11. Layers and GroupsWelcome to One-on-One| 00:04 | Hello! I am Deke McClelland.
| | 00:06 | Welcome to Illustrator CS6
One-on-One: Intermediate.
| | 00:10 | Part 2 in a series of four courses devoted
to your ultimate mastery of the world's most
| | 00:16 | powerful vector-based drawing program.
| | 00:20 | This course and the larger one-on-one series
is all about project-based learning. That
| | 00:25 | is to say, you learn by doing.
| | 00:28 | And by actually experiencing Illustrator firsthand,
you'll be better equipped to create your own
| | 00:33 | artwork in the future.
| | 00:35 | In this course, I'll show you how to assign
strokes to your path outlines, complete with
| | 00:40 | dashes, custom arrowheads
and variable line weights.
| | 00:44 | We'll explore how to modify gradients directly inside of
path outline, as well as apply gradients to a stroke.
| | 00:52 | You'll see how to create seamlessly repeating
tile patterns using the new pattern generator,
| | 00:57 | which is a dream to work with.
| | 00:59 | You'll learn how to combine simple shapes to create
more complex ones using Pathfinder operations.
| | 01:05 | You'll see how to create interlocking paths
using the amazing Live Paint feature, and
| | 01:10 | I'll show you how to place and
modify photographic images.
| | 01:15 | The result is a
contextualized learning program.
| | 01:18 | Illustrator's features make sense because
you apply them to a clearly defined task,
| | 01:23 | and you leave each chapter with
a real sense of accomplishment.
| | 01:27 | I hope there are moments where you feel
"I rule! I did it, and I can do more!"
| | 01:34 | In this first chapter, I'll show you how to
work with Illustrator's primary containers,
| | 01:38 | layers, and groups.
| | 01:40 | I know, it doesn't sound terribly exciting,
but I assure you it is, and it goes to the
| | 01:46 | heart of how Illustrator works.
| | 01:48 | Here, let me show you.
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| Creating and moving objects onto layers| 00:00 | Over the course of this chapter, we're going to
take the word good and we're going transform
| | 00:04 | it into this final effect.
| | 00:06 | We're going to start things off in this movie
by performing a few organizational chores.
| | 00:10 | Specifically, I'll show you how to create
layers and move objects between layers.
| | 00:15 | Now if you have access to this exercise file, go ahead
and make sure that the Layers panel is up on screen.
| | 00:20 | And you can get to it by going to the Window
menu and choosing the layers command, or you
| | 00:24 | can press the F7 key which is a pretty common
keyboard shortcut across the Creative Suite applications.
| | 00:30 | Notice that I have one and only one layer.
| | 00:32 | I'll go ahead and expand it by clicking on this
little triangle, and that twirls the layer open.
| | 00:37 | You can see that even though this is a very
simple illustration at this point, I've got
| | 00:41 | a total of 18 objects, all clumped together
inside of a layer that doesn't have unique name.
| | 00:47 | So I'm going to start things off
by cleaning up this document.
| | 00:51 | Notice this ornamental frame here.
| | 00:52 | I created it using a feature known as a
Pattern Brush inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:57 | I was able to create the Pattern Brush by
assembling a few objects onto a separate artboard.
| | 01:02 | I'll go ahead and switch to that artboard
by pressing Shift+Page Down, and then I'm
| | 01:06 | going to zoom in a little bit as well.
| | 01:09 | Let's say I want to take these objects because
I don't really need them anymore, and I want
| | 01:12 | to offload them to another layer.
| | 01:15 | But I'd start things off by twirling close
layer 1 here, and you can create a new layer
| | 01:19 | by clicking on the little page icon at the
bottom of the Layers panel, but that's going
| | 01:24 | to create an unnamed layer.
| | 01:25 | If you want to name the layer as you make it,
then press the Alt key or the Option key
| | 01:29 | on the Mac, and then click that page icon, and
that will bring up the Layer Options dialog box.
| | 01:34 | I'll go ahead, and call this layer Patterns,
and then I'll change its color to Teal.
| | 01:38 | That's just a personal preference
where this document is concerned.
| | 01:41 | Now I'll go ahead and click
OK and we've got a new layer.
| | 01:44 | Now I'm going to select all the objects on
this artboard by going up to the Select menu
| | 01:47 | and choosing All on Active Artboard, or you can
press Ctrl+Alt+A or Command+Option+A on the Mac.
| | 01:53 | Now notice the selection edges appear in blue,
and that's because the color currently associated
| | 01:59 | with layer one is blue.
| | 02:00 | If I want them to appear in a different color,
then I just double-click on layer 1 in order
| | 02:04 | to bring up the Layer Options dialog box,
and then I change the color to say Gold.
| | 02:10 | Then I'll click OK.
| | 02:11 | Now all of those
selection edges change to gold.
| | 02:15 | We also have this little colored square there that
indicates the selected items inside of layer 1.
| | 02:21 | If I want to move these items to the Patterns
layer, I just need to drag that little square
| | 02:26 | to the patterns layer.
| | 02:27 | Notice now all of my
selection edges change to Teal.
| | 02:30 | All right, now I'll go ahead and turn off
the patterns layer in order to hide those
| | 02:34 | objects, and I'll press Shift+Page Up in order
to return to the first artboard which contains
| | 02:39 | my illustration in progress.
| | 02:41 | Notice behind the artwork, we have
photographic image that I placed inside the document.
| | 02:46 | Problem is it's pretty hard to edit artwork
when it's set against the full image like
| | 02:50 | this, because what ends up happening is anytime
you click inside the artwork, you end up selecting
| | 02:55 | the image instead of one of the other objects.
| | 02:57 | So what I'd like to do is place that image on
its own independent layer and lock it down.
| | 03:02 | I want to create this layer behind layer 1 and
there's a couple of different ways to do that.
| | 03:07 | One is to press the Ctrl and Alt keys, that
would be the Command and Option keys on the
| | 03:11 | Mac, and click on that little page icon.
| | 03:13 | And notice, that brings up the Layer Options
dialog box, and it creates the new layer behind
| | 03:18 | the previously active one.
| | 03:20 | Another way to work is to press the keyboard
shortcut; Ctrl+Alt+L or Command+Option+L on the Mac.
| | 03:25 | Now I don't know if it was Adobe's intention
that the only keyboard shortcut for making
| | 03:29 | a new layer inside the program would create
a new layer in back of the active one, but
| | 03:34 | it's ultimately because of the keyboard
shortcut, because Ctrl and Alt are involved on a PC
| | 03:38 | or Command and Option on the Mac.
| | 03:40 | In any case, that's the way it works.
| | 03:42 | I'm going to go ahead and
call this new layer image.
| | 03:45 | I'll change its color to violet
let's say, and then I'll click OK.
| | 03:50 | Now with the image selected, and you can
tell it's selected, because we have this big X
| | 03:54 | across the document window, I'll go ahead
and drag that orange square that indicates
| | 03:58 | the image down to the image layer, and
then the big X on screen changes to violet.
| | 04:03 | And I'll also go ahead and lock down this layer by
clicking in the column right next to the eyes.
| | 04:08 | That will go ahead and give me a lock and
it also automatically deselects the image.
| | 04:12 | All right, now I want to rename layer 1.
| | 04:16 | So I'll double-click on its name, and I'll
call it design, and then press the Enter key
| | 04:19 | or the Return key on the Mac.
| | 04:21 | Finally, I'd like to be able
to see these layers bigger.
| | 04:24 | In particular, I'd like to see the objects
on the layers inside of the Layers panel,
| | 04:29 | so we have larger thumbnails.
| | 04:30 | You may recall you can achieve that by clicking
on the little flyout icon in the upper-right
| | 04:34 | corner of the panel, and then
choosing the last command, Panel Options.
| | 04:39 | What I typically do is select
Other, and then dial in a value.
| | 04:43 | And for this particular illustration, I'm
going to enter a value 60 pixels, and then
| | 04:47 | click OK, and that gives me much
larger thumbnails as you can see here.
| | 04:51 | Bear in mind however that that is
not a Global Preference setting.
| | 04:55 | The size of the thumbnails is saved along with
the document when you choose the Save command.
| | 04:59 | And that friends is how you create layers and
move objects between layers here inside Illustrator.
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| Creating and using sublayers| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how
to create and employ a sublayer.
| | 00:03 | A sublayer is just what it sounds
like; it's a layer inside of a layer.
| | 00:08 | Sublayers are great when you want to take a
group of objects and either lock them down
| | 00:12 | or hide them while keeping
them inside a given layer.
| | 00:15 | For example, let's say I want to protect
everything that's currently blue inside my illustration.
| | 00:19 | Then I would go ahead and partially
marquee these objects using my Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:24 | Taking care not to move too far up
because then I'll select the word good.
| | 00:28 | So I'll select pretty low like so, and that
selects everything except the word good.
| | 00:32 | Now if I twirl open the Design layer, you
can see these orange squares next to each
| | 00:36 | one of the selected objects.
| | 00:38 | Now there's a couple ways
to create a new sublayer.
| | 00:41 | One is, to make sure that the Design layer
is active as it is, and then you drop down
| | 00:45 | to this Create New Sublayer icon, and either
click on it if you want to create an unnamed
| | 00:50 | sublayer, or if you want to name the thing as you
make it, then Alt+Click or Option+Click on that icon.
| | 00:55 | I'll go ahead and call my layer frame, and I
want to assign a color that's complementary
| | 01:00 | to the gold that's
assigned to the Design layer.
| | 01:03 | So I'll go with something like
cyan, let's say, and click OK.
| | 01:07 | But there's a problem with this approach.
| | 01:09 | Notice that the frame sublayer appears at
the top of the design layer, and it has its
| | 01:13 | own unique color, which is fine.
| | 01:15 | However, that color can bleed
into the objects below it.
| | 01:18 | That happens if you twirl closed that
design layer and then twirl it back open.
| | 01:22 | Now you can see all the objects below
the frame sublayer are colored cyan.
