zag Strokes, in other words.
| | 01:58 | So we need to first expand
Zig Zag and then outline it.
| | 02:03 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z on the
Mac in order to undo that modification.
| | 02:07 | And if I were to expand the effect
right now, if I were to go up to the Object
| | 02:12 | menu and choose Expand Appearance, what
would happen is Illustrator is going to
| | 02:16 | expand the Zig Zag Effect, so we have
paths that are really zigzagging back and
| | 02:20 | forth, but it's also going to expand
the Drop Shadow Effect to a pixel-based
| | 02:24 | image, which means we
lose our Drop Shadow control.
| | 02:27 | So what would be nice is if you could
just turn Drop Shadow off and then keep it.
| | 02:33 | So just expand what's visible, don't
expand what's invisible, but instead what
| | 02:36 | happens is you go up to the Object menu,
you choose Expand Appearance, that does
| | 02:41 | go ahead and expand out the path
outlines just the way we want them, however, it
| | 02:45 | throws away the Drop Shadow.
| | 02:46 | So unless you want a pixel-based image,
this is the way to go, but we're going
| | 02:50 | to have to reassign the Drop Shadow later.
| | 02:53 | The other thing I hate about
this, and this is just me griping.
| | 02:55 | I'll go over to the layers panel.
| | 02:57 | I'll twirl open the black cat layer,
and let's scroll down to the bottom here,
| | 03:01 | which is where the whiskers Group is.
| | 03:02 | If I twirl it open, I've got a bunch of
Groups inside that Group now, instead of
| | 03:07 | individual path outlines, which is
fairly ridiculous, because each one of the
| | 03:11 | Groups only contains one path and that's it.
| | 03:13 | So we don't need these Groups of Groups.
| | 03:15 | So I'm going to press Ctrl+Shift+G or
Cmd+Shift+G on the Mac twice in a row
| | 03:21 | in order to completely
ungroup these whiskers all the way.
| | 03:25 | And then I'll press Ctrl+G or Cmd+
G on the Mac in order to reinstate the
| | 03:30 | Group of whiskers, and I'll go
ahead and double-click on that Group and
| | 03:34 | rename it whiskers.
| | 03:35 | And then, having done that, I now
have the properly wiggling paths.
| | 03:39 | I'll go up to the Object menu.
| | 03:41 | I'll choose the Path command, and then
I'll choose Outline Stroke or press that
| | 03:45 | dekeKeys shortcut, Ctrl+Backslash, Cmd+Backslash
on the Mac, and now I have path outlines
| | 03:50 | that are not Stroked, but
are rather Filled with white.
| | 03:53 | The Fill is active, that doesn't
really matter, because as soon as I click on
| | 03:56 | Gradient, it's going to assign
the Gradient to the Fill anyway.
| | 04:00 | So I'll click on that Gradient swatch.
| | 04:01 | I now have Gradients inside of my whiskers.
| | 04:04 | You know what, I'm going to press Ctrl+
H or Cmd+H on the Mac so that I hide
| | 04:08 | those selection edges and I
can actually see what I'm doing.
| | 04:10 | You'll notice that we have two Linear
Gradients essentially that are applied to
| | 04:14 | these whiskers, and they begin on the
left side and end on the right side of
| | 04:19 | each whisker, so there's actually
eight different Linear Gradients going on.
| | 04:23 | Let's go ahead and switch them out
with Radial Gradients, which will begin in
| | 04:27 | the center of each one of the whiskers
and extend out to the ends, and that's
| | 04:31 | not what I want either, but
I'll take care of that in a second.
| | 04:33 | Let's go ahead and change this final
Gradient color by double-clicking on it, in
| | 04:38 | order to bring up the Color panel.
| | 04:39 | I'll switch over to my CMYK sliders,
and I'm going to switch this color to a
| | 04:43 | rich black once again.
| | 04:44 | I guess I could have lifted it from
one of the other Gradients, but I chose
| | 04:47 | this route instead, so 50, 50, 50 for Cyan,
Magenta, and Yellow, and then 100% for Black.
| | 04:53 | The Gradients still aren't looking right,
so I'll switch to my Gradient tool by
| | 04:57 | pressing the G key or clicking on it,
and lo and behold, where is my annotator?
| | 05:01 | I can't see the darn thing.
| | 05:03 | And it's not because my path outlines
are hidden, it's because the Group is
| | 05:06 | active, and the Gradient isn't actually
assigned to the Group, it's assigned to
| | 05:10 | the independent whiskers.
| | 05:11 | So I need to switch over to the
Appearance panel and double-click on Contents,
| | 05:15 | and as soon as I do, then I see all
of my Gradient annotators, just FYI.
| | 05:21 | All right, I don't want
any of these guys though.
| | 05:24 | In other words, I don't want to
manipulate each and every one of
| | 05:26 | them independently.
| | 05:27 | So I'm going to start from a new
location right there at the center of the
| | 05:30 | muzzle, and I'm going to drag out like
so, and I'm going to press the Shift key
| | 05:34 | as I do to constrain the angle of my
drag to exactly horizontal, until my cursor
| | 05:38 | is above the upper right
corner of the H down here.
| | 05:41 | So I want it to align just to that
location, just for aesthetic purposes, and I
| | 05:45 | end up getting this effect
here, and all is well. Yea!
| | 05:49 | Now I'm going to switch back to my
Black Arrow tool, and then I need to
| | 05:53 | double-click on Group once again,
because I've got to reinstate that Drop
| | 05:56 | Shadow, so I'll double-click on Group,
which is telling me No Appearance, so
| | 05:59 | there's no Drop Shadow there anymore.
| | 06:01 | Double-click on it, make the Group
active, then I'll go back up to the Effect
| | 06:05 | menu, choose Stylize, and choose the
Drop Shadow command, or press that dekeKeys
| | 06:09 | shortcut, which is Ctrl+Alt+E,
Cmd+Option+E on the Mac.
| | 06:12 | And with any luck, I'll see the last Drop
Shadow I applied, which in my case is true.
| | 06:17 | So these are the right settings.
| | 06:19 | Mode's set to Multiply, Opacity 100, X
Offset 0, Y Offset 3, and Blur 3 as well.
| | 06:25 | Color's turned on, and it's set to Black.
| | 06:27 | I could Preview the effect if I want to,
but I know it's right, so I'll just
| | 06:30 | click OK in order to assign that Drop
Shadow, and we end up with the final
| | 06:35 | version of our artwork.
| | 06:36 | And that, my friends, is how you apply and
manipulate Gradients using the Gradient
| | 06:41 | panel, the Gradient tool, and the
Gradient annotator here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
15. Blends and MasksThe earliest dynamic functions| 00:01 | Despite the fact that they were
introduced more than 20 years ago, Blends
| | 00:05 | and Masks continue to rank among
Illustrator's most powerful and flexible capabilities.
| | 00:10 | Blending permits you to design custom
Gradations, and Morphings, in which one
| | 00:15 | shape or group of shapes
steadily transitions into another.
| | 00:19 | Masking permits you to place those
gradients or any other collection of
| | 00:23 | objects inside a path.
| | 00:25 | The beauty of both Blends and Masks
is that they are forever editable.
| | 00:29 | Change the color or shape of a
blended path and the entire blend
| | 00:33 | updates immediately.
| | 00:35 | You can even change the path of a blend,
so it slows down, speeds up, or curves
| | 00:40 | on its way from one shape to another.
Plus, you can blend between groups of
| | 00:45 | shapes, blend both Fills and Strokes,
blend between Opacity and Transparency,
| | 00:50 | and specify the exact
number of steps between shapes.
| | 00:54 | Where Masks are concerned, you can edit both
the mask and its contents anytime you like.
| | 00:59 | Frankly, it warms my heart to see these
20-year-old features hold up better than
| | 01:04 | many half their age.
| | 01:05 | Here's hoping I'm
still relevant when I turn 20.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The gradient-intensive illustration| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to
introduce you to what I'm calling the
| | 00:03 | Gradient Intensive Illustration, which
is this illustration that's a rife with
| | 00:07 | different kinds of gradients.
| | 00:09 | However that's not really enough.
| | 00:10 | You're little limited by
gradients inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:13 | Particularly when compared to
the more flexible blends and masks.
| | 00:18 | Now I started things off with this
back of the napkin sketch right here.
| | 00:22 | It's called Bat tomb sketch.tif and I
ultimately developed it into this Final
| | 00:27 | rasterized artwork.tif file right here.
| | 00:30 | We're still working inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:32 | I have taken the illustration and
rasterized it inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:36 | That is to say, I've opened the
Illustrator file inside Photoshop and converted
| | 00:40 | it to pixels, which can be a very
good idea because that way all of your
| | 00:45 | complex gradients and blends and masks
and different effects are boiled down
| | 00:50 | into pixels so there is no longer a chance of
something going wrong during the print process.
| | 00:55 | Of course I went ahead and rasterized
the file at a high-resolution so as to
| | 00:59 | preserve all the detail as well.
| | 01:01 | This is the project that we will be
creating over the course of this chapter,
| | 01:05 | all kinds of blends and masks
and gradients working together.
| | 01:09 | All right, let's go ahead and switch
over to Illustrator, which is where we're
| | 01:12 | going to actually work of course.
| | 01:14 | This is the final version of
Illustration. It's called Sarcophagus
| | 01:17 | illustration.ai, and there's
all sorts of blends at work.
| | 01:22 | There are color blends in the
background sky as well as here inside of the
| | 01:26 | grass, this star right here is
represented as a blend, as is this
| | 01:30 | light trail as well.
| | 01:32 | Then we have various object blends.
| | 01:35 | These little striations patterns here
inside of the bat wing, as well as his
| | 01:39 | eyebrows and these lines right here
are all represented using blends, as are
| | 01:44 | these various posts inside of the
fence down here. And you'll get a chance to
| | 01:48 | create all of these various
objects over the course of this chapter.
| | 01:51 | We are going to start off
inside of this file here.
| | 01:54 | It's called Lots of gradients.ai and it
does contain strictly gradients, that is
| | 02:00 | to say either Radial or Linear gradient
fills inside of these various objects.
| | 02:05 | Some of the gradients are
fairly complex, meaning that they
| | 02:08 | integrate translucency.
| | 02:10 | For example, this object right here,
that I'm tracing along, that represents the
| | 02:14 | midsection of the Sarcophagus.
| | 02:16 | That shape is filled
with a translucent gradient.
| | 02:19 | We also have a few multi-
gradient shapes going on.
| | 02:22 | That is to say two different gradient
fills inside of a single object working
| | 02:26 | together, subject to a blend mode.
| | 02:28 | And we'll get a sense of how some of
that kind of stuff works when we
| | 02:31 | investigate blend modes in a future chapter.
| | 02:34 | But for now the main thing I want you to
notice is that the gradients are fairly flat.
| | 02:39 | So notice the sky in the background.
| | 02:41 | We have this radial gradient that goes
from dark through a bunch of different
| | 02:45 | colors, lots of dollars going on inside of this
gradient but it's ultimately a linear gradient.
| | 02:50 | So we're just seeing single
horizontal lines of color.
| | 02:53 | Whereas if you compare that to the
final version of the illustration, we
| | 02:57 | have waves of color going on inside of
this background, and that is a benefit
| | 03:02 | associated with working with blends
inside of Illustrator, they're very flexible.
| | 03:07 | The last thing that I want to show you,
where this beginning illustration is
| | 03:10 | concerned, is that I've got a heavy
outline that's assigned to the overall
| | 03:15 | sarcophagus object here.
| | 03:17 | Now the various paths associated with
the sarcophagus are strewn over the course
| | 03:21 | of several different layers, right here.
| | 03:23 | Starting with bat head and
going down to tomb & body.
| | 03:26 | Then in the background we have this
thing called super object on its own layer
| | 03:30 | and that's what's conveying the
heavy stroke as well as this halo.
| | 03:34 | So, what I am going to do here inside
the layers panel, I am going to go ahead
| | 03:37 | and turn off tomb & body all the way up
to bat head just by dragging over those
| | 03:42 | eyeballs and then we can see the
super object in the background.
| | 03:45 | And what I did to create it was I selected all
these others paths that I hadd been working with.
| | 03:50 | I went ahead and created a copy of them,
I pasted them on this new layer, I went
| | 03:54 | ahead and united them using the Add
Pathfinder operation, and then I applied a
| | 03:59 | heavy stroke and a glow.
| | 04:01 | You create the glow, incidentally, by
going up to the effect menu, choosing Stylize,
| | 04:06 | and choosing Outer Glow.
| | 04:08 | We'll be taking a look at these dynamic
effects, as they are known, here under the
| | 04:12 | Effect menu, in a chapter inside of
the mastery portion of this series.
| | 04:17 | In the meantime though, I am just
going to go ahead and turn on these various
| | 04:20 | layers, so you can get a sense of
how this structure was put together.
| | 04:23 | Because even though it's a cartoon,
it still subscribes to the rules of
| | 04:27 | perspective drawing.
| | 04:28 | It can be very difficult to
determine what order to build up your objects
| | 04:32 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:34 | So on top of this super object, I
have a layer called tomb & body, and that
| | 04:38 | incorporates the sides of the
sarcophagus as well as these wings right up here,
| | 04:43 | the bat's wings that is. And then in
front of that, we have what I'm calling the
| | 04:47 | shield & ribs layer, which includes this
shield, also the face of the sarcophagus,
| | 04:52 | and these two bits of wing that
are covering the front of the tomb.
| | 04:56 | Then I've got this thing called low
fence, which is just these low fence elements
| | 05:00 | down here, and then finally I've got
the bat head that's set up in a kind of
| | 05:04 | cartoon perspective.
| | 05:05 | He looks like he's looking a little bit to
the side as opposed to straight forward.
| | 05:09 | But it still works inside of the
context of this composition. And that is the
| | 05:13 | base illustration, lots and
lots of gradients going on.
| | 05:16 | No blends or masks so far.
| | 05:18 | We're going to be establishing the
blends and masks, all of them, over the course
| | 05:23 | of this chapter, beginning in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a multi-color blend| 00:00 | In this exercise, we're going to take our
first look at Blends inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:04 | Specifically, we are going to take
this big background sky that's currently
| | 00:08 | filled with a linear gradient starting
at the top and going to the bottom, that
| | 00:13 | contains a total of six different colors.
| | 00:16 | So it's quite the gradient.
| | 00:18 | But we'll see that by replacing that
gradient with an equivalent blend, we
| | 00:21 | provide ourselves with lots more opportunities.
| | 00:24 | The name of this graphic is Lots of
gradients.ai and I am going to zoom out so
| | 00:29 | that I can take in the
entire illustration at a time.
| | 00:32 | Notice that it bleeds off the artboard
and I do have a bleed boundary set up
| | 00:36 | and you can get to it by pressing
Ctrl+Semicolon or Cmd+Semicolon
| | 00:40 | the Mac to turn on the guides, and that way
you'll see that red bleed line right there.
| | 00:45 | So in other words, I have this document
set up properly so that we can print a
| | 00:49 | full bleed. And then I'll scroll down to
Layers panel and I'll twirl open the sky
| | 00:54 | later right there, and it contains two
objects; path, which is the big background
| | 00:59 | rectangle that's filled with a gradient
as well as these bands of color that are
| | 01:03 | assembled inside of a group,
currently they're turned off.
| | 01:06 | We'll be turning them on in just a moment.
| | 01:08 | But first I'm going to meatball
the path to select it, and I've got my
| | 01:10 | Gradient panel up so that we can see the
various colors that I've used inside the gradient.
| | 01:14 | So things start off at the bottom of
the gradient with this color right here.
| | 01:18 | If I click on this color swatch and
take a look at the color values here inside
| | 01:21 | the Color panel, I've got a 25%
Cyan, everything else is zeroed out.
| | 01:26 | So that we have this little bit of
brightness down here at the bottom of the sky.
| | 01:29 | Next, I have this very deep red, and
notice for each and every one of my colors
| | 01:34 | the next color is a kind of a dark brown.
| | 01:36 | All of my color values add up to no
more than 270% and that's very important.
| | 01:42 | Because if your total ink percentage
adds up to more than 270% you stand a
| | 01:47 | chance of having your ink smear when
you go to print this illustration, and you
| | 01:50 | don't want that to happen.
| | 01:51 | So keep an eye out for
those totals as you work along.
| | 01:54 | It's especially tempting by the way, I
should just say, when you're trying to
| | 01:58 | create rich dark colors like these,
it's tempting to go into the stratosphere
| | 02:03 | and build up color values that add up
to 300% or 350% and those will definitely
| | 02:09 | smear, so watch out for that.
| | 02:11 | Anyway, what I want to do though is
replace this gradient with a blend because
| | 02:16 | I want some more sort of wavy action
going on in the sky where the bands of
| | 02:20 | color are concerned.
| | 02:21 | Right now, each and every band is strictly
horizontal inside of this linear gradient.
| | 02:27 | So I am going to click in the gradient
swatch in the upper left-hand corner of the
| | 02:30 | Gradient panel to make it active and
that way I can switch out the entire
| | 02:34 | gradient with a flat fill just by
clicking somewhere inside of the CMYK spectrum.
| | 02:38 | And it doesn't matter where you click,
just click somewhere in there if you're
| | 02:41 | working along with me, because that way
you'll be able to better see the bands
| | 02:45 | of color that we are going to blend together.
| | 02:47 | They are these bands here, I will go
ahead and turn them on, this is a group
| | 02:51 | of a bunch of different objects and
notice every single one of those six
| | 02:54 | colors is represented.
| | 02:55 | So I am using the exact same
colors that were at work inside of the gradient.
| | 03:00 | They're just expressed as separate path
outlines with flat fills. And what I'm
| | 03:04 | going to do here is, I will meatball
the bands in order to select them and then
| | 03:07 | I'm going to ungroup them.
| | 03:08 | I just wanted to group them
together to keep them tidy.
| | 03:11 | But before I blend them, I might as
well ungroup them because otherwise I'll
| | 03:15 | have a blend inside of a group and
that just makes it more laborious to edit
| | 03:19 | the document later.
| | 03:20 | So with this group selected, I'll go up
to the Object menu, and then I'll choose
| | 03:24 | the Ungroup command, or I could press
Ctrl+Shift+G, Cmd+Shift+G on the Mac
| | 03:28 | to ungroup those guys.
| | 03:30 | Now click off of them in order to
deselect the entire group and I'll click on
| | 03:33 | any one of these objects.
| | 03:34 | I just want you to see.
| | 03:35 | I've clicked on the light blue down here at
the bottom. That's the exact same color
| | 03:39 | that was at work at the bottom of the gradient.
| | 03:41 | So that is 25% Cyan, everybody else zeroed out.
| | 03:45 | If I click on the red shape in order to
select it, that's that same collection of
| | 03:49 | color values that I used to create the red.
| | 03:52 | Again, I'm making sure that my
percentages add up to 270% or less.
| | 03:57 | That magical number by the way is just
a standard in the prepress community.
| | 04:01 | It doesn't have to be 270%, some
presses can handle more ink. You would want to
| | 04:05 | talk to your commercial printer to
find out what their total ink limit is.
| | 04:10 | By the way, that's the question you
would ask is, how much ink can you handle?
| | 04:14 | What is your total ink limit?
| | 04:16 | All right, with all of those objects
ready to go, I am going to go ahead and
| | 04:19 | select them by marqueeing across
them with the Black Arrow tool,
| | 04:22 | so I have all six of my paths selected.
And there is a couple of different ways
| | 04:26 | to create a blend inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:29 | One is to use the Blend tool,
| | 04:31 | down here near the bottom of the
toolbox, and it's got a keyboard shortcut of W.
| | 04:35 | However, I'll tell you, I
don't use this tool very often.
| | 04:38 | What it allows you to do is click at
specific points inside of your blended
| | 04:43 | objects in order to blend them together.
| | 04:45 | It works best when you only have two
objects that you are trying to blend,
| | 04:49 | although you can use it with more.
| | 04:51 | But the only reason you actually need
to take advantage of it is if your blend
| | 04:55 | starts going weird on you.
| | 04:56 | If it doesn't blend in the right way,
that is, this point for example, this
| | 05:01 | bottom left-hand point in this purple
path ends up blending over to the bottom
| | 05:05 | right-hand point in the next path down.
| | 05:07 | That's the kind of situation where you
need the Blend tool. For standard blends,
| | 05:11 | however, like this one here, you don't need it.
| | 05:13 | What you do instead, is you go up
to the Object menu, you choose the Blend
| | 05:17 | command, and you choose Make.
And this is a keyboard shortcut.
| | 05:19 | If you're going to do a lot of blending
inside of Illustrator, which I recommend
| | 05:23 | you do, very powerful feature, then you
want to remember this keyboard shortcut
| | 05:26 | as well, Ctrl+Alt+B or Cmd+Option+
B on the Mac, and that goes ahead and
| | 05:31 | blends all of the objects together
in order to create a continuous smooth
| | 05:35 | gradient as we're seeing here.
| | 05:37 | Now, I am going to click off of the
paths for a moment so that you can see what
| | 05:41 | the gradient looks like and because all
of those path outlines were bending, I
| | 05:46 | had a bunch of curvatures set up in
those path outlines that I drew using the
| | 05:49 | Pen tool, incidentally.
| | 05:51 | We have that same curvature built in
to our final blend as well, into the
| | 05:55 | gradient that we've constructed
manually here inside of Illustrator.
| | 06:00 | That means that I can now go in and
edit those blends. Because this is a live
| | 06:04 | dynamic object, it will
respond to my edits on the fly.
| | 06:08 | So I could go ahead and grab my White
Arrow tool, for example, and then I would
| | 06:11 | just hover the tool over a
perspective path outline. I can see now,
| | 06:15 | notice my cursor has a little square
next to it, a black square indicating
| | 06:20 | that there's something underneath the cursor.
| | 06:21 | If I click on it, sure enough I've
gone ahead and selected it, it looks like the
| | 06:25 | red shape, because I can see it's red,
here inside the Color panel.
| | 06:28 | Now I can manipulate its control
handles or the anchor points as well in order
| | 06:33 | to change the nature of my gradient.
| | 06:36 | So notice now that I've set things
up so I have a pretty harsh transition
| | 06:40 | at this point, which can be very
useful depending on the kind of effect you
| | 06:43 | are trying to create.
| | 06:44 | If you are trying to create nice sharp
highlights, for example, then you want your
| | 06:48 | path outlines to be very close
to each other inside the blend.
| | 06:52 | If you want smoother transitions, then
you move that path outline away, so that
| | 06:57 | you have more room between the
various paths inside of your blend.
| | 07:01 | So I might want to go ahead and bring
this side up a little bit to add a little
| | 07:04 | bit of glow over this region of this
hill, over this grass, for example, and I
| | 07:10 | have that kind of control, it's amazing.
| | 07:12 | Now the thing, I will tell you is now
I've got this big huge galumphing sort of
| | 07:18 | gradient that's exceeding outside of
my rectangle, that's not necessarily a
| | 07:23 | problem for our purposes
because we've got this bleed.
| | 07:26 | So anything outside of the
bleed is just going to drop out.
| | 07:28 | But let's say it's important to you
that all of the elements of the blend fit
| | 07:32 | inside of the rectangle, that's when
you take advantage of a clipping mask and
| | 07:36 | I'll show you how that
works in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Establishing a clipping mask| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as Big sloppy
blend.ai, and I'm calling it Big sloppy
| | 00:04 | blend because even though the blend is
meticulous and it looks great, it exceeds
| | 00:09 | the boundaries of our rectangle. And
let's say I want the blend to exist only
| | 00:13 | inside the rectangle, why then I need
to fill the rectangle with a blend by
| | 00:18 | establishing the rectangle as a
clipping mask, and here's how that works.
| | 00:22 | Inside the sky layer, inside of this
document, I've got both the blend, that
| | 00:26 | we created in the previous exercise, and this
item called path, which is the larger rectangle.
| | 00:32 | In Illustrator, the mask has to exist
on top of the stuff that it's masking.
| | 00:36 | So in other words, this path
has to be on top of the blend.
| | 00:38 | So I am going to go ahead and grab the
path and move it on top of the blend, like so.
| | 00:43 | So that it's in front.
| | 00:45 | Then I will go ahead and meatball the
path and Shift+Meatball the blend in order
| | 00:50 | to select both objects.
| | 00:51 | This is a pretty simple operation
once you understand the mechanics.
| | 00:55 | You go up to the Object menu, you
choose Clipping Mask and you choose this
| | 00:58 | command right there, Make, which has a
keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+7 or Cmd+7.
| | 01:04 | The whole reason that it has that
keyboard shortcut is because it's one before
| | 01:08 | Compound Path, which
appears immediately after it.
| | 01:11 | So I was explaining in the fundamental
portion of the series that Ctrl+8 or
| | 01:15 | Cmd+8 will establish a Compound
Path, and you can remember that of course
| | 01:19 | because 8 is itself a Compound Path, a
larger shape with two holes cut out of it.
| | 01:24 | If you remember that the Clipping
Mask comes right before it then you can
| | 01:28 | remember it's keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+7,
Cmd+7 on a Mac, and that goes
| | 01:32 | ahead and creates this Clipping Mask
right there, that is, the blend is clipped
| | 01:36 | inside of the rectangle.
| | 01:38 | Notice over here in the
layers panel what happens.
| | 01:40 | I will go ahead and collapse the
Gradient panel for a moment, by double-clicking
| | 01:44 | to the right of the word Transparency,
and then down here inside the layers
| | 01:48 | panel, I will twirl open this group,
so Illustrator automatically takes the
| | 01:52 | Clipping Mask and the stuff that it's
clipping and puts it inside of a group, so
| | 01:56 | just kind of a safe container.
| | 01:57 | If you go ahead and twirl the group open,
you'll see that you now have this item
| | 02:01 | and I will go ahead and expand the
panel, so we can see the full name.
| | 02:04 | We've got this item called Clipping
Path, where the thumbnail is concerned
| | 02:07 | everything inside the white portion of
the clipping path is inside the mask,
| | 02:12 | everything in the gray area is outside
of the mask and therefore clipped away,
| | 02:16 | and then anything below is clipped.
| | 02:19 | So in our case, we've got the blend item
that's clipped inside the clipping path.
| | 02:23 | We might as well, as long as we're here,
take a look at how the blend is put together.
| | 02:26 | You can twirl that open as well and
you'll see the various items that are inside
| | 02:31 | of the dynamic blend.
| | 02:32 | So as long as these items continue
to exist inside of the blend, then they
| | 02:36 | will blend together.
| | 02:37 | You can actually move these items out
of the blend if you want eliminate them
| | 02:42 | from that blended object or you can move
other objects into the blend if you so desire.
| | 02:47 | Anyway we've got this first path right
here, which is this vertical line, more or
| | 02:50 | less, and if I meatball it,
you can see what it looks like.
| | 02:53 | That's the path of the blend, and we'll be
taking a look more at what that means
| | 02:58 | in future exercises.
| | 03:00 | But the basic idea is this determines
the order and the direction in which these
| | 03:04 | paths blend together and then we have
the individual paths that are blended,
| | 03:09 | starting at the top here with this very
dark path at the top of the illustration
| | 03:14 | and working our way down.
| | 03:15 | So I just wanted you to have a sense
of how those various objects work on an
| | 03:20 | anatomical level here inside the layers panel.
| | 03:23 | In the next exercise, we'll try our
hands at something slightly more complicated.
| | 03:27 | We'll replace this Radial Gradient
that's at work inside of the grass with a
| | 03:31 | custom blend, and we'll clip it as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reinstating the mask colors| 00:00 | In these next two exercises, we're
going to be taking this light green to dark
| | 00:03 | green gradient, that's at work inside of
this forward grass path down here at the
| | 00:08 | bottom of the illustration, and we'll
replace it with a blend, inside of a
| | 00:12 | Clipping Mask of course.
| | 00:13 | Now if that all sounds like more of the
same thing, rest assured I'll be passing
| | 00:17 | along some new techniques.
| | 00:18 | I've saved my progress as Clipped sky
blend.ai, and using my Black arrow tool,
| | 00:23 | I'll click on the outline of
this path in order to select it.
| | 00:26 | Well that didn't work, and that's
because the layer that contains the path
| | 00:29 | is currently locked.
| | 00:30 | So if you are working along with me,
scroll to the top of the Layers panel,
| | 00:33 | notice that the grass layer is indeed locked.
| | 00:35 | Go ahead and click on that lock icon to
unlock it and as you can see here grass
| | 00:40 | is way up at the top of the stack.
| | 00:43 | Then I'm going to scroll down the list
and lock my sky layer just to protect it
| | 00:47 | from any accidental modifications.
| | 00:49 | All right, now I'll go ahead and click
on this path outline to select it, and I
| | 00:52 | am going to scroll down a little bit so that
I can analyze this path in a little more detail.
| | 00:57 | Now, I can see that it's a Radial Gradient.
| | 01:00 | If I expand the Gradient
panel, Type is set to Radial.
| | 01:03 | However, does it comprise a series of
concentric circles or concentric ellipses?
| | 01:08 | Well, to answer that question I need
to switch to the Gradient tool, which I
| | 01:11 | can get by clicking on it or pressing the G
key, and then I can see my gradient annotator.
| | 01:16 | I will go ahead and scroll over just
a little bit there and hover over the
| | 01:19 | gradient annotator and I can
see that it is indeed an ellipse.
| | 01:23 | So we have a series of concentric ellipses.
| | 01:25 | There are three colors stops
in all, notice them right here.
| | 01:28 | It might be a little easier to
evaluate them from the Gradient panel.
| | 01:31 | So I'll click on the first one, my
gradient starts off as a light green,
| | 01:35 | actually it's more of a chartreuse,
heavier on yellow than it is on cyan.
| | 01:39 | Then I'll click on that central
color stop and we've got something of a
| | 01:43 | medium dark green going on. And then
finally, we end with this ultra-dark
| | 01:48 | green way toward the outside.
| | 01:49 | So the middle green, by the way, is
weighted at 35%. That is, the location is set
| | 01:54 | to 35%, so it's closer to the
interior than to the exterior of the shape.