| | 01:27 | That's something of a bug.
| | 01:28 | But here's the workaround.
| | 01:29 | I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac
to undo the creation of that sublayer.
| | 01:34 | That doesn't take care of my problem until I twirl
the Design layer closed and then twirl it back open.
| | 01:40 | The solution is to create your
sublayer at the bottom of the stack.
| | 01:43 | Now that's not always
possible, but it is in my case.
| | 01:46 | So I'll go ahead and click on the Design layer
there inside the Layers panel, and then I'll
| | 01:50 | press the Ctrl and Alt keys, or the Command and Option
keys on the Mac and click on Create New Sublayer.
| | 01:56 | That goes ahead and puts new sublayer
at the bottom of the Design layer.
| | 02:00 | I'll call this layer Frame again, and I'll
assign a color of cyan, and then click OK.
| | 02:06 | Now by virtue of the fact that this sublayer
is at the bottom, it's not going to affect
| | 02:09 | the color of any of the other objects.
| | 02:12 | Now we need to move the
selected objects into that sublayer.
| | 02:15 | You can go ahead, and drag any one of these
orange squares right here, but that will end
| | 02:19 | up moving just that one object.
| | 02:22 | If you want to move all the selected objects,
you need to drag the orange square to the
| | 02:26 | right of the Design layer all the way down the stack
like so, and then drop it into the frame sublayer.
| | 02:32 | So that's one way to work.
| | 02:33 | I'll go ahead, and press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac, so I can show you the other way,
| | 02:37 | which is to click on this topmost selected
object, and then Shift+Click on the bottommost
| | 02:43 | object in order to select them here inside
the Layers panel, and then go ahead and drag
| | 02:47 | them directly into that frame sublayer.
| | 02:49 | All right, now we're left with just a couple
of objects here that are not inside the frame
| | 02:53 | sublayer, that is, this text, the word good,
and also I've got this path that's turned off.
| | 02:59 | I'll go ahead and turn
it on for a moment here.
| | 03:01 | It's this little spirograph effect.
| | 03:03 | And just so I can keep track of what this
path is, I'll go ahead and double-click on
| | 03:07 | it, and rename it Spiro.
| | 03:09 | And great thing about Illustrator is that
you can name anything on an object-by-object
| | 03:14 | basis here inside the Layers panel.
| | 03:15 | All right, I'll go ahead and
turn that spirograph back off.
| | 03:19 | I'll click on good in order to select it.
| | 03:22 | Now currently, this is live editable text.
| | 03:24 | However, in order to create these final 3D
letters, I need to convert the text to outlines.
| | 03:30 | So I'm going to switch back my document here.
| | 03:33 | And you do that by the way by going up to the Type
menu and choosing the Create Outlines command.
| | 03:37 | However, that ruins your ability to
edit the type later on down the line.
| | 03:41 | So I typically, before I choose this command,
I go ahead and make a copy of my text.
| | 03:46 | So what I'm going to do is keep this text
safe by putting it inside yet another sublayer.
| | 03:51 | So I'll click on design in
order to make it active.
| | 03:54 | Then, I'll press the Ctrl and Alt keys or
the Command and Option keys on the Mac, and
| | 03:58 | click on the Create New Sublayer icon.
| | 04:01 | I'll call this sublayer Safe because that's
its purpose, and I'll change its color to
| | 04:05 | light blue there at the top of the stack,
because that seems like a safe color.
| | 04:09 | Now I'll click OK in order to make this layer.
| | 04:12 | I actually want this
layer to be on top of frame,
| | 04:15 | so I'll move it up just by dragging it.
| | 04:17 | Then I'll drag good down
into the safe sublayer.
| | 04:21 | We can see good is now in the
layer because of the thumbnail.
| | 04:24 | I'm going to go ahead and twirl it open,
so that I can see the word good there.
| | 04:27 | I'm going to click on it to make it active,
and I'm going to create a copy of this object
| | 04:32 | by going up to the Layers panel flyout
menu, and choosing Duplicate "good".
| | 04:36 | That will copy the text and deselect
the original text as you can see.
| | 04:39 | All right, with the copied text still selected
here, I'll go up to the Type menu and choose
| | 04:44 | Create Outlines or you can press Ctrl+
Shift+O or Command+Shift+O on the Mac.
| | 04:49 | As you can see, that goes ahead and
converts the letters to path outlines.
| | 04:52 | All right, now I'm going to do something
that might seem a little strange at first.
| | 04:56 | I'm going to hide the Safe layer by
clicking on its eye to turn it off.
| | 05:00 | That hides both the editable version of the
text as well as the text that's been converted
| | 05:04 | to paths here inside the sublayer.
| | 05:06 | Now I want to make a copy of the text
that's been converted to path outlines.
| | 05:10 | So I'll click on this top item here which
is called group, and I'll press the Alt key
| | 05:14 | or the Option key on the Mac and
I'll drag it outside of the sublayer.
| | 05:18 | And notice, as soon as I do, that will not
only create a copy of that group, but it will
| | 05:23 | also make the copy visible
here inside the illustration.
| | 05:26 | And that's because it's now part of the larger
visible layer as opposed to the hidden sublayer.
| | 05:31 | Now I'll go ahead and
twirl that sublayer closed.
| | 05:33 | And finally, I will go ahead and lock down
that Frame layer by clicking inside this column
| | 05:38 | just to the right of the eyeball.
| | 05:40 | And there you have a couple of uses for
sublayers which allow you to both hide and lock groups
| | 05:45 | of objects here inside Illustrator.
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| Creating 3D type as a group| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll take the characters in
the word good, and we'll turn them into these
| | 00:04 | hollow 3D letters, which after all is
a step in achieving the final effect.
| | 00:09 | And as we'll see, like so many things in
Illustrator, these 3D letters are ultimately rendered out
| | 00:14 | automatically as a group.
| | 00:17 | So the first step is to go ahead and select the word
good which has been converted to path outlines.
| | 00:22 | And you can see that Illustrator has created
the outlines as a group because we see the
| | 00:26 | word group on the far left-
hand side of the Control panel.
| | 00:30 | So even if I rename the group item here
inside the Layers panel by double-clicking on it
| | 00:35 | and changing its name to 3D, we no longer
know that it's a group here in the Layers
| | 00:39 | panel because we are not
seeing the word group.
| | 00:42 | However, we always know what kind of object
we're dealing with because of that first item
| | 00:47 | there on the Control panel.
| | 00:48 | All right, next we want
to stroke these letters.
| | 00:50 | So I'll go up to the second
swatch in, and change it to white.
| | 00:54 | Then I'll change the Line
Weight value to 4 points.
| | 00:56 | I'll click on the word Stroke.
| | 00:58 | I want the strokes to be on the
outside of the path outlines.
| | 01:01 | So I'll click on this final Align Stroke
icon in order to move those strokes outward.
| | 01:06 | Then finally, we want to get rid of the fill.
| | 01:08 | So click on the first swatch,
and change it to None.
| | 01:12 | We end up with this effect here.
| | 01:14 | Now in order to properly render these letters in 3D,
I need to convert the strokes to filled paths.
| | 01:20 | You do that by going up to the Object menu,
choosing Path, and then choosing Outline Stroke.
| | 01:26 | We now have path outlines drawn
on both sides of the strokes.
| | 01:29 | We've also lost our stroke as you can see up here in
the Control panel and we switched it for a fill.
| | 01:34 | All right, now for the 3D edges.
| | 01:37 | Now 3D is a pretty
complicated topic in Illustrator.
| | 01:40 | I'll be devoting an entire chapter
to it in the final mastery course.
| | 01:43 | But for now, we are going to
keep things pretty simple.
| | 01:45 | Go up to the Effect menu, choose 3D,
and then choose Extrude & Bevel.
| | 01:50 | You'll see this dialog box.
| | 01:52 | Now these three values here
are the X, Y, and Z axis.
| | 01:55 | I want you to change the X value to 4 and
the Y value to 4 as well, and then change
| | 02:00 | the Z value to 0 so that the
letters will remain upright.
| | 02:05 | Then turn on the Preview check box,
and you should see this effect here.
| | 02:08 | An Extrude Depth of 50 points is just fine;
the Perspective should be 0 degrees.
| | 02:13 | Assuming you're seeing the same thing that
I'm showing in the video, go ahead and click
| | 02:17 | OK in order to accept that effect.
| | 02:20 | Now this is a dynamic effect in Illustrator,
meaning that it's being applied live on the fly.
| | 02:25 | So it's worth keeping a backup of this layer
by pressing the Alt key or the Option key
| | 02:29 | on the Mac and dragging it
into the safe subfolder.
| | 02:33 | Then go ahead and release and
you'll create a hidden backup.
| | 02:36 | Now click on the letters to reselect them
and then go up to the Object menu and choose
| | 02:40 | Expand Appearance, which is going to convert
everything that we're seeing right now to
| | 02:44 | editable path outlines and
you'll end up with this effect here.
| | 02:49 | You now have your first taste of 3D inside
of Illustrator, once again rendered out as
| | 02:53 | a group as we can see on the far-
left side of the Control panel.
| | 02:57 | In the next movie, we'll go ahead and recolor
these letters to come up with something that
| | 03:01 | more closely resembles the final effect.