| | 01:59 | Then finally we've got this dark
green, which is made up of 65% Cyan, 30%
| | 02:04 | Magenta, 85% Yellow and 80% Black. And I
mention those specific values for two
| | 02:09 | reasons. First of all, we're going to have
to come back to them later, when we end
| | 02:14 | up creating empty areas
inside of our Clipping Mask.
| | 02:16 | I'll show you what's going on there.
| | 02:18 | Then finally, I just want you to note
that the values add up to less than 270%.
| | 02:23 | In fact if you do the math, they add up to 260%.
| | 02:27 | So again, I don't mean to harp the
point too much, but it's very important, you
| | 02:30 | have got to keep your colors at 270%
or lower in order to avoid your ink
| | 02:35 | smearing on the page.
| | 02:37 | All right, so having gotten a sense
of what's going on here, let's replace
| | 02:40 | that Radial Gradient with a blend.
| | 02:42 | So I'll go ahead and switch back to my
Selection tool, and I am going to replace
| | 02:46 | this gradient right here with a flat
color by clicking on the gradient swatch in
| | 02:49 | the upper left-hand corner of the
gradient panel, and then let's say I click on
| | 02:53 | an orange, here in the CMYK spectrum
bar at the bottom of the Color panel.
| | 02:57 | That will just help us
compare our new colors more easily.
| | 03:01 | Then I will twirl open my grass layer
and I am actually going to collapse my
| | 03:04 | Gradient panel as well so
I have more room to work.
| | 03:07 | Notice inside of this grass layer that
I have this group of paths up here at
| | 03:11 | the top and those are those cartoon
lines at the top of the grassy knoll and
| | 03:15 | then way down here at the bottom we
have this orange path, what was formerly
| | 03:19 | filled with a gradient.
| | 03:20 | Then in between we have a bunch
of ellipses that are turned off.
| | 03:24 | So I will go ahead and turn them all
back on so we can see them and the result
| | 03:27 | is three ellipses, of varying sizes of course.
| | 03:30 | Each filled with those same exact
shades of green we saw just a moment ago.
| | 03:34 | So if I marquee the 3 paths with my
Black Arrow tool, and then I go up to the
| | 03:39 | Object menu and I choose Blend, and
then I choose Make or press Ctrl+Alt+B,
| | 03:43 | Cmd+Option+B on a Mac, I create a
kind of manual elliptical gradient and
| | 03:49 | that may leave you wondering, why in
the world would you do such a thing?
| | 03:51 | You just had an automatic elliptical gradient
a moment ago, why replace it with a manual one?
| | 03:56 | Because it gives us more flexibility
and we can modify it, as we will shortly.
| | 04:01 | But in the meantime I need to mask
these various ellipses inside of the
| | 04:04 | grass shape. And this time I'm not doing it
strictly for the sake of keeping things tidy,
| | 04:09 | the way I did with that rectangle,
this time I really need to do it
| | 04:13 | because we've got all these little
blades of grass that are going to show
| | 04:15 | up badly otherwise.
| | 04:17 | If I click off the path outline for
example, I am covering up that grass
| | 04:21 | shape in the background.
| | 04:22 | So obviously that's a bad thing.
| | 04:24 | First step of course is to grab the
thing that you're going to clip with.
| | 04:27 | So the item that's going to serve as
the Clipping Mask needs to be in front.
| | 04:30 | So I will go ahead and grab what's
known orange path and I'll drag it in front
| | 04:35 | of the blend, like so.
| | 04:36 | One other little note I want to make
along the way here, I am going to twirl
| | 04:40 | open my blend so that we can see
there are the three ellipses there.
| | 04:43 | That's the way you want to start things off.
| | 04:45 | In other words, you want to start with 3
paths or more, as many paths as you want.
| | 04:50 | We blended six paths a couple of exercises ago.
| | 04:53 | But each one of those paths is
similar in terms of its makeup.
| | 04:58 | So in other words, they contain the
same number of anchor points and the
| | 05:03 | composition of those
anchor points is the same too.
| | 05:06 | So we have quarter points in some
locations and equivalent smooth points
| | 05:09 | in other locations.
| | 05:10 | In the case of these three ellipses,
we've got four smooth points per path and
| | 05:16 | that way Illustrator has no confusion
about how it should perform the blend.
| | 05:21 | Anyway, I am going to go ahead and
meatball this top half and then I will
| | 05:25 | Shift+Meatball the entire blend
right there so that both are selected.
| | 05:29 | The top path is going to serve as the
Clipping Mask, as soon as I go up to the Object menu,
| | 05:33 | choose Clipping Mask, and then
choose the Make command, or press Ctrl+7,
| | 05:37 | Cmd+7 on a Mac.
| | 05:38 | Now here's something I want you to note.
| | 05:40 | I am going to go ahead and click off
the shape for a moment, and I am going to
| | 05:43 | zoom in, and notice how we've lost some
information here, couple of different
| | 05:47 | things that we've lost.
| | 05:48 | We've lost the stroke that was formerly
associated with that path outline, and I
| | 05:53 | will go ahead and twirl open the group
so we can see the Clipping Mask now has
| | 05:56 | no fill and no stroke.
| | 05:59 | So by virtue of the fact that we
lost the stroke, we lost the stroke.
| | 06:02 | The stroke is gone and by virtue of the
fact that we lost the fill, the top most
| | 06:06 | tips of the blades of grass here are
cut off because that's the point at which
| | 06:11 | this biggest path outline cuts off as well.
| | 06:13 | So if I go ahead and meatball this
large ellipse that's inside of the blend,
| | 06:18 | you'll see that it clips along the tops
of the blades of grass. So what do I do?
| | 06:23 | Well of course I could make
that shape bigger if I wanted to.
| | 06:26 | I could scale this path outline and
you can scale and otherwise transform the
| | 06:30 | path outlines as much as you want
when they're selected inside of the blend
| | 06:34 | and you can select those shapes either
using the White Arrow tool out here in
| | 06:37 | the illustration window, or by meatballing the
individual items here inside the layers panel.
| | 06:42 | However, I don't want to do that,
because that's going to change the nature
| | 06:45 | of the blend itself.
| | 06:46 | What I'd rather do is reinstate the
fill and the stroke that were formerly
| | 06:50 | associated with this path outline
| | 06:52 | that's now a clipping path. And
I'll have to do that manually.
| | 06:56 | So I'll show you a slightly more
automated technique, a way of just sort of
| | 07:01 | protecting yourself before
you create a clipping mask.
| | 07:03 | I will show you that
technique later inside this chapter.
| | 07:06 | But for now we'll just manually
reinstate things by meatballing that Clipping
| | 07:10 | Path. And Clipping Path here inside
the Layers panel means the same thing as
| | 07:15 | Clipping Mask by the way.
| | 07:16 | Illustrator has two terms for this feature.
| | 07:19 | Now notice up here in the Color panel
that we have neither fill nor stroke.
| | 07:22 | I am going to go ahead and
reinstate those stroke values manually.
| | 07:25 | Now you could go ahead and grab the
eyedropper tool if you want to and with this
| | 07:30 | shape selected you could try to eyedrop
that outermost edge of that greenness
| | 07:36 | right there in order to restore the
green inside of the clipping path.
| | 07:40 | But notice that these are not
the same values we had before.
| | 07:43 | So if you look closely here you may
notice that all of a sudden the green
| | 07:47 | shifts ever so slightly at the tips of
the blades of grass and it might show up
| | 07:52 | even more in print.
| | 07:53 | So you really want those values to match.
| | 07:55 | So I already know what they are,
I read them to you earlier.
| | 07:57 | But I wrote them down as well.
| | 07:59 | It's 65%, Cyan which survived.
| | 08:01 | I will go ahead and enter 30% for
Magenta, I'll take down in my case, the
| | 08:05 | Yellow value to 85%.
| | 08:07 | Then I'll take up the
Black value to 80%, like so.
| | 08:10 | So I just want to reinstate those
exact values there and then we have a very
| | 08:15 | smooth transition from that shade of
green to be identical shade of green inside
| | 08:19 | of the clipping path.
| | 08:20 | Now I will go up to my strokes swatch
here in the Control panel, click on it, and
| | 08:24 | then I'll click on t his fourth swatch in,
I'll go ahead and click on it in
| | 08:28 | order to assign that rich black to the
stroke and then I'll bring up my Stroke
| | 08:32 | panel by clicking on the word
stroke up here in Control panel.
| | 08:35 | I will set both my cap and my
corner options there to Round.
| | 08:39 | So I've got a round cap and a round
join, and then I'm done, and I've gone
| | 08:43 | ahead and created this elliptical
blend inside of this grass shape, inside of
| | 08:50 | this Clipping Mask.
| | 08:51 | Now the question still is, why in the
world did I do that, why'd I go to all
| | 08:55 | that effort just to create the manual
equivalent of a Radial Gradient. And the
| | 09:01 | reason is, now I can modify the gradient
to any extent I like, as I'll demonstrate
| | 09:05 | in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing blended paths| 00:00 | In this exercise we're going to take
that elliptical gradient that we created
| | 00:03 | with a fair amount of effort as a blend,
and we are going to customize it to fit
| | 00:07 | the contours of this grassy knoll. And
that's something that we can't do with a
| | 00:11 | gradient, but we can do with a blend.
| | 00:13 | I have saved my progress as Manual
elliptical grad.ai and I am going to go
| | 00:18 | ahead and grab my White Arrow tool and
I am going to hover my cursor over the
| | 00:22 | various points inside of this grass in
order to find out where the edges of my
| | 00:27 | blended objects are.
| | 00:28 | So if I move to this point right there,
notice that you can see in addition to
| | 00:33 | my white arrow cursor I have a
black square that tells me that there is
| | 00:37 | something underneath my cursor.
| | 00:38 | I will click on it to select it and this
looks to be the middle path and indeed it is.
| | 00:44 | So this is that sort of darkish shade of
green, not the ultra dark green and not
| | 00:48 | the light green, but the one in between.
| | 00:49 | What I would like to do is add a couple
of points so that I can raise this area
| | 00:55 | here in order to match the contour of this bump.
| | 00:58 | I am going to do that by
switching over to my Pen tool.
| | 01:02 | So you can add points and delete
points and do the whole number on path
| | 01:06 | outlines that are parts of blends,
just as you can with any path outlines
| | 01:09 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:11 | So I will grab my Pen either by
clicking on it or pressing the P key, and then
| | 01:14 | you have to be pretty careful here.
| | 01:16 | Scoot your cursor over the segment.
| | 01:19 | Make sure that you see a plus
sign next to the cursor and click.
| | 01:23 | If you don't see a plus sign, if you
see an X, don't click, because that
| | 01:26 | will create a new point.
| | 01:27 | It's very easy to do if you are not
paying fairly meticulous attention.
| | 01:31 | Then I am going to move my
cursor over to this location.
| | 01:33 | I have got a plus sign next to the cursor.
| | 01:35 | I will click in order to add a
new point, like so. So far so good.
| | 01:39 | Now I am going to grab my Direct
Selection tool, my White Arrow tool, and I will
| | 01:42 | drag this point upward, like so.
| | 01:45 | Now what I have done, you may notice, I
was telling you in a previous exercise,
| | 01:49 | that it's important to make sure that
you have the same number of anchor points
| | 01:53 | in all of your blended shapes and that
they're the same kinds of anchor point so
| | 01:57 | that Illustrator knows how
to blend the shapes together.
| | 02:00 | Well, that's a good rule of thumb.
| | 02:02 | You can sometimes get away with not
following that rule and when you're adding
| | 02:07 | points, because you've already
established the order of the blend and the way
| | 02:10 | that the blend is mapped out, you have
a fair amount of flexibility in terms of
| | 02:14 | adding points to the various shapes,
but you still have to take easy.
| | 02:18 | It is possible if you add too many points to
any one shape inside a blend to mess things up.
| | 02:23 | So just try adding a point, moving it around
making sure the blend still works out nicely.
| | 02:28 | Now I have dragged this point up toward
the top of this path outline right there.
| | 02:32 | I just want it to be slightly
inward, and then I am going to click on this
| | 02:36 | anchor point there in order to select
it and I will move this Bezier control
| | 02:40 | handle up like so and now I
will grab this guy as well.
| | 02:44 | I will click on this anchor point and move
its control handle up, to get this effect.
| | 02:48 | Now notice I am kind of messing up the gradient.
| | 02:50 | I have this interesting wash of green
that's sweeping in from the left-hand side.
| | 02:54 | Now, I could end up liking that.
| | 02:56 | That could end up working very nicely for me.
| | 02:58 | I don't happen to like it, however.
| | 03:00 | So I'm going to zoom out and I am
going to take this control handle and scoot
| | 03:04 | it in like so that I have less
radical transitions inside of my blend.
| | 03:09 | Now I will drag this guy up little bit.
| | 03:11 | That is that anchor point.
| | 03:12 | Click on this anchor point over here,
scroll over, and move its control
| | 03:17 | handle inward as well, because again we've
got a very radical transition at that location.
| | 03:21 | Now let's take a swing at editing the
innermost path outline inside the blend.
| | 03:25 | I will scoot my cursor down until I see
once again that I've got a square next
| | 03:30 | to my White Arrow tool.
| | 03:31 | Now this one is telling me that I
am going to be clicking on an anchor
| | 03:34 | point, which is just fine.
| | 03:36 | So I will go and click on
that anchor point to select it.
| | 03:37 | That works out pretty nicely.
| | 03:39 | Then I will grab my Pen tool once
again and I will hover my cursor over a
| | 03:43 | segment taking care to make sure that
I'm seeing a plus sign next to the cursor.
| | 03:47 | I will click in order to
add a point at that location.
| | 03:50 | Then I will move the cursor over to the
left-hand side, click as soon as I see a
| | 03:54 | plus sign next to it.
| | 03:54 | Press the A key in order to switch
back to the White Arrow tool, scoot this
| | 03:58 | guy up a little like so, maybe move
this control handle, just move these guys
| | 04:03 | around until I feel like I am getting
the look that I am hoping for, and I will
| | 04:08 | go ahead and move these down a little
bit, because if I move them too far up
| | 04:11 | like this, then I am going to see a
flat area of green on the inside down here
| | 04:16 | toward the bottom of the illustration and I
don't know that I want that large of a flat area.
| | 04:21 | And I'm not sure I want this kind of
radioactive highlight down here on the grass either.
| | 04:25 | So I want to take it a little easy.
| | 04:26 | I will scoot this anchor point down, like so.
| | 04:28 | Scoot this guy this guy down as well
and we should get a nice smooth transition
| | 04:34 | as I'm seeing here inside of my final blend.
| | 04:38 | Now in this case I am blending from a six
-point shape down here at the bottom to
| | 04:42 | another six-point shape in between, and
| | 04:44 | then finally to a four-point
shape at top, but everything seems to
| | 04:48 | visually reconcile. So I'm okay.
| | 04:51 | If you feel like you're not seeing
reconciliation, your colors are moving in
| | 04:54 | sort of aberrant directions, you could go
ahead and try to find an outermost path
| | 04:59 | outline, which I believe, no, that's not it.
| | 05:01 | That's the clipping path
itself. I don't want that.
| | 05:04 | I will go ahead and meatball this
path so I can find it. It's right there.
| | 05:07 | Good.
| | 05:08 | I will click off of it.
| | 05:09 | Then I will come back to it.
| | 05:11 | Now this is a problem you may run into
every once in a while, which is you can't
| | 05:14 | quite get to the contents of a
clipping path, and this is something that Adobe
| | 05:19 | has changed over time, quite
for the worse, in my opinion.
| | 05:23 | If for some reason you just can't get
to the contents of a clipping mask then
| | 05:28 | what you have to do is press the V key
to switch to the Black Arrow tool, click
| | 05:32 | on that clipping path in order to
select it, like so, then go up here to the
| | 05:36 | Control panel and notice that
it's telling me it's a group.
| | 05:39 | It's actually a group with a clipping
mask inside of it, which is very important.
| | 05:43 | Notice these two icons, one allows you
to edit the clipping mask itself, which
| | 05:47 | I don't want to do.
| | 05:48 | The other one is to edit the contents.
| | 05:50 | So I will click on Edit Contents and
then I will select all of those various
| | 05:53 | ellipses and now with any luck I should
be able to get to that guy by clicking
| | 05:58 | out with a White Arrow tool or what have you.
| | 06:00 | What I want to do is I want to press
the P key to switch to the Pen tool and
| | 06:04 | I'll go ahead and add a point at this
location right there, and I'll add
| | 06:07 | another anchor point over someplace around here.
| | 06:11 | As soon as I see a plus sign next to my
cursor, I will click in order to add an
| | 06:14 | anchor point and that does
smooth out the gradient a little bit.
| | 06:17 | By virtue of the fact that I know
have six anchor points associated with
| | 06:21 | the outermost shape.
| | 06:22 | So hopefully by now you get the idea, I
will go ahead and press the V key, click
| | 06:26 | off of my shapes to deselect, and the
idea is this, when you're editing a blend
| | 06:30 | you can make any modifications you want -
you can add points, you to move points
| | 06:34 | around, you can move control
handles - just be cognizant of the fact that
| | 06:38 | Illustrator has to somehow reconcile
the blend between the various objects. And
| | 06:43 | the best way to do that is to ensure
that each and every path outline inside the
| | 06:47 | blend has the same number of anchor points.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the number of blended steps| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to show you
how to blend between stroked as opposed
| | 00:03 | to filled path outlines inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:06 | I will also show you how to adjust the
number of steps inside of a blend, and
| | 00:10 | I'll explain what steps are.
| | 00:12 | I have saved my progress is Iridescent
grass.ai, and I am going to go ahead and
| | 00:16 | zoom in on this gradient
background here inside of the sky.
| | 00:20 | You may recall that we are blending
from a red path to a dark brown one to a
| | 00:25 | violet one to a blue one.
| | 00:27 | If you look closely you can see
some bands of color in between.
| | 00:30 | These bands are known as steps.
| | 00:32 | So Illustrator is drawing temporary
path outlines between the path outlines
| | 00:37 | that we established in the first
place in order to smooth out the color
| | 00:41 | transitions in between.
| | 00:44 | Illustrator will create as many as 256
different temporary paths between any two
| | 00:50 | real paths inside of your blend and
that's a function of postscript by the way.
| | 00:55 | That's where that 256 maximum comes from.
| | 00:58 | Now if you want to get a sense of how
that's determined, I am going to switch
| | 01:01 | down here to grass path and I am
going to click on that path outline.
| | 01:05 | That selects my clipping mask.
| | 01:06 | If I wan to adjust the blend instead
the blend inside of the mask, then I'll go
| | 01:11 | up here to my Control panel and click
on that second icon, Edit Contents, and
| | 01:15 | that selects the blend.
| | 01:16 | So in this case we're blending
between dark green on the outside to a kind
| | 01:20 | of darkish medium green in the middle and
then a very light green on the far interior.
| | 01:25 | Again, Illustrator is ensuring
smooth transitions in between.
| | 01:28 | So sometimes you are going to be able
to see the bands, other times you won't.
| | 01:33 | I should say the banding that you see
onscreen isn't necessarily an indicator of
| | 01:37 | the banding that you might experience in print.
| | 01:39 | So you might have to print off a
few test pages in order to be sure.
| | 01:43 | At any rate, how does Illustrator
determine how many steps to apply?
| | 01:47 | Well, I can show you that by going up here
to the Object menu, choosing Blend, and
| | 01:52 | choosing this command
right there, Blend Options.
| | 01:55 | Now notice it has no keyboard
shortcut, even though you will be using
| | 01:58 | this command a lot.
| | 01:59 | I frankly think it's a big pain in the
neck to have to dig inside of a submenu like this,
| | 02:04 | so let me show you a shortcut.
| | 02:05 | I am going to escape out of that menu.
| | 02:07 | Another way to get to the Blending
Options dialog box, which is what you get
| | 02:11 | when you choose that command, is to
go down here to the Blend tool and
| | 02:14 | double-click on it, and that
will bring up Blending Options.
| | 02:17 | Notice that Spacing right here is set
to Smooth Color and what that does is it
| | 02:21 | ensures the smoothest
color transitions possible.
| | 02:24 | If you don't want smooth color
transitions for whatever reason, you want to
| | 02:28 | be able to see the bands of color, then go
ahead and choose one of these other options.
| | 02:32 | You can either specify the number of
steps or the distance between steps.
| | 02:35 | I almost invariably go with specified
steps, by the way, as opposed to distance.
| | 02:40 | I will go ahead and choose that command,
Illustrator is telling me, I went with 76.
| | 02:43 | That's what seemed right to me.
| | 02:45 | This is Illustrator talking.
| | 02:46 | If you want to go with a
different value, be my guest.
| | 02:48 | Make sure Preview is turned on.
| | 02:50 | Then I will try out something like 12,
and once I enter a value of 12, I can
| | 02:54 | clearly see the bands of color in between.
| | 02:56 | If you can't quite see them in the
video I will take them down even lower.
| | 02:59 | I'll take that number down to 6.
| | 03:01 | So we have six steps, that is six
virtual path outlines in between each one of
| | 03:07 | our real path outlines and we end up
getting this terrific banding effect right
| | 03:11 | there which you may or may not want depending on
the effect you are going for. I don't want it.
| | 03:15 | So I will click Cancel.
| | 03:17 | So why in the world did I show you that?
| | 03:18 | Well, let me show you.
| | 03:19 | I will switch to the Black Arrow tool
and I am going to scroll up to this area
| | 03:24 | on the left wing that's associated with
the bat right there and notice that we
| | 03:29 | have a couple of extreme path outlines
here that represent the wrinkles inside
| | 03:33 | of the bat wings, I don't
know what those folds are called.
| | 03:35 | But anyway I want to
create a few more in between.
| | 03:39 | What I could do is I could
grab one of these path outlines.
| | 03:41 | Notice that each of them contains
just two anchor points, one at the
| | 03:45 | beginning, one at the end,
| | 03:46 | we have a curved segment in between.
And I could switch over to my Rotate tool,
| | 03:51 | and I can do this number where I click
to set the transformation origin and then
| | 03:56 | I drag a little bit, like so,
| | 03:57 | and I press the Alt or Option key in
order to create a clone, and then I press
| | 04:01 | Ctrl+D or Cmd+D on a Mac a couple of
times in order to duplicate that effect.
| | 04:06 | But it's not reconciling properly at all.
| | 04:08 | It should be going in toward this
top fold right there and it's not.
| | 04:13 | So Illustrator is not scaling the path outlines.
| | 04:17 | I could do that in a separate step if
I wanted to, but that's pretty static,
| | 04:22 | working this way that is.
| | 04:23 | It's not very flexible, whereas were I
to work with a blend instead I would have
| | 04:28 | all the flexibility in the world.
| | 04:29 | So I will go ahead and press Ctrl+Z or
Cmd+Z a few times in order to get
| | 04:33 | back to that original path outline.
| | 04:34 | Then I will switch back to my Black
Arrow tool and I'll Shift+Click on this top
| | 04:39 | path outline, like so.
| | 04:40 | So I've got this guy selected at top,
this guy selected down here, I want to
| | 04:44 | blend between the two, which I can, even though they're
open path outlines, no fills, and just strokes.
| | 04:50 | You can still blend between them
and you can get great results as well.
| | 04:53 | We will be doing this a few times
to achieve all kinds of effects.
| | 04:56 | I will going to the Object menu,
choose Blend, and then choose Make, or press
| | 05:00 | Ctrl+Alt+, Cmd+Option+B on a Mac, and
Illustrator gives me one step in between.
| | 05:05 | That's all it does.
| | 05:06 | A moment ago inside the grassy
knoll we had 76 steps, now we get one.
| | 05:12 | What in the world is going on?
| | 05:13 | Well, Illustrator is looking at
this and going, all right, let's see, up
| | 05:16 | here you've got a black stroke, no fill,
down here you've got a black stroke, no fill.
| | 05:23 | What do you want from me, buddy?
| | 05:24 | This is the best I am going to do.
| | 05:25 | I am going to give you one step, because I
don't what you are trying to achieve here.
| | 05:28 | You are not trying to achieve
some kind of smooth color transition.
| | 05:31 | So I don't know what you are up to.
| | 05:33 | So what we do now is we adjust
the number of steps manually.
| | 05:36 | With this blend selected you go
down here to the Blend tool once again
| | 05:40 | double-click on it to bring up
the Blend Options dialog box.
| | 05:43 | This is Illustrator's idea of
smooth color, one step and only one.
| | 05:47 | I will go ahead and
switch over to Specified Steps.
| | 05:49 | We can see that indeed Illustrator
assigned one step and then I will press the
| | 05:53 | Up Arrow key to bring it up to two steps.
| | 05:55 | Now we have got two steps in between
the extreme path outlines, and I will press
| | 05:59 | Up Arrow again to get three
steps, and we're done. Click OK.
| | 06:02 | That looks great, and now let me
show you just how flexible this is.
| | 06:06 | First of all, notice that Illustrator
is essentially rotating and scaling each
| | 06:10 | one of these path outlines in
order to fill in the gaps in between.
| | 06:15 | Then if I grab my White Arrow tool and
I click off the path outline, click on
| | 06:20 | it again in order to select just a
segment and I drag this control handle, then
| | 06:24 | Illustrator updates all those temporary path
outlines, a.k.a. steps, on the fly that is to say.
| | 06:30 | Then if I don't like that effect, I
just modify it some more, bring the control
| | 06:33 | handle back up, Illustrator fills in the gaps.
| | 06:36 | So this is a very, very
flexible way to work as you'll see.
| | 06:41 | In the next exercise we're going to
repeat these steps for these two path
| | 06:44 | outlines over here on the right wing,
and I'll show you want to do when things
| | 06:48 | go wrong.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Blend tool| 00:00 | In this exercise, I will show you
what can go wrong when blending between
| | 00:03 | objects and how to solve
problems using the Blend tool.
| | 00:06 | I have saved my progress as Three-step
blend.ai and I'm going to press the V
| | 00:11 | key in order to switch to the Black
Arrow tool, click on this path outline
| | 00:15 | toward the top of the right-hand wing,
and Shift+click on this lower path
| | 00:19 | outline, and we are going to blend
between these two guys just as we did over
| | 00:23 | here in the left-hand wing.
| | 00:25 | However, it's not going to
work out as well this time.
| | 00:27 | So I'll go up to the Object menu.
| | 00:29 | I will choose Blend, and I will choose Make.
| | 00:31 | Now I am fully anticipating that I am
going to get a single step and nothing more.
| | 00:36 | But as soon as I choose the
command, I get this step right there.
| | 00:40 | So we do just get one step, great, but
that step looks totally wrong, and if I were
| | 00:46 | to go over here to the Blend tool and
double-click on it, and let's go ahead and
| | 00:50 | switch over to Specified Steps, and
raise that value so that we can create a
| | 00:54 | bunch of steps in between, what
in the world is happening here?
| | 00:58 | Well, Illustrator is always
blending between anchor points when it's trying
| | 01:02 | to reconcile the difference between two
extremes paths, and when I say extreme I
| | 01:06 | mean on the extreme ends of a blend.
And normally, what we'd hope it we do, since
| | 01:11 | they're such simple path outlines,
blend between the two left-hand anchor
| | 01:15 | points and then blend between
the two right-hand anchor points.
| | 01:18 | But in this case, Illustrator
has gotten the equation totally wrong.
| | 01:21 | It's blending from the left anchor
point in the top path to the right anchor
| | 01:24 | point in the bottom path and between
the right anchor point in the top one, to
| | 01:28 | the left anchor point in the bottom one.
| | 01:30 | Why is it doing this?
| | 01:30 | Because of the order in
which I drew the path outlines.
| | 01:33 | I must have drawn one from left to
right and the other from right to left and
| | 01:38 | Illustrator pays attention to that kind
of stuff, even though it doesn't let you
| | 01:41 | just change the direction of an open
path outline, it does punish you for
| | 01:46 | getting that direction wrong.
| | 01:47 | So what in the world are we supposed to do?
| | 01:49 | Well, cancel out of here.
| | 01:51 | Then press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z on the
Mac in order to undo the creation of that
| | 01:56 | step right there, and now what we need
to do is use the Blend tool, which I have
| | 02:00 | already selected because I just double-
clicked on it, but go ahead and grab that
| | 02:03 | Blend tool or your can press the W key,
that's not a keyboard shortcut that I
| | 02:07 | care to remember but you may find it helpful.
| | 02:10 | And then what you do with this tool
is you click on an anchor point in each
| | 02:15 | one of the path outlines that you want to blend
and you are basically telling Illustrator, hey!
| | 02:20 | Here is the similar anchor point.
| | 02:22 | So since the two right-hand anchor
points are coincident, that is, right on top of
| | 02:25 | each other, it's easier to
click on the left-hand anchor point.
| | 02:28 | So I will start by clicking on the left-
hand point in the bottom shape, and you
| | 02:32 | click, once again, on each one of the
path outlines that you want to blend.
| | 02:35 | So having clicked on this guy, I now
need to click on this one here and that
| | 02:40 | will go ahead and create the blend immediately.
| | 02:42 | However, Illustrator once
again got it totally wrong.
| | 02:45 | This time it looked at the front shape
which was not selected, darn it, but it
| | 02:50 | went ahead and grabbed the front most
shape at this point and blended that to
| | 02:55 | the left-hand point in the top open path.
| | 02:58 | And I have to give it A for effort,
because it's really tried, bless it, in
| | 03:02 | order to blend these completely
different path outlines with each other.
| | 03:06 | However, it's made an absolute mess of things.
| | 03:08 | That's not what I want.
| | 03:10 | So I will press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+
Z on the Mac to undo that change.
| | 03:13 | Now the problem is the
shields & ribs layer right here.
| | 03:16 | It contains paths that are on top
of the path that I'm trying to blend.
| | 03:21 | So I need to lock it down.
| | 03:22 | So first I am going to press Ctrl+Z,
or Cmd+Z on the Mac to undo that bad
| | 03:26 | blend, and then here inside the layers
panel, I will click in front of the shield
| | 03:31 | & ribs layer to lock it. And now
Illustrator can't consider those path outlines
| | 03:36 | in the blend, and I will now click on
this bottom left point and then I will
| | 03:40 | click on the top left point, and this
time Illustrator does exactly what I want.
| | 03:46 | So that's why YOU use the Blend tool,
when you're trying to reconcile blends that
| | 03:50 | Illustrator can't figure out automatically.
| | 03:52 | Okay having done that, I need
to specify a number of steps.
| | 03:55 | So I will double-click on
the Blend tool once again.
| | 03:58 | From here on out, it's the same old
thing, change spacing from Smooth Color to
| | 04:01 | Specified Steps, increase that number
of steps option to 3 like so, so that we
| | 04:07 | have an equivalent number of steps on
the right-hand side and the left-hand
| | 04:10 | side, click OK, and the job is done.
| | 04:13 | I will press the V key to switch back
to the Black Arrow tool and click off the
| | 04:16 | path outlines to deselect them.
| | 04:18 | So if you run into a situation, and
you will, where two path outlines don't
| | 04:23 | blend together properly, undo your
modifications and try clicking on equivalent
| | 04:28 | points inside of those path
outlines using the Blend tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blending between levels of opacity| 00:00 | I have saved my progress as Blended bat
wings.ai, and in this exercise I am going
| | 00:05 | to demonstrate how you can blend not
only between different colors of fills or
| | 00:10 | strokes inside of Illustrator, but
also between different levels of opacity.
| | 00:14 | So I am going to scroll over
here until I find this region.
| | 00:19 | So notice that I have got a few things
going on actually here and let me make
| | 00:23 | sure that this layer is unlocked, it is locked.
| | 00:26 | It's the star layer that contains the
objects that we are seeing onscreen.
| | 00:30 | So I need to unlock that layer so I can
gain access to the items it contains.
| | 00:35 | Then I'm going to click in the upper
right-hand corner of that star layer in
| | 00:39 | order to select everything contained
inside the layer and there are a total of
| | 00:43 | four objects that we are seeing right now.
| | 00:45 | There is actually a fifth
object that's offscreen.
| | 00:48 | I will go ahead and zoom out so
that we can take in everything.
| | 00:51 | So the fifth object is over here.
| | 00:53 | It's this little completely
transparent guy, a little circle whose Opacity
| | 00:57 | value is set to 0%.
| | 01:00 | Over here, if I zoom in, we've got a
transparent star shape toward the outside.
| | 01:06 | We also have this translucent star
shape on the interior that's also blurred a
| | 01:11 | little bit and then we have two
variations of the circle with different levels
| | 01:15 | of opacity once again.
| | 01:17 | So I am going to click off
these path outlines for a moment.
| | 01:19 | I want to show you what's going on with
this blurry star shape just so you have
| | 01:22 | a sense of what we're working with here.
| | 01:25 | This is not one of the
shapes that we are going to blend,
| | 01:27 | actually. In fact, this is the only shape
on the layer that we are not go blend.
| | 01:30 | If I switch over to the Appearance
panel while that shape is selected, you can
| | 01:34 | see that it has a fill and the Opacity
is set to 25% and you can change that
| | 01:39 | Opacity value by clicking on the word Opacity.
| | 01:42 | That brings up the Transparency panel.
| | 01:44 | You change the Opacity value.
| | 01:45 | Raise it to make the shape more
opaque, lower it to make it more
| | 01:48 | translucent/transparent.
| | 01:51 | Anyway, I am going to escape out of there.
| | 01:52 | This is what I want you to see,
this Gaussian Blur option.
| | 01:55 | If you click on it that brings up this
dynamic effect inside of Illustrator and
| | 02:01 | it's called Gaussian Blur.
| | 02:02 | It's borrowed from Photoshop, and what it
does is it goes ahead and blurs the shape.
| | 02:07 | It's a pixel level effect.
| | 02:08 | So it does go ahead and convert this
vector to pixels on the fly, and in this
| | 02:14 | case I have set the Radius value to 6
pixels, which is a fair amount of blur, not
| | 02:18 | nearly as much of a blur as you would
get if you applied 6 pixels worth of blur
| | 02:22 | inside of Photoshop, but quite a bit
of blur here inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:26 | Anyway, I just want you to see that.
| | 02:27 | I am going to cancel out.
| | 02:28 | So you get a sense of how I created
that blur. And if you were trying to blur an
| | 02:31 | object in such a way, then you would
select it, go up to the Effect menu, and
| | 02:36 | this is how you apply the
blur in the first place. Choose blur,
| | 02:38 | and then choose Gaussian blur
from this region of Photoshop
| | 02:42 | Effects right there.
| | 02:43 | Anyway, we will be talking about those
more, these dynamic effects, when we look
| | 02:47 | at dynamic effects, an entire chapter
devoted to the topic inside the Mastery
| | 02:52 | portion of this series.
| | 02:53 | However, in the mean time,
here is what I want to do.
| | 02:55 | I am going to click off that star to
deselect it and I am going to grab this
| | 02:59 | star right here. And you might say,
what star are you talking about, Deke?
| | 03:03 | Well, I can see that there is something
here, I know there is a star out here,
| | 03:05 | it happens to be transparent.
| | 03:07 | But I can see a little
black square next to my cursor.
| | 03:10 | So I will click in order
to select that big old star.
| | 03:13 | Sure enough, it is there.
| | 03:14 | Notice that it has a Fill Color of 50%
Cyan. Everybody else zeroed out.
| | 03:18 | So where is that Fill Color?
| | 03:19 | Well, by virtue of the fact that I have
set the Opacity value - either up here in
| | 03:23 | the Control panel or down here in the
Appearance panel, anywhere where you can
| | 03:26 | find it - to 0%, it is absolutely transparent.
| | 03:30 | Now I am going to go ahead and click
on this interior circle right there.
| | 03:34 | It's actually the outermost of the two
circles that are right on top of each
| | 03:38 | other and this guy has a
Fill Color of 25% Yellow.
| | 03:43 | Everybody else is zeroed out,
and its Opacity is 100%.
| | 03:46 | So I just want to see what
we are working with here.
| | 03:48 | Click on one, Shift+Click, if
you can find it, on the other one.
| | 03:52 | If you can't find it, by the way, if
you just can't locate the shape, you can
| | 03:55 | press Ctrl+Y, Cmd+Y on a Mac to
switch to the Outline mode, then you'll see
| | 03:59 | the bigger star's the one we want to select.
| | 04:01 | Go ahead and Shift+Click
on it to select it as well.
| | 04:03 | Then press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y to
switch back to the Preview mode, and now go
| | 04:08 | up to the Object menu, choose the
Blend command and choose Make, or press
| | 04:12 | Ctrl+Atl+B, Cmd+Option+B on a Mac in order
to create a blend between those two path outlines.
| | 04:18 | Now by virtue of the fact that the
two paths had different Fill Colors,
| | 04:23 | because the interior shape has a
color of 25% yellow and the exterior shape
| | 04:27 | has a color of 50% cyan, why then
Illustrator goes ahead and creates a bunch
| | 04:33 | of steps in between.
| | 04:34 | If they were the same color, but
different Opacity levels, then Illustrator
| | 04:38 | would do that one step thing once again.
| | 04:41 | Or it might create a few more steps
depending on the distance between the path outlines.
| | 04:45 | But it's not smart enough to tell the
different levels of transparency apart
| | 04:48 | from each other. You would then have to
specify the number of steps manually.
| | 04:52 | I might go ahead and do that anyway.
| | 04:53 | With the Blend selected I will double
-click on the Blend tool here inside
| | 04:57 | the toolbox in order bring up the
Blend Options dialog box and then I can
| | 05:00 | switch from Spacing.
| | 05:01 | Remember, if you ever want to know
the number of steps that Illustrator has
| | 05:05 | assigned, you switch from Smooth Color to
Specified Steps and then you'll see, my gosh!
| | 05:09 | 127 steps.
| | 05:11 | I don't think I need this many.
| | 05:13 | Now you want to assign as few steps
as you can get away with, by the way.
| | 05:17 | If you're really trying to control the
process, because otherwise, too many steps,
| | 05:22 | you're just throwing more
complexity at the project.
| | 05:24 | It's going to take longer to print,
it's going to take longer to rasterize
| | 05:27 | inside of Photoshop, the whole number.
| | 05:29 | So if you reduce the number of steps
to, let's say, 35, I think worked out
| | 05:33 | pretty nicely, and press the Tab key,
I didn't see anything change onscreen.
| | 05:38 | And I reduced the number of steps to
about a quarter of what they were before
| | 05:42 | and everything looks just absolutely
copacetic, and that means that, as I say,
| | 05:47 | it's going to print faster, it's going to
rasterize faster, it's going to view faster.
| | 05:51 | We are going to preview the
effect faster onscreen as well.
| | 05:54 | So I am going to click OK in
order to accept that modification.
| | 05:57 | Now the great thing, I am going to zoom
in on this effect, because I just love it.
| | 06:00 | Notice if I click off, now, by selecting the
Black Arrow key and then clicking off the shape,
| | 06:06 | if I deselect the shape, because I am
so far zoomed in, I can see the bands of
| | 06:09 | color in between, bear in mind
however that you really are zoomed in.
| | 06:13 | In my case, I am zoomed into 300%.
| | 06:16 | These different bands aren't
going to reconcile in print.
| | 06:18 | They are not going to reconcile
when I rasterize the graphic either.
| | 06:21 | However, now that I am zoomed in, I
can see that I have got this wonderful
| | 06:25 | interaction between the various star
shapes and I have got this very sculptural
| | 06:28 | star effect going on as well.
| | 06:30 | Now this brings up an important point
if you've been paying close attention you
| | 06:33 | might ask me, well, wait a sec, Deke.
| | 06:36 | Just a few exercises ago you were
telling us how important it is to make sure
| | 06:40 | your path outlines contain the same
number of anchor points and equivalent
| | 06:43 | anchor points and they should be the
same kind and all that garbage, and yet you
| | 06:48 | have got a circle that has four
smooth points and then you have got this
| | 06:51 | bazillion point star.
| | 06:52 | I think it's 11 point star,
which would mean 22 corner points.
| | 06:57 | How different could these shapes be?
| | 06:59 | Well, the great thing is that the
two shapes are oriented properly with
| | 07:03 | respect to each other,
| | 07:04 | so things are working out quite nicely.
And also, Illustrator is very good about
| | 07:07 | blending between a circle
and just about anything.
| | 07:10 | So it goes ahead and smooths out these
areas in etween the different shapes and
| | 07:14 | reconciles the effect quite nicely.
| | 07:16 | Anyway, you can achieve some really
awesome effects by blending between paths
| | 07:21 | with various levels of opacity.
| | 07:23 | In the next exercise I am going to show
you how to blend between two paths that
| | 07:27 | are far apart from each other
and edit the path of the blend.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing the path of the blend| 00:00 | I have saved my progress
as Happy little star.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise, I am going to show
you how to blend between objects that
| | 00:07 | are far apart from each other and then how
to modify the path of the blend in between.
| | 00:12 | So I am going to start
things off by zooming out.
| | 00:15 | I am going to select this interior circle.
| | 00:17 | Can't really see it but you can see the
Exterior circle right there which is the
| | 00:21 | beginning of that blend between
the circle on the star shape.
| | 00:25 | If you move your cursor in a little bit,
you'll see that there is another shape
| | 00:29 | just on the inside of the larger circle.
| | 00:32 | Click on it and you'll select a smaller
circle that has an Opacity value of 50%
| | 00:37 | and 25% Yellow, that's all.
| | 00:39 | Just like the outer circle actually
but it's a different opacity level.
| | 00:42 | But I want you to note that the color
is 25% yellow, nothing else is going on.
| | 00:47 | Now I am going to zoom out so that I
can take in more of my graphic at a time
| | 00:51 | and there is another
circle over here some place.
| | 00:55 | So I will press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on
the Mac to switch to the outline mode,
| | 00:58 | and there it is, I will
click on it to select it.
| | 01:01 | It has that exact same color.
| | 01:03 | So just 25% yellow, nothing
more, and an Opacity level of 0%.
| | 01:07 | And I was telling you in a previous
exercise, Illustrator is smart enough to
| | 01:11 | smooth out the transition between
different fill or stroke colors.
| | 01:14 | It is not smart enough to smooth out
the transition between different levels of
| | 01:18 | opacity and we will see that right now.
| | 01:21 | So I've got one of the circle selected
over here on the left-hand side, I will
| | 01:25 | Shift+Click on that inner-most circle
in the upper-right corner, or near the
| | 01:29 | upper-right corner, anyway, of the Illustration.
| | 01:32 | Then I will press Ctrl+Y, Cmd+Y on
the Mac to switch back to the Preview
| | 01:35 | mode, and even though these Path
outlines are way on opposite sides of the
| | 01:40 | Illustration, you can still blend between them.
| | 01:42 | So I will go to the Object menu, I
will choose Blend and I will choose
| | 01:45 | Make, Ctrl+Alt+B, Cmd+Option+B on the
Mac in order to blend between these two shapes.
| | 01:51 | Now what would happen if they were
right on top of each other is we just get
| | 01:54 | that one standard step in between.
| | 01:57 | Because they are so far apart from
each other Illustrator is saying, well, I
| | 02:01 | guess you want me to sort of fill in
the gaps, so I will do my best here and
| | 02:05 | here is a bunch of circles in between, whatever.
| | 02:07 | All right, so it's up to you now to
modify the number of steps of course, so
| | 02:11 | you double-click on the Blend tool
inside the toolbox. That brings up the Blend
| | 02:15 | Options dialog box.
| | 02:16 | Let's see how many steps Illustrator
created for us by changing Spacing from
| | 02:20 | Smooth Color to Specified
Steps, and apparently it's 34 steps.
| | 02:24 | Well what we need to do is increase
the number of steps until we get an
| | 02:27 | absolutely smooth transition.
| | 02:28 | Now at about a hundred steps, if I
enter that value, make sure Preview is turned
| | 02:32 | on, press the Tab key in
order to invoke the Preview.
| | 02:35 | We have a very smooth transition from
this 50% opaque shape to a 0% opaque shape
| | 02:43 | and that is to say, we have a nice
smooth Gradient transition in terms of the
| | 02:48 | level of translucency.
| | 02:49 | However we have a bunch of bumps on
the outside of the shape that's being
| | 02:54 | created in the meantime. And that sort
of creates this kind of wormy effect, and
| | 02:59 | that's because we're still seeing the
individual little circles that Illustrator
| | 03:03 | is drawing in between these
virtual circles, that is to say.
| | 03:07 | At some place around 150
those are going to die away.
| | 03:10 | So I am going to change the value to 150,
press the Tab key, sure enough we get
| | 03:13 | a pretty darn smooth transition now in between.
| | 03:16 | However, if I click OK in order to
accept that modification, we have got a
| | 03:20 | straight line in between one
blended object and the other.
| | 03:25 | What if I want this line to sort of wave back
and forth? Why, I can adjust the path of the blend.
| | 03:31 | So notice what we've got here.
| | 03:32 | You can see right there onscreen.
| | 03:34 | You can also see it here in the
Layers panel if you like. If I twirl
| | 03:37 | open the star layer and then twirl-open the Blend, that
is that top blend right there, the one that's selected,
| | 03:43 | you can see that I've got two path
outlines and this other path on top, which is a
| | 03:48 | straight line, and that top path is the path
of the blend that we are seeing in between.
| | 03:52 | So we have got a circle on the left, a
circle on the right, and a path of the blend
| | 03:56 | in between the two.
| | 03:57 | And that path of the blend shows up
automatically when two objects span a great distance.
| | 04:02 | It doesn't always show up inside of a
blend but it is created when there is a
| | 04:05 | lot of distance associated with the
blend, as there was, you may recall way back
| | 04:08 | when, where the Background
Blend and the sky was concerned.
| | 04:12 | We had a path of the blend there too.
| | 04:14 | But we will see that sometimes the path
of the blend doesn't get created and you
| | 04:17 | have to create it manually.
| | 04:18 | Anyway, how do we go about modifying it?
| | 04:20 | Well, if you want to add some curvature
here is how, go to the Pen tool, click
| | 04:24 | and hold on it, and choose the Convert
Anchor Point tool from the flyout menu.
| | 04:29 | And then I am going to drag from this
anchor point right there, even though
| | 04:33 | it's at the middle of the circle, because the
path of the blend is on top, we should get it.
| | 04:38 | So I'll go ahead and drag like
so and no, it's unhappy with me.
| | 04:43 | It should work, actually, I've done this
before and usually it works out just fine.
| | 04:46 | It did this time.
| | 04:47 | But if you end up having a problem,
like I did the first I tried it, I will go
| | 04:51 | ahead and undo that modification.
| | 04:53 | What you can do is select the path
of the blend automatically, which I've
| | 04:56 | actually done for myself here, or you can
lock down the two other paths, like so.
| | 05:00 | I could just go ahead and give them
some locks here inside the layers panel.
| | 05:05 | So you'd want to leave that path of the
blend, the straight-line, unlocked and
| | 05:09 | then that way nothing is going to get
in your way and you could drag like so in
| | 05:13 | order to create a Control Handle, so
I'm dragging a Control Handle out of the
| | 05:17 | Anchor Point, converting it from a
corner point, which it was before, to a smooth
| | 05:21 | point and I'm creating a
curved segment as a result.
| | 05:23 | Now then, what about this guy?
| | 05:26 | Well the tempting thing to do is to
grab this anchor point and drag down, but
| | 05:30 | that's the wrong thing.
| | 05:32 | You want to drag in the opposite
direction because you need to keep dragging
| | 05:36 | in the same direction as you're
modifying your path outlines, so I already
| | 05:40 | established the equivalent of a
clockwise direction for my path, I need to
| | 05:44 | stay clockwise, like so, that is in my case
dragging to the left, and it could be up or down.
| | 05:50 | But I am going to drag up and to the left,
and I end up achieving this effect here.
| | 05:54 | All right, let's go ahead and
center the view onscreen, and I will press
| | 05:58 | Ctrl+Shift+A or Cmd+Shift+A on
the Mac in order to deselect everything,
| | 06:01 | I'll switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 06:03 | I will go ahead and unlock these two
paths that are inside the Blend. And this
| | 06:07 | is the result of blending between two
objects with the exact same Fill Color but
| | 06:12 | different levels of opacity that are
geographically very far apart from each
| | 06:16 | other, and then modifying the
curvature of the path of the blend.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a custom path of the blend| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to show you
how to draw in your own path of a blend
| | 00:04 | if the Illustrator doesn't provide one for you.
| | 00:07 | I have saved my progress as Shooting
star.ai, and I am going to go ahead and zoom
| | 00:10 | in on this bat's eyebrow right
there by Ctrl+Spacebar-dragging or
| | 00:14 | Cmd+Spacebar-dragging on a Mac.
| | 00:17 | Notice that I've got this kind of lump over
here on left side of the eye and another
| | 00:21 | one, a ridge I guess, over here
on the right side of the eye.
| | 00:24 | Let's say I want to create a bunch
of ridges in between that follow the
| | 00:28 | contour of the eye.
| | 00:30 | Why then, I will go ahead and click on
one of the path outlines with my Black
| | 00:33 | Arrow tool and Shift+Click on the
other so that they are both selected.
| | 00:36 | Go up to the Object menu initiate the
Blend as you always do by choosing the
| | 00:40 | Blend command, then choosing Make or
pressing Ctrl+Alt+B, Cmd+Option+B on
| | 00:44 | Mac, and Illustrator creates this.
| | 00:46 | Now obviously that's not quite what we want.
| | 00:48 | I am glad it gave me this many steps
because the two path outlines are fairly
| | 00:53 | geographically different from each other.
| | 00:55 | However, they are not far apart
enough that we get a path of the blend.
| | 00:59 | I can't see a path of the blend
here inside the illustration window.
| | 01:03 | Then if I go ahead and twirl open bat
head, that is bat head layer, and then I
| | 01:07 | twirl open the Blend, which is right on
top there, I have got two extreme paths
| | 01:11 | in the blend, but I don't have
any path of the blend in between.
| | 01:15 | So I need to draw it in, and here's how.
| | 01:17 | Go ahead and grab your Pen tool, and you
may need to select it from that Convert
| | 01:20 | Point flyout menu, or you
can press the P key of course.
| | 01:24 | You can draw your path in either direction.
| | 01:26 | However, you are going to get different results.
| | 01:27 | If I draw it from the left-hand side to
the right-hand side, then I am going to
| | 01:31 | reverse this blend, I am going to
actually turn it upside down, and you would only
| | 01:34 | know that through trial and error.
| | 01:36 | I don't want you to have to go
through that experience, because the only
| | 01:39 | solution is to undo and do it again.
| | 01:41 | So we might as well do
it right in the first place.
| | 01:43 | I'm going to go ahead and start my path
over here on right-hand side and to make
| | 01:48 | sure that I don't add any points to
my existing paths, I am going to press
| | 01:51 | Ctrl+Shift+A or Cmd+Shift+
A on a Mac to deselect them.
| | 01:54 | If I don't want my extreme paths to
move, because the beginning and the end
| | 01:59 | of the path of the blend determine the
beginning and the end of the blend as
| | 02:03 | we will soon see, if you want those
extreme paths to stay exactly where they
| | 02:07 | are, then you want to go ahead and start and
end your path outline at those paths, like so.
| | 02:13 | So I dragged out a control handle from
this anchor point and I am going to drag
| | 02:18 | from here to the left, because I have
already established the direction of my
| | 02:22 | path is counterclockwise in this case.
| | 02:24 | So I need to continue in that
direction and I will end up creating this
| | 02:27 | path outline, like so.
| | 02:29 | That's good enough, just a starting
point is what we want and now what you do
| | 02:33 | is you grab that new path that you just
created and you drag it here inside the Layers panel.
| | 02:37 | You just drag it on to the blend and
drop and Illustrator is that smart. Instead
| | 02:41 | of adding it to the blend, it goes
ahead and makes it the path of the blend.
| | 02:45 | I will press Ctrl+Z Cmd+Z on
a Mac in order to undo that move.
| | 02:49 | If you wanted it to blend between
these various path outlines and add that as
| | 02:53 | another blended object, then you
would move it between the two like so and
| | 02:57 | then you are going to create a crazy blend
like this one, which of course is a disaster.
| | 03:00 | So I will press Ctrl+Z,
Cmd+Z on a Mac to undo.
| | 03:03 | If you want it to be a path of the
blend, then just drop it on top like so and
| | 03:07 | you will get a path of the blend.
| | 03:08 | Beautiful, and it's in the right
direction, because I already knew was going to
| | 03:12 | be wrong otherwise.
| | 03:13 | Now I will get my White Arrow tool and
I will click off the path for a moment
| | 03:16 | and then click back on it, because
I want to edit the anchor points
| | 03:19 | independently of each other.
| | 03:20 | If I drag this left hand anchor point
over, notice that I increase the size
| | 03:24 | of the blend as well.
| | 03:25 | So the position of the endpoints
determines the size of the blend.
| | 03:29 | Anyway I don't want that.
| | 03:30 | So I will press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z on a Mac.
| | 03:32 | I might lift this guy's eyebrow a little
bit to give him a little bit of an arch.
| | 03:36 | So he is a more evil.
| | 03:37 | He is not so much evil.
| | 03:38 | He is just kind of menacing.
| | 03:39 | Then I will move this control handle
down a little bit and now I want to change
| | 03:43 | the number of steps inside of my blend.
| | 03:45 | So I will double-click on the Blend
tool while the path outline is selected.
| | 03:48 | Any portion of the blend can be selected.
| | 03:50 | I will double-click on the Blend tool.
| | 03:52 | It brings at the Blending Options dialog box.
| | 03:53 | I will switch the Spacing option
from Smooth Color to Specified Steps.
| | 03:57 | I can see that Illustrator
has given me eight steps.
| | 03:59 | Let's say I take it up to 15 for
a moment and press the Tab key.
| | 04:02 | And the reason I'm doing this is I want to
show you the difference between these two
| | 04:05 | orientation options.
| | 04:07 | They specifically control the orientation of
the blended steps along the path of the blend.
| | 04:13 | So you have to have a path of the
blend for these guys to do anything.
| | 04:16 | By default, we are seeing all of the path steps
upright with respect to the path of the blend.
| | 04:22 | If we want them to sort of flay
outward like a fan, then you click the second
| | 04:26 | option to Align to the Path and you
end up getting this effect instead.
| | 04:30 | Now that may or may not
be what you're looking for;
| | 04:33 | in our case it's not.
| | 04:35 | So I will switch back to Align to Page,
like so, and then I'm going to change the
| | 04:40 | Spacing Value to 9, because that's
what I want for this effect, and then I will
| | 04:44 | click OK in order to accept that modification.
| | 04:47 | Switch back to Black Arrow tool, click
off the path outline, zoom out a little bit.
| | 04:50 | And you can see that we have this kind of
cartoon ridge above the bat's eye, created
| | 04:55 | using a collection of arcs represented
as a blend that traces the contours of a
| | 05:00 | path outlined that we
created using the Pen tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Placing one mask inside another| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to show
you how to modify two blends at the same
| | 00:03 | time and then we are going to take
them and place them inside of a mask, and
| | 00:06 | then we are going to take that mask
and put it inside yet another mask.
| | 00:10 | I have saved my progress as Menacing
eyebrow.ai, and I am going to zoom out here
| | 00:15 | so that we can take in the face
of the sarcophagus right here.
| | 00:19 | Notice that I've got these extreme
paths at the top and the bottom on both
| | 00:24 | sides of the sarcophagus and I want to
blend between them in order to create
| | 00:28 | a kind of ribbing effect.
| | 00:29 | Now I would like to go and select these
objects, but for me they're on a locked layer.
| | 00:34 | So I am going to unlock this shield &
ribs layer by clicking on the lock icon to
| | 00:38 | turn it off and then I will click on
this top path here and the bottom path.
| | 00:42 | And this time around, because we have done
it so many times, so I am just going to
| | 00:45 | press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+B
or Cmd+Option+B on a Mac. Because
| | 00:49 | those two paths sport identical
strokes and no fills, Illustrator gives us a
| | 00:53 | single step in between.
| | 00:55 | All right, that's fine, we'll come back to it.
| | 00:56 | I will click on this path outline and
this one in order to select both of them.
| | 01:01 | Press Ctrl+Alt+B or Cmd+Option+B again
in order to blend between those two paths.
| | 01:06 | Now I want to modify the steps
associated with these two blends at the same time.
| | 01:11 | So with this one selected I will Shift+
Click on this guy to select it as well,
| | 01:15 | and because I have the Black Arrow tool
active I go ahead and select the entire
| | 01:19 | blend, because it's part
of a single blend object.
| | 01:22 | So I have both blends selected.
| | 01:24 | Now I will go over to the Blend tool
and double-click on it to bring up the
| | 01:28 | Blend Options dialog box.
| | 01:30 | I will switch Spacing from
Smooth Color to Specified Steps.
| | 01:33 | I'll see that I have a
single step and nothing more.
| | 01:36 | I want that steps value,
just based on experience here,
| | 01:39 | I want it to be 15. And then I will press
the Tab key and I fill in the ribs, like so.
| | 01:44 | They need to be clipped, as well, inside of
this sort of a accordion shape right there.
| | 01:50 | So I will go ahead and click OK to accept
my changes and I want to grab this shape.
| | 01:55 | However, I got to Switch tools.
| | 01:56 | So I will press the V key
to get my Black Arrow tool.
| | 01:59 | I will click on this path outline to select it.
| | 02:01 | It needs to be in front of
the blends in order to mask him.
| | 02:04 | So I will press Ctrl+X or
Cmd+X on a Mac to cut that shape.
| | 02:08 | Then I'll select both of the blends.
| | 02:11 | It's important that you select both
of them, so that you can don't end up
| | 02:13 | pasting between the two.
| | 02:15 | So click on one, Shift+Click on the
other, and press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F on the Mac
| | 02:19 | in order to paste that shape into place.
| | 02:21 | Now the reason we can see
through it, is because it contains a
| | 02:24 | translucent gradient.
| | 02:26 | Now here is the thing.
| | 02:27 | This is, I don't know if it is
the most complex gradient on earth.
| | 02:30 | I will go ahead and bring up
my Gradient panel so I can see.
| | 02:33 | Apparently, I'm blending from a shade
of brown right here to that exact same
| | 02:37 | shade of brown, I believe.
| | 02:39 | Well, actually it does change a
little bit here inside the Color panel.
| | 02:41 | So the color stops are a little bit
different from each other, but one is 100%
| | 02:45 | opaque, the first one is.
| | 02:46 | You will see the Opacity value there
is 100%, and if I click on that second
| | 02:51 | color stop, its Opacity value is 0%.
| | 02:53 | So I have a translucent gradient, in
other words, and that's why I can see
| | 02:57 | through this shape.
| | 02:58 | However, here's the deal.
| | 03:00 | Any time you convert a shape to a clipping
mask, you lose its Fill and Stroke attributes.
| | 03:04 | You can reinstate them,
but initially you lose them.
| | 03:08 | This has been the way it
is since Illustrator '88.
| | 03:11 | It's a shame a shame that
Illustrator hasn't fixed this problem by now.
| | 03:14 | You should be able to retain
those Fill and Stroke attributes.
| | 03:17 | However, what you do upfront if you know
you are going to lose them and you want
| | 03:22 | to be able to reinstate them more
easily than having to write down all these
| | 03:25 | settings and reapply them manually.
| | 03:28 | Go ahead and select the shape as I
have done so that you are telling
| | 03:32 | Illustrator here is the Fill and Stroke
attributes I want to work with and then
| | 03:36 | just grab something like the Rectangle tool, any
tool will do, and just go ahead and draw a shape.
| | 03:41 | So I will draw it out here in this
sort of empty area in the background.
| | 03:44 | Just in order to save those Fill
and Stroke attributes for later.
| | 03:49 | Now I don't have any stroke attributes,
but I do go ahead and save my Gradient Fill.