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| Selecting and working inside groups| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to convert
our lackluster 3D letters into this highly
| | 00:05 | graphic effect here.
| | 00:07 | And in doing so, I'll show you have
how to select and work inside groups.
| | 00:11 | So the first thing we need to do is extract
these light gray surfaces from the darker
| | 00:15 | gray extruded edges.
| | 00:17 | Now because these letters are a group, if
I click on them with the Back Arrow tool,
| | 00:21 | then I'll select everything inside that group.
| | 00:24 | That's not what I want.
| | 00:26 | So I'll need to switch over to the White
Arrow tool, which you can get by pressing the A
| | 00:29 | key, then I'll click off the
letters to deselect them.
| | 00:32 | Now note if I click somewhere on this path
outline around the G, I'll either select a
| | 00:37 | segment as in this case, or
an independent anchor point.
| | 00:41 | If I want to select an entire path outline,
then I press the Alt key or the Option key
| | 00:46 | on the Mac, and click on that path.
| | 00:48 | Notice now I've selected the entire path
outline. I can see it's a compound path up here in
| | 00:53 | the Control panel.
| | 00:54 | What that means is it's a path
with another path cut out of it.
| | 00:58 | We'll see more about
compound paths in the future.
| | 01:01 | Now what do I do if I want to select the inner
path along with this outer path? Well, I just
| | 01:05 | Alt+Click or Option+Click on that selected
path outline again, and I will get both the
| | 01:11 | inner edge and the outer
edge as you can see here.
| | 01:14 | All right, I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac in order to undo that move.
| | 01:18 | If I want to select the entire letter G
which Illustrator has seen fit to group together,
| | 01:23 | then I'll Alt+Click or Option+Click on one
of the selected paths again, and now you can
| | 01:28 | see I've got the G selected
independently of the other layers.
| | 01:32 | So this tells you two things.
| | 01:34 | First of all, Alt+Clicking or Option+Clicking
with a White Arrow tool selects up the chain
| | 01:39 | of hierarchy that's associated with a group
inside of Illustrator, and you can have groups
| | 01:45 | inside groups as well.
| | 01:46 | All right, I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on a Mac in order to undo that move.
| | 01:51 | And now, if I press Alt or Option and click yet
again, I will select the entire group of letters.
| | 01:58 | All right, so while this is all very well
and good, how do we use this information in
| | 02:02 | order to select just those light surfaces? Well,
I'll click off the path outline to deselect
| | 02:08 | them and then I'll Alt+Click twice on the
outer path along the G in order to select
| | 02:13 | both the outer and inner path outlines.
| | 02:16 | Then, I will go up to this final option in the
Control panel, and click this down pointing
| | 02:20 | arrowhead and make sure it's set to All, then
click on its neighboring Select Similar Objects
| | 02:25 | icon, and that will select all of those
surfaces independently of the extruded sides.
| | 02:31 | All right, now there is two ways to remove
these light surfaces from their current group;
| | 02:36 | one is to go up to the Edit menu and choose
the Cut command, and then you would follow
| | 02:40 | that up with the Paste in Front command
and that would free up those objects.
| | 02:44 | Another way to work is to just
go over here to Layers panel.
| | 02:47 | See that little orange square? Just go ahead
and drag it up out of the group, and drop
| | 02:52 | it any old place.
| | 02:53 | You can drop it right
there on that Spiro path.
| | 02:56 | You'll see that we have a ton of sub-groups
that have come out of the larger 3D group
| | 03:02 | which is still intact back
here in the background.
| | 03:04 | All right, I am going to go
ahead and scroll up the list.
| | 03:07 | Now at this point, we want to go
ahead and group the objects together.
| | 03:10 | But I really don't want a collection of
subgroups inside that group, just because later on down
| | 03:16 | the line if I want to edit these letters,
it's going to make life more difficult.
| | 03:19 | So the first thing you want to do is just
clean things up by choosing the Ungroup command
| | 03:24 | or pressing Ctrl+Shift+G or
Command+Shift+G on the Mac.
| | 03:27 | And that is now going to leave us with a
bunch of compound paths which Illustrator tells
| | 03:32 | me with the words Compound Path on
the left side of the Control panel.
| | 03:36 | All right, now we want to group them together
by going up to the Object menu, and choosing
| | 03:40 | the Group Command, or pressing
Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac.
| | 03:44 | We might as well go ahead and rename our new
group by double-clicking on its name here
| | 03:47 | in the Layers panel and calling the new group
Strokes, lets say, because they were originally
| | 03:52 | created as strokes.
| | 03:53 | All right, now we need to recolor them.
| | 03:56 | So I'll click on the first swatch and change
it to white, and I'll click on the second
| | 04:00 | swatch and change the stroke to the
shade of blue that I've created in advance.
| | 04:06 | And then finally, I am going to click on the
word Stroke, and I am going to change the
| | 04:10 | Corner option to the
second one in, Round Join.
| | 04:14 | We'll see why I am doing
this in just a moment.
| | 04:16 | All right, that goes ahead
and takes care of the strokes.
| | 04:19 | But now, I want to
address those extruded sides.
| | 04:22 | I can select them in mass because
they're all part of the same group.
| | 04:25 | So I'll press the V key in order to switch
to the Black Arrow tool and then I'll click
| | 04:29 | on any one of the
extruded sides to select them.
| | 04:32 | You can see that they are now
independent of those stroke surfaces.
| | 04:36 | All right, I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac to undo that movement.
| | 04:39 | Now you can't really tell because
there are so many nested groups going on.
| | 04:45 | But there are a ton of tiny little path
outlines all over the place here that are required
| | 04:50 | to create these various shades of gray, because
we have a kind of fountain of gray going from
| | 04:54 | dark at the top to lighter at the side.
| | 04:57 | So if we want a single color effect like the
final effect we're going for here, then we
| | 05:02 | need to fuse all those shapes together
and here's the easiest way to do it.
| | 05:06 | You go up to the Window menu, and choose the
Path Finder command to bring up the Path Finder
| | 05:11 | panel which we will look at in
detail in a future chapter.
| | 05:15 | But for now, I just want you to
click on this very first icon Unite.
| | 05:18 | That goes ahead and fuses all the shapes
together, and we end up with a ton more anchor point
| | 05:23 | or so it appears, but in truth, they were
always there. We just weren't seeing them.
| | 05:27 | Now notice that I've blown up my old group
and replaced it with a new one. So the name
| | 05:32 | of the old group is gone.
| | 05:33 | It used to be called 3D as you may recall.
| | 05:35 | I am going to go ahead and rename this new
group 3D sides, because after all, that's what
| | 05:40 | they are, and then I'll go up to the Control
panel, click on that very first swatch, change
| | 05:45 | it to that shade of blue.
| | 05:47 | And just so we can see what's going on here,
I am going to press Ctrl+H or Command+H on
| | 05:51 | the Mac in order to hide my selection edges.
| | 05:53 | Then I will press Ctrl+Spacebar or
Command+Spacebar on the Mac, and marquee around
| | 05:58 | this point near the bottom of the G, so
that we can see we've got a mismatch here.
| | 06:03 | This rounded corner associated with the
stroke around the white surfaces is not matching
| | 06:08 | up with the extruded edges.
| | 06:10 | The extruded edges are
still selected by the way.
| | 06:12 | To make them match, click on the second
color swatch, and change the stroke to blue.
| | 06:17 | Note now that we have this
corner that's just jutting out here.
| | 06:20 | We need to round it off by clicking on Stroke,
and doing that same thing we did before.
| | 06:25 | That is to say, we need to change the
Corner to Round Join; the second one in there.
| | 06:30 | All right, that takes cares of that.
| | 06:31 | I am going to press Ctrl+0 or Command+0
on a Mac in order to center my zoom.
| | 06:36 | And that folks is how you go about selecting
and working inside groups as well as extracting
| | 06:41 | items from one group and
setting them inside of another.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating clipping groups| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll create the spirograph
faces at the back of the letters and we'll
| | 00:04 | do so using another kind of group inside
of Illustrator known as a clipping group.
| | 00:10 | This will serve as our first look
at masking inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:13 | We'll see more with
masking in the advanced course.
| | 00:16 | So here's our illustration in progress.
| | 00:18 | What I need to do is bring out yet
another copy of those outlined layers.
| | 00:23 | So I am going to twirl open the safe sublayer,
and then I'll select the middle group, which
| | 00:28 | is the letters converted to path outlines.
| | 00:30 | And you know, I think I'll just go ahead and rename
that group paths, so I know that's what it is.
| | 00:36 | Now I'll press the Alt key or the Option key
on a Mac, and I'll drag that group to just
| | 00:41 | below the 3D sides group,
and drop it into place.
| | 00:44 | That creates a visible copy of
that item outside of the sublayer.
| | 00:48 | Now I'll go ahead and
twirl close the sublayer.
| | 00:50 | Now if you click on one of the letters to
select it, and I still have my selection edges
| | 00:53 | hidden, so I'll press Ctrl+H or
Command+H on the Mac to bring it back.
| | 00:57 | Then I'll go ahead and zoom in on the top of this D
and you can see that things are out of register.
| | 01:03 | The inner edge of that bevel should be
exactly aligned with that top of the D.
| | 01:09 | So to fix that problem, I am going to click on
the white surface to select it, and Shift+Click
| | 01:13 | on the blue extruded edge.
| | 01:14 | Then, I'll drag these guys by an anchor point
just a little bit up into left, so I can see
| | 01:19 | what I am doing, and then I'll drag them back
down, so that they snap into alignment, like so.
| | 01:24 | And now everything should
be more or less good to go.
| | 01:26 | I am going to press Ctrl+0 or Command+0
on the Mac to once again zoom out.
| | 01:31 | The next thing we need to do is bring back
that spirograph pattern, and that's this spiro
| | 01:35 | item here inside the Layers panel.
| | 01:37 | Just go ahead and click in the
eyeball column to make it visible.
| | 01:39 | And next, I'll select this item with the Black
Arrow tool by clicking in the center of it here.
| | 01:44 | What we're seeing here is a very basic path
outline with a dynamic effect assigned to
| | 01:49 | it, and I'll be showing you how to make these
kinds of dynamic effects in the advanced course.
| | 01:53 | But for now, what I'd like you do is
duplicate the spirograph three times, once for each
| | 01:58 | of the other letters.
| | 02:00 | So go ahead and drag the item, and then press
and hold the Shift and Alt keys or the Shift
| | 02:05 | and Option keys on the Mac.
| | 02:06 | The Shift key constrains the angle of my drag
to exactly horizontal in this case, and the
| | 02:10 | Alt or Option key will create a copy.