| | 03:53 | Now having done that I will switch
back to Black Arrow tool by pressing the V
| | 03:57 | key, and I'll click on the path outline
to select it, and then I will Shift+Click
| | 04:01 | on each of the two blends in
order to select them as well.
| | 04:04 | Now anytime you're creating a clipping
mask, the top path outline is going to
| | 04:08 | clip everything else.
| | 04:09 | So now I will go up to the Object menu
and I'll choose Clipping Mask and I will
| | 04:13 | choose Make or press Ctrl+7, Cmd+7 on a Mac.
| | 04:17 | Sure enough, I go
ahead and mask those blends.
| | 04:20 | Sure enough, I also loose my Fill and
Stroke attributes, that are assigned to the
| | 04:24 | clipping mask at any rate.
| | 04:26 | Now I will press the I key to get my
eyedropper and I'll click anywhere inside
| | 04:31 | of this little rectangle I created.
| | 04:33 | So I will click like so and that goes
ahead and assigns that fill to the blends,
| | 04:38 | which is not what I want at all.
| | 04:40 | So the blend must be selected in
addition to the clipping mask, what do I do?
| | 04:44 | Well, of course you press Ctrl+Z, Cmd
+Z on a Mac, because this is a mistake.
| | 04:48 | I will go ahead and twirl open shields
& ribs and then I will scroll down and
| | 04:52 | try to find the selected group. There it is!
| | 04:54 | I will twirl it open, and
there is the clipping mask.
| | 04:57 | So I could select this path outline
independently of the others using White Arrow tool.
| | 05:01 | That's one way to work, because
I want to select into a group.
| | 05:04 | Another ways is to find it
here inside the layers panel.
| | 05:06 | That's the way I prefer to work.
| | 05:08 | Then meatball that clipping path, the
item that's called clipping path, which is
| | 05:12 | the mask, independently of everything else.
| | 05:15 | I still have my Eyedropper selected.
| | 05:17 | So I will click inside of that gradient in
order reassign that Fill to the clipping mask.
| | 05:22 | So that's one clipping mask,
what about the other one?
| | 05:25 | Well, I want to go ahead and place this
larger sort of accordion shape inside of
| | 05:30 | the face of the sarcophagus.
| | 05:32 | So I'll switch to my Black
Arrow tool by pressing the V key.
| | 05:35 | I will click on this outer sort of
rectangular shape right there in order to
| | 05:39 | select it, that is this prospective rectangle.
| | 05:42 | I will press Ctrl+X, Cmd+X on the
Mac in order to cut it, because I've got
| | 05:46 | to place it in front once again so
that it's at the front of the stack.
| | 05:50 | Then I'll click on this
object to select the whole group,
| | 05:53 | mind you, not just the clipping path
even though only the clipping mask is
| | 05:56 | showing up onscreen, everything is selected.
| | 05:59 | Then I will press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F
on the Mac in order to paste it in front.
| | 06:04 | Now it's obscuring everything behind it.
| | 06:06 | So I have got to dig
into the layers panel again.
| | 06:09 | Luckily, I am scrolled to the right
location here inside of the panel.
| | 06:13 | Let's go ahead and hide that Gradient panel.
| | 06:14 | Actually, this reminds me I need to
make sure to back up that gradient.
| | 06:18 | This is an even more complex gradient,
because it contains three different color stops.
| | 06:22 | I am not even going to bother to check
out exactly what those color stops are.
| | 06:26 | Instead, I am going to press the M
key to switch to my Rectangle tool.
| | 06:30 | Again, it doesn't matter what shape you
draw, just any shape will do. With this
| | 06:34 | larger path outline selected go
ahead and draw a rectangle that will
| | 06:38 | automatically fill with that same
gradient, because it's active, and then, here
| | 06:43 | inside the Layers panel you need
to click on the path outline.
| | 06:46 | That's it right there, that's below
this sort of shield group right there.
| | 06:51 | Go ahead and click on it, that is
meatball it, in order to select it and then
| | 06:54 | Shift+Meatball the group underneath which
represents the clipping mask and its content.
| | 06:58 | Now we are going to mask them together
by going up to the Object menu, choosing
| | 07:03 | Clipping Mask once again, and choosing Make.
| | 07:05 | So you can place a clipping mask inside of
another clipping mask as deep as you want to go.
| | 07:09 | So you can nest as many clipping masks
as you like, and I am going to do that by
| | 07:14 | choosing the command or
pressing Ctrl+7, Cmd+7 on a Mac.
| | 07:17 | It goes ahead and clips just like I
wanted to, however, of course we lose the
| | 07:21 | Fill and Stroke attributes.
| | 07:22 | I don't want to assign this fill
here to everything that's selected.
| | 07:26 | So I need to twirl open that group right there.
| | 07:28 | It gets a little complicated, but you've just
got to be systematic in terms of your approach.
| | 07:33 | Go head and twirl open that group.
| | 07:34 | Meatball that top clipping path,
because that's the one that we want to refill
| | 07:38 | and then I will press the I key in
order to my Eyedropper and I'll click inside
| | 07:42 | of that rectangle. That goes
ahead and reassigns the gradient.
| | 07:46 | You can even see it here inside
the thumbnail in the Layers panel.
| | 07:50 | That reinstates that gradient fill to
that clipping mask, and, by the way, it also
| | 07:53 | reassigns the stroke. There was a stroke
associated with that path originally, and
| | 07:57 | we get this effect here.
| | 07:59 | Now I'll switch to the Black
Arrow tool by pressing the V key.
| | 08:02 | Then I will go ahead and click on one
of these path outlines, these rectangles
| | 08:06 | that I no longer need.
| | 08:07 | I will click on one, Shift+Click on
the other so that they are both selected.
| | 08:09 | I will press Backspace key or the
Delete key on the Mac in order to get rid of
| | 08:13 | them and this is the effect
that we ultimately achieve.
| | 08:16 | Two blends inside of one clipping
mask that we then place inside of another
| | 08:21 | clipping mask, without losing our Fill
or Stroke attributes, contrary to the way
| | 08:26 | that Illustrator normally works,
| | 08:28 | thanks to the fact that we took a
systematic approach to the entire process.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blending groups and adjusting the speed| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to show
you how to blend between two groups of
| | 00:03 | paths inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:05 | This is a very powerful feature, very
little known, as well, what I'm about to show you.
| | 00:10 | And then I will also show you another
little known powerful feature where you
| | 00:13 | can change the speed of a blend using
the control handles that are associated
| | 00:18 | with the path of the blend.
| | 00:20 | And if this all sounds like so much
gibberish, well, check it out, it's actually
| | 00:24 | really, really great, what we are
about to do, very simple as well.
| | 00:27 | I have saved my progress as Nested
clipping masks.ai and I am going to scroll
| | 00:32 | down toward the bottom of the sarcophagus
where I have this little fence motif set up here.
| | 00:36 | And I what I want to do is take these
two posts over here on the left hand and
| | 00:40 | the right hand side and blend
between them to create some more posts.
| | 00:44 | And I'm going to do that first of
all by unlocking this low fence layer.
| | 00:48 | So if you're working along with me,
you need to unlock it as well.
| | 00:51 | So click the lock icon in front of low
fence, now I can gain access to these objects.
| | 00:56 | And I will go ahead and zoom in a
little more, center my zoom as well.
| | 00:59 | And I will click on one of these posts.
| | 01:02 | Now notice when I clicked with the
Black Arrow tool, I selected both the top
| | 01:05 | ball and the post itself,
because they're part of a group.
| | 01:08 | So I am going to twirl open layers
panel just so we can inspect these groups,
| | 01:11 | and I will twirl this guy open so we
can see it's a post with a ball in back of
| | 01:17 | it, that's all it is.
| | 01:18 | So a very simple group, you could work
with more complex groups if you wanted to.
| | 01:22 | And then same goes for this post
over here on the left hand side.
| | 01:24 | It's this group up top, and if I were to
twirl it open, we've also got a post on
| | 01:29 | top and a ball below it.
| | 01:30 | So whenever you're blending between two
different groups, you just need to make
| | 01:35 | sure those groups contain
similar paths inside of them.
| | 01:38 | So the same number of paths,
the same construction and so on.
| | 01:41 | Now I want you to see that even though
this is a cartoon rendering that it does
| | 01:45 | subscribe to real perspective.
| | 01:47 | So if I were to grab this post over
here on the right hand side and then
| | 01:51 | Alt+Drag or Option+Drag it in
order to create a duplicate.
| | 01:54 | And I drag it all the
way over to left hand side;
| | 01:56 | you can see it's at the wrong angel.
| | 01:57 | So I need the post in between to
gradually step up so that they get straighter
| | 02:02 | and straighter and straighter, that is
more up and down, more vertical as we go
| | 02:06 | from the right hand post
over to the left hand one.
| | 02:09 | And that's something that a Blend can do.
| | 02:10 | So I will Backspace that clone
group, because I don't need it.
| | 02:13 | And I will select the first group over
here on the right hand side and I will
| | 02:16 | Shift+Click on the left hand group,
so that they're both selected.
| | 02:20 | And notice that both of the group's are
meatballed here inside the Layers panel.
| | 02:23 | I am going to go ahead and twirl them
closed, so that we have a little less
| | 02:26 | confusion going on.
| | 02:27 | And then I'll go up to the Object menu.
| | 02:30 | I will choose Blend and I will choose
Make or press Ctrl+Alt+B, Cmd+Option+B
| | 02:35 | on the Mac, and because these two
groups are formulated in the same way, they
| | 02:39 | blend together beautifully.
| | 02:41 | So again, you can have as many paths
inside of these groups as you want, just so
| | 02:46 | long as the groups are
constructed in the same way.
| | 02:49 | Now, I have got a ton of posts at this point.
| | 02:52 | Illustrator's seen fit to give me lots
this time around, as well as the path
| | 02:56 | of the blend in between, which is quite
handy, because I will need it in just a moment.
| | 03:00 | All right, let's change the number of
posts first by double-clicking on the
| | 03:03 | Blend tool to bring up the
Blending Options dialog box.
| | 03:06 | I will change spacing from Smooth
Color, which is meaningless in this case,
| | 03:09 | to specified steps.
| | 03:11 | It's telling me that it went ahead and
created 15 steps form me, I only want 5.
| | 03:15 | So I'll enter 5 and press the Tab Key.
| | 03:17 | And things are looking pretty darn good.
| | 03:19 | Except for, here is the problem,
because the spacing between the posts is
| | 03:23 | absolutely uniform, that defies
the rules of perspective drawing.
| | 03:27 | We ought to see bigger spaces over here
on the left hand side and smaller spaces
| | 03:32 | as the posts decline away from us.
| | 03:35 | And so what we need to be able to do is
change the speed of the blend, and there
| | 03:40 | are no numerical options for doing that.
| | 03:42 | However, there is a way by
modifying the path of the blend.
| | 03:46 | You have to change the
control handles, as we'll see.
| | 03:48 | So I will click OK to accept the
modification, and then I am going to go to my
| | 03:52 | Pen tool, click and hold, to bring up the
flyout menu and choose Convert Anchor Point.
| | 03:57 | And now I will drag from this first
anchor point inside the path of the blend in
| | 04:01 | order to draw out a control handle.
| | 04:03 | Now I don't want to introduce any
curvature in my path, because then I'd end
| | 04:06 | up getting this kind of effect here.
| | 04:07 | I want to keep the path straight, but I
need the control handle to determine how
| | 04:12 | quickly the blend occurs.
| | 04:13 | So if you have got a long
control handle, it's a slow transition.
| | 04:17 | And if you have a very short control
handle or no control handle at all, you
| | 04:21 | have a very rapid transition.
| | 04:23 | So the posts are spaced far from each
other where we have the control handle.
| | 04:27 | They are spaced very closely to each
other where we don't have a control handle.
| | 04:31 | So I am going to eventually back this
guy off, but first I'm going introduce
| | 04:34 | another control handle over here on
the right hand side by dragging to the
| | 04:38 | right, because I've established a
clockwise direction in this case, I need to
| | 04:42 | continue in this direction, so I will
drag off to the right like so in order top
| | 04:46 | peel these posts apart from each other.
| | 04:48 | Then in order to continue modifying
those control handles, because the Convert
| | 04:52 | Pont tool is really just useful for
creating the control handles in the first
| | 04:56 | place, where this
particular exercise is concerned.
| | 04:59 | So I will press the A key in order to
get my White Arrow tool, and then I can
| | 05:03 | modify those control
handles that I have created.
| | 05:05 | And the whole time, I am taking care to
make sure that I am dragging the control
| | 05:08 | handle along the path outline.
| | 05:10 | So the path outline is fundamentally straight.
| | 05:13 | It might have a little curvature at this
point, so I might bend it down a little bit.
| | 05:17 | Or, at this point it might
be introducing some curvature.
| | 05:20 | I don't want that, I just want to
change the speed of things. So just monkey
| | 05:23 | around with those control handles until
you get the speed of those posts exactly
| | 05:28 | the way you want them.
| | 05:29 | And then in my case, I would say I am done.
| | 05:31 | So I will go head and click off that
path outline in order to deselect it.
| | 05:34 | Actually it's looking to me like these two
guys are spaced a little too closely together.
| | 05:39 | I'm having problems
finding my path of the blend.
| | 05:41 | There it is, all right, and I will go
ahead and click on it and then go ahead
| | 05:44 | and move that control handle
over just a little bit more.
| | 05:46 | All right, I like that.
| | 05:48 | So that gives you a sense of how you
can blend between two groups of shapes,
| | 05:51 | two equivalent groups of shapes
inside of Illustrator, as well as modify the
| | 05:55 | speed of your blend using the control
handles that are associated with the path
| | 05:59 | of the blend.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rotating objects in 3D space| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to show
you something that is completely unrelated
| | 00:04 | to Blends and Masks inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:07 | So feel free to skip this
exercise if you want to.
| | 00:10 | However, I am here to
tell you this is really cool.
| | 00:12 | What we are going to do is we are
going to rotate a couple of objects in 3D
| | 00:16 | space, so that we match
the perspective of our scene.
| | 00:18 | I have gone ahead and saved my progress
as Blended groups.ai, and I'm zoomed in
| | 00:24 | on this fence right here.
| | 00:25 | And I don't know how this slipped my
notice, but this sort of back edge has gotten
| | 00:29 | wedged in back of the face of the
sarcophagus, and that's a real problem.
| | 00:33 | This guy right there, in other
words, he should be in front.
| | 00:36 | And the reason he's where he is at, he
used to be in the right position, but I had
| | 00:40 | to bring the face of the sarcophagus
up front in order to make it a clipping
| | 00:44 | mask and it ended up covering up this shape.
| | 00:46 | So this is really easy Illustrator stuff.
| | 00:48 | It's just that we need to
take care of the problem.
| | 00:50 | So I will go ahead and select it with
my Black Arrow tool, I will press Ctrl+X,
| | 00:53 | Cmd+X on the Mac in order to cut it.
| | 00:55 | Click on the face of the sarcophagus
and then I will press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F
| | 01:00 | on the Mac in order to paste it in front.
| | 01:01 | So that's done, that was easy.
| | 01:03 | All right, now if you're working along
with me, I want you to go to your Layers
| | 01:06 | panel, and notice that there is a layer
that's currently turned off right now,
| | 01:08 | called Type & Crest.
| | 01:10 | I want you to turn it on, and you'll
see some type that could be live text.
| | 01:15 | This would work with live
text inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:17 | I've turned it into path outlines
just to sort of simplify things and to keep
| | 01:21 | the live text from getting in our way
when we are working on other objects.
| | 01:25 | And then I've also got
this crest up here at the top.
| | 01:27 | I went ahead and drew this crest using
several passes of the ellipse tool, so I
| | 01:32 | drew a bunch of circles and then I
assigned some strokes and I outlined the
| | 01:37 | strokes, and I combined them all
together using a pathfinder operation.
| | 01:40 | And that was too
complicated to do in perspective.
| | 01:43 | So after creating the shape and after
creating the text, I then need to place
| | 01:47 | them in perspective, so I want to
match the perspective of the scene.
| | 01:50 | So we will start with the text down here.
| | 01:52 | I will go ahead and click on it to
make it selected, and if I press Ctrl+H or
| | 01:56 | Cmd+H, so that I hide the
selection outlines for a moment.
| | 01:59 | And this is a good idea when you're
rotating things in 3D space, because you can
| | 02:03 | better see what's going on
without the selection edges in your way.
| | 02:05 | Now I am going to go ahead and zoom-in.
| | 02:08 | You can see that I've created a kind of
embedded effect here, that is, the letters
| | 02:13 | look like they're carved out of
something, out of thin air in our case, because
| | 02:17 | the letters are just
floating on top of the scene.
| | 02:19 | If you go over to the Appearance panel,
you'll see that I have two different
| | 02:24 | gradient Fills set up here in the Stroke,
and I have set up the Fills so that they
| | 02:28 | are offset with respect to each other.
| | 02:30 | I have got an Offset Path effect
assigned and I have got a Transform effect.
| | 02:34 | Now coming up, we have got a chapter
on Advanced Type in which I'm going to
| | 02:39 | tell you about how to create cool type of
effects and how to create logos and all that stuff.
| | 02:43 | So just stay tuned for that.
| | 02:45 | In the meantime, rather than walk you
through everything that's going on here,
| | 02:49 | and of course, you can explore it on
your own just by clicking on any one of
| | 02:52 | these links, and you'll see
the effects that I have applied.
| | 02:55 | But so far you don't really have the
information you need to process what's
| | 02:59 | going on inside these dialog boxes.
| | 03:00 | So, like I say, stay tuned
for the full story later.
| | 03:03 | In the meantime we are just going to
rotate this text in 3D space using a fairly
| | 03:08 | complicated, but really super cool
command that I usually don't document inside
| | 03:13 | of Illustrator, and it's up
here under the Effect menu.
| | 03:15 | You go to 3D, and then you choose
this command right there, Rotate.
| | 03:19 | Now in the mastery portion of this
series, I have an entire chapter devoted
| | 03:24 | to the topic of 3D;
| | 03:25 | however, I focus on these
commands, Extrude & Bevel.
| | 03:28 | Extrude creates a 3-D effect by
extruding something into space, so you take a
| | 03:32 | square, make it a cube.
| | 03:32 | You take a circle, make
it a cylinder, you'll see.
| | 03:36 | And Revolve, you take a shape and
revolve it around an axis to create a
| | 03:39 | different kind of 3D shape.
| | 03:42 | So basically you can take half a lamp,
and revolve it around an axis and you
| | 03:46 | have a whole 3-D lamp.
| | 03:48 | Rotate is the simplest of the commands,
what it does, it just rotates a 2-D
| | 03:51 | object in 3-D space, kind of like
you printed it on a piece of paper and
| | 03:55 | you're just rotating the piece of
paper around in space, and that's what we
| | 03:59 | are going to do here.
| | 04:00 | So go ahead and choose the Rotate
command and you get this cube, which may
| | 04:04 | seem fairly daunting at first that you are
supposed to use a cube in order to rotate this guy.
| | 04:08 | First thing I want you to do is turn
on the Preview check box, so you can see
| | 04:12 | what you're doing and you'll
immediately rotate the text to some degree that's
| | 04:16 | already specified here inside the dialog box.
| | 04:18 | The position is Off-Axis Front, for
what it's worth, and you have these other
| | 04:22 | options you can choose from, these
Presets, but we're going to give them the
| | 04:26 | slip, because none of them
are going to do us any good.
| | 04:28 | Instead, we are going to start just
dragging this guy around, and for starters
| | 04:32 | here, I want you to find the blue edges.
| | 04:35 | So notice we've got this red option
right there, and we have got a green option,
| | 04:38 | and we have got a blue option.
| | 04:40 | And what we are doing here is we are
doing an X axis rotation, which is as we'll
| | 04:45 | see, either moves the edge
forward or backward, like so.
| | 04:48 | So that's an X axis rotation, and the
reason I mentioned the colors is because
| | 04:52 | they correspond to the
colors of the edges, notice that.
| | 04:54 | So if I drag that top edge, that's a
red edge, so that performs an X axis
| | 05:00 | rotation, then we've got a Y axis
rotation and you drag one of these side
| | 05:03 | edges to perform that.
| | 05:05 | And you'll see this wireframe preview
in the background as you drag around and
| | 05:09 | then you release and you let
the preview update onscreen.
| | 05:12 | It will take just a moment, because we
do have two different gradient fills and
| | 05:16 | a stroke assigned to this shape.
| | 05:18 | And then finally if you drag on this
edge over here, so the depth edge, you get
| | 05:23 | that blue line, that is to say, it
corresponds to the Z axis rotation, and then
| | 05:27 | you can drag, like so.
| | 05:29 | Now if you know anything about aviation,
I don't expect that you do, but just to
| | 05:33 | give you a sense if you know basically
how the plane shifts in space as it's
| | 05:38 | flying or how your car shifts as it's
driving on the road, you've got pitch,
| | 05:43 | which is your X axis rotation, you've
got yaw, which is your Y axis rotation,
| | 05:49 | and you've got roll,
which is your Z axis rotation.
| | 05:52 | So anyway, I am going to go ahead and
drag this blue edge like so until I get
| | 05:57 | the text more or less at the angle I
want it to be, along the top of the post.
| | 06:01 | And then I also want to shift the text
back, that is, I want to pitch it back, I
| | 06:05 | want to lean it back by dragging one of
these red edges, and I'll drag up like
| | 06:11 | so in order to lean that text back.
| | 06:13 | And no matter what I do though, it's
still just straight-on text, we don't
| | 06:16 | have any perspective.
| | 06:18 | And that's because my
perspective value is set to 0 degrees.
| | 06:21 | I want you just to go ahead and raise that
value, you can experiment if you want to.
| | 06:24 | You can go ahead and grab the slider
right there and do this number in order to
| | 06:28 | introduce or get rid of perspective.
| | 06:31 | But the value that we are looking
for is 100 degrees, just go ahead and
| | 06:35 | enter 100 degrees into that option,
and then that will give you a better
| | 06:39 | sense of what's going on.
| | 06:40 | Now you can continue to drag this
text round in any way that you see fit.
| | 06:45 | I am going to go ahead and move this
guy down forward, I am going to pitch the
| | 06:48 | text forward a little bit, I might go
ahead and drag this Z axis edge right
| | 06:52 | there, the blue edge, down like
so in order to achieve this effect.
| | 06:57 | So what you basically do is you whittle
your way to finally getting the effect
| | 07:01 | you are looking for.
| | 07:02 | Now I've done this work in advance, so I will
just tell you the values that I came up with.
| | 07:06 | For the X axis value, I came up with 20
degrees, so go ahead and enter that if
| | 07:10 | you want to work along
with me, press the Tab Key.
| | 07:13 | And for Y, I came up with -29;
| | 07:16 | this is all trial and error by the way.
| | 07:18 | I can't just look at a scene and know
these numbers off the top of my head.
| | 07:22 | I have to just sort of mess around with
this box until I get it right, so I am
| | 07:26 | just trying to simplify things for you.
| | 07:27 | I will enter 29 degree and press the Tab Key.
| | 07:30 | And now it's almost where it needs to
be, I could just go ahead and drag this
| | 07:34 | blue edge down a little bit, but I am
going too far with my modifications.
| | 07:38 | About there is right, actually, -6
degrees ends up working out pretty well, you
| | 07:43 | can try -7, press the Down Arrow key
to reduce it a little if I wanted to.
| | 07:47 | But I think given the nature of my
posts that -6 degrees looks better.
| | 07:51 | So again, everything got goofed up,
because I dragged that edge right there.
| | 07:56 | What I want is 20 degrees for the X value.
| | 07:59 | And what you would end up doing is
after you get things more or less right, you
| | 08:03 | would sort of up and down arrow these
values until you got things exactly right.
| | 08:07 | So I press the Down Arrow Key in the
case of the yaw value here, the Y axis
| | 08:11 | value, to take it down to -29 degrees
and then I do think I want to take the Z
| | 08:16 | value down to -7 degrees as well
by pressing the Down Arrow key.
| | 08:21 | And unfortunately you
can't split the difference;
| | 08:23 | you have to work in whole degree increments.
| | 08:25 | It would be nice to set this guy to like -6.5
degrees, but that's not going to work for you.
| | 08:29 | So anyway, this ends up
looking pretty good. I'll click OK.
| | 08:33 | And then we need to perform a
similar modification, though not the same
| | 08:36 | modification, because this crest here
is at a different point inside of
| | 08:40 | my perspective scene, but I will go
ahead and click on it to select it, and I
| | 08:43 | can't see the selection edges, because
I press Ctrl+H, Cmd+H on the Mac.
| | 08:48 | If I want to confirm that this is
selected, I'll press Ctrl+H, Cmd+H and I
| | 08:52 | can see my selection edges now.
| | 08:54 | And I might as well leave them visible,
because this time I am just going to
| | 08:56 | tell you some values you can
experiment as well if you want to, just to get a
| | 08:59 | sense of how things work.
| | 09:01 | However, here is what you do.
| | 09:02 | Go up to the Effect menu and go ahead
and choose the second command Rotate... or
| | 09:08 | you can mash your fist down and
press the E key for Effect, that's
| | 09:11 | Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E on the PC or Cmd+
Shift+Option+E on the Mac, and that's going
| | 09:15 | to repeat the last effect applied
using different settings, that's what that
| | 09:19 | second command in the Effect menu always does.
| | 09:21 | It will bring back up your
last settings that you applied.
| | 09:24 | This time around, I just want you to
enter some values before you turn on the
| | 09:27 | Preview check box,
because it will make it quicker.
| | 09:29 | Just enter 38 for the red X value,
enter -26 for the green Y value, and then
| | 09:36 | enter -15 for the blue Z value.
| | 09:40 | Leave perspective set to
100%, that's very important.
| | 09:43 | Turn on the Preview check box and you
end up getting a dead match, like so.
| | 09:47 | Then click OK in order to
accept that modification.
| | 09:50 | So I'll click off the shape, and we can
see what we have been able to achieve here.
| | 09:54 | And those are my 3-D effects.
| | 09:56 | We have just rotated 2-D objects in
3-D space in order to simulate the
| | 10:00 | perspective of our environment.
| | 10:01 | As I say, it has nothing whatsoever
to do with Blends and Masks inside of
| | 10:06 | Illustrator, but it's still
extremely useful information.
| | 10:08 | We will be covering 3-D in a great
deal of detail inside of a chapter in
| | 10:14 | the Mastery series.
| | 10:15 | In the next exercise, I am going
to show you how to create a poor
| | 10:18 | man's perspective grid.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating custom perspective guides| 00:00 | In this final exercise I am going to
show you how to create your own poor
| | 00:03 | man's perspective grid.
| | 00:05 | Now this is going to be of use to
those of you who know a thing or two about
| | 00:08 | perspective drawing.
| | 00:10 | You're going to find this terribly helpful,
| | 00:12 | I should think, I do, on a regular basis.
| | 00:14 | Those of you who don't like
perspective drawing or don't understand it, feel
| | 00:18 | free to skip this exercise, although
it's very easy to perform, the steps
| | 00:22 | I'm about to show you.
| | 00:24 | So you might want to hang in there, I'm going
to go ahead and zoom out of my illustration.
| | 00:27 | And by the way, I have saved my
modifications as 3D rotations.ai.
| | 00:33 | Now Illustrator CS5 includes a
perspective grid tool that automates the process,
| | 00:39 | and I've actually drawn a grid in
advance, and you can check it out if you like
| | 00:42 | by dropping down to this new tool
here in side of Illustrator CS5.
| | 00:45 | The perspective grid tool, which has
a keyboard shortcut of Shift+P, and if
| | 00:49 | you just click on that tool you'll see the
perspective grid that I've set up for you.
| | 00:53 | I'm going to zoom out a little bit here.
| | 00:55 | This is what's known as a two-point
perspective grid, that is, we have an X-face
| | 01:01 | over here on the right-hand side, and
we have a Z-face, this depth face, over
| | 01:05 | here on the left-hand side,
where this illustration is concerned.
| | 01:08 | That means that the right-hand side
of the sarcophagus can decline toward a
| | 01:14 | horizon just as in real 3D.
| | 01:17 | And the left-hand side declines toward
the horizon as well, but I want my
| | 01:21 | sarcophagus to decline upward, as if
I had this sort of low angle shot and
| | 01:26 | this ginormous like 50 foot
sarcophagus was in front of me with this
| | 01:32 | cartoon bat on top of it.
| | 01:34 | That means I need what's
known as three-point distortion.
| | 01:38 | Well, three-point distortion is
awfully hard to create inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:41 | I will show you how to do it.
| | 01:43 | I devote an entire chapter, once again,
to the perspective grid feature here
| | 01:47 | inside of Illustrator in the
Mastery portion of this series.
| | 01:50 | But it's too early for that now, and
it does require a fair amount of work.
| | 01:54 | So instead I decided to create my own
perspective grid, and I'll show you how that works.
| | 01:58 | First of all, assuming that you still
have your perspective grid tool selected,
| | 02:02 | then you can hide your perspective grid,
get it offscreen, because we don't want
| | 02:05 | it up here any more, it will
just clutter up everything,
| | 02:08 | by clicking on this tiny little close
box right there, that's associated with
| | 02:12 | this perspective grid annotator.
| | 02:14 | So that's one way to get rid of it.
| | 02:15 | Another way, if some other tool is
selected, because if I have the Black Arrow
| | 02:19 | tool selected, and I try to click
on this close box, it doesn't work.
| | 02:23 | Anyway, I'll go up to the view menu,
and I'll choose perspective grid.
| | 02:26 | Here's how to get rid of it
regardless of what tool is selected.
| | 02:29 | And then you choose the Hide
Grid command and it goes away.
| | 02:32 | Now when I've got setup instead, my own
little custom grid, is down here at the
| | 02:37 | very bottom of the Layers panel.
| | 02:39 | There is a layer called Guides.
| | 02:40 | And if you turn it on and you're
seeing the guides, which you can see of
| | 02:44 | course by going to the View menu,
choosing Guides, and then choosing Show
| | 02:48 | Guides, if they're hidden.
| | 02:50 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and the Escape
out of there, because mine are visible.