| | 02:13 | Then, you want to release the mouse
button, and then release the keys.
| | 02:17 | And I'm going to press the right-arrow key
once just to nudge this guy over a little
| | 02:21 | bit because I want to see sort of these
rippling edges along the extruded side.
| | 02:26 | Now I will go ahead and do it again, press
Shift and Alt or Shift and Option on the Mac
| | 02:30 | as you drag the path
outline to a new position.
| | 02:33 | I'll go ahead and nudge it into place by pressing the
right-arrow key again, and then I'll do it a third time.
| | 02:38 | You need to have the Shift and Alt keys down
or the Shift and Option keys on the Mac in
| | 02:42 | order to create that copy.
| | 02:43 | All right, now we have all
the spirographs that we need.
| | 02:46 | To move them down the stack, you
could cut them and then paste them back.
| | 02:51 | That's one option.
| | 02:52 | You could go up to the Object menu, choose
Arrange, and then choose something like Send
| | 02:56 | Backward or Send to Back.
| | 02:59 | However, the easiest thing to do is just
drag them around inside the Layers panel.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to click on one of the spiros
and Shift+Click on another in order to select
| | 03:07 | them here inside the Layers panel.
| | 03:08 | Notice, that doesn't select them out
there in the illustration window.
| | 03:12 | And in fact, only the last spiro is selected
as indicated by that orange square there.
| | 03:18 | Now I am going to scroll down the list a little bit, and
move these spirograph patterns below the paths group.
| | 03:25 | And that goes ahead and puts the patterns
behind the black letters which is where they
| | 03:28 | need to be if we're going
to create a clipping group.
| | 03:31 | All right, now I want to click on
the black letters to select them.
| | 03:34 | And I need to ungroup them so that each
letter is independent, and I'll do that by going
| | 03:38 | up to the Object menu and choosing the
Ungroup command or again pressing Ctrl+Shift+G or
| | 03:43 | Command+Shift+G on the Mac.
| | 03:45 | Now here's an interesting thing.
| | 03:46 | Notice that the letters are upside down.
| | 03:48 | So G is at the bottom and D is at the top.
| | 03:51 | If for whatever reason you want to change
the order, then just go ahead and click on
| | 03:54 | the first path and Shift+Click on the last
one again here inside the Layers panel, and
| | 03:58 | then go over to the Panels flyout menu, and
choose Reverse Order, and that will just switch
| | 04:03 | them around, so that the G is on top, the D
is on the bottom and we actually can see
| | 04:07 | the word good here inside the Layers panel.
| | 04:09 | All right, the next step is to click on the
first spirograph pattern, and then Shift+Click
| | 04:13 | on the letter D to select both of them.
| | 04:16 | Then you go up to the Object menu, you choose
Clipping Mask, and you choose Make, or you
| | 04:21 | can press its keyboard shortcut if you
remember it of Ctrl+7 or Command+7 on the Mac.
| | 04:26 | And that will go ahead and clip the spirograph
pattern inside of the G, and it also produces
| | 04:31 | a clipping group as indicated by the words Clip
Group on the left side of the Control panel.
| | 04:36 | Now you may have wondered why I hadn't
changed the colors of the letters to blue before I
| | 04:41 | started this process. Here is why. As soon
as you turn the object into a clipping mask,
| | 04:46 | you lose the fill and stroke.
| | 04:48 | So we're going to have to
reassign those anyway.
| | 04:50 | Let's go ahead and take care of the other
letters here and we've got to repeat this
| | 04:53 | process independently for
each one of the letters.
| | 04:55 | All right, here are our four clipping groups.
| | 04:58 | They look invisible because
they are white on white.
| | 05:01 | I want you to twirl open the very first one,
and you should see a G at the top of it.
| | 05:05 | So we've got a G that's serving as a
mask for the spiro pattern below.
| | 05:09 | The easiest way to select that G is to click
on this little circular meatball right there
| | 05:13 | in the Layers panel.
| | 05:15 | That selects that G
independently of the other letters.
| | 05:17 | Now I want you to go up to that Select Similar
Objects icon on the left side of the Control
| | 05:22 | panel and click on it and that will
select all the other letters as well.
| | 05:27 | Now we can reassign a fill and stroke by clicking on
the first color swatch, and setting it to blue.
| | 05:32 | I am also going to set the stroke to blue as
well just in case the letters are a little
| | 05:37 | off from the extruded side, so that we'll
have complete faces and no gaps in between.
| | 05:43 | All right, the last thing I want to do
here is group all of these letters together.
| | 05:47 | So I'll go up to the Object menu and choose the Group
Command or press Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac.
| | 05:53 | Illustrator brings up an alert message.
| | 05:54 | It tells me that I can't make a group of
objects that are housed inside other groups.
| | 05:59 | So what we've done here is we've just
selected the letter faces, but we didn't select the
| | 06:03 | other elements of the clipping groups.
| | 06:05 | So what you need to do is click off the
shapes in order to deselect them, and then click
| | 06:11 | and Shift+Click on each one of the letters,
in order to reselect them, this time we've
| | 06:15 | selected the clipping groups as we can see
once again up here in the Control panel.
| | 06:20 | Now I can go up to the Object menu, and choose the
Group Command and everything will work out just fine.
| | 06:25 | We end it with a new group
here inside the Layers panel.
| | 06:27 | I am going to rename it faces and press
the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac.
| | 06:33 | That's how you work with a more specialized
style of groups known as clipping groups here
| | 06:38 | inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working in an isolation mode| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to differentiate
the inner sides from the faces of the letters
| | 00:05 | by adding these thin white strokes, and to
accomplish that we'll take advantage of the
| | 00:09 | group isolation mode.
| | 00:11 | So I'll switch back to my
illustration in progress.
| | 00:13 | Now what I need to do is select the inner
sides independently of the outer sides.
| | 00:18 | So I could get my White Arrow tool and then
Alt+Click or Option+Click on one of the inner
| | 00:23 | sides and Shift+Option or Shift+Alt
click on another one, and so forth.
| | 00:27 | The problem is with this edge right here.
| | 00:30 | Notice if I try to select the inner edge
along the descender of the G, I select an outer
| | 00:34 | edge as well, and that's because
these edges have gotten fused together.
| | 00:39 | The only way to do that effectively is to
isolate the group from the rest of the illustration.
| | 00:45 | Now there is a couple of ways
to enter an Isolation mode.
| | 00:47 | One is to click on the item that you want
to isolate here inside the Layers panel and
| | 00:52 | then go to Layers panel fly-out
menu and choose Enter Isolation Mode.
| | 00:56 | And this works with anything, layers, sublayers,
clipping groups, anything that you can see
| | 01:02 | inside the Layers panel.
| | 01:04 | Or another way to work is to switch your Black
Arrow tool and then just double-click on any
| | 01:09 | one of these extruded edges in
order to isolate the group.
| | 01:13 | You can see it's isolated, because of this
information up here at the top of the document window.
| | 01:19 | So we have got this gray bar, we're seeing
the name of the group, 3D sides, and it exists
| | 01:23 | inside the design layer.
| | 01:24 | So you're going to see the entire
hierarchy associated with this particular item.
| | 01:30 | Also everything that's not part of the group is
dimmed and you can't select it. Notice that.
| | 01:34 | So you can't select anything,
but these extruded edges.
| | 01:38 | Let's take a look at this problem area.
| | 01:41 | I'll go ahead and zoom in on it and I'm going to
click on it with a Black Arrow tool to select it.
| | 01:45 | What I need to do is to just this region of
points here, which isn't very easy to do with
| | 01:50 | the White Arrow tool.
| | 01:52 | I'd have to do this number where I marquee
this rectangle and Shift+Marquee another one,
| | 01:57 | and so forth, unless I wanted to Shift+Click
on each and every point, which would be even
| | 02:02 | a worse nightmare.
| | 02:03 | However, the Black and White Arrow tools are
not your only options for selecting things
| | 02:07 | inside Illustrator.
| | 02:08 | You also have, for example, the Lasso tool.
| | 02:11 | So I'll go ahead and click on the Lasso tool
to select it and then I'll draw a rough lasso
| | 02:16 | around this region like so and that's
going to select all of those points.
| | 02:20 | Next, I'll go up to the Edit menu and I'll
choose the Cut command or press Ctrl+X or
| | 02:26 | Command+X on the Mac and that will
go ahead and cut those points away.
| | 02:29 | Then return to the Edit menu and choose Paste in
Front or press Ctrl+F or Command+F on the Mac.
| | 02:35 | Now that is going to leave a
very tiny hole, by the way.
| | 02:38 | If I were to press Ctrl+Spacebar or Command+
Spacebar on the Mac and draw tiny marquee around this
| | 02:43 | area so that I'm zoomed in
as far as I can go, 6400%.
| | 02:47 | I can see that these two points
don't quite connect to each other.
| | 02:49 | Doesn't matter at all! Don't worry about it.
| | 02:51 | So I'll just press Ctrl+0 or Command+0
on the Mac in order to zoom out.
| | 02:55 | The reason that is not a problem is, because
Illustrator goes ahead and fills the path
| | 02:59 | as if those two points were joined.
| | 03:02 | Now I need to go ahead and select the
paths that I want to extract here.
| | 03:06 | So I'll switch to my Black Arrow tool and
because we're working in the Isolation mode,
| | 03:11 | I could now select paths inside of
the group using the Black Arrow.
| | 03:14 | So I'll click on this side right here, Shift
+Click on this one. I need edge as well.
| | 03:19 | This path needs to be selected now
independently of the other one.
| | 03:23 | I'll Shift+Click here and here, here, and
here, and then on these to paths along the
| | 03:29 | D and this one as well.
| | 03:30 | I think that's everybody.
| | 03:32 | Now I'll press Ctrl+X or Command+X on the
Mac in order to cut those inner edges.
| | 03:38 | To escape the group Isolation mode, you
can either work your way at the hierarchy.
| | 03:42 | For example, if I click on design, I
would now isolate the entire design layer.
| | 03:46 | Or if I wanted to escape the Isolation mode
altogether, I'd just press the Escape key.
| | 03:51 | Now what we need to do is paste these inner
edges in back of these white strokes right there.
| | 03:58 | So I'll click on one of the white strokes
to select all of them, and then I'll press
| | 04:01 | Ctrl+B or Command+B on the Mac to paste in
those inner edges, and we might as well group
| | 04:06 | them together by going upto the Object menu
and choosing the Group command or of course
| | 04:10 | pressing Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac.
| | 04:12 | We end up with this new group.
| | 04:14 | I'll go ahead and double-click on it and
call it inner, and I'm going to rename 3D sides
| | 04:19 | outer instead, just to
clearly distinguish them.
| | 04:23 | With these shapes selected I'll press Ctrl+H
or Command+H on the Mac to hide the selection
| | 04:27 | edges so I can see the strokes applied.
| | 04:29 | Then I'll go up to the second
swatch here and change it to white.
| | 04:33 | That gives me too thick of strokes, and also
there in front of the fills, which is no good.
| | 04:38 | If you ever want a move a stroke behind a
fill in Illustrator, then you need to switch
| | 04:42 | to the Appearance panel, which you get by
going up to the Window menu and choosing the
| | 04:46 | Appearance command.
| | 04:47 | Now we should be seeing fills and strokes
inside this panel, but we're not and that's
| | 04:51 | because there are no fills or strokes
applied to the group which is what's selected.
| | 04:56 | They are applied to the individual
path outlines inside the group.
| | 04:59 | So to get to them you double-click on the
word Contents and that switches you to path
| | 05:04 | outlines inside the group as we're seeing
here, and then you just grab that stroke and
| | 05:08 | move it under the Fill and we
end up with this final effect.
| | 05:12 | I'm going to press Ctrl+H just
to get my selection edges back.
| | 05:16 | Then I'll click off the path
outlines to deselect them.
| | 05:20 | That's how you work in the Isolation mode
whether you're isolating a layer, a sublayer,
| | 05:25 | or a group here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying effects to groups and layers| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll achieve the final version
of our artwork and we will do it by applying
| | 00:05 | an effect to an entire group, and then we'll turn
around and apply an effect to an entire layer.
| | 00:11 | So here's my illustration so far.
| | 00:13 | The first thing I want to do is
apply a drop shadow to my letters.
| | 00:18 | The best way to accomplish that is to select
the faces, just by clicking in one of the
| | 00:21 | spirograph patterns.
| | 00:23 | Notice, Illustrator is telling me on the left-hand side of
the Control panel that I've selected an entire group.
| | 00:28 | To make a drop shadow you go up to the Effect
menu, you choose Stylize, and then you choose
| | 00:33 | the Drop Shadow command.
| | 00:35 | These are the default settings.
| | 00:36 | That is we've got an Opacity of 75%, the
mode is Multiply, meaning that we're going
| | 00:41 | to burn the shadow into the background, and
I'll explain what that means in more detail
| | 00:46 | in just a moment.
| | 00:46 | Then we've got an X and Y offset value of
7 points meaning that the shadow is going
| | 00:51 | to move 7 points to the
right and seven points down.
| | 00:54 | The Blur is set to 5 points.
| | 00:56 | That's all just fine by me.
| | 00:58 | However, if I turn on the Preview check box,
I can see that I end up getting this black
| | 01:02 | shadow, which is not what I'm looking for.
| | 01:04 | So I'll click on the Color Swatch in order
to bring up the Color Picker dialog box and
| | 01:08 | then I'll click on the Color Swatches button
so I can see that blue Swatch that I created
| | 01:12 | in advance, and I'll go ahead and
click on it in order to select it.
| | 01:16 | Then I'll click OK.
| | 01:17 | That's more of the drop
shadow that I'm looking for.
| | 01:20 | Now I'll click OK in
order to accept that effect.
| | 01:22 | Now I want you to see that this effect is
not assigned to the letters themselves.
| | 01:27 | It's actually assigned to the group.
| | 01:29 | I'm going to switch back to the
Appearance panel and we will see Group.
| | 01:32 | There is Contents.
| | 01:33 | If I double-click on Contents, then I'm not going to
see anything listed here about the drop shadow.
| | 01:38 | Instead, the FX which is the drop
shadow is assigned to larger group.
| | 01:43 | If I double-click on the Group, sure enough,
I see that there's a drop shadow assigned.
| | 01:47 | If I wanted to modify the drop shadow, all I
have to do is click on the words Drop Shadow
| | 01:52 | and I can see my
dynamically assigned settings.
| | 01:55 | I'm going got cancel out of here.
| | 01:57 | The reason I bring this up is because if you destroy
that group, the drop shadow is going to go away.
| | 02:02 | Notice if I go up to the Object menu and I
choose the Ungroup command, then we no longer
| | 02:08 | have a drop shadow, because we no longer have a group
to assign the drop shadow to in the first place.
| | 02:13 | So I'll Undo that ungrouping there by
pressing Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 02:19 | We've got mostly everything in place here.
| | 02:22 | However, if you take a look at the final artwork,
notice how it is burned into the background.
| | 02:27 | Just as if the blue were an ink for example
that's mixing in with the paper, and all the
| | 02:33 | white stuff in the artwork is disappearing.
| | 02:36 | To achieve this effect what you do is you
switch back to the artwork at hand of course.
| | 02:41 | I'll go ahead and return to
the Layers panel as well.
| | 02:43 | I want everything on
this layer to be affected.
| | 02:47 | Now if I wanted everything on this layer to be
affected independently, I'd select everything
| | 02:51 | on a layer by clicking on this little wedge
in the upper right-hand corner of the layer
| | 02:56 | here inside the Layers panel.
| | 02:58 | That's going to select all
the art that can be selected.
| | 03:01 | So it's not going to select
anything that's locked down for example.
| | 03:05 | Then I would go up to the word Opacity up
here in the Control panel and I would click
| | 03:10 | on it to bring up the Transparency panel and
I would change the Blend mode from Normal
| | 03:15 | to Multiply, which is the way that you burn art
work in and create those kinds of inking effects.
| | 03:21 | However, we end up with an absolute mess.
| | 03:23 | I'll go ahead and click off
my artwork to deselect it.
| | 03:26 | Notice how all of the various path outlines
associated with the word good here are burning
| | 03:31 | into each other, and that's not the effect
I want at all, and of course the frame and
| | 03:35 | the other text is unaffected.
| | 03:37 | Here's what we want instead.
| | 03:38 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac to undo that change.
| | 03:42 | Instead, we want to assign the
Multiply blend mode to the entire group.
| | 03:46 | And you do that by targeting the
group here inside the Layers panel.
| | 03:50 | To target a group or any other
object, you click on its meatball.
| | 03:54 | So I'll go ahead and click on
that meatball right there.
| | 03:56 | Notice, currently the circle is not filled, but
we have managed to target this entire layer.
| | 04:03 | Everything inside of it is selected in so
far as they can be selected, but you'll see
| | 04:07 | even the stuff that's locked down will
be affected as well in just a moment.
| | 04:12 | I'll click on the word Opacity
up here in the Control panel.
| | 04:14 | I'll click on Normal to bring up the blend
mode pop-up menu, and then I'll choose the
| | 04:18 | Multiply mode and everything
ends up working out brilliantly.
| | 04:21 | So now I'll go ahead and click off the
artwork to deselect it, and notice now the meatball
| | 04:26 | is more sculptural.
| | 04:26 | It has a little gradient inside of it and
that tells you that you've applied a dynamic
| | 04:32 | effect, in this case Multiply, to that layer.
| | 04:35 | Now the brilliant thing about this approach
is that you can introduce other objects into
| | 04:39 | the layer and they will
automatically be multiplied as well.
| | 04:42 | For example, I'm going to go ahead and turn
on the patterns layer for a moment here and
| | 04:46 | click on it to make it active.
| | 04:47 | And let's say I want to create a break in
this frame pattern around the top of the D.
| | 04:52 | Then I would go ahead and grab my Rectangle
tool, and I draw a rectangle about yay big
| | 04:57 | so that I have a little bit
of extra room around sides.
| | 05:00 | I'm happy with that white fill, but
I want to get rid of the strokes.
| | 05:03 | So click on the second swatch up here on
the Control panel and change it to None.
| | 05:09 | That isn't the effect I'm
looking for at all, right?
| | 05:11 | However, if I put this white rectangle on the
design layer then everything is going to change.
| | 05:16 | And I'll do that by going up to the Edit menu
and choosing the Cut command or I could to
| | 05:21 | press Ctrl+X or Command+X on the Mac.
| | 05:23 | Then I'll click on a spirograph face of one
of the letters, because that faces group is
| | 05:27 | at the bottom of the good letter stack.
| | 05:30 | I would return to the Edit menu and choose
Paste in Back or press Ctrl+B or Command+B
| | 05:35 | on the Mac and all of a sudden that white
rectangle turns into a hole, because it and
| | 05:40 | everything else in this design layer are
being multiplied into the background.
| | 05:45 | Finally, what I do is scroll down to this
new path that I created, double-click on it
| | 05:49 | and rename it blank, like so, and then press
the Enter key in order to accept that change.
| | 05:54 | And that's how you apply effects to entire
groups and layers here inside Illustrator.