| | 02:52 | Then you'll see the custom guides that I
set up. Now, this may be terrifying to you.
| | 02:57 | If you don't know what's going on with
perspective drawing then you may look at
| | 03:00 | this and say, no, thank you at all, I
don't want to have anything to do with this.
| | 03:03 | However, again, if you like
perspective, if you rock it, if you generally
| | 03:07 | understand what's going on, then
this kind of thing may help you out.
| | 03:10 | And notice that I have these lines
that are defining the X-face over here;
| | 03:14 | I have these lines that are defining the Z-face.
| | 03:17 | And then I have these vertical lines
that are tapering upward, and they are
| | 03:20 | defining the Y axis.
| | 03:22 | And all of my lines are ultimately
either parallel to those lines, or
| | 03:26 | directly on top of them.
| | 03:28 | And because these are snapping guides
then I'm ensured a high degree of control,
| | 03:33 | so it's really great.
| | 03:34 | Anyway, what if you want to create such a thing?
| | 03:36 | Here I am assuming that you like this so far,
if you do, how do you create such guides.
| | 03:41 | Well, let's go ahead and turn off the
guides as they exist right now, so I'll
| | 03:45 | turn off that guides layer.
| | 03:46 | I'm going to scroll to the
very top of the layers panel.
| | 03:48 | And I've got this yellow layer called
Perspective, go ahead and turn it on, and
| | 03:52 | those are my original perspective lines.
| | 03:54 | All right, I'll zoom out another
click, so we can see them here.
| | 03:56 | What we've got is these green lines
defining the Y axis, these orange lines
| | 04:01 | defining the X axis, and these
blue lines defining the Z axis.
| | 04:05 | I just created them using the
line tool by the way, and I'm the one
| | 04:08 | who color-coded them.
| | 04:09 | So these are completely manual
modifications to my illustration.
| | 04:14 | Now what I'm going to do, is I'm
going to click one of the blue lines, I
| | 04:17 | can start anywhere.
| | 04:18 | And then Shift+Click on the other blue line,
so here's my two blue lines, the Z axis.
| | 04:22 | And I'll go ahead and blend those by
pressing Ctrl+Alt+B or Cmd+Option+B on
| | 04:26 | the Mac, and Illustrator
creates X number of steps.
| | 04:29 | I don't really care how many so far.
| | 04:31 | Then I'll click one of the orange
lines, Shift+Click on the other orange
| | 04:34 | line to select it.
| | 04:35 | So I need to make sure I
select lines of the same color.
| | 04:38 | Press Ctrl+Alt+B or Cmd+Option+B on the
Mac in order to blend between those two lines.
| | 04:43 | And then, because I want both the X
axis and the Z axis to have the same number
| | 04:49 | of intermediate guidelines between them,
| | 04:51 | then I'll go ahead and click on one,
Shift+Click on the other, so I've got both
| | 04:55 | my orange lines and my blue lines selected.
| | 04:58 | And I'll double-click on my Blend tool,
here inside the toolbox to bring up the
| | 05:02 | blending options dialog box.
| | 05:04 | And I'll switch my spacing option from
Smooth Color to Specified Steps, and I'll
| | 05:08 | change the number of steps to 24.
| | 05:11 | Completely an arbitrary decision on
my part, I just decided 24 is probably
| | 05:15 | going to work good.
| | 05:16 | And then I clicked OK to accept
that modification. Looks great!
| | 05:20 | Now I'll click with my Black Arrow tool,
so I'll press the V key, and then
| | 05:24 | click on one of the green lines, Shift+
Click on the other green line, and then I'll
| | 05:28 | press Ctrl+Alt+B or Cmd+
Option+B to blend between them.
| | 05:32 | And now I'll double-click on the
Blend tool once again to bring up the
| | 05:35 | blending options dialog box, switch to
Specified Steps, and change the value this time to 14.
| | 05:40 | And I'm just looking for guidelines
that are more or less equally spaced with
| | 05:44 | respect to each other, and I don't
things to get too confusing, even though this
| | 05:47 | is already fairly Byzantine, but I
didn't want it to get so bad I couldn't
| | 05:51 | tell what I was doing.
| | 05:53 | And then I click OK in order
to accept that modification.
| | 05:55 | All right, now these are
just static path outlines.
| | 05:58 | That is, I'll snap to their
anchor points, but I won't snap to the
| | 06:01 | intermediate segments.
| | 06:02 | If I want to snap to the segments,
these angled segments, then I need to
| | 06:05 | convert them to the Guides.
| | 06:07 | And here is how I did that.
| | 06:08 | I went ahead and took my perspective
layer and I duplicated it, because that way
| | 06:11 | I can go back and modify my
settings later on if I want to.
| | 06:15 | So I went ahead and grabbed the
perspective layer, dragged it down to the bottom
| | 06:19 | of the layers panel onto the little
page icon, dropped, and then I created this
| | 06:23 | layer called Perspective Copy.
| | 06:24 | I'll turnoff the original perspective layer.
| | 06:26 | I'll double-click on this one and
rename it something like 3D Guides, and I can
| | 06:31 | change the color as well to - I
don't know, light gray let's say, just
| | 06:34 | something unobtrusive, click OK.
| | 06:37 | And now that I have that layer active,
I'll click on that little wedge in
| | 06:41 | the upper right-hand corner to
select the contents of the layer, so
| | 06:44 | everything is now selected.
| | 06:45 | And I'll go up to the view menu, because
we're going to convert these to guides,
| | 06:48 | and I'll choose guides, and I'll choose
make guides or press Ctrl+5, Cmd+5
| | 06:53 | on the Mac, and Illustrator gets mad at me.
| | 06:55 | And it says, hey, you can't do this,
because you've got some weird thing
| | 06:59 | selected that can't be converted to guides.
| | 07:01 | Well, the weird thing is Blends.
| | 07:03 | You can't convert blends directly to guides,
| | 07:05 | you have to expand them first.
| | 07:07 | Here's how you do it.
| | 07:08 | Click OK, because you can't do
anything else inside that alert.
| | 07:12 | You go up to the object menu.
| | 07:13 | Anytime you want to convert automated
things inside of Illustrator to static
| | 07:17 | path outlines, you go to the object
menu and you choose whichever expand
| | 07:21 | command is available.
| | 07:22 | You never know which one it is going to be, it
might be Expand Appearance if it is, choose it.
| | 07:26 | If it's Expand instead, go ahead and choose it.
| | 07:28 | I've given you keyboard shortcut for Expand
| | 07:30 | if you loaded dekeKeys, of Ctrl+M and
Cmd+M on the Mac, it is just there
| | 07:34 | in case you want it.
| | 07:35 | Go ahead and choose the
command, you get this dialog box;
| | 07:37 | you pretty much ignore it, because
there is not anything to do here.
| | 07:39 | You just say sure, whatever you're
talking about, dialog box, that's fine.
| | 07:43 | Click OK, in order to do it, and that
goes and converts all these lines to
| | 07:47 | static path outlines.
| | 07:48 | We don't care about the Strokes
or the Fills or any of that stuff.
| | 07:51 | Then go up to the view menu, choose
guides and choose make guides and once again
| | 07:54 | you can press Ctrl+5, Cmd+5 on
the Mac and you've made your snapping
| | 07:59 | guidelines here inside of Illustrator.
Perhaps that's a little overwhelming.
| | 08:04 | In which case go ahead and
turn them off, and we are done,
| | 08:06 | folks, we have done everything we
possibly could to this illustration.
| | 08:10 | I'm going to go ahead and zoom it by
pressing Ctrl+1, Cmd+1 on the Ma,c to 100%.
| | 08:15 | And then I'm going to change my
zoom ratio to 82%, because that way the
| | 08:19 | illustration fits on my screen.
| | 08:21 | And that is the final version
of our illustration, created
| | 08:24 | thanks to the ancient, but
altogether prodigious power of Blends and
| | 08:28 | Masks inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
16. Repeating Tile PatternsWhat's old is new again| 00:00 | You know M.C. Escher, no, not the one who
wore the parachute pants, the other one.
| | 00:05 | The 20th Century Illustrator who
drew the up down staircases and the
| | 00:09 | endlessly flowing rivers, and a pair
of hands drawing each other, all of
| | 00:14 | which is not possible.
| | 00:16 | He also made interlocking birds and
fish and lizards, which is what you're
| | 00:20 | about to do, only you're going to
make anything interlocking, impeccably,
| | 00:25 | seamlessly, and forever.
| | 00:27 | I can't promise to make you think like
M.C. Escher, who knows what was going
| | 00:31 | through that guy's brain, but you're
about to do something you might have
| | 00:34 | thought you couldn't do with a computer
program that you can do with this one.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing tile patterns| 00:00 | I'd like you to start things
off by opening this illustration.
| | 00:03 | It's called Big tile collection.ai,
and it may not look like much.
| | 00:07 | It's just a big frame around a white
interior, that's about it, but actually this
| | 00:11 | document contains a wealth of tile patterns.
| | 00:14 | Basically every tile pattern that
ships along with Illustrator CS5.
| | 00:19 | So if you were to bring up the Swatches
panel which you can do by going to the
| | 00:22 | Window menu and choosing the Swatches
command, then down there in the lower left
| | 00:26 | corner of the panel, you'll see a folder
icon, click on it to bring up a list of
| | 00:30 | Swatch Libraries, then if you were drop
down to patterns, you'll see that you have
| | 00:34 | three groups of Pattern Libraries,
| | 00:36 | Basic Graphics, Decorative, and Nature.
| | 00:39 | I have taken all those tile patterns and
placed them inside this one document so
| | 00:43 | you can get to all of them anytime you like.
| | 00:46 | And it's pretty interesting to check
them out because there are a heck of a lot
| | 00:49 | of very nicely designed
tile patterns in this group.
| | 00:52 | I am going to click on the edge of
this white rectangle to select it and then
| | 00:55 | I am going to switch over to Color
panel just to make sure my Fill is active,
| | 00:59 | because you can apply tile patterns to
Strokes, but if you do so in this case
| | 01:03 | you are going to get a tiny one-point stroke
and you are not going to see the tile pattern.
| | 01:06 | So better to work with the Fill.
| | 01:08 | Then switch back to the Swatches panel.
| | 01:10 | If you want to see these big swatch
previews, then click on the flyout menu icon
| | 01:14 | and choose Large Thumbnail View.
| | 01:16 | That gives you the best view of each one
of the tile patterns, the only thing to
| | 01:20 | bare in mind is it also
tends to slow down the panels.
| | 01:23 | So as you scroll down, you are going to
have to wait for the panel to refresh.
| | 01:26 | Anyway let's check out some of these guys.
| | 01:28 | There's Undulating Coarse Dots,
which I think is really interesting.
| | 01:31 | I am going to zoom in, and, by the way,
this little Red Square that's showing up,
| | 01:35 | that's just happens to be the
center point of the rectangle.
| | 01:37 | I will press Ctrl+H or Cmd+H on the
Mac to hide the edge just so it goes away.
| | 01:42 | Now notice that at this zoom ratio at a
150%, I can see the edges of my tiles,
| | 01:48 | tiles are always rectangular inside
of Illustrator but they should blend
| | 01:52 | seamlessly, you shouldn't see edges.
| | 01:54 | What we're seeing here is a
function of the screen display.
| | 01:57 | So Illustrator's screen render is not
quite doing things correctly and as a result
| | 02:02 | we're seeing the seams.
| | 02:03 | If you want to check whether the seams
are there or not, just zoom in and out,
| | 02:07 | try different zoom levels.
| | 02:09 | In this case as soon as I zoom in the 200%,
things resolve and the edges go away.
| | 02:14 | You can also test the tile pattern by
printing it, especially to a postscript
| | 02:17 | printer. That will give you the best idea.
| | 02:19 | But you should be able to get a
rough sense from other printers as well.
| | 02:23 | Now I am going to switch to one of the
other pattern such as 50% to a 100% Dot
| | 02:26 | Gradation, and this thing -
again. we're seeing seams,
| | 02:30 | so I'll go ahead and zoom out.
| | 02:31 | Now zooming out makes the seams
in this style pattern go away.
| | 02:33 | But you can see how we actually have a dot
gradation going on here and this is scalable.
| | 02:39 | You can set it to any size you like,
you can rotate these patterns, you can
| | 02:42 | slant them, as we'll see in future exercises.
| | 02:45 | You have a great deal of control.
| | 02:47 | I am going to go ahead and scroll down
to some of the color patterns that are
| | 02:50 | available to us here.
| | 02:51 | And once you start getting to this
region of color patterns, you are going
| | 02:54 | to see that every other pattern is
black and white and then next door it's
| | 02:59 | got a color version.
| | 03:00 | So we have got Knit, for example,
right there, and then we've got Knit Color.
| | 03:05 | We also have, for example, Links
Japanese, which I think is really interesting.
| | 03:10 | There is this Weave pattern that I
think is totally great. And all these classic
| | 03:15 | patterns essentially that
have stood the test of time.
| | 03:17 | Some of them are off op art patterns, some
of them are traditional patterns, some of
| | 03:21 | them are textures. I am going to go
ahead and scroll down the list a little bit
| | 03:24 | here until I come to some of the
nature patterns, like, for example, we have
| | 03:29 | Turtle, this guy, which I
think is just totally awesome.
| | 03:32 | We have Peacock as well.
| | 03:35 | We have this pattern, Snake.
| | 03:37 | As soon as I click on it, it looks like this
is a photographic pattern, but if you zoom in.
| | 03:42 | you are going to see that each and
every object is represented as a vector.
| | 03:46 | So these are all vector-based drawings.
| | 03:48 | All right, I am going to go ahead and
zoom out so that we can take in some
| | 03:51 | patterns that I have created for you.
| | 03:53 | Down at the very bottom of the list,
you'll see this group of Arabian patterns.
| | 03:57 | So there is Arabian muted right there,
and then I have a more garish color
| | 04:01 | scheme with Arabian Garish, and then
finally I went ahead and filled in each of
| | 04:06 | the shapes using a gradient, a
radial gradient in this case.
| | 04:10 | And I showed how to
create those last time around.
| | 04:13 | So in my Illustrator CS4 One-on-One
Advanced Series, Chapter 18, if you want to
| | 04:18 | check it out, you can learn exactly how
to create this Arabian pattern because
| | 04:22 | it's pretty interesting.
| | 04:23 | It's an interesting experiment in geometry.
| | 04:26 | It's not hard to do.
| | 04:27 | You just have to think your way
through it so that everthing
| | 04:30 | interlocks exactly right.
| | 04:32 | This time around, I decided to be a
little bit more ambitious, as you'll see.
| | 04:36 | So I have come up with the tile
pattern that's inspired not by these classic
| | 04:41 | designs but rather by MC Escher.
| | 04:43 | So let me show you what I am talking
about here. I am going to turn off this test
| | 04:46 | shape layer, and I'm going to scroll to
the bottom of my layers panel and turn on
| | 04:50 | Humanoids. And what I have here is
this kind of strangely stylized humanoid
| | 04:55 | creature, that when rotated actually
locks into alignment with himself, so
| | 05:00 | that you can see every single one of
these guys is exactly the same guy, just at
| | 05:05 | different angles, and also
set to different colors.
| | 05:08 | So having created a collection of these
guys, I then made a different layer, I
| | 05:12 | will go and turn this one off and this
one on, and this is the actual rectangular
| | 05:17 | tile pattern, this is exactly as many
guys as I need to fill a rectangle.
| | 05:21 | It doesn't look like a rectangle but
this is the collection of objects I used to
| | 05:25 | great the tile pattern and we'll see
how they fit together in just a moment.
| | 05:29 | I will turn that guy off and then I
created some color variations including
| | 05:32 | these bronze-gradient examples right
here. And then finally, let's see how this
| | 05:37 | interlocking dude works as a tile pattern.
| | 05:39 | I will scroll back up to the top of the
Layers panel and turn on the test shape
| | 05:42 | layer, click on that rectangle in
order to make sure it's selected, and then
| | 05:47 | let's try out the Troglodytes pattern,
and that's how that looks, and so you can
| | 05:50 | see everything is
repeating absolutely seamlessly.
| | 05:54 | This is a more garish pattern that I
called clusters. And then finally, we've
| | 05:57 | got this guy, Bronze men, which are the
guys filled with radial gradients that we
| | 06:01 | saw just a moment ago.
| | 06:03 | So there's your preview of
seamlessly repeating tile patterns.
| | 06:07 | In the nest exercise we will set
about creating the interlocking humanoids.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Determining the points of intersection| 00:00 | Over the course of this chapter, I want
to teach you to think like M.C. Escher.
| | 00:04 | Now I don't promise to turn you in M.C.
Escher, I'm no M.C. Escher myself.
| | 00:08 | The guy had a very specially wired
brain, but I want you to understand how
| | 00:13 | you go about creating repeating
patterns, how you think your way through these
| | 00:17 | geometric puzzles, so that you can
absolutely geek out and create anything
| | 00:21 | you so desire. And to that end I've created
this document called the humanoid factory.ai.
| | 00:27 | It starts off here at the bottom of
Layers panels with a template layer, and
| | 00:31 | it features a central humanoid with a
bunch of repeated versions of that same
| | 00:36 | guy around him, just to make sure that
everything fits, and what I'd like you
| | 00:40 | to do is just go ahead and zoom in on
that central guy, the guy that's filled
| | 00:44 | with white right there.
| | 00:46 | And I want you to understand how not to work.
| | 00:49 | So what you don't do is just set in and
trace, because even if you crate a halfway
| | 00:54 | decent tracing like the one here on the
humanoid layer, go ahead and turn that
| | 00:57 | layer on and click on it to make it active.
| | 00:59 | Even if you mostly get it right, as I have
here, with the few anchor points are obviously off,
| | 01:06 | even if you do a pretty darn decent job
like this, it's not going to repeat properly.
| | 01:10 | So if I click on the shape to select it
with my Black Arrow tool, then I switch
| | 01:14 | over my Rotate tool, and I'm going to
Alt+Click or Option+Click right there on
| | 01:19 | the bridge of his nose, I guess that's
what that is anyway, because that's the
| | 01:22 | point around which we are rotating the shape.
| | 01:24 | I'll Alt +Click or Option+Click and then I'll
set the angle value to a 120 degrees. Now why 120 degrees?
| | 01:31 | Because there are three of them, one, two,
three, and a full circle is 360 degrees, so
| | 01:35 | you divide 360 by 3, and you can even
enter the math if you like, and then press
| | 01:42 | the Tab key, and that will give you 120 degrees.
| | 01:45 | Then click the Copy button and notice
things do not align, and then if I press
| | 01:49 | Ctrl+D or Cmd+D on the Mac, in
order to repeat that transformation, I can
| | 01:54 | see that everything is off.
| | 01:56 | Now I could go in and modify each one
of these shapes, so at least these three
| | 02:00 | shapes fit together, but
that's not going to do the job.
| | 02:03 | That means that for every other
repeated version of the humanoid, I'm going
| | 02:07 | to have to make some additional adjustments,
and that is just not going to work out.
| | 02:11 | I'm not going to be able to reconcile things.
| | 02:14 | So I'm going to get rid of
everything on this layer by pressing Ctrl+A,
| | 02:18 | because everything else is either
locked or hidden, and that would be
| | 02:21 | Cmd+A on the Mac, and then I'll
press the Backspace Key or the Delete Key
| | 02:25 | to get rid of things.
| | 02:26 | Here is what you need to look
for, points of intersection.
| | 02:30 | That is, points at which the
guy rotates around himself.
| | 02:33 | Now one of the obvious points of
intersection is that point that I just Alt- or
| | 02:37 | Option-clicked on with the Rotate tool,
right there at the bridge of his nose.
| | 02:41 | But there are three other points
inside of this illustration, because we're
| | 02:45 | repeating him three times, he is a triad.
| | 02:48 | There's going to be two other places where that happens.
| | 02:51 | I have marked those points of
intersection here on my intersections layer.
| | 02:54 | So go ahead and turn it on and you'll
see there are the points, right at the
| | 02:58 | bridge of his nose, down here at his
left knee, and down at the base of his
| | 03:03 | kooky Nike, or whatever the heck this
is, and so those are the lines that you
| | 03:08 | have to make sure work out, notice that
these are all the exact same line just
| | 03:12 | rotated at different angles.
| | 03:14 | So let's start off by creating
those points of intersection.
| | 03:17 | I'm going to turn that layer back off,
because having it on is a little bit
| | 03:21 | confusing, and it's also
cheating, don't you know?
| | 03:23 | We want to make sure that we're
creating this project from scratch.
| | 03:26 | So go and get your Pen tool, we're
going to have to use the Pen tool for
| | 03:29 | this entire project.
| | 03:30 | No Pathfinder operations this time
around. Again, make sure the humanoid layer
| | 03:34 | is active, because it's
unlocked and you can draw on it.
| | 03:37 | And I'm going to zoom in right on the
bridge of the nose there, and I'm going to
| | 03:40 | click at the bridge and then
I'm going to click, like so.
| | 03:44 | And that's basically all I need to do for now.
| | 03:47 | Now in the Color panel, I can see that I
have no fill and I have a black stroke,
| | 03:52 | and this is a rich black stroke or at
least it should be, it isn't, but it's
| | 03:56 | going to be, as soon as I
switch over to the Swatches panel.
| | 03:59 | And I click on this Rich black Swatch
that I have created for you, I'll go back
| | 04:03 | to the Color panel, make sure that it's
assigned to the stroke properly, it is.
| | 04:06 | Now I'm going to take that line and I'm
gong to select it with the Black Arrow
| | 04:10 | tool, and then having done that, I'm going to
the press the R key to switch over to
| | 04:15 | the Rotate tool, and I'm going to Alt+
Click or Option+Click right at the top of
| | 04:18 | that line, and I'm going to set the
angle to 120 degrees, just as before, and I'll
| | 04:23 | click the Copy button, and then I'll
do it again by pressing Ctrl+D, and that
| | 04:27 | establishes that first line.
| | 04:29 | And you know we ought to do here?
| | 04:30 | Let's go and press the V key, to
switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 04:33 | I'm going to select all three of those
guys, and I'm going to click on the word
| | 04:37 | stroke up here in the Control panel to
bring up the Stroke panel, and I'm going
| | 04:41 | to switch my corners and my joints to
round, and that way I'm not going to have
| | 04:45 | any strange mitered corners and
everything is going to align properly.
| | 04:48 | All right, so we'll just
start with those guys for now.
| | 04:51 | Now let's move down to that other point
of intersection, and you can see it quite
| | 04:54 | easily here, the shoe rotates around itself.
| | 04:57 | So let's go ahead and draw in those lines too.
| | 04:59 | Again, using the Pen tool, I'm going to
click here, and then I'm just going to
| | 05:03 | click here, and all these are
straight lines so far, anyway.
| | 05:06 | The next ones that we'll draw curve slightly.
| | 05:08 | And I'll press the V key once again
to switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 05:12 | Click on this line to select it.
| | 05:13 | Press the R key to switch to My Rotate tool.
| | 05:16 | Alt+Click or Option+Click at the
bottom of that line, go ahead and stick with
| | 05:20 | an angle value of 120 degrees, click the Copy button,
and press Control+D in order to copy that line.
| | 05:27 | And this way, the idea is, no matter what,
he is going intersect properly with
| | 05:32 | himself, because whatever I did with
that line is going to work out, because
| | 05:37 | I've copied it two additional times.
| | 05:39 | All right, let's move now over here
to the knee, notice how these knees are
| | 05:43 | intersecting each other, and I'll press
the P key in order to switch back to My
| | 05:47 | Pen tool, and I'll go ahead and drag, like so.
| | 05:50 | It doesn't matter if you get this
exactly right, in other words, if you don't
| | 05:53 | match my template exactly, as long as
you follow these steps, you will get
| | 05:57 | the proper results.
| | 05:58 | You will get a man, some sort of
humanoid thing here, that interlocks
| | 06:02 | properly with himself.
| | 06:04 | Then I'm going to drag over on this
side in order to more or less match the
| | 06:08 | angle of that thigh line, and then I'll
press the V key to get my Black Arrow tool again.
| | 06:13 | I'll click on that line to
select it, press the R key.
| | 06:16 | So we are doing the same thing
over and over to get the Rotate tool.
| | 06:19 | I'll Alt+Click or Option+Click at that
knee intersection, the angle value will
| | 06:23 | automatically come up as 120 degrees, I'll
click the Copy button, and I'll press Ctrl+D
| | 06:28 | or Cmd+D on a Mac to duplicate that line.
| | 06:31 | And you can see that it's not matching
the lines in my template. That's okay.
| | 06:35 | Again, as long as it's matching itself,
that's what counts, and this will become
| | 06:41 | more and more obvious as we
work our way through this project.
| | 06:44 | And that's how you create the points of
intersection that are required to create
| | 06:48 | a seamlessly repeating pattern.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Extending paths from the intersections| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as points of intersection.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise we're going to
work our way away from the points of
| | 00:07 | intersection, and we're going to create these
kinds of radiant segments that are going outward.
| | 00:12 | The idea is, every segment that we lay
down has an equal and opposite segment.
| | 00:18 | So for example, what I mean by that, is
this segment that goes down his nose on
| | 00:23 | the other side of his nose, also
represents this segment here at the top of his hair.
| | 00:28 | And this segment down his face
represents the segment along the top of his hair,
| | 00:31 | and the segment along his arm
represents the segment along the back of his hair,
| | 00:35 | and so on, so every single one of these
segments has to be absolutely identical.
| | 00:41 | So let's start tracing away here.
| | 00:43 | I'm working on the humanoid layer and
I'm going to go ahead and click on this
| | 00:46 | segment right there, and I'm going
to switch to my Pen tool once again by
| | 00:50 | pressing the P key and I'm
going to draw a few segments.
| | 00:53 | So I'll click here, then I'll
click, and I'll click, and I'll click.
| | 00:57 | Now I don't know how far I should go,
I obviously should not trace the entire
| | 01:01 | darn thing, because I'm not exactly sure where
these segments are going to line up elsewhere.
| | 01:07 | But let's click a little farther here,
I'm going to add a few points around the
| | 01:11 | hand for example, and this line right
there is ultimately a straight segment.
| | 01:16 | So I'll just click, and then I'll click
down like that, click under his arm, and
| | 01:20 | maybe I'll go little farther.
| | 01:22 | I'll drag away from that last point,
from the end point to have a control
| | 01:25 | handle, and I'll drag at this location as
well, to add a smooth point at this location.
| | 01:30 | And I'm going to press the Space Bar
and drag it around a little bit, just to
| | 01:33 | get that point where I want it.
| | 01:35 | I don't really know yet if these lines
are going to work out, so I need to test
| | 01:38 | them, and the way you test them is
around the point of intersection once again.
| | 01:42 | So get rid of those existing segments up
there that we don't need, because we're
| | 01:46 | going to re-create them in just a second.
| | 01:48 | And go ahead and grab this line with the
Black Arrow tool, and I'll press the R
| | 01:52 | key to switch to the Rotate tool.
| | 01:54 | And I'll Alt+Click once again at the
top there on the bridge of the nose, and
| | 01:58 | I'll enter my 120 degrees and I'll press the Tab key.
| | 02:02 | And you know what, I don't really care
what's going on this direction right now,
| | 02:06 | what I do care about is how it's
going to trace the other side of his head.
| | 02:09 | So let's go ahead and flip that angle
to -120 degrees, should send it the other
| | 02:14 | direction and that works out beautifully,
and I'll go ahead and click the Copy
| | 02:18 | button, so that I have both of my lines here.
| | 02:20 | And then I'll notice that I've gone
too far, so I'm tracing into that other
| | 02:25 | guy up there, and really what I want
to do, I just want to craft him and only
| | 02:29 | him, later I'll see if the other
humanoids around him interlock properly.
| | 02:34 | But if I get his lines down properly in
the first place, his points of symmetry
| | 02:40 | down right in the first place,
then everything should work out.
| | 02:43 | So what I'm going to do here, is I'm
going to delete the segments that I
| | 02:47 | don't need up here.
| | 02:48 | So this point obviously is not
something I need, and I'll Shift+Click on
| | 02:52 | this point as well.
| | 02:53 | And so that identifies these two
segments, and then I will press the Backspace
| | 02:57 | key to get rid of them.
| | 02:59 | Well, if I do it there, I've
got to do it over here as well.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to get this point and
I'm going to Shift+Click on this point.
| | 03:06 | Now how do I know those are my two points?
| | 03:08 | Because I'm working from the end, I
selected two points up there, so I should
| | 03:12 | select those exact same two points
down here, and press the Backspace key.
| | 03:17 | This is the most surefire solution for
working our way around the core outline.
| | 03:22 | Now I'm going to go ahead and marquee
these two points right there, because this
| | 03:26 | needs to be joined together, I need to
join these two path outlines that I have
| | 03:30 | created together at the point of intersection.
| | 03:33 | So I'll go ahead and select them both.
| | 03:35 | Again, I'm marqueeing them with the white
arrow tool, and now, instead of going up
| | 03:40 | to the Object, menu choosing Path, and
choosing the Join command, which will join
| | 03:44 | them automatically without any dialog
box here inside Illustrator CS5, I want to
| | 03:48 | join it the old-school way, where I
make a dialog box come up onscreen, and you
| | 03:53 | do that by mashing your fist down on
the keyboard and pressing J. So instead of
| | 03:58 | Ctrl+J it's Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J or on
a Mac it's Cmd+Shift+Option+J.
| | 04:03 | So let's go ahead and do that and
assuming I got those points exactly aligned
| | 04:07 | with each other, when I press Ctrl+
Shift+Alt+J or Cmd+Shift+Option+J, I
| | 04:11 | should get the join dialog box.
| | 04:13 | If you don't see that dialog box,
and instead your points just slightly
| | 04:16 | move onscreen and join together,
that's a problem, you don't want any
| | 04:20 | automatic movement right now.
| | 04:22 | Instead, you want the dialog box, so
what you'd have to do, if you're not getting
| | 04:25 | the dialog box, is you'd want to go
ahead and grab your Black Arrow tool, click
| | 04:30 | on this path outline right there,
delete it, go ahead and select the first one
| | 04:34 | again, press the R key to get your Rotate tool.