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|
|
12. Swatches and Stacking OrderHow swatches and stacking work| 00:00 | In this chapter, I'll introduce you to two
loosely related topics that work great together:
| | 00:07 | swatches and stacking order.
| | 00:08 | The Swatches panel allows you to save colors.
| | 00:11 | That way, you can apply them to other fills
and strokes in the future, all this without
| | 00:16 | having to tediously dial in CMYK
or RGB values in the Color panel.
| | 00:23 | We'll also take a look at global swatches
which let you update the colors of multiple
| | 00:27 | path outlines without even selecting them.
| | 00:30 | I'll show you the eyedropper which lets
you lift colors from existing objects.
| | 00:35 | Now by objects, I mean path outlines, text,
groups, essentially everything that you can
| | 00:41 | create in Illustrator.
| | 00:43 | Each of those objects rest on top of another.
| | 00:47 | The order in which the objects
occur is called the stacking order.
| | 00:51 | In this chapter, I'll show you how to adjust
the stacking order, as well as how to select
| | 00:56 | objects that are covered up by other ones.
| | 00:59 | You can even stack multiple fills and strokes
inside a single path outline which is where
| | 01:04 | swatches and stacking order come together.
| | 01:08 | In the end, we'll create this vibrant stylized
Aztec spiritual calendar known as the Tonalpohualli,
| | 01:15 | here, let me show you how it works.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Multiple views and power duplication| 00:00 | All right, here is the final version of the artwork
that we'll create over the course of this chapter.
| | 00:05 | But before we start things off here, I want
to give you a sense of how it's put together.
| | 00:08 | As you can see, it's ultimately a
combination of circles and rectangles and stars.
| | 00:14 | And I also took advantage of power duplication,
that is, I scaled and rotated and flipped objects
| | 00:19 | multiple times in a row.
| | 00:21 | So in this movie, we're going to do a little
bit of a recap of power duplication, and I
| | 00:25 | am going to pass along a new trick as well.
| | 00:28 | So I am going to switch over
to our starter document here.
| | 00:32 | And I want this version of the document to
remain aligned with the finals, so that we
| | 00:37 | can track our progress, but I also want to
create another window into this document that
| | 00:41 | allows me to zoom in and out.
| | 00:44 | And I'll create that new window by going up to the
Window menu and choosing the New Window command.
| | 00:49 | And that will give me a second seemingly
identical version of the document that's called, as
| | 00:54 | you can see here in the Title tab, Most paths.ai:2, which
makes you think it's some kind of duplicate but it's not.
| | 01:01 | It's just a second window
into the same illustration.
| | 01:05 | All right, just to demonstrate how it works,
I'll go ahead and drag the tab up and over
| | 01:10 | here, so that we can see it at the same time
that we're seeing the artwork in a background,
| | 01:14 | and in other words, I am
making this new window float.
| | 01:16 | And I'll go ahead and drag it's edge over to the
right here to make the window a little bit smaller.
| | 01:21 | Then I am going to zoom in a couple of clicks
until I am seeing the illustration at 200%,
| | 01:26 | and I am going to Ctrl+Y or Command+Y
in a Mac to switch to the Preview mode.
| | 01:30 | Now notice, if I click over here inside of
the first window, Most paths.ai:1, that that
| | 01:37 | makes that window active, but it doesn't
bring it in front of the floater, which is nice,
| | 01:41 | so that I can see both of them
no matter what at the same time.
| | 01:44 | All right, we're going to start things off
here by duplicating this little white circle,
| | 01:49 | so that it appears all the way around
the edge of this larger brown circle.
| | 01:53 | So what I need to do, of course, is switch
over to the Rotate tool, which you can get
| | 01:57 | by pressing the R key.
| | 01:59 | And I want to make sure that my little
origin point isn't in the center of the circle.
| | 02:03 | That wouldn't make any darn sense.
| | 02:04 | Instead, it needs to be in the
center of this God's nose right here.
| | 02:08 | So I am going to switch over to my
second window by clicking in it.
| | 02:12 | And I'll press the Alt key or the Option key on
the Mac and click in the center of that nose.
| | 02:16 | And I can see the center that nose up close in
personal, because I am zoomed in and because
| | 02:22 | I am looking at the
illustration in the Preview mode.
| | 02:24 | So I'll go ahead and Alt+click to
bring up the Rotate dialog box.
| | 02:27 | And I really don't know how far I need to
rotate this circle in order to make it work,
| | 02:31 | so what I am going to do
is press Shift+Down arrow.
| | 02:33 | At least I know I need a negative value.
| | 02:35 | And you can see that the circle rotates over,
in my case, -20 degrees, because I pressed
| | 02:40 | Shift+Down arrow twice.
| | 02:41 | And now I'll just press the down arrow key a
few more times here until I get to -24 degrees.
| | 02:46 | And that looks just about right, and I can see that
it's right over here in the first window as well.
| | 02:51 | So both windows are tracking my progress.
| | 02:53 | All right, so I know I want a total of four
circles inside of this space, which means
| | 02:57 | one original three duplicates, which
means I need to take -24 and divide it by 3.
| | 03:02 | So I'll enter slash 3 times, like so, and
press the Tab key that's -8 degrees, it's
| | 03:06 | fine, and I'll click on the Copy button in
order to make a copy of that circle and that
| | 03:10 | looks just exactly right here inside
the Preview mode in the first window.
| | 03:14 | So then I'll press Ctrl+D or Command+D on
the Mac a couple of times in order to fill
| | 03:19 | out those circles.
| | 03:20 | All right now, I'll press the V key, to switch
back to my Black Arrow tool and I'll Shift+click
| | 03:24 | on the other three circles in
order to select all three.
| | 03:28 | And because I am going to have to duplicate
these guys a few times here, I am going to
| | 03:32 | group them together.
| | 03:33 | It's just going to make
them easier to select later.
| | 03:35 | So I'll go out to the Object menu and choose
Group command, or of course, I could press
| | 03:39 | Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac.
| | 03:41 | All right now, I'll press the R key to switch
back to the Rotate tool and I'll Alt+click
| | 03:45 | for Option+click in the center
of that God's nose once again.
| | 03:48 | This time I'll change
the angle to -45 degrees.
| | 03:50 | I just know that's right.
| | 03:53 | And I'll press the Tab key, and sure enough,
that puts the circle where they need to be
| | 03:55 | and I'll click on the Copy
button in order to create a copy.
| | 03:59 | Now I'll press the V key to switch back to my
Black Arrow tool, Shift+Click on the first
| | 04:04 | group of circles, and now group all of these circles
together by pressing Ctrl+G or Command+G again.
| | 04:09 | Again, this is just a little bit of tidiness
here, so I don't run into problems when I
| | 04:14 | am trying to group things together later.
| | 04:15 | All right, I am going to go ahead and make
my window a little tidier so I can see the
| | 04:19 | circles in the background.
| | 04:20 | Now you might think that I would continue to
duplicate those circles by pressing Ctrl+D
| | 04:25 | or Command+D on the Mac over and over again, but
actually that kind of throws off the alignment
| | 04:31 | where the stars are concerned.
| | 04:33 | So instead what I need to do is switch over
to the Reflect tool, which you can also get
| | 04:37 | by pressing the O, and I'll Alt+Click or Option+Click right
there in the center point of the God's nose once again.
| | 04:43 | It is time to bring up the Reflect dialog box.
| | 04:45 | I don't want at this point to duplicate the
circles across the vertical axis. Instead,
| | 04:50 | I want the axis to be set to horizontal, so that
I moved the circles down, as you can see here.
| | 04:57 | And I keep having to move that dialog box on
screen, because I've got a very small screen
| | 05:01 | to work with here.
| | 05:02 | Now I'll click the Copy button
in order to create that copy.
| | 05:04 | I'll press the V key to switch
back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 05:07 | I'll Shift+Click on the top group of circles
and I'll press Ctrl+G or Command+G again in
| | 05:12 | order to group of them all.
| | 05:13 | So I've got now groups nested inside of groups,
nested inside of groups, which is just fine.
| | 05:17 | It's not going to present me
with any problems at all.
| | 05:20 | All right, now I'll press the O key to switch
back to the Reflect tool, Alt+Click or Option+Click
| | 05:24 | in the center of the God's nose, switch the
axis to vertical this time, and click Copy,
| | 05:29 | and I've now managed to copy all of
these circles as you can see here.
| | 05:34 | All right now, I want to combine all of these
circles into groups so I'll press the V key
| | 05:37 | to switch to the Black Arrow tool, Shit+Click
on the right group of circles, and press Ctrl+G
| | 05:42 | or Command+G on the Mac in
order to group them all.
| | 05:44 | All right now, what I want to be
able to do is rename this group.
| | 05:48 | That presents a little bit of a problem,
because my window is in the way of the Layers panel.
| | 05:53 | So I'll go ahead and move the window over
making sure that I am not dropping it into
| | 05:57 | the other windows, and then I'll twirl open
this calendar layer right here, and I'll scroll
| | 06:02 | down until I see a selected meatball,
there it is, next to the word Group.
| | 06:07 | I'll double-click on the word Group and
change it to eggs, because they are white.
| | 06:10 | What the heck! And that will
just help me know what they are.
| | 06:13 | All right now, what I want to do--I'll go
ahead and move this guy over here--I want
| | 06:16 | to duplicate this group of squares right here.
| | 06:19 | So I'll click in one and Shift+Click in the other
two with the Black Arrow tool to select them all.
| | 06:24 | I want them to be easier to select in the
future, so I'll press Ctrl+G or Command+G
| | 06:28 | on the Mac in order to group them together.
| | 06:30 | Then I'll press the R key to
switch back to the Rotate tool.
| | 06:33 | I'll switch back to the second window by clicking
in it, and I'll press the Alt key or the Option
| | 06:37 | key on the Mac and click in
the center of the God's nose.
| | 06:41 | And it turns out that -45 degrees, which was
my last rotation, is exactly what I need.
| | 06:46 | So I'll just go ahead and
click at the Copy button.
| | 06:48 | And now with that guy selected, I'll Alt+
Click or Option+Click in the center of the nose
| | 06:52 | again and change the Angle value to
90 degrees and press the Tab key.
| | 06:56 | That moves the squares down to this
location, which is where I want them.
| | 06:59 | I'll click the Copy button and I've now
created all of the squares on the left-hand side.
| | 07:04 | I don't have them over here on the right-hand,
as you can see, so I need to make them.
| | 07:08 | And I'll do that by pressing V key to switch
to the Black Arrow tool, Shift+clicking on
| | 07:12 | the other two groups of squares
there so that all three are selected.