| | 04:37 | Alt+Click or Option+Click exactly at
that endpoint to bring up the Rotate dialog
| | 04:42 | box, and that's the trick.
| | 04:43 | You have to nail that endpoint, then go
ahead and enter -120 degrees, click on the Copy
| | 04:49 | button, press the A key to switch back
to the White Arrow tool, marquee around
| | 04:53 | those points again, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt
+J or Cmd+ Shift+Option+J on a Mac,
| | 04:58 | you should hopefully see the dialog
box now, select corner, and click OK.
| | 05:03 | The reason I really want to see that
dialog box, is I want to make sure that
| | 05:06 | these two points are exactly coincident,
that is, they occupy precisely the same
| | 05:11 | location inside of my illustration.
| | 05:14 | And now I'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 05:16 | And finally what I'm going to do, is
I'm going to change my stroke to red, and
| | 05:20 | my stroke is currently active, so I'm
just going to click in this red swatch,
| | 05:24 | here in the Swatches panel.
| | 05:25 | And the reason I'm making this path red,
is I need to color code the subpaths
| | 05:30 | that are going to make up the larger
path outline, and you'll see why shortly.
| | 05:33 | All right, that's good for this exercise.
| | 05:35 | In the next exercise we'll
extend our paths from the other points
| | 05:38 | of intersection.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Crafting symmetrical subpaths| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as Top of man.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise I recommend that we
go ahead and establish some guides.
| | 00:07 | So we know exactly where these various
subpaths are meeting with each other.
| | 00:12 | And I'm going to create
those guides using circles.
| | 00:15 | So for starters here, I'm going to
create a new layer, and I'm going to do so by
| | 00:19 | pressing Ctrl+Alt+L or
Cmd+Option+L on the Mac.
| | 00:22 | Let's go ahead and call these guy
guides, and I'll switch the color to, say, light
| | 00:26 | blue, and I'll click OK.
| | 00:28 | And I'm going to moves this guides layer
all the way to the bottom of the stack.
| | 00:32 | It looks like I'm going to have
to do that in two moves, like so.
| | 00:35 | And then I'm going to draw some
circles on that layer, so I'm going to grab
| | 00:38 | my Ellipse tool, and then I'm going to Alt+
Drag from that center outward right there.
| | 00:45 | So I'm Alt+Draggging from the point
of intersection outward in order to
| | 00:49 | create just a small guide.
| | 00:51 | And it's not a guide yet,
but it will be shortly.
| | 00:53 | All right, let's go ahead and take that shape.
| | 00:56 | And because it's underneath, I'm going
to have to select it by its outside here
| | 01:00 | with the Black Arrow tool.
| | 01:02 | And I'll go ahead and drag it to this
position, press the Alt or Option key to clone it.
| | 01:05 | Now I'm going to drag the center point
of this circle, so that it snaps into
| | 01:08 | alignment with the bottom of his
elbow, which is obviously one of the end
| | 01:12 | points of this Red path.
| | 01:13 | Next, I'll go ahead and drag the
circle to this location here approximately.
| | 01:17 | Press the Alt key or the
Option key in order to clone it.
| | 01:20 | Drag the center point till it snaps in
alignment with the other endpoint to the Red path.
| | 01:24 | Now let's go ahead and create a couple
more of these guys at the other points of
| | 01:29 | intersection down below here.
| | 01:30 | So I'll go ahead and drag a
copy of the circle by Alt+Dragging,
| | 01:35 | Option+Dragging on the Mac.
| | 01:36 | I'll drag that center point till it
snaps into alignment with the knees,
| | 01:40 | then I'll create one more clone by Alt+
Dragging, Option+Dragging on the Mac.
| | 01:44 | And I'll drag that center point until it
snaps into alignment with the bottom of the heel.
| | 01:50 | And I've now identified all the
significant points that I know about in the
| | 01:54 | creation of this path outline.
| | 01:56 | So here on the Guides' layer, I'm
going to click this triangle on the upper
| | 01:59 | right-hand corner to select all of the guides.
| | 02:02 | And then I'll go up to the view menu,
I'll choose the guides command, and I'll
| | 02:06 | choose make guides, or press
Ctrl+5, Cmd+5 on the Mac.
| | 02:09 | And you now have a series of circular guides.
| | 02:12 | So I'll click off of them.
| | 02:13 | They're just there to identify what's
going on, just so I can keep track of
| | 02:17 | these significant points later.
| | 02:19 | All right, now I'm going to drop down
here to the bottom of the foot, and I'll go
| | 02:23 | and click on that path to make it active.
| | 02:24 | I'll press the P key in order to
switch to the Pen tool, I'll click on the
| | 02:28 | endpoint to let Illustrator
know I want to extend the path.
| | 02:31 | Then I'll click here, click at
this location like so on, all of these
| | 02:35 | are straight segments.
| | 02:36 | If I don't nail the points, once
again, that's not the end of the world.
| | 02:40 | All that matters is that for each and
every segment that I create on this side,
| | 02:45 | we have equal and
symmetrical segments on the other side.
| | 02:49 | Now I'm going to drag along the thigh
like so, in order to extend the control
| | 02:54 | handle, I'll drag at this location
in order to create a smooth point.
| | 02:58 | And I am more or less matching the
angle of the top of the thigh, although, if I
| | 03:02 | don't get it right, once
again, not that big a deal.
| | 03:05 | I'm going to Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
like so, in order to extend the control
| | 03:09 | handle in an independent direction.
| | 03:11 | I will drag from this location,
in order to create a smooth point.
| | 03:16 | I will Alt+Click or Option+Click to
sever away that control handle, because I
| | 03:21 | want to create a straight segment.
| | 03:23 | Now if I click here, I'm going to go
ahead and connect this path with the Red
| | 03:27 | path and that's not what I want to do, I
want to keep these paths independent of
| | 03:30 | each other right now.
| | 03:31 | So I'm going to click over here,
just to set the anchor point down.
| | 03:35 | And then I'm going to press the A
key to switch to the White Arrow tool.
| | 03:38 | And I'm going to move that point by
dragging it into alignment with the other ones.
| | 03:43 | So those two points should now be
coincident, assuming that I positioned that
| | 03:47 | circular guide in the right location.
| | 03:48 | All right, now, what we want to do is
switch to the Black Arrow tool, click on
| | 03:53 | the path to select the entire thing, and
let's color this one blue, just so that
| | 03:57 | we can track it independently of the others.
| | 03:59 | And I'll do that by clicking on the
blue swatch here in the swatches panel.
| | 04:02 | I'm going to grab these two
paths, we don't need them anymore.
| | 04:05 | And I'll click on one, Shift+Click on
the other with the Black Arrow tool, press
| | 04:09 | the backspace key or the delete key on
the Mac in order to delete those paths.
| | 04:13 | Then I'll click on this path outline to
select it, and I'll press the R key to
| | 04:17 | switch to the Rotate tool.
| | 04:19 | I'll Alt+Click or Option+
Click exactly on that endpoint.
| | 04:23 | And I'll change the value, obviously
negative -120 degrees is not what I want, because I
| | 04:28 | want to trace along him, not
along one of the other guys.
| | 04:31 | So I will change this value from -120 to +120.
| | 04:36 | Press the tab key, that looks right,
then I'll click the Copy button.
| | 04:40 | And I know this is fine, because
the path outline is staying along him.
| | 04:45 | It's not extending out into any of the
other reputed elements inside this pattern.
| | 04:50 | All right, next then I'm going to grab
my White Arrow tool once again, and I'm
| | 04:54 | going to marquee those
two endpoints right there.
| | 04:56 | Now I've managed to select my guideline as well.
| | 04:59 | Apparently my guides are not locked down.
| | 05:01 | So I'll go up to the View menu, I'll
choose guides, and I'll choose the lLock
| | 05:05 | Guides command, that may or
may not be necessary for you.
| | 05:08 | And then that should just deselect the
guide, the endpoints are still selected.
| | 05:12 | Mash your fist down with the J key.
| | 05:14 | So press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J or Cmd+Shift+Option+J
on the Mac, that should
| | 05:18 | produce the Join dialog box, we want to
see it, so that we know we've nailed the
| | 05:22 | location of these endpoints, so they
are exactly coincident. Corner's what we
| | 05:27 | want, click OK, and we're now done
with that portion of the outline.
| | 05:32 | In next exercise we'll finish
off the last remaining subpath in this
| | 05:36 | core path outline.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The final flawed subpaths| 00:00 | In this exercise, we're going to
establish the final sub-path in this core path
| | 00:05 | outline inside of our
seamlessly repeating pattern.
| | 00:08 | But it's going to be a little
trickier this time, because we're trying to
| | 00:11 | match the existing endpoints, which don't
necessarily have anything to do with each other.
| | 00:15 | So in other words, we've got this far
left endpoint in the red path, and then
| | 00:19 | we've got the far left
endpoint in the right path.
| | 00:22 | They were drawn without
any knowledge of each other.
| | 00:25 | There was no symmetrical
matching between these two paths either.
| | 00:29 | So we're bound to have to a little bit
of mis-registration this time around.
| | 00:33 | I'll show you how to resolve that.
| | 00:35 | I've saved my progress as Red path blue path.ai.
| | 00:39 | Before we draw anything, I'm
going to establish yet another guide.
| | 00:42 | So I'm going to go ahead and
draw up down to this guides layer.
| | 00:45 | I'm going to drag it up to just
above the humanoid layer, like so.
| | 00:50 | Then I'll go up to the View
menu, and I'll choose Guides.
| | 00:53 | And I'll choose Lock Guides to turn it off.
| | 00:56 | I'll grab any one of these circular guides.
| | 00:58 | Because they're in front now, I
can drag them by their center points.
| | 01:01 | I'll drag this guide by the center point
until it snaps into alignment with that
| | 01:05 | endpoint there, the left-
hand endpoint in the blue path.
| | 01:09 | Then I'll press the Alt key or the
Option key on the Mac in order to
| | 01:12 | duplicate that guide.
| | 01:14 | Now I've gone ahead and created a
total of six different circular guides.
| | 01:18 | So I've managed to identify every point
of intersection, as well as the points
| | 01:23 | at which the various sub-
paths meet up with each other.
| | 01:25 | All right, now I'm going to go back to
the View menu, choose Guides, and choose
| | 01:30 | Lock Guides to lock those guides down.
| | 01:33 | Let's set that about continuing this
sub-path right here along the thigh.
| | 01:37 | So I'm going to click on that segment
with the Black Arrow tool to select it.
| | 01:40 | I'll zoom in a little bit as well.
| | 01:42 | Press the P key in order
to switch to the Pen tool.
| | 01:45 | Click on that point in order to sever off
its control handle and make it a cusp point.
| | 01:49 | Then I'll click here to create
a corner point under the arm.
| | 01:52 | Click at the elbow.
| | 01:53 | Click at the wrist, or
whatever wacky thing this is.
| | 01:58 | Then finally, click around here,
because I don't want to click on that endpoint
| | 02:01 | or I'll go ahead and connect the two paths.
| | 02:03 | It's too early for that.
| | 02:04 | Now I'll switch to the White Arrow tool,
grab that endpoint, and drag it until
| | 02:08 | it snaps into alignment with the first one.
| | 02:10 | All right, now let's get rid
of these other thigh paths here.
| | 02:14 | They helped us to establish the point of
intersection, but we don't need them anymore.
| | 02:18 | So I'll press the V key to
switch to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 02:20 | I'll marquee around both of them, and
press the Backspace key or the Delete
| | 02:24 | key to get rid of them.
| | 02:25 | All right, let's grab this
path, the one we're working on.
| | 02:28 | Let's change its color to green, just
so that we can keep all the sub-paths
| | 02:32 | separate from each other.
| | 02:34 | This time around, I'm
going to grab my Rotate tool.
| | 02:38 | However, I don't want you to Alt+
Click exactly at that endpoint.
| | 02:42 | I want you to Alt+Click a
little bit away from it.
| | 02:45 | This requires a leap of faith on your part.
| | 02:47 | But we're not going to try to nail the
location of that knee this time around.
| | 02:52 | Instead, we're going to go ahead and
align this new path, the clone that we're
| | 02:56 | about to create to this point down here.
| | 02:58 | Then we'll figure out how far
off the knees are from each other.
| | 03:02 | So Alt+Click or Option+Click let's
say right about there, just slightly
| | 03:06 | away from the knee.
| | 03:07 | A 120 must not be the right value.
| | 03:08 | So I'll change it to -120. That looks right.
| | 03:11 | I'll click the Copy button in
order to create a copy of that path.
| | 03:15 | Now go back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 03:17 | Grab this endpoint here, and drag it until
it snaps into alignment with that tail point.
| | 03:22 | We end up getting a great match all
the way around, except right here.
| | 03:27 | Let's go ahead and zoom in like crazy.
| | 03:29 | I'm pressing Ctrl and the
Spacebar, or Cmd+Spacebar on a Mac.
| | 03:33 | I'm going to marquee around this
point, so that we can see that the two
| | 03:36 | points are not coincident.
| | 03:38 | That is no surprise.
| | 03:40 | That is going to happen, unless
you were just incredibly lucky,
| | 03:44 | as you were drawing this path outline,
these two points are going to be slightly
| | 03:48 | out of whack with each other.
| | 03:49 | Now, the quick and dirty solution is to
marquee these two points with the White
| | 03:53 | Arrow tool, like so.
| | 03:54 | Then you'd go the Object menu,
choose Path, and choose Average, or press
| | 03:59 | Ctrl+Alt+J, Cmd+Option+J on a Mac,
then you would average to Both axes.
| | 04:04 | But if you do that, you will go ahead and
average the points together, and that's great.
| | 04:08 | However, that also doesn't really
reconcile the fact that these two lines now
| | 04:14 | have slightly different slopes than each other.
| | 04:17 | So the way in which they're bending
may now be different from each other.
| | 04:21 | They may not quite align.
| | 04:23 | If you want to check that out, what I suggest
you do is go ahead and click off those paths.
| | 04:28 | Click with the White Arrow
tool on one of the segments.
| | 04:31 | It doesn't matter which one.
| | 04:32 | Press Ctrl+C or Cmd+C on a Mac to copy it.
| | 04:35 | Then click off the segment to deselect it.
| | 04:38 | Press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F on
the Mac to paste it in front.
| | 04:41 | Then press the R key to select the Rotate tool.
| | 04:44 | Alt+Click on that knee point right there,
| | 04:47 | that being an Option+Click on the Mac.
| | 04:50 | Change the value to -120 degrees.
| | 04:52 | That looks like it's going
to work out fine. Click OK.
| | 04:55 | Then let's press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on a Mac.
| | 04:58 | I'm going to zoom in here.
| | 05:00 | I'm going to turn off the template
layer by clicking on its eyeball.
| | 05:04 | So what we've done by pressing Ctrl+Y
or Cmd+Y on a Mac is we've switched
| | 05:08 | to the Preview mode, and
| | 05:09 | we can see whether these two
lines exactly match each other.
| | 05:13 | They're not quite exactly on.
| | 05:16 | Now that might not be a problem.
| | 05:17 | That might be good enough for you.
| | 05:19 | But it is going to mean that when
those strokes align with each other,
| | 05:23 | they're going to get slightly thicker than
the other strokes inside of your illustration.
| | 05:27 | So, I think there is a better way.
| | 05:29 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z
on the Mac a few times in a row, until I
| | 05:35 | get my points back away
from each other, like so.
| | 05:38 | Now, that didn't take me
out of the Outline mode.
| | 05:40 | So I'll press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on
a Mac to switch to the Preview mode.
| | 05:44 | Then I'm going to show you the better
way to exactly, precisely align those two
| | 05:48 | endpoints in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reconciling misaligned paths| 00:00 | I have saved my progress to
Slightly off alignment.ai.
| | 00:03 | So called, because our endpoints
here at the knee are slightly out off
| | 00:08 | alignment with each other.
| | 00:09 | So here's how to solve the problem.
| | 00:11 | At least this is what I came up with
in my case, you may have to experiment a
| | 00:16 | little to get exactly the same results.
| | 00:17 | But what I am going to do here is
scroll to the bottom of the layers panel
| | 00:21 | and turn off the template layer so that we
can focus our attention just on this green knee.
| | 00:27 | I am also going to turn off
the guides layers for now.
| | 00:29 | We will come back to it later.
| | 00:30 | I am going to press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+
Y on the Mac to switch to the outline
| | 00:35 | mode, so that we can
better see our path outlines.
| | 00:38 | I am going press Shift+Tab in order
to hide those right side panels so I
| | 00:42 | have more room to work.
| | 00:43 | Now with the Black Arrow tool I am going
to click on this path outline to select
| | 00:47 | it here and I am going to switch over to
the Scissors tool, which you may have to
| | 00:50 | select from the Eraser tool
flyout menu, or you can press C key.
| | 00:54 | I am going to click right there at the
toe, at the base of the calf, and then I
| | 00:59 | will press and hold the Ctrl key or
the Cmd key on the Mac to temporarily
| | 01:02 | get my Black Arrow tool, and I will
click on this thigh path right there to
| | 01:06 | select it, and then I will click right there.
| | 01:09 | Having released Ctrl or Cmd I will click
with the Scissors tool in order to cut that point.
| | 01:14 | So we now have two independent
paths to work with right here.
| | 01:17 | Using the Black Arrow tool I will lift
these guys up and I am going to align
| | 01:22 | them together at their end point so
that they snap into alignment right there.
| | 01:26 | Then I am going to press the A key
to switch to the White Arrow tool.
| | 01:29 | I will marquee those two coincident
end points, and to make sure they are
| | 01:33 | coincident, again very, very
important, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J or
| | 01:37 | Cmd+Shift+Option+J on the Mac
to join the two points together.
| | 01:40 | You should bring up the Join dialog box.
| | 01:42 | If so, select Corner and click OK.
| | 01:45 | Again, it's very important
that you see that dialog box.
| | 01:49 | Now I am going to press the V key to
switch back to my Black Arrow tool and I am
| | 01:53 | going to grab this endpoint right
there, and I am going to drag it so that it
| | 01:57 | snaps into alignment at the top of the
thigh right there, which means that those
| | 02:02 | two endpoints are exactly aligned,
but these two are not as you can see.
| | 02:07 | So now what we need to do is a
combination of rotating and scaling these paths
| | 02:14 | into exact alignment.
| | 02:16 | Let me show you how that works. And
this is where you and I might differ.
| | 02:20 | You might have to try out something
different, because after all your path
| | 02:23 | outline's going to be a
little different than mine.
| | 02:25 | But anyway, I am going to
switch to the Rotate tool.
| | 02:28 | Then I am going to click to set my
transformation origin on that endpoint that
| | 02:33 | is properly aligned, so over here
on the far right side of the thigh.
| | 02:37 | Then I am going to zoom in like crazy
at this location where the points are not
| | 02:42 | aligning properly and I am going to
drag up like so and I am going to drag just
| | 02:47 | slightly beyond the other end point.
| | 02:49 | See that, I am just leaving a little
gap between the two, and now I am going
| | 02:55 | to grab my Scale tool.
| | 02:57 | The great thing about the Transformation
tools is as long as you switch back and
| | 03:00 | forth between them, you
maintain the same origin point.
| | 03:03 | So I don't have to go all the way back
over there to the right side of the thigh
| | 03:07 | to reset the Transformation origin.
| | 03:09 | It's already there.
| | 03:10 | I will just go ahead and drag from
this anchor point until it snaps into
| | 03:14 | alignment with the other one.
| | 03:16 | Now if I have done everything properly,
then I should find out that these two
| | 03:21 | outlines here, these two segments are
more or less in alignment with each other,
| | 03:25 | or very, very darn close.
| | 03:27 | So I will go and switch back to the
Rotate tool and this time I am going to
| | 03:30 | Alt+Click or Option+Click on the knee.
| | 03:33 | I am going to set the Angle
value -120, press the Tab key.
| | 03:37 | It looks like this is going to align
very well, because what was formerly this
| | 03:41 | anchor point is swung around to this location.
| | 03:43 | It looks like I have a alignment, I
will click Copy, and all I am doing is
| | 03:47 | testing whether these two path
outlines meet each other, and here I am zoomed
| | 03:52 | into 2400% and they are almost
exactly on top of each other.
| | 03:55 | So that is going to be good enough.
| | 03:58 | Now I am going to go ahead and zoom out.
| | 03:59 | I don't need that path.
| | 04:01 | I was just using it for confirmation.
| | 04:02 | So I will press the Backspace key or
the Delete key in order to get rid of it
| | 04:06 | and then I am going to switch
back to my Black Arrow tool.
| | 04:08 | Now a couple of little cleanup chores here.
| | 04:11 | I will press Shift+Tab to
bring back my right side panels.
| | 04:14 | I will turn on the template
layer so I can see it once again.
| | 04:17 | Press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on the Mac so
that I switch back to the Preview mode.
| | 04:22 | You may notice, I will press Cmd+Y
or Ctrl+Y again, you may notice that my
| | 04:27 | new path outlines here on the humanoid
layer are not exactly in alignment with
| | 04:30 | those on the template layer.
| | 04:31 | That, again, does not matter.
| | 04:33 | As long as you create these humanoid
paths correctly, these various subpaths
| | 04:38 | that we've been working on, then it
doesn't matter whether you get different
| | 04:41 | results in the template or not, all
of your various little men are going to
| | 04:45 | align with each other
once we start rotating them.
| | 04:48 | Anyway, I will press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+
Y again to switch back to the Preview
| | 04:51 | mode, and I am going to bring back my
guides layer. And notice that this guide is
| | 04:56 | no longer in alignment with the knee.
| | 04:58 | I want it to be exactly aligned with the knee.
| | 05:00 | So I will go up to the View menu, I'll
choose Guides, and I'll choose Lock
| | 05:04 | Guides to turn it off, and then I will
click on this little circle right there,
| | 05:09 | and I'll drag it until it snaps into
alignment with the knee, everything is
| | 05:12 | copacetic now, so I will go back to the
View menu, choose Guides, lock him back down.
| | 05:18 | Then I am going to take that guides
layers and drag it below template once again.
| | 05:22 | All right, we are now ready to embark
upon the task of joining our various path
| | 05:28 | outlines to each other, and we are
going to do that in the very next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Completing the core path outline| 00:00 | I have saved my progress as Many subpaths.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise, we are going to
take our various subpaths, join them
| | 00:06 | together into one overarching path
outline, and we are going to make sure that
| | 00:10 | we have exact alignment.
| | 00:13 | We have got a few different subpaths going on.
| | 00:15 | I am going to drag them apart so you can see.
| | 00:17 | We've got the thigh and a calf, we've got
the bottom side of the leg, we've got this
| | 00:22 | area under the arm as well.
| | 00:24 | Then we have the red path and the blue path.
| | 00:26 | So we need to join all the green paths
together first and then we will join them
| | 00:30 | to the red path and the blue path. Here is how.
| | 00:33 | I will go ahead and undo those
movements by pressing Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z on
| | 00:37 | the Mac a few times.
| | 00:38 | Then I will grab my White Arrow tool
and I will marquee around these end points
| | 00:42 | right here, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J,
Cmd+Shift+Option+J on the Mac to bring
| | 00:46 | up the Join dialog box.
| | 00:47 | Now we are going to be pressing Ctrl+
Shift+Alt+J or Cmd+Shift+Option+J in
| | 00:51 | a Mac many, many times here and every
single time you need to see this dialog box.
| | 00:58 | If not, you have got some sort of
misalignment that you're going to have to reconcile.
| | 01:02 | I will go ahead and click OK, corner
points are fine all the way around.
| | 01:06 | Now I am going to marquee these
endpoints right there at the base of the foot.
| | 01:10 | I will press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J, Cmd+
Shift+Option+J on the Mac, click OK to
| | 01:14 | accept the corner point.
| | 01:16 | Now then, our green path is all
one big subpath at this point.
| | 01:20 | Let's join it to the blue path. And,
when we do it by the way, both paths are
| | 01:25 | going to turn one color, because the
single path outline can only have one color
| | 01:30 | of stroke, that is, if it's got
a single stroke which these do;
| | 01:33 | one is going to override the other.
| | 01:35 | Presumably, the new path is going
to turn green, because I believe the
| | 01:38 | green path is in front. But we will see.
| | 01:40 | It doesn't really matter at this point.
| | 01:42 | I will marquee these two end points
right there of the two differently colored
| | 01:46 | paths, and I will press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+
J, Cmd+Shift+Option+J on the Mac.
| | 01:50 | It brings up the dialog box, click OK.
| | 01:52 | Now we have one big green path outline.
| | 01:54 | Now we are going to join these two endpoints.
| | 01:57 | That's going to leave these two end points
at the top of the hand still not together.
| | 02:02 | They still won't be joined.
| | 02:04 | So we have to remember that.
| | 02:05 | So I will marquee the endpoints at
the bottom of the elbow there, at the
| | 02:09 | intersection of the green path and
the blue path, and then I will press
| | 02:11 | Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J, Cmd+Shift+Option+J.
Sure enough, get the dialog box, click OK.
| | 02:16 | One big green path outline all the way.
| | 02:19 | It's still an open path, though we
haven't closed it, because these two points
| | 02:23 | are independent of each other.
| | 02:24 | Anyway, I'll undo that move.
| | 02:26 | I will marquee those two endpoints
with my White Arrow tool and if everything
| | 02:30 | is going according to plan, I should
be able to press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J or
| | 02:34 | Cmd+Shift+Option+J in the Mac in
order to confirm that I am getting a
| | 02:37 | Corner point, click OK.
| | 02:39 | So in every single case I had coincident
endpoints and as a result I am going to
| | 02:44 | get precise alignment.
| | 02:45 | That's my prediction anyway.
| | 02:47 | Let's see if it comes true.
| | 02:48 | So I am going to change the stroke
back to my jet black there, the rich black,
| | 02:53 | and then I am going to press the
V key to get my Black Arrow tool.
| | 02:55 | I will click on the path outline to
make sure I have the entire thing selected.
| | 02:59 | Then I will press R key to
switch to the Rotate tool.
| | 03:02 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in on
the top of the nose there, the bridge of
| | 03:05 | the nose and I will Alt+Click or Option
+Click on the Mac in order to bring up
| | 03:10 | the Rotate dialog box.
| | 03:11 | The last Angle I applied
was -120 degrees, that's fine.
| | 03:15 | Either negative or positive of
120 degrees will do it for us.
| | 03:19 | Click the Copy button, and then press
Ctrl+D or Cmd+D on the Mac in order to
| | 03:24 | duplicate that path outline.
| | 03:26 | Now, you can see I have got exact
alignment around the head and arm region.
| | 03:30 | So that's good news.
| | 03:32 | The only place where I expect to have
some alignment problems is down here along
| | 03:36 | this thigh and calf, because
that was the area of reconciliation.
| | 03:40 | But we will see how things go.
| | 03:41 | I will press Ctrl+A or Cmd+A on the
Mac to select all three of these shapes,
| | 03:45 | because they are the only
shapes that are visible and unlocked.
| | 03:49 | Then I will press the V key.
| | 03:50 | Now from here and out we have path
outlines in every direction we need them, at
| | 03:54 | every angle, that is to say.
| | 03:57 | Now we just need to
replicate them in different areas.
| | 04:00 | So I am going to drag at the top
of this guy's knee, right there.
| | 04:03 | You want to drag from an endpointt, by the
way, because we want to ensure that one
| | 04:07 | endpoint snaps into alignment with the other.
| | 04:09 | So you want to make sure that you're
bonding box is off and all that jazz.
| | 04:13 | Anyway, the reason I am choosing this
knee point is because there is a knee
| | 04:17 | point to lock it into
alignment with right there.
| | 04:19 | So I will go ahead and grab this guy
and drag it down like so until it locks
| | 04:24 | into alignment, I should see the white
arrowhead cursor that shows me I have a snap.
| | 04:29 | Then I will press and hold the Alt key or the
Option key on the Mac and release. It looks good.
| | 04:34 | I think we have a very good match thus far.
| | 04:38 | This time around, just to confirm, I
will go ahead and zoom out little farther
| | 04:42 | here and I will drag from this guy's
toe, right there, and I will drag it into
| | 04:48 | alignment with this location and then
I will press the Alt or Option key and
| | 04:52 | release and I have gone ahead and
cloned some more path outlines. And let's go
| | 04:56 | and turn off the Template for a moment,
just so we can see if all these guys are
| | 05:00 | aligning properly with each
other, and they seem to be.
| | 05:03 | Now what if at this point
we want to make a change?
| | 05:06 | We have confirmed that everybody aligns
great so we have done a good job so far,
| | 05:10 | but maybe I don't feel
comfortable with all the details.
| | 05:13 | For example, I am going to press
Ctrl+Z a few different times here,
| | 05:17 | this would be Cmd+Z a few
different times on the Mac, until I get back to
| | 05:21 | just my core guy stroked in black right there.
| | 05:25 | I look at this guy and I am very
proud of the fact that he aligns with
| | 05:30 | himself all over the place.
| | 05:31 | He is absolutely a golden interlocking object.
| | 05:34 | But he's kind of got some
strange details inside of him.
| | 05:38 | For example, in order to reconcile
the hands, I gave him this kind of
| | 05:42 | strangley, sort of four-fingered hand
on one side in which he curled his thumb
| | 05:46 | around, and then on the other side he
has got a three-finger hand and he has
| | 05:50 | got his thumb tucked.
| | 05:52 | Well, I could take this thumb
out into that finger region.
| | 05:56 | Notice that this is the other hand right there.
| | 05:58 | So this hand reaches around to this location.
| | 06:01 | So I could have his thumb sticking into
his fingers as if he is holding his own hand.
| | 06:06 | Well, I will show you how to make such
a modification and keep everything in
| | 06:11 | alignment in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making a symmetrical modification| 00:00 | I have saved my changes as Core path
outline.ai, and in this exercise I am going
| | 00:04 | to show you how to make an alteration.
| | 00:07 | So as I said, I want to
make this guy's thumb come out.
| | 00:10 | Right now it curls around.