| | 07:16 | Then I'll press the O to switch back to the
Reflect tool, click in the second window,
| | 07:20 | Alt+Click or Option+Click in the center of
the nose, make sure that the axis is set to
| | 07:24 | Vertical, and click the Copy button in
order to create a copy of those squares.
| | 07:29 | I assume they're there, but I might as well
move this guy out of the way to make sure.
| | 07:32 | Yup, there, they are.
| | 07:33 | All right, and then I'll grab
my Black Arrow tool once again.
| | 07:37 | I'll Shift+Click on one of those left-hand
squares, which I forgot to group in advance
| | 07:41 | so now I am going to have to select each one
of them independently, and I accidentally
| | 07:45 | selected that circle.
| | 07:46 | This is why it's so great to go ahead and
group in advance when you're work in this way.
| | 07:49 | All right, now I have all the squares set
selected, except for the top and bottom groups,
| | 07:53 | which are different, and then I'll press Ctrl+G
or Command+G on the Mac in order to group them.
| | 07:58 | And then finally, I want to go ahead and
create this uber group of outside squares.
| | 08:03 | So I'll Shift+Click on the top group, I'll
Shift+Click in the button group, and I'll
| | 08:07 | Shift+Click on any one of these beige; not
ellipses but rather rectangles, in order to
| | 08:11 | select them as well.
| | 08:12 | So all of the outer rectangles and squares
are selected, now I'll move my window out
| | 08:16 | of the way here, and I'll go ahead and drop
it so it's consolidated with the other ones.
| | 08:21 | And I'll scroll up to find that
these guys need to be grouped together.
| | 08:25 | I didn't group them.
| | 08:26 | So I'll press Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac in
order to create this uber group right there.
| | 08:31 | And I'll go ahead and double-click on it and
call it outer squares, because that's what
| | 08:35 | I want to name my group and that is it.
| | 08:38 | And that folks is a review of a few
transformations and power duplication functions as well as
| | 08:43 | an introduction to the fact that you can
create multiple windows into same document.
| | 08:48 | And by the way, one more note.
| | 08:51 | If I go to the File menu and choose the Save
command, I save the fact that I have multiple
| | 08:57 | views into this document.
| | 08:58 | So the next time I open it up, I will have
not one window but two different views going
| | 09:03 | at the same time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lifting a color and creating a swatch| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to lift a
color with the eyedropper and then save that
| | 00:04 | color out as a swatch
inside the Swatches panel.
| | 00:07 | And the great thing about swatches is that
they help you establish a color theme, stick
| | 00:12 | with that color theme, and automate the
application of color inside your artwork.
| | 00:17 | So the practical upshot is, if you think you
are going to use a color more than once, go
| | 00:21 | ahead and save it out as a swatch.
| | 00:23 | Now I have gone ahead and saved my progress
as All paths few fills.ai found inside the
| | 00:28 | 12 swatches folder. Bear in mind, if you open up
the file, you're going to open up two different
| | 00:33 | windows into the
illustration here inside Illustrator.
| | 00:36 | I am going to switch to my second window,
one that features a zoomed in outline view
| | 00:41 | and I am going to press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y
on a Mac in order to switch to the Preview
| | 00:45 | mode. You may have to press a keyboard
shortcut a couple of times in a row to make it work.
| | 00:50 | Now let's say I want to take this greenish
fill inside of this rare rectangle here, and
| | 00:55 | I want to save that out as a swatch.
| | 00:57 | I could go ahead and click on that square
using my Black Arrow tool, but if I do, I'm
| | 01:01 | going to select a group of squares and rectangles
that have all kinds of different fills going on.
| | 01:07 | So my better option is to switch to the
Eyedropper tool, which I can select from a toolbox or
| | 01:12 | by pressing the I key, and then you just
have to click inside of that shape in order to
| | 01:17 | lift its fill and stroke.
| | 01:19 | Now we have got a couple of problems going on.
One is, I just upset all the selected shapes.
| | 01:24 | Come back to that in a moment. My other problem is that
I can't see what's going on inside the color panel.
| | 01:29 | Now if your color panel is not open on screen,
go to the Window menu and choose the Color
| | 01:33 | command or you can press the F6 key.
| | 01:36 | My problem however is that I can't see the
CMYK values, which is the way it works by
| | 01:40 | default, so in order to see the fill and stroke
you need to click on that little up down arrow
| | 01:45 | icon a couple of times to the left of the
word color, in order to expand the panel and
| | 01:50 | reveal, in my case, the CMYK values.
| | 01:52 | If you're not seeing the CMYK values, you
go over to fly-out menu and choose CMYK.
| | 01:57 | Now in my case the fill is active. If it
isn't for you, just go and press the X key, which
| | 02:02 | allows you to switch back and forth between
stroke and the fill, and you'll see my CMYK
| | 02:07 | values set as 30, 10, 40 and 30 respectively.
| | 02:11 | So I have gone ahead and switched the Fill
color which is great but I've messed up all
| | 02:14 | of my selected shapes.
| | 02:16 | So what I need to do is undo this
modification twice in a row and I'll show you why.
| | 02:22 | If you go up to the Edit menu, you'll
see that the first command is Undo Color.
| | 02:25 | So if you either a choose a Command or press Ctrl+Z
or Command+Z, nothing will happen on screen.
| | 02:31 | Then you have to go up to the Edit menu and
choose Undo Eyedropper or press Ctrl+Z or
| | 02:36 | Command+Z again in order to undo the application of
the fill and stroke to the various selected objects.
| | 02:41 | Now you might say, All right Deke, that
first command, Undo Color, that must've meant the
| | 02:46 | changing of the colors inside the
Color panel. Actually it doesn't.
| | 02:49 | If I press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
on the Mac in order to deselect my shapes
| | 02:53 | here, you can see that the lifted color
remains intact, which is a great thing.
| | 02:58 | So I don't really know, what
that first command was all about.
| | 03:01 | Anyway what you want to do now is switch over
to the Swatches panel, which you can do by
| | 03:05 | going to the Window menu and choosing the
Swatches command, and then you'll see a list
| | 03:09 | of swatches that are saved along
with this particular document.
| | 03:12 | So that's another thing to think about.
| | 03:14 | Swatches are document specific, so every
document is going to have its own swatches.
| | 03:19 | All right, to create a new swatch you click a
little page icon at the bottom of the panel
| | 03:23 | and that brings up the New Swatch dialog box.
Notice that Illustrator assigns a default
| | 03:27 | name according to the CMYK values.
| | 03:29 | I am going to change the name to Grayish green,
let's say, and then I'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 03:35 | Now you can make some modifications to the
CMYK values at this point, if you want to.
| | 03:39 | I don't need to, so I'll just click OK in order
to create that new swatch inside the panel.
| | 03:43 | Now you can assign that color to any object
inside the illustration. So for example, I could
| | 03:48 | press the B key to switch back to my Black
Arrow tool and I can click on this outer dark
| | 03:52 | green circle here.
| | 03:54 | And then I could either assign this swatch to
the fill just by clicking on it here inside
| | 03:58 | the Swatches panel, or if I wasn't sure my
fill was active, I could go up to the control
| | 04:03 | panel, click on the first swatch over here
on the left inside and then select my new
| | 04:07 | grayish green swatch from that list.
| | 04:09 | And by the way, in case you're wondering why my
swatches are as big as they are, it's because
| | 04:14 | I went ahead set them to
the medium thumbnail view.
| | 04:17 | All right, anyway I am going to click on
that swatch to assign it and the deed is done.
| | 04:21 | So you can see how easy it is to automate the
application of color using swatches inside Illustrator.
| | 04:27 | All right, I am going to have a press Ctrl+Shift+A or
Command+Shift+A on a Mac in order to deselect that circle.
| | 04:32 | Now that's a one way to create a
swatch inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:35 | You can also create a swatch
by dragging and dropping.
| | 04:39 | So let's say I go ahead and grab the
Eyedropper tool once again, and this time I don't have
| | 04:43 | any shape selected.
| | 04:44 | So I'll just go a head and click inside of
this yellow square in order to lift that shade
| | 04:49 | of yellow as the fill color. By the way,
you're also lifting the stroke color, so in my
| | 04:54 | case, I lifted the shade of brown.
| | 04:56 | Now there is two ways to create swatches by
dragging and dropping inside of Illustrator.
| | 05:01 | One is to drag and drop the Fill or Stroke
swatch from the bottom of the toolbox. Now
| | 05:05 | I can see mine because I have a small screen.
| | 05:07 | So I'll expand my toolbox to the two column
display, and then I'll go ahead and drag the
| | 05:12 | Fill color--that yellow swatch there and
drop it inside the Swatches panel.
| | 05:17 | And so that's another way to create a swatch.