| | 00:11 | I want to make it come out into this
guy's hand and then by the same token,
| | 00:17 | this guy is going to have his index and
pinky extended making a sort of hang 10 gesture.
| | 00:23 | Now in order to pull that off, I need
to make a modification to this region
| | 00:27 | right here and I am going to do that
by switching to the White Arrow tool.
| | 00:30 | I am going to marquee this segment and
I am going to press the Backspace key or
| | 00:33 | the Delete key on the Mac to delete it.
| | 00:35 | Then I am going to press the P key to
switch to the Pen tool and I am going to
| | 00:38 | click like this just to bring that
thumb into that region right there and then
| | 00:43 | finally I will complete
the path outline, like so.
| | 00:46 | Now, I may need to make a few
adjustments here and in fact I am going to.
| | 00:50 | One thing I am going to do is nudge
this point over just little and I am doing
| | 00:54 | that using the Arrow keys.
| | 00:56 | I might want to nudge this point over as
well so it's more or less aligned like it was.
| | 01:02 | Although this isn't essential, I am
just doing all this work for aesthetic
| | 01:05 | reasons. And I am going to
take these two points right here.
| | 01:08 | Click on one, Shift+Click on the other,
and I am going to lift them, because his
| | 01:10 | hand's just too darn thick, it seems to me.
| | 01:13 | This hand right here could
use a little bit of thickening.
| | 01:16 | So I will drag that finger up.
| | 01:17 | I am going to have these two fingers
tucked down eventually once I get done
| | 01:21 | finishing off the interior.
| | 01:24 | This looks like it's pretty good.
| | 01:26 | I am just trying to nudge everything
into alignment so that I'm comfortable
| | 01:29 | with the location of the points,
because once I accept them, I'm going to have
| | 01:33 | to stick with them,
| | 01:35 | is is basically what it comes down to.
| | 01:36 | So he's going to have this big giant
thumb, fair enough, but his fingers are to
| | 01:40 | be a little slimmer. And now I will
marquee these points like so, because they're
| | 01:46 | the ones I just got through changing.
| | 01:48 | I did not select that point,
| | 01:49 | I did not select that point.
| | 01:51 | Just these points right here in between
and I will press Ctrl+C or Cmd+C on
| | 01:56 | the Mac to copy them.
| | 01:57 | Now I am going to switchover and
I'm going to get rid of those similar
| | 02:02 | points over on this side.
| | 02:03 | Now this takes a little bit of
imagination, but I'm pretty confident it's these
| | 02:08 | three points that need to come out.
| | 02:10 | So let's give that a shot.
| | 02:11 | I will marquee them with the White Arrow
tool and I will press the Delete key or
| | 02:15 | the Backspace key in order to wipe them out.
| | 02:17 | Then I will press Ctrl+V or Cmd+V
on the Mac to paste that path just right
| | 02:22 | there in the center.
| | 02:23 | I don't care if it's aligned
with anything at this point.
| | 02:26 | I will go ahead and get my Black
Arrow tool and I am going to drag this
| | 02:30 | endpoint in alignment with this one
right there, because we are going to need
| | 02:33 | to lift it around, like so.
| | 02:35 | We are going to rotate this
new path around this endpoint.
| | 02:38 | So I will press the R key to select the
Rotate tool and then I will Alt+Click or
| | 02:41 | Option+Click at that shoulder
location, enter an Angle of -120 degrees,
| | 02:46 | that's exactly what I want, and click OK.
| | 02:49 | Now again, we cross our fingers, go
ahead and grab that White Arrow tool,
| | 02:54 | marquee these two end points, and like
usual we've got to do the mash your fist
| | 02:58 | J number in order to confirm
that we have coincident end points.
| | 03:02 | So press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J, Cmd+
Shift+Option+J an a Mac to bring up the
| | 03:06 | Join dialog box, select Corner and
click OK. And then, go ahead and marquee these
| | 03:12 | two end points, they're the last
ones that need to be joined together.
| | 03:14 | Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J, Cmd+Shift+
Option+J on a Mac, and that didn't work,
| | 03:18 | which is really potentially a big drag.
| | 03:21 | Now I say it didn't work,
because we didn't get the dialog box.
| | 03:24 | When we don't get the dialog
box that means you did not have
| | 03:27 | coincident endpoints.
| | 03:28 | You do now, because they got fused together.
| | 03:31 | But I am going to press Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z
on the Mac in order to undo that modification.
| | 03:36 | I am going to turn off the template
layer, so I can see what I am doing.
| | 03:38 | I am going to press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y
on the Mac so I just see the path outlines.
| | 03:43 | Let's get rid of those guides as well.
| | 03:45 | Where are the guides these days?
| | 03:46 | They are down here.
| | 03:47 | I will hide that guides layer.
| | 03:49 | And then I am going to Ctrl+
Spacebar+Drag around these points.
| | 03:54 | That's Cmd+Spacebar+Drag in order
to zoom way in on them and I'm going to
| | 03:58 | click off the point to
see what the deal is. Man!
| | 04:01 | even at 6400% I cannot see a gap.
| | 04:05 | So apparently the gap is
not big enough to worry about.
| | 04:08 | But anyway, I'll go and
marquee those two points.
| | 04:10 | You can see that they are separate,
because there are more rectangular when I
| | 04:14 | select them, than square.
| | 04:16 | So one is apparently
little higher than the other.
| | 04:18 | Anyway, what happens when you have two
endpoints that aren't quite on top of
| | 04:22 | each other and you press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+
J or Cmd+Shift+Option+J on the Mac,
| | 04:27 | you both align them with each other so
they just scooted right on to each other.
| | 04:31 | You make them coincident and then you
go ahead and join them and in this case,
| | 04:34 | it must've joined them with a corner point.
| | 04:36 | So all is well, I guess,
because that should be good enough.
| | 04:40 | If you have any concerns about it, then
you would run through that whole number
| | 04:44 | where you select the guy and
you rotate him and all that jazz.
| | 04:47 | Now we have something of a screen
redraw problem here, because we have got
| | 04:51 | these thick edges, I should think if
we just move that path a little bit
| | 04:54 | like so, those will go away.
| | 04:56 | Anyway, I press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+Z
on Mac to undo that change, and let's just
| | 05:01 | test that these guys are still
in alignment with each other.
| | 05:03 | I will grab my Rotate tool, I will Alt+
Click or Option+Click on the bridge of
| | 05:07 | the nose right there, -120 degrees is
fine, Copy, then press Ctrl+D or Comman+D
| | 05:14 | on the Mac in order to
duplicate that rotation and duplication.
| | 05:18 | Switch back to the Black Arrow tool,
zoom in, make sure everybody is
| | 05:21 | aligned with each other.
| | 05:22 | Well, these hands definitely are
aligned just fine and these other areas look
| | 05:26 | like they have alignment as well.
| | 05:28 | So it seems we lucked out,
and everything is okay.
| | 05:31 | I like it better when we have perfect
alignment between those points, but I
| | 05:34 | suppose every once in a while we
can accept less than perfect results.
| | 05:38 | I am going to marquee these two
paths in order to select them, press the
| | 05:40 | Backspace key, we are left with our core
path outline with the big giant fist on
| | 05:45 | one side and the strange
hand signal on the other side.
| | 05:48 | We are going to go ahead and build
up these paths, I will press Ctrl+Y,
| | 05:52 | Cmd+Y on the Mac to
switch back to the Preview mode.
| | 05:55 | I am going to leave the template and
guides layers turned off, but I am going to
| | 05:58 | bring up this layer, interior, which
contains all the interior elements.
| | 06:03 | You can see that for the most
part everything works out just fine.
| | 06:06 | He is a fairly strangely put together
guy with some spikes on his back and
| | 06:11 | these scales on his arm.
| | 06:12 | He is wearing a monocle and he's got a
pocket on the back of - is he wearing
| | 06:16 | jeans or not, he has got a seam over
on this side and the other side, but he
| | 06:20 | doesn't really have any
place for his tail to come out.
| | 06:22 | So he is a fairly mysterious
creature, but we do have to make
| | 06:26 | some modifications.
| | 06:27 | We have to bring out that thumb out, we
have to rearrange the fingers a little
| | 06:29 | bit, we have to change the
hand signal over on this side.
| | 06:33 | And, because my path outline has changed
a little bit, because I redrew it for
| | 06:37 | you here in the last few exercises,
I am going to have to realign some of
| | 06:41 | these points around the outside of the
creature, and we will do all that work
| | 06:45 | in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the interior elements| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as Next missing link.ai.
| | 00:03 | So called, because this guy seems to be
evolving before our eyes into some sort
| | 00:07 | of next-generation monocled creature.
| | 00:10 | Anyway, we do need to fix him up a
little bit, because he has got a lot of
| | 00:13 | problems, especially in this hand.
| | 00:15 | I'm going to reconcile these problems by
pressing Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on the Mac
| | 00:19 | to switch to the Outline mode.
| | 00:22 | That way we can see exactly where the
path outlines aren't lining up properly.
| | 00:26 | Now you may notice here, that we lost a finger.
| | 00:29 | That's because this guy is a blend.
| | 00:31 | We're blending between these two
path outlines in order to create a
| | 00:34 | third outline in between.
| | 00:36 | So anyway, I'm going to
grab my White Arrow tool.
| | 00:38 | That's how we're going to do most of
this work, and I'm going to scrunch this
| | 00:40 | finger forward quite a bit.
| | 00:42 | Change the control handles.
| | 00:44 | Go ahead and make them shorter, and
then drag this end point, so it snaps into
| | 00:48 | alignment with the corner right there.
| | 00:49 | Then I might go ahead and drag this guy up.
| | 00:52 | You know what else I want to
do, just for the fun of it.
| | 00:55 | I'm going to create a
knuckle here with the Pen tool.
| | 00:59 | I'm going to do the same thing
for this path outline as well.
| | 01:02 | So I'm Ctrl+Clicking or Cmd+
Clicking to deselect the former path,
| | 01:05 | Ctrl+Clicking or Cmd+
Clicking on this path to select it.
| | 01:08 | Then I'll Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
from this anchor point in order to add a
| | 01:14 | control handle in a different direction,
and I'll go ahead and draw a hump at
| | 01:17 | this location as well
| | 01:19 | to indicate a knuckle, of course.
Make a little bit of a modification with
| | 01:22 | the White Arrow tool,
| | 01:23 | go ahead and grab that White Arrow
tool in fact, and I drag this knuckle up
| | 01:27 | a little bit as well.
| | 01:28 | I don't need this path outline
anymore, so I'll go ahead and Alt+Click or
| | 01:31 | Option+Click on it to select it, and then
press the Backspace key to get rid of it.
| | 01:35 | That's the Delete key on the Mac.
| | 01:37 | Let's grab this anchor point.
| | 01:39 | Snap it into alignment
with this point right there.
| | 01:42 | Move the control handle, so that
it's in alignment with this straight
| | 01:46 | segment right there.
| | 01:47 | That way we have a
continuous edge at this location.
| | 01:50 | This guy needs to come over a little bit.
| | 01:52 | This is like his glove or something, by the way.
| | 01:55 | If you don't like this path,
you can totally get rid of it.
| | 01:57 | You can make any alterations you like.
| | 02:00 | I don't care if you draw a smiley
face on the guy, totally up to you.
| | 02:03 | All right, now I'll grab this path
outline and move it back into position.
| | 02:07 | Basically, everybody around the edge
needs some sort of slight modification,
| | 02:11 | because that edge path is
different than it used to be.
| | 02:14 | I'll go ahead and Alt+Marquee or Option+
Marquee those two paths to select them.
| | 02:19 | Drag this guy down a little bit
until it snaps into alignment, like so.
| | 02:22 | Alt+Click this path, maybe
just nudge him over a little bit.
| | 02:26 | That was an Option+Click on the Mac, just
because I want to keep using the White Arrow tool,
| | 02:30 | by the way. You could switch to the
Black Arrow tool, and then you wouldn't have to
| | 02:34 | keep Alt+Clicking on one path after
another to select the entire thing.
| | 02:38 | Anyway, I'm going to grab this
guy, move him into alignment.
| | 02:41 | Let's see what else we've
got to deal, with these hairs;
| | 02:43 | they should be a lot higher.
| | 02:46 | I could nudge him, or I could drag him,
obviously, a variety of different ways to work.
| | 02:50 | These are fine.
| | 02:51 | Those are his spikes there.
| | 02:53 | Good enough where they are.
| | 02:54 | I think this guy wants to move
over a little bit. Yes, he does.
| | 02:59 | This guy could get nudged over slightly as well.
| | 03:02 | It could even snap into alignment,
that's not going to hurt anything.
| | 03:05 | This guy, definitely a problem, move
him up until he snaps into alignment, and
| | 03:10 | otherwise, that looks pretty good.
| | 03:12 | I'll go ahead and grab this point right
there, that anchor point and drag it out.
| | 03:16 | This anchor point wants to
be nudged out a little bit.
| | 03:18 | This thumb path wants to be nudged out.
| | 03:20 | This guy wants to be nudged down.
| | 03:22 | These guys want to just come out
of this location for right now.
| | 03:27 | What I'm going to do with them is I'm
going to turn them into the little hang
| | 03:32 | ten sort of hand signal here by
dragging this guy down like this.
| | 03:36 | Then I'll get the Pen
tool by pressing the P key.
| | 03:39 | I'll click there, and I'll click like so,
and I might click right about there, I figure.
| | 03:47 | Then I'll click some place around here,
click underneath the thumb, like so.
| | 03:51 | Why is that working, and what did I do?
| | 03:53 | Now I'm completely
confused by my own modifications.
| | 03:57 | Oh, I see, look at that.
| | 03:59 | I added a point there.
| | 04:00 | Silly, silly me only been using
Illustrator 24 years, so sometimes I get confused.
| | 04:04 | Anyway, I'm going to click there
in order to reactivate the path.
| | 04:08 | Click here I guess, click over here,
and then click up there in order to create
| | 04:13 | that sort of hang-ten sign.
| | 04:15 | I might go ahead and move these guys
into alignment, or you know what, I think
| | 04:18 | this would look better if I
take this guy wider, like so.
| | 04:23 | That other path outline that's just
hanging up there at top, I don't need it.
| | 04:26 | So I'll Alt+Click on it,
Option+Click on the Mac.
| | 04:28 | Delete it by pressing the
Backspace or Delete key.
| | 04:31 | Press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on the Mac, so
I can see what's going on with this thumb.
| | 04:36 | It should cover up those two fingers.
| | 04:38 | So I'm not sure if it's in front or
in back, but I'm going to go ahead
| | 04:42 | and select that path.
| | 04:43 | Right-click, choose Arrange, and then
choose Bring to Front, or I could press
| | 04:48 | Ctrl+Shift+Right Bracket, Cmd+
Shift+Right Bracket on the Mac.
| | 04:51 | Then I need to fill it with White, I gather.
| | 04:54 | So I'll go up to the Fill icon up here
in the Control panel, and I'll change
| | 04:58 | that Fill color to White.
| | 05:00 | That is going to present a problem
though, because that means I'm filling over
| | 05:06 | on top of this stroke right there,
| | 05:09 | that's on the outside of the path.
| | 05:11 | I definitely don't want to do that.
| | 05:12 | So I'm going to have to take a
two-part approach on this guy.
| | 05:15 | I'll go ahead and Copy him by pressing
Ctrl+C, Cmd+C on the Mac in order to
| | 05:19 | copy it to the clipboard.
| | 05:20 | Then I'll click off the
shape with the White Arrow tool.
| | 05:22 | Grab this anchor point, drag it in,
so it's remaining centered at the
| | 05:26 | previous location, like so.
| | 05:28 | Drag this guy in as well.
| | 05:30 | So in other words, I'm maintaining
alignment with the original outline there.
| | 05:33 | Now I'll get rid of the stroke
that's associated with this path outline.
| | 05:38 | I believe my stroke is currently active.
| | 05:40 | So I'll just click on the None swatch
here in the Swatches panel. That works out.
| | 05:43 | Now I'll press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F on
the Mac to paste back in that stroke.
| | 05:48 | Now we need to get rid of the fill by
going up to the Fill option here in the
| | 05:52 | Control panel, and switching
the Swatch to None, like so.
| | 05:56 | And then I'll click off that sub
-panel. That looks great.
| | 05:59 | You know the one thing that doesn't
look great is this guy right there.
| | 06:01 | I don't need this segment.
| | 06:02 | What is going on with this stuff here?
| | 06:04 | These two are connected to
each other. That is weird.
| | 06:07 | I didn't know that.
| | 06:08 | All right, I'm going to go ahead and
get this anchor point, and delete it like
| | 06:11 | so, because we don't need a
straight edge right there. That's fine.
| | 06:14 | I am done with that hand.
| | 06:16 | That's enough work up there.
| | 06:17 | Now I'm going to move down here.
| | 06:19 | These guys aren't really properly
aligned, might as well switch back to the
| | 06:22 | Outline mode, so I can better see how these
various points are intersecting with each other.
| | 06:26 | I'll drag that guy into alignment.
| | 06:28 | Just a few more fuzzy
little things I have to do.
| | 06:31 | Your changes will be totally different,
because your path outline is totally different.
| | 06:35 | So, enjoy that.
| | 06:36 | You'll get a kick out of moving
these anchor points all over the place. At
| | 06:39 | least, if nothing else,
| | 06:41 | this is a very real-world project.
| | 06:42 | This is the kind of stuff you have to do
on a regular basis inside of Illustrator.
| | 06:46 | So if nothing else, you
might as well get used to it.
| | 06:48 | I'm going to go ahead
and grab this anchor point.
| | 06:50 | Drag it up, until it snaps into place.
| | 06:53 | Otherwise, this looks pretty good.
| | 06:55 | I don't know what's going on with that pocket.
| | 06:57 | All right, that was just a weird
screen redraw problems. So that's okay.
| | 06:59 | Oh, here, these guys still need work.
| | 07:02 | I'll move this guy up out of the way.
| | 07:03 | Then snap him into alignment.
| | 07:05 | Get this path right there, and
snap it into alignment, like so.
| | 07:10 | Grab this path, snap it into alignment.
| | 07:13 | This guy needs to be
nudged out just a little bit.
| | 07:15 | This guy needs to come in,
| | 07:17 | if I can select him, I am
having problems grabbing that point.
| | 07:19 | So I'll go ahead and marquee it.
| | 07:22 | Lock down humanoid for a moment.
| | 07:24 | Drag it in like so, unlock humanoid, and
then bring it back, so I can get a snap.
| | 07:30 | Let's see, this point right there
needs to be moved down into alignment.
| | 07:35 | I keep thinking I'm going
to be done any hour now.
| | 07:38 | This guy is the final one, brilliant.
| | 07:40 | This happens every once in a while.
| | 07:41 | If you don't exactly grab the
anchor point, you'll grab the segment.
| | 07:44 | You'll whip it around like
some kind of crazy lasso.
| | 07:48 | Anyway, I'll undo that modification,
like there would be any reason on earth
| | 07:52 | I would want to do that, Illustrator.
| | 07:54 | I'll go ahead and marquee that point,
that ends up selecting some of the
| | 07:56 | humanoid, so I'll lock that down.
| | 07:58 | I'll lift the point by
nudging it. Unlock humanoid.
| | 08:01 | Drag this anchor point back down into place.
| | 08:04 | I'm feeling so hopeful here.
| | 08:05 | I think I got everybody aligned properly.
| | 08:07 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Y, Cmd+Y on
the Mac, and yes, we do have alignment
| | 08:12 | with the interior and the humanoid exterior.
| | 08:16 | In the next exercise, we're going
to start coloring these objects.
| | 08:19 | We're going to rotate him
around into different positions.
| | 08:22 | We're going to establish the
basis for a repeating tile pattern.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Coloring paths and testing the interlock| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as Ready to deploy.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise, we're going to take this guy,
| | 00:06 | we're going to assign some fill colors,
| | 00:08 | we're going to group them together,
| | 00:09 | we're going to rotate him to
create the other various humanoids,
| | 00:13 | and we're ultimately going to assemble a
rough repeating pattern that will then
| | 00:18 | serve as the basis for a
rectangular tile pattern.
| | 00:21 | So I'm going to switchover
here to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:24 | I'm going to click in
this big humanoid shape here.
| | 00:27 | From the Swatches panel, I'm
going to fill it with this Muted red.
| | 00:31 | But first of all, I need to
make sure the fill is active.
| | 00:33 | So I'll switch over to
the Color panel, it's not.
| | 00:35 | I'll click on Fill, or press the X key,
switch back to Swatches and then click
| | 00:40 | on Muted red in order to fill that guy with red.
| | 00:43 | And now I see what other filled shapes I have,
including this little interior of a thumb shape.
| | 00:49 | That's going to be fun to select.
| | 00:50 | So I'll go ahead and marquee, just this
tiny marquee around it, in order to select
| | 00:54 | both of it, and the path in front of it,
and then I'll Shift+Click on the path
| | 00:57 | in front of it in order to deselect it.
| | 01:00 | So I just have the white path selected,
and you can confirm that, because you'll
| | 01:03 | see that up here in the Control panel,
| | 01:06 | the Fill is White and the Stroke is None.
| | 01:08 | Then I'm going to fill that
shape with Muted red once again.
| | 01:12 | Now I'll select a spine shape.
| | 01:14 | So I'll go ahead and click on this guy
to select him, and then I'll Shift+Click
| | 01:18 | on each one of the outlines of these spikes.
| | 01:21 | This takes a little bit of care
actually to make sure you get him selected.
| | 01:24 | Then I'll go back to the Swatches panel,
and fill them with Muted red as well.
| | 01:28 | Now I have a little problem.
| | 01:29 | Do you notice that, how that filled edge
is cutting into that stroke right there?
| | 01:35 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
select this point using the White Arrow tool.
| | 01:40 | I'm just going to nudge it over it
until I reveal that entire corner.
| | 01:45 | And at about that point
there, everything looks good.
| | 01:47 | All right, so I'll click off of
that point in order to deselect it.
| | 01:50 | You might as well take care of every
single issue that you see at this point in
| | 01:55 | time, because once you start rotating
and cloning this guy, then you're not
| | 01:59 | going to want to go back and
have to make any more changes.
| | 02:02 | So now is the time to do the work.
| | 02:04 | All right, I'm going to go to press the V
key to switch back to my Black Arrow tool.
| | 02:07 | I'm going to click on the
monocle in order to select it.
| | 02:10 | I want to select these guys too.
| | 02:12 | But I should be able to select him,
just by going up to the Select Similar
| | 02:15 | Objects icon, and clicking on the
down pointing arrowhead next to it, and
| | 02:19 | choosing Fill Color and that
should just select those six objects
| | 02:22 | altogether, because after all, there
are no other white filled objects on
| | 02:26 | any visible layers.
| | 02:28 | All right, now I'm going to switch
these guys to Muted blue, so a slightly
| | 02:31 | different color for those shapes.
| | 02:34 | And we have the base guy done.
| | 02:35 | So I'm going to grab him by
marqueeing around him, and I'm going to press
| | 02:39 | Ctrl+G, or Cmd+G on the Mac to group him.
| | 02:42 | What that's going to do is it's going
to move the path from humanoid onto the
| | 02:46 | interior layer, because when you group,
you always move all the grouped objects
| | 02:50 | up to the top layer in the selection.
| | 02:53 | Anyway, I want the exact opposite.
| | 02:55 | I'm going to take this guy back down
to humanoid by dragging that turquoise
| | 02:59 | square right there next to the interior layer,
| | 03:02 | I'll drag it down to the humanoid layer
like so, so that goes ahead and moves him.
| | 03:06 | For now, I'm going to turn off interior.
| | 03:08 | We'll find a new use for it later.
| | 03:10 | Then I'm going to go ahead and zoom
out a little bit, so that we can see more
| | 03:14 | of the illustration.
| | 03:15 | I'm going to press the R key in
order to switch to the Rotate tool.
| | 03:19 | I'm going to Alt+Click or Option+Click on
that bridge of the nose point right there.
| | 03:23 | And then inside the Rotate dialog box,
I'm going to enter a 120 degrees instead of
| | 03:27 | negative, and click the Copy button,
because I'm going to fill this guy next.
| | 03:31 | I'm going to do so by switching to the
White Arrow tool and I'm going to click
| | 03:36 | off the path outline in
order to deselect everything.
| | 03:38 | I'll Alt+Click on the big old
path around the entire guy there.
| | 03:42 | Then I'll Shift+Alt+Click on each
of these other paths that I know is
| | 03:47 | currently filled with red.
| | 03:48 | Now I would love it, if I could
use that Select Similar Objects icon.
| | 03:52 | But I can't, because it would select not
only the reds in this guy, but the reds
| | 03:56 | in this guy as well.
| | 03:57 | So having selected all the red paths,
I'm going to switch over here to Muted
| | 04:01 | blue, and click on it to make it active. Oops!
| | 04:05 | I missed the thumb path,
darn it. You know what,
| | 04:08 | here is an easier way to work.
| | 04:09 | I'm going to undo that
modification there for a moment.
| | 04:12 | I'm going to click off the path outline.
| | 04:13 | It was telling you, I can't use this icon.
| | 04:15 | I can use this icon.
| | 04:17 | I just have to lock down the other group.
| | 04:19 | So I'm going to go ahead and twirl
open that humanoid layer right there,
| | 04:23 | lock this upright guy.
| | 04:26 | The other one's now unlocked.
| | 04:27 | I'll go ahead and Alt+Click or
Option+Click on the larger path outline.
| | 04:30 | Then I'll go up to this icon and click on it.
| | 04:33 | That should give me all of the red filled paths.
| | 04:36 | Then I'll go ahead and click on Muted blue.
| | 04:38 | And that time, it worked beautifully.
| | 04:40 | Now I might have worked in the other
order, because now I have to select
| | 04:43 | these guys independently.
| | 04:45 | So I guess I'm not the smartest
worker ever, but I'll go ahead and
| | 04:48 | Shift+Alt+Click on each one of these
circles, as well as this one right there.
| | 04:54 | Then I'll switch that to Muted yellow.
| | 04:56 | Let's see if I can learn
from our mistakes this time.
| | 04:58 | I'll go ahead and grab my Black Arrow tool.
| | 05:00 | Click on the path outline
to select the entire group.
| | 05:03 | Then I'll grab my Rotate
tool by pressing the R key.
| | 05:06 | I'll Alt+Click or Option+Click
on that bridge of the nose point.
| | 05:10 | A 120 degrees is a great Angle.
| | 05:12 | Click Copy in order to create yet another copy.
| | 05:15 | All right, this time, I'm
going to lock you down, mister.
| | 05:19 | I'm going to leave this guy
unlocked, so I can edit him.
| | 05:21 | I'll grab my Direct Selection tool.
| | 05:23 | Click off the shapes to deselect them,
Alt+Click or Option+Click on any one of
| | 05:28 | these yellow circles.
| | 05:29 | Go up to this icon, click on it.
| | 05:32 | Go ahead and change these
circles to Muted red this time.
| | 05:35 | Now I'll Alt+Click or Option+
Click on the big purple shape.
| | 05:38 | Go up to this icon in the
Control panel, and click on it.
| | 05:41 | Then switch these guys to Muted yellow,
and we end up getting this effect here.
| | 05:46 | All right, that's exactly what I wanted.
| | 05:48 | Thank gosh, I did it right this time.
| | 05:50 | Let's go ahead and unlock
those various items right there.
| | 05:54 | And, just to match the template, why not,
| | 05:57 | let's go ahead and show the
template layer once again.
| | 06:01 | I'm going to grab these guys, all
of them, just by marqueeing them.
| | 06:04 | I'm going to grab this purple guy's toe.
| | 06:07 | I'll drag it over here, and then, I'll
press the Alt or Option key, and I'll
| | 06:11 | release in order to create a
copy of these various guys.
| | 06:15 | Then I'll Alt+Drag or Option+Drag from the
tail like so in order to create a copy here.
| | 06:21 | Then apparently, I just want to copy this
guy - wait a sec, things are out of alignment.
| | 06:27 | What in the world is going on? Oh my gosh!
| | 06:29 | I have a problem.
| | 06:30 | These guys are out of alignment.
| | 06:32 | So let's press Ctrl+Z a
few times. No need to panic.
| | 06:35 | Let's just try to see if we can get to
the bottom of this, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Z again.
| | 06:39 | That would be Cmd+Z, Cmd+Z
again on the Mac in order to undo
| | 06:43 | those modifications.
| | 06:44 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Y, and turn
off this template layer, and see if we've
| | 06:48 | got proper alignment.
| | 06:50 | It looks like these guys are
absolutely aligned with each other.
| | 06:53 | So let's go and zoom back out.
| | 06:54 | I may just not have dragged things into
alignment properly when I grabbed his toe, for example.
| | 07:00 | I'll go ahead and grab it again.
| | 07:03 | I will snap it into alignment.
| | 07:04 | It looks like everybody is aligned, and
I'll press the Alt key or the Option key
| | 07:08 | on the Mac in order to
create a clone at that location.
| | 07:11 | I'll press Ctrl+Y, Cmd+Y,
and see if we have any gaps.
| | 07:16 | We don't, everything seems to be just fine.
| | 07:18 | All right, let's go ahead
and grab these guys again.
| | 07:21 | This time, I will drag by this anchor
point and I will snap it into alignment
| | 07:27 | with this location right there.
| | 07:28 | Press the Alt key or the Option key on the
Mac in order to create yet another clone.
| | 07:32 | So I guess I was just doing
some sloppy dragging there. Phew.
| | 07:35 | I thought something was really wrong with
my core objects. That would've scared me silly.
| | 07:41 | All right, I'm going to go ahead and grab
this guy like so and just move him over there.
| | 07:45 | Press the Alt key or the Option
key on the Mac in order to clone him.
| | 07:49 | Then I'll drag him by his toe point,
so I can snap him into alignment.
| | 07:53 | That goes ahead and snaps all
those guys as you see there.
| | 07:57 | Let's see how many other
paths we want to create here.
| | 07:59 | I'm going to go ahead and
bring back up my template layer.
| | 08:02 | It looks like we have a
few other things to fill in.
| | 08:04 | So I'll just go ahead and drag these guys out.
| | 08:06 | I'll press the Alt or
Option key to create copies.
| | 08:08 | Drag this into position.
| | 08:11 | I'm dragging by an anchor point, the
tail that is, and I'm moving it into the
| | 08:16 | proper location right there.
| | 08:18 | This guy should be in front at this point.
| | 08:20 | So I'll go ahead and drag him by his heel.
| | 08:22 | So you always want to drag by an anchor point.
| | 08:24 | I was saying that before.
| | 08:25 | Then I'll press the Alt key or the
Option key on the Mac in order to create a
| | 08:29 | clone at this location.
| | 08:31 | From here on out, you can just move
independent objects if you want to, that is,
| | 08:36 | independent guys here.
| | 08:37 | So, I'll go ahead and grab this guy.
| | 08:40 | Press the Alt or Option key as
I drag him to create a clone.
| | 08:42 | Grab him by his tail.
| | 08:44 | Snap him into alignment right there.
| | 08:46 | Then I could grab, let's
say, this guy, move him out.
| | 08:49 | Press the Alt or Option key
in order to create a clone.
| | 08:52 | Drag him by the top of his head,
and snap him into alignment.
| | 08:55 | He is the same guy that needs to go over here.
| | 08:58 | So let's press the Alt or Option key
as we drag him over. Grab the tail.
| | 09:03 | Snap him into alignment once again.
| | 09:05 | Finally, which one of the guys is he?
| | 09:07 | He is the purple guy, so I'll drag him out.
| | 09:09 | Press the Alt or Option key.
| | 09:11 | Grab the base of his tail, and
drag him into alignment right there.
| | 09:16 | And we now have a collection
of these interlocking dudes.
| | 09:19 | I'm so relieved that everybody
is in alignment with each other.
| | 09:22 | In the next exercise, I'll show
you how we determine the rectangular
| | 09:26 | perimeter of these objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Establishing a rectangular tile| 00:00 | I've saved my progress as Heap of humanoids.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise, we're going to take
our successfully interlocking objects and
| | 00:07 | we're going to convert them into a
rectangular tile pattern, but how?
| | 00:11 | See the thing is, even if you get your
objects exactly interlocking like this,
| | 00:16 | if there are no gaps whatsoever, and
everything looks absolutely perfect, it is
| | 00:21 | by no means implicitly obvious
where that rectangle should be.
| | 00:25 | By the way, you have to mark a
rectangle using the Rectangle tool.
| | 00:29 | So let me show you.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to switchover to the humanoid layer.
| | 00:32 | Make sure it's active.
| | 00:34 | Then I'll grab my Rectangle tool either
by clicking on it, or pressing the M key.
| | 00:38 | Then I could just draw a rectangle
like so in the middle of the shape.
| | 00:42 | Of course, I'm covering
everything up, so that's no good.
| | 00:44 | Up here in the Control panel,
I'm going the Fill to None.
| | 00:48 | Then I'm going to change the Stroke to White.
| | 00:52 | Then I'll zoom in on my
rectangle to see if that's what I want.
| | 00:57 | And how could it possibly be what I want?
| | 00:59 | I mean, we need to see
everything repeating properly.
| | 01:04 | So if I were to merely
select an arbitrary area, like so.
| | 01:07 | We would have this guy's shoulder, the
yellow guy's shoulder, upside down man, coming
| | 01:13 | right into the purple guy's shoulder over here.
| | 01:16 | So what we need, is we need to
surround our various objects similarly.
| | 01:21 | So we need to look for
common points of reference.
| | 01:25 | So I'm going to get rid of that
rectangle just by deleting it.
| | 01:28 | What's looking pretty good for me
is the top of this yellow guy's head.
| | 01:32 | Notice that we've got another yellow guy next
door, and he has got a top of the head too.
| | 01:36 | So that's good.
| | 01:37 | Then down here, we've got yellow guys
that are more or less directly below.
| | 01:41 | Now I say more or less, because
they aren't actually directly below.
| | 01:44 | They're out of alignment.
| | 01:46 | But we'll fix that momentarily.
| | 01:47 | Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and
draw a rectangle from the top of that
| | 01:51 | guy's head, the upside down yellow
guy, to about the top of the other upside
| | 01:56 | down yellow guy's head.
| | 01:57 | But you can see over here in the
right-hand side, but you can see I'm
| | 02:00 | not aligning properly.
| | 02:01 | So I'll have to fix that in just a moment.
| | 02:03 | Then I'll drag down here.
| | 02:05 | And I can't even see, because I didn't auto
scroll and Illustrator's not keeping up
| | 02:08 | with me, so I'll just release
| | 02:10 | and hope for the best, and
the best wasn't very good.
| | 02:13 | But anyway, that's the way things are.
| | 02:15 | So what I need to do now is I need to
take these massive interlocking guys and I
| | 02:20 | need to rotate them slightly, so
they fit better in the rectangle.
| | 02:24 | So I'm going to press Ctrl+A, or Cmd+A
on the Mac to select all these guys.
| | 02:28 | My gosh, that's so easy to figure
out with all those selection edges.
| | 02:32 | I'm going to Shift+Click with the
Black Arrow tool, Shift+Click on the
| | 02:36 | rectangle, because I don't want to move it.
| | 02:38 | All right, now I'll press
Ctrl+H or Cmd +H on the Mac.
| | 02:41 | Now that I have confirmed the rectangle
is deselected, so that I'm getting rid
| | 02:44 | of the selection edges, just so I
can see what the heck I'm doing.
| | 02:48 | I'll get my Rotate tool, which I can
get by pressing the R key of course, and
| | 02:51 | I'll click at that point of alignment
where the top of that yellow guy's head is
| | 02:56 | indeed aligned properly.
| | 02:57 | That will become the origin for my rotation.
| | 03:01 | Then I'll go ahead and drag these
guys down, so they at least appear to be
| | 03:05 | aligned, and I'm not sure if
I'm doing this right or not.
| | 03:08 | So I'm going to have to zoom in a little bit.
| | 03:10 | Let's press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on the
Mac in order to switch to the Outline mode.
| | 03:15 | I'm seeing too many of these guys,
because the template layer is still turned on.
| | 03:18 | So I'll turn it off. And what I want to do,
| | 03:20 | I'll leave this origin point right where it is.
| | 03:22 | I'm not sure that the top of that
head is exactly where it needs to be.
| | 03:25 | So I'm going to drag back up like so,
and I'm going to take another swing at it.
| | 03:29 | I'm going to drag it down until the top
point of that other yellow head exactly
| | 03:34 | aligns to the top of that rectangle right there.
| | 03:38 | Then I'll check these guys down below.
| | 03:40 | Make sure their heads are aligning.
| | 03:41 | Well, at least they are on
the straight and narrow here.
| | 03:43 | They're aligned horizontally.
| | 03:45 | They're not aligned to the bottom of the
rectangle, but that's the rectangle's fault.
| | 03:48 | So I'm going to switch to the Direct
Selection tool and I'm going to press
| | 03:51 | Ctrl+H once again to see my selection edges.
| | 03:54 | I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A, Cmd+Shift+A
on a Mac to deselect everything, and
| | 03:58 | I'm going to grab this corner point by
clicking on it, and this corner point as
| | 04:02 | well by clicking on it.
| | 04:03 | Then I'll drag it up while pressing
the Shift key, because this has to be
| | 04:08 | an absolute rectangle,
| | 04:10 | by the way, you've got to
constrain this shape to a rectangle.
| | 04:12 | You can't let it get rotated or
slanted or anything like that.
| | 04:16 | Then I'll release my mouse button once
I've snapped into alignment there, and
| | 04:20 | I'll release the Shift key as well.
| | 04:21 | Now I'm going to click off the path outline.
| | 04:23 | I'm going to click on this corner point again.
| | 04:27 | I'm going to scroll up inside of my
illustration, and Shift+Click on this guy.
| | 04:31 | I'll drag it over while I press the
Shift key until it snaps into alignment.
| | 04:35 | Now we have the rectangle
exactly where it needs to be.
| | 04:39 | So it should be snapped into alignment.
| | 04:41 | If I press Ctrl+Y or Cmd +Y, I can confirm.
| | 04:44 | We should have a rectangle that's
snapped exactly into alignment with each of
| | 04:48 | the upside down yellow guy's heads.
| | 04:51 | Sure enough, it looks like we
have exactly that kind of alignment.
| | 04:54 | Okay, now having done that, leave the
rectangle there, let's get rid of the
| | 04:59 | dudes we don't need.
| | 05:00 | So I'm going to get my Black Arrow tool
and I'm going to select anybody who is
| | 05:04 | not at least partially inside the rectangle.
| | 05:07 | If they're even partially
in the rectangle, leave them.
| | 05:10 | But if they aren't, like this yellow
guy is not actually contributing, because
| | 05:14 | even though his corner is right there
inside of the rectangle, there is already
| | 05:19 | another corner point that's filling in the gaps.
| | 05:21 | So we already have a stroke that's going
into the rectangle from the purple guy there.
| | 05:25 | So we don't need the gold guy.
| | 05:27 | I'll Shift+Click on him as well.
Him we need, because his tail goes in.
| | 05:31 | Him we need, because his hand goes in.
| | 05:33 | Him we don't need, because nothing goes in.
| | 05:34 | Him we need, because just the
little teeny top of his finger goes in.
| | 05:38 | So you've really got to keep a close eye.
| | 05:40 | This red guy, we need him, because the
top of his hair is inside the rectangle;
| | 05:45 | this purple guy, his hand's in the rectangle;
| | 05:47 | this red guy, his arm and
leg are in the rectangle.
| | 05:50 | These two guys, not in the
rectangle, they can come out.
| | 05:53 | And that's it, everybody else has to stay.
| | 05:55 | So just these two guys over here,
and these three to four guys, actually
| | 05:59 | this fourth guy as well.
| | 06:01 | Once you've selected and pressed the
Backspace key or the Delete key to get rid of
| | 06:04 | them, and now we have a
rectangular tile pattern.
| | 06:08 | Believe it or not, this is what rectangular
tile patterns look like inside of Illustrator.
| | 06:13 | In the next exercise, I'll show you
how to save this pattern as a swatch, so
| | 06:17 | that we can apply it as a fill to
an object here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Defining a tile pattern| 00:00 | In this exercise I am going to show you
how to take this collection of repeating
| | 00:03 | objects and define it as a tile pattern.
| | 00:06 | Now as you may recall even though it
doesn't look like it, we have an area that
| | 00:11 | repeats inside of a rectangle.
| | 00:13 | So in other words, the top of this
guy's head, for example, in the upper
| | 00:16 | right-hand corner of the rectangle,
will continue on into his body over here in
| | 00:21 | the upper left-hand corner of the
rectangle, and down here in the bottom-right
| | 00:26 | corner, this guy's face descends
into the bottom of the rectangle and it
| | 00:31 | reappears at the top of the
rectangle along with his arm.
| | 00:34 | So everything is going to repeat
exactly right, knock on wood, but how in the
| | 00:39 | world do we define this thing as a tile pattern?
| | 00:42 | Well, it's kind of weird the way it works,
because it goes against a few rules that
| | 00:45 | we've learned so far.
| | 00:47 | I was telling you that if we were
using a rectangle to create a clipping
| | 00:51 | mask, this back in a previous chapter,
why then that rectangle has to be in
| | 00:56 | front of everything.
| | 00:57 | Well, for this rectangle to define the tile
pattern, it needs to be at the back of the stack.
| | 01:03 | Also, very important, it can
have no fill and no stroke.
| | 01:08 | If any of those things are not true,
| | 01:11 | if it's at the top of the stack, or the
middle of the stack, or it has a stroke,
| | 01:14 | or it has a fill, that's going to
ruin everything, and basically Illustrator
| | 01:18 | ignores the rectangle and just creates
this big area of white around our pattern
| | 01:24 | and we don't get a seamless repeat.
| | 01:26 | So here's what you do.
| | 01:28 | Go ahead and grab that rectangle right there,
make sure both Fill and Stroke are set to None.
| | 01:32 | So our Fill is None but our Stroke is not.
| | 01:35 | Click on the Stroke icon up here in
the Control panel, change it to None.
| | 01:38 | Next, what you need to do is
right-click anywhere inside the
| | 01:42 | illustration window, choose Arrange,
and then choose Send to Back, or you
| | 01:46 | can press Ctrl+Shift+Left Bracket,
| | 01:48 | Cmd +Shift+Left Bracket on the Mac, and
now the rectangle is in back.
| | 01:52 | All right, now we need to select the
entire contents of this layer, and the
| | 01:56 | easiest way to do that is to go over to
the humanoid layer and click that little
| | 02:00 | black wedge in the upper right-hand
corner, and that goes ahead and selects
| | 02:03 | everything, including that
rectangle; very important.
| | 02:06 | And now couple of different ways to work.
| | 02:08 | One way is you can just go ahead and
grab this colossal group of objects here
| | 02:13 | and drag it and drop it into the
Swatches panel, but if you do that, notice that
| | 02:17 | Illustrator will assign an automatic
name, in my case New Pattern Swatch 5.
| | 02:21 | For you, it might be New Pattern Swatch 1.
| | 02:24 | It really doesn't matter.
| | 02:25 | That's not the way I want to go.
| | 02:26 | So I will press Ctrl+Z, Cmd +Z on
a Mac to undo the creation of that new
| | 02:30 | tile pattern. And instead, I'll go up
here to the Edit menu and choose the
| | 02:35 | Define Pattern command.
| | 02:36 | So you go to a totally different
location. And this has a lot to do with the fact
| | 02:41 | that this is a very old
feature inside of Illustrator.
| | 02:44 | Tile patterns were first
introduced in Illustrator '88.
| | 02:48 | So way back in 1988. And back then we
didn't really have panels like this and so
| | 02:53 | this command is kind of a
leftover. But anyway, go ahead and choose it.
| | 02:56 | You get the New Swatch dialog box and
then you go ahead and name the swatch, and
| | 03:00 | I am going to call it Troglodytes even
though it's kind of weird word but that's
| | 03:03 | how it's spelled, and then click OK
in order to create that new pattern.
| | 03:08 | Now let's see if it works.
| | 03:09 | I am going to scroll up to the top of
my layers panel, I am going to turn on
| | 03:13 | that test shape layer right there.
| | 03:15 | I am going to click on the boundary
of that white rectangle, and I am going
| | 03:18 | ahead and assign this Troglodytes swatch,
and we'll see if it repeats properly, and
| | 03:23 | sure enough it does.
| | 03:25 | So thanks to the fact that we drew that
rectangle and we drew it properly, and we
| | 03:30 | got rid of its fill, and we got rid of
its stroke, and we sent it to back, and the
| | 03:33 | whole number, we ended up getting an
exactly properly defined tile pattern that
| | 03:39 | repeats seamlessly throughout any path outline.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a few color variations| 00:00 | I have saved my progress
as Troglodyte pattern.ai.
| | 00:03 | In this exercise, I'll show you how to
create a couple of color variations on that tile.
| | 00:07 | I am going to turn off the test shape
layer, go back to humanoid here, and I am
| | 00:12 | going to click on this little black
wedge to select all the objects, and I'll
| | 00:15 | press Ctrl+C, Cmd+C on
a Mac in order to copy them.
| | 00:18 | Then I am going to turn off humanoid.
| | 00:20 | I am going to switch to the interior
layer, turn it on here in the Layers panel,
| | 00:25 | click on the flyout menu, and make sure
Paste Remembers Layers is turned off.
| | 00:30 | So if it has a check mark go ahead
and choose the command to turn it off. And
| | 00:33 | then press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F on a Mac in
order paste those guys onto the interior layer.
| | 00:39 | All right.
| | 00:39 | Then I am going to click off of the
shapes in order to deselect them, and I
| | 00:42 | am going to change the name of this layer to
variations like so and then I will click OK.
| | 00:48 | Now to start change in the colors around.
I am going to grab my White Arrow tool,
| | 00:52 | because all these shapes are
enclosed inside groups, and I Alt+click or
| | 00:57 | Option+click on one of the
purple path outlines for example.
| | 01:00 | I'll go up to this Select Similar
Objects icon, click on it in order to select
| | 01:05 | all the purple shapes, and then I am
going to switch these guys out for garish
| | 01:09 | orange ,let's say, what the heck.
| | 01:11 | Then I am going to Alt+click or Option+
click on one of the muted red shapes, go
| | 01:16 | up to this Select Similar Objects icon,
click on it and switch these guys out
| | 01:20 | for garish green, and then I'll go
ahead and grab any one of the yellow shapes
| | 01:26 | right there, Select Similar Objects
once again, and then finally, I'll switch
| | 01:29 | these guys out with garish
purple and we get this effect here.
| | 01:33 | And then all I do is I just go ahead
and select all these objects again by
| | 01:36 | clicking the black wedge in the upper-
right corner of the layer, and then I go
| | 01:40 | up to the Edit menu, choose Define
Pattern, and I'll call these guys Clubsters
| | 01:45 | which is my original name for them, because
they are so hip with their vibrant colors,
| | 01:49 | and I'll click OK and now we
have a little Clubsters swatch.
| | 01:53 | Then finally, I want to switch
these guys out for gradients.
| | 01:57 | So I am going to press Ctrl+Shift+A,
Cmd+Shift+A on a Mac to deselect all
| | 02:00 | the shapes, and actually
that's not quite what I want to do.
| | 02:04 | I want to select them all.
| | 02:05 | I am going to press Ctrl+A, Cmd+A on
the Mac, the only shape I don't want to
| | 02:08 | select is the rectangle.
| | 02:10 | So I'll Shift+Alt+click on it, Shift+
Option+click on the Mac, if you can find
| | 02:15 | that rectangle, that's what you
wanted to do, to deselect it independently
| | 02:19 | of the other shapes.
| | 02:20 | I've emphasized this many times before
but if you're going to take advantage
| | 02:23 | of that technique, you have to make
sure that you're selecting objects by
| | 02:28 | their path outline.
| | 02:29 | So if that didn't work for you, you
press Ctrl+K, Cmd+K on the Mac to bring
| | 02:32 | up the Preferences dialog box.
| | 02:34 | You switch to Selection and Anchor
Display and you turn on Object Selection by
| | 02:38 | Path Only so you can select through
filled objects inside of your document.
| | 02:43 | Anyway, I will click Cancel
because it was already selected.
| | 02:45 | I have got all these guys active now.
| | 02:47 | So I can see what I am doing.
| | 02:48 | I am going to press Ctrl+H, Cmd+
H on the Mac to hide those selection
| | 02:51 | edges, and I am going ahead and fill
these shapes with the radial gradient
| | 02:55 | that I have creates in advance.
| | 02:56 | It's here in the Swatches panel
and it's called Copper Radial.
| | 02:59 | Go ahead and click on that and
you will get this wacky effect here.
| | 03:03 | That's not what I meant to do at all.
| | 03:05 | Gosh I think that just looks wild.
| | 03:09 | Well you could work with that if you want to.
| | 03:11 | What I've done, the problem is that
I'm filling every single path outline and
| | 03:15 | many of these paths were not
meant to be filled on a first place.
| | 03:18 | So I am going to press Ctrl+Z, Cmd+
Z on the Mac to undo that modification
| | 03:22 | and you know what I am going to have do
here is I am going to have to click off
| | 03:26 | the shapes in order to deselect them.
| | 03:28 | Then I'll press Ctrl+H or
Cmd+H to see the selection edges.
| | 03:32 | Go ahead and Alt+click or
Option+click on any of the filled objects.
| | 03:36 | It's important you get a filled object,
and then go ahead and click on Select
| | 03:40 | Similar objects in order to select all
those filled objects and they should just
| | 03:44 | be, by the way, you want just Fill Color.
| | 03:47 | So that's what should be selected.
| | 03:49 | Then we will fill those guys with Copper Radial.
| | 03:52 | Then we need to get the green guys
and the orange guys independently.
| | 03:54 | So I will Alt+click on one of the green
guys there, one of the green fill guys,
| | 03:58 | click on Select Similar objects, then
click on Copper Radial, and then finally
| | 04:03 | Alt+click or Option+click on one of the
orange shapes, go up to Select Similar
| | 04:07 | Objects, and then finally, click
Copper Radial in order to apply that.
| | 04:11 | Now the big problem at this point is I
want each one of these groups of objects,
| | 04:17 | in order to be filled with a single
continuous gradient, and I am going to do
| | 04:23 | that, by the way, in a fairly labor-
intensive way because there is kind of no
| | 04:27 | other way to work here.
| | 04:28 | I have got to get rid of all of
these dudes here except for one, because
| | 04:33 | otherwise I am going to have to
operate on every single one of these
| | 04:36 | guys independently.
| | 04:37 | So I am going to select the entire
contents of this layer by clicking in the black
| | 04:41 | wedge in the upper-right corner of the
layer there in the Layers panel, and then I'm
| | 04:46 | going to Shift+click with the Black Arrow
tool, Shift+click on the outline of one
| | 04:50 | of the guys in order to deselect him,
and then Shift+click on him again, that's
| | 04:55 | not what I meant to do, Shift+
click on him to turn him off.
| | 04:57 | Let me see if I can zoom in a little
better here, and then Shift+click on the
| | 05:01 | outline of the rectangle, because I
want to keep the rectangle. And then
| | 05:03 | everybody else has to go away.
| | 05:05 | It's heartbreaking but, it's the way it is.
| | 05:07 | Now with this guy, the only Troglodyte
left standing, I'm going to Alt+click or
| | 05:13 | Option+click on the big path outline
with the White Arrow tool and then I'll go
| | 05:18 | up to this icon, and Select the Similar Objects;
| | 05:21 | that way I am just selecting the
filled objects and nothing more.
| | 05:24 | We don't want the purely stroked objects.
| | 05:26 | I'm going to press the G key to get to
my Gradient tool and I think I'm going to
| | 05:32 | be in for a surprise. Yeah.
| | 05:33 | There's a ton of these gradient
annotators going on this time around.
| | 05:37 | Anyway, I am just going to drag from
a neutral location like so out to the
| | 05:41 | parameter and that way we're filling
the guy with a single continuous gradient
| | 05:46 | so that we have smooth color transitions
going on inside of this object, phew! All right.
| | 05:51 | Now I'm going to switch back to my White
Arrow tool and then I am going to click
| | 05:55 | off the shapes to deselect them, Alt+
click or Option+click on the main path
| | 05:59 | right there and I'm going to change
its stroke to 2 points thick like so in
| | 06:04 | order to give him a thicker stroke,
just around the big border. All right.
| | 06:07 | Now let's go ahead and see
if we can replicate them.
| | 06:10 | I'll press Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on
the Mac so that we can see him and the
| | 06:14 | rectangle and I probably want to be zoomed in.
| | 06:17 | Now this is nerve-racking because
we have got to make sure we align him
| | 06:20 | properly once again.
| | 06:21 | I'll click on the entire path with the
Black Arrow tool this time in order to
| | 06:25 | select the entire group.
| | 06:27 | I'll press the R key to get my Rotate tool.
| | 06:29 | I going to zoom back in, actually.
| | 06:31 | Alt+click or Option+click
on the bridge of the nose.
| | 06:33 | A 120, click Copy, looks like I got
him, press Ctrl+D, Cmd+D on the Mac
| | 06:38 | in order to duplicate him, and now
let's go ahead and take this group of
| | 06:43 | objects here, and just go through the mind
numbing process of replicating them once again.
| | 06:49 | So when you decide you want to make
changes to the colors, sometimes it can be a
| | 06:53 | little more painful then you might
have been prepared for it. All right.
| | 06:58 | I'll press Ctrl+D. I should be able to
press Ctrl+D now in order to duplicate
| | 07:02 | these guys all the way over here;
| | 07:04 | that's a Cmd+D on the Mac obviously.
| | 07:07 | Then I am going to take this guy by
the tail, and I am going to drag him into
| | 07:10 | alignment with this location right
there, and I'll press the Alt key or the
| | 07:14 | Option key on the Mac in order to
duplicate him, and then I'll grab that tail
| | 07:18 | point again and I'll duplicate these
guys to this location, and I am pressing the
| | 07:21 | Alt key or the Option key as I release.
| | 07:24 | Then finally, I'll grab this guy
by the foot, and that isn't finally.
| | 07:27 | I still need one more, but anyway, go
ahead and drag him down to this location,
| | 07:30 | it snaps into alignment, press the Alt
key, the Option key on the Mac in order
| | 07:33 | to duplicate and then grab this guy by
the tail, press the Alt or the Option key,
| | 07:39 | release in order to duplicate.
| | 07:41 | Now I have too many objects once again.
| | 07:43 | I've got this guy that I don't need.
| | 07:44 | I've got this guy that I don't need.
| | 07:47 | This guy I do need.
| | 07:48 | This guy I do need.
| | 07:49 | This guy I do not need.
| | 07:51 | These guys I do need. Him I do not need.
| | 07:54 | The rest of them are partially inside. Oops!
| | 07:57 | You're not, go away. All right.
| | 07:59 | Everybody else inside. Grab them, press
Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y on the Mac so I can
| | 08:03 | see all these guys.
| | 08:04 | So I will press Ctrl+H, actually, or
Cmd+H. They look good. All right.
| | 08:09 | Then I'll go up to the Edit menu,
choose Define Pattern, and I am going to call
| | 08:13 | these guys Bronze men and click OK,
and we have yet another tile pattern.
| | 08:18 | Let's check it out.
| | 08:19 | I am going to turn on test shape.
| | 08:21 | I am going to turn off variations.
| | 08:23 | I am going on click on this
central rectangle, like so.
| | 08:26 | I can't see its selection edges because
they're turned off right now I presume
| | 08:30 | it's selected. And then I'll go
ahead and click on Clubsters. Perfect!
| | 08:34 | I knew that one was going to work
though because we didn't have to make any
| | 08:37 | major modifications.
| | 08:38 | Let's try out Bronze men this time,
and everything works out hunky-dory. And
| | 08:43 | that's how you go about creating
color variations on your tile patterns
| | 08:47 | here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Protecting patterns from transformations| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to show
you how to move or otherwise transform
| | 00:04 | objects that are either filled or
stroked with tile patterns without affecting
| | 00:08 | the tile patterns themselves.
| | 00:10 | That way if you have multiple
overlapping objects that are all filled with the
| | 00:13 | same tile pattern or similar tile
patterns as in our case, then you can do
| | 00:17 | anything you want to the
filled or stroked objects,
| | 00:20 | and the tile patterns will
continue to align with each other.
| | 00:23 | I've saved my changes as Color variations.ai.
| | 00:26 | And currently I have got this
central rectangle filled with the bronze men.
| | 00:31 | I'm going to change that fill by switching it
here in the Swatches palette to Troglodytes.
| | 00:36 | And my fill is active, so I end up
changing my fill here inside the illustration.
| | 00:41 | Now I am going to add a big
circle with the Ellipse tool.
| | 00:44 | And it's going to provide us with a
kind of magnifying glass into a different
| | 00:48 | version of these troglodytes.
| | 00:50 | And so I will just drag while pressing
the Shift key in order to create this big
| | 00:54 | circle like so and then I'll release.
| | 00:56 | And it comes in filled
with the same tile patter.
| | 00:59 | I am going to switch it over to
the more colorful Clubsters here.
| | 01:03 | And then I am going to increase my
stroke weight to something like, let's
| | 01:07 | start with 40 for starters, and it comes in
as this sort of dingy gray, that's interesting.
| | 01:14 | I am going to click on this little
Stroke swatch and switch it to rich black.
| | 01:18 | And then I am going to increase the
stroke value from 40 to let's say 44, and
| | 01:24 | press the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac.
| | 01:26 | And I am going to add a drop shadow as
well, by going up to the Effect menu,
| | 01:30 | and notice, because the stroke is active, I
will assign the drop shadow just to the stroke.
| | 01:34 | So I will go to Stylize > Drop Shadow,
if you load dekeKeys, you can press
| | 01:37 | Ctrl+Alt+E, Cmd+Option+E on the Mac.
| | 01:41 | And these are the settings I want to apply.
| | 01:44 | So Multiply, an Opacity of 100%, X and Y
Offset set to 7 points a piece, and Blur set to 0.
| | 01:51 | That's just going to quicken things up.
| | 01:52 | So we don't have to spend a lot of time
waiting for that Gaussian blur to resolve.
| | 01:56 | And I will turn on the Preview check box
and that may be a little dark, actually
| | 02:00 | let's take the Opacity value down
to 75%, let's say, press the tab key;
| | 02:04 | that looks better to me.
| | 02:06 | And I will click OK.
| | 02:07 | And now I want to add another stroke that
contains yet another variation on this tile pattern.
| | 02:13 | So I will drop down to the Add New
Stroke icon, click on it, or I could press
| | 02:18 | Ctrl+Alt+Slash, Cmd+Option+Slash on the Mac.
| | 02:21 | I will change the Stroke
Weight value to 40 points.
| | 02:24 | So we will have the effect of a two-
point black stroke on either side, because
| | 02:28 | 44 point minus 40 is 4, split in
half, we have 2 points on either side.
| | 02:34 | And then I'm going to change that
stroke from black to this final guy
| | 02:38 | right there, Bronze men.
| | 02:39 | So we have this effect right here.
| | 02:41 | Now then, notice how we have absolute
and impeccable alignment between all of
| | 02:46 | these guys inside the tile pattern.
| | 02:48 | So one flows right into the other.
| | 02:50 | And the analogy I make is to a very nice shirt.
| | 02:53 | If you've ever got a patterned shirt
that is tailored nicely, probably very
| | 02:57 | expensive as well, then the idea is everything
about shirt should align when you button it up.
| | 03:02 | And the same is true with these tile patterns.
| | 03:04 | They should remain in absolute
alignment, no matter what we do.
| | 03:07 | But if I drag this path to a
different location, why then, the Stroke & Fill
| | 03:13 | are still in alignment,
| | 03:14 | because they're all part of the same
object. However, they are not aligned with
| | 03:17 | the background anymore, because both of
the tile patterns, both the Fill & the
| |
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