In this case, it's going to auto name and we
| | 05:22 | see the CMYK values as well as one to indicate that
this is the first swatch with those particular values.
| | 05:28 | All right, I am going to press Ctrl+Z or
Command+Z on a Mac to undo that new swatch.
| | 05:32 | The other way work is to switch back over to
the Color panel and drag and drop from there.
| | 05:37 | Now if you're working from one of the default
workspaces, such as Essentials, then the Color
| | 05:43 | and Swatches panels are in different locations
so we can easily drag and drop between them.
| | 05:48 | Way back when, at the
beginning of fundamentals course,
| | 05:50 | I suggested you set up a 101 workspace and
it features Color, Color Guide and Swatches
| | 05:54 | all grouped together.
| | 05:56 | So if you're working that way can still perform
a drag and drop for the Color panel as follows.
| | 06:00 | You go ahead and drag either the Fill or
Stroke swatch, and you drag it up to the word
| | 06:05 | Swatches, you wait for Illustrator to switch
over to the Swatches panel, and then you go
| | 06:10 | and move your cursor back into the panel.
| | 06:12 | Now the advantage of performing a drag and
drop and you might think, oh gosh! It's so
| | 06:16 | much easier, just to click on a
little page icon to create a swatch after all.
| | 06:20 | The advantage of performing a drag and drop
is that you can drop the swatch anywhere in
| | 06:25 | the list that you like. So I could
put it at the front of my custom
| | 06:28 | colors like so in order to move that
yellow swatch to this location, and then
| | 06:33 | I would double-click on it in order to rename
the swatch because I want to call mine Aztec
| | 06:38 | gold, and then click OK in
order to create that new swatch.
| | 06:44 | And that folks is how you lift fill and
stroke attributes using the eyedropper as well as
| | 06:49 | save out a color as a custom swatch.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating and using global swatches| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll introduce you to what's
known as global swatches and these are swatches
| | 00:05 | that are linked to their objects.
| | 00:07 | So if you make any kind of modifications to
a global swatch, all of the linked objects
| | 00:11 | will change in kind.
| | 00:13 | If you take a look at the Swatches panel, you'll
see a small group of swatches with white triangles
| | 00:18 | in their bottom right corners.
| | 00:20 | Those are the global swatches.
| | 00:22 | Everything else is a
standard everyday average swatch.
| | 00:24 | So in other words, notice this yellow swatch
right there, Aztec gold, the one we just created
| | 00:29 | in the previous movie.
| | 00:30 | If I double-click on it in order make some
kind of modification, like let's say I change
| | 00:35 | the cyan value to a 100% so that I'm getting
a shade of green, and I turn on the Preview
| | 00:40 | check box so I can see the changes.
| | 00:42 | There are no changes, because this is not
a global swatch, meaning there is no link
| | 00:48 | between the swatch and the objects.
| | 00:50 | So I'll go ahead and cancel out.
| | 00:52 | There is a kind of a link however. If I go ahead and select the
swatch right now, Aztec gold, and then I go up to the Control panel,
| | 01:00 | notice the Select Similar Objects icon.
| | 01:02 | I am going to click the down pointing arrow
head to the right of it and choose Fill Color,
| | 01:06 | and as soon as I do I select all of those
squares that are filled with that shade of yellow.
| | 01:12 | So a link exists.
| | 01:13 | Illustrator is aware that these
objects go with this swatch.
| | 01:17 | It's just until you turn on the global check
box, which I am about to show you in a moment,
| | 01:21 | you can't make that kind of global connection.
| | 01:24 | So what you want to do if you want to change
an Object to global swatch, step one is to
| | 01:29 | select the swatch. Step two is to go ahead
and select all the objects associated with
| | 01:34 | that swatch in any way, shape, or form, and
then step three is to double-click on the
| | 01:38 | swatch and turn on the Global check box,
and then go ahead and click the OK button.
| | 01:43 | Now you'll see a little white triangle in the
bottom right-hand corner of that color swatch.
| | 01:49 | You can now click off of the
selected shapes to deselect them.
| | 01:52 | Now if I double-click on this color swatch to bring
up the dialog box I can change my color values.
| | 01:58 | For example, I am going to change the C
value to 20, the M value to 40, and the Y value
| | 02:03 | to 60, and now if I turn on the Preview check box, I
can see all of the linked objects change in time.
| | 02:10 | Now obviously we no longer have Aztec gold.
| | 02:12 | So I might as well change the name to
let's say, Texcocoa broth, and click OK.
| | 02:18 | Now of course not only have I modified the
color of the swatch, but I have modified the
| | 02:22 | color of the linked objects as well.
| | 02:24 | The thing I haven't done is
change the name of the swatch.
| | 02:29 | Illustrator will go ahead and remember everything you did
inside the dialog box except the changing of the name.
| | 02:34 | So if you want to really change the name you
have to double-click again and then enter
| | 02:39 | that name again, like so, and then click OK.
| | 02:42 | So essentially you can't turn on the global
check box and change name in one operation.
| | 02:46 | You have to do in two separate
operations and now the deed is actually done.
| | 02:52 | I might as well go ahead and change that
grayish green swatch to global swatch as well.
| | 02:56 | So I'll click on it.
| | 02:57 | Again, these are the steps that are
required if you want to really retain the link.
| | 03:00 | Go ahead and click on the swatch, go up to
the Control panel, click on that down pointing
| | 03:04 | arrow head, confirm that Fill color is active,
in our case, and then you want to click on
| | 03:08 | a Select Similar Objects icon to
select all of those fills shapes.
| | 03:14 | Double-click at the grayish green color swatch
to open the dialog box, turn on Global, and
| | 03:18 | in our case we don't want to change the color.
| | 03:20 | So just click OK. Now what I am
going to tell you is when in
| | 03:23 | doubt, you want your swatches to be global.
| | 03:26 | There is fairly few occasions where you don't
want global swatches inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:31 | So when you're creating a swatch you
might as well turn on Global in first place.
| | 03:35 | For example, let's say I want to go ahead
and create a new swatch that really is Aztec
| | 03:39 | gold for the yellow
jewelry inside of the face.
| | 03:43 | Because this is a grouped object, I'll press
the A key to switch to the White Arrow tool
| | 03:47 | and then I'll click somewhere inside
the yellow in order to select that ring.
| | 03:51 | Then I'll go up once again to the Select Similar
Objects icon on the right side of the control
| | 03:55 | panel and click on it to select all the
shapes that are filled with that color.
| | 04:00 | That's a very important step in
order to establish that link.
| | 04:03 | Then click on a little page icon
at the bottom of Swatches panel.
| | 04:06 | Let's go ahead and call this guy Aztec gold
and turn on the Global check box, and then
| | 04:12 | click OK, and we've got ourselves a new global
swatch that's associated with the selected objects.
| | 04:19 | Now I'll go ahead and click off the shapes
to deselect them and let's say I think this
| | 04:23 | gold color is currently to sort of greenish.
| | 04:26 | So I'll double-click on the color swatch in
order to bring up the dialog box, I'll reduce
| | 04:31 | the C value to 0, I'll take the M value up to 10,
and then I'll reduce the Y value to 70%.
| | 04:37 | Turn on the Preview check box, keep a
very careful eye over here on the face.
| | 04:41 | As soon as I turn on the Preview check box
you can see that the color becomes more of
| | 04:45 | gold, and now I can click OK in
order to accept that modification.
| | 04:50 | And it happens even though the shapes are
deselected because we've established a link.
| | 04:56 | That is how you create and modify global
color swatches here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Deleting, adding, and managing swatches| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to manage
your swatches. Specifically, I'll show you how
| | 00:04 | to delete and add entire
collections of swatches at a time.
| | 00:08 | So I am going to switch over to
the wide view of my document.
| | 00:12 | And if you take a look at the Swatches panel,
you can see that there are all kinds of swatches
| | 00:16 | that are not in use
inside of this illustration.
| | 00:20 | For example, I have no intention of
employing this fiery red, or any of these oranges, or
| | 00:28 | these bright violets, or any of those vivid
colors to my document, because the color theme
| | 00:33 | I have selected is more in the order of earth tones,
along with a few blues, and that gold jewelry as well.
| | 00:40 | So what I'd like to do is just get rid of
the colors that are of no use to me and then
| | 00:43 | add in the colors that I need.
| | 00:46 | So I'll start things off here inside the
Swatches panel by clicking on the flyout menu icon
| | 00:50 | in the upper-right-hand corner and choosing
Select All Unused, and that will go ahead and
| | 00:55 | select all of the swatches or at least
nearly all the swatches that are not used inside
| | 01:00 | the illustration, and that includes three of my
global swatches that I haven't yet assigned.
| | 01:06 | So I am going to deselect them by pressing
the Ctrl key or the Command key on the Mac
| | 01:10 | and clicking on each one of
those selected global swatches.
| | 01:14 | So the dark brown one goes by the name Darkness,
the bright green, Imported beetle swatch, and
| | 01:20 | then finally the Stone violet swatch.
| | 01:22 | So Ctrl+click on all three of those, Command+
click on the Mac in order to deselect them, that
| | 01:27 | leaves you with almost all of
the default swatches selected.
| | 01:31 | Then you drop down to the little
Trashcan icon and click on it.
| | 01:34 | Now that will cause Illustrator to alert you
and ask you if you really want to delete the
| | 01:38 | swatches, which I think is you know a silly
warning. I mean how often do you click on
| | 01:43 | something that looks exactly like a trashcan
if you don't want to delete things, but then
| | 01:47 | you would click Yes and go forward. Or I'll
click No, so I can show you how to avoid that
| | 01:52 | message. Two different ways, you can either
press the Alt key or the Option key on the
| | 01:55 | Mac and click on that Trash icon, in which
case the selected swatches will go away without
| | 02:00 | warning, or you can drag any one of these selected
swatches to the Trashcan and release, and that'll
| | 02:07 | take care of things as well.
| | 02:09 | Now notice that leaves me with a few aberrant
swatches, two of which are arranged in these folders.
| | 02:15 | So I have got this black swatch right here
and then I have this orange swatch, which
| | 02:19 | is just kooky because I'm definitely not
using orange anywhere inside this artwork.
| | 02:23 | So I need to get rid of them as well by
clicking on one of the folders and Shift+clicking on
| | 02:27 | the other, and then go ahead and
drag them to the Trash icon as well.
| | 02:32 | All right, now let's say that I want to add
swatches for all of the colors that I am using.
| | 02:38 | Well, there's a couple of
different ways to work.
| | 02:40 | If I press the V key to switch to the Black
Arrow tool and then I marquee random group
| | 02:44 | of shapes here, and then I go up to the
Swatches panel flyout menu, you can see that I have
| | 02:49 | got a command right below Select All Unused,
that says Add Selected Colors, and that will
| | 02:54 | go ahead and add the colors from the
selected shapes, or if I press the Escape key in
| | 02:58 | order to hide that menu and then press Ctrl+
Shift+A or Command+Shift+A on the Mac to deselect
| | 03:02 | the artwork, then when I go back to the flyout menu,
I'll see the command has changed to Add Used Colors.
| | 03:08 | So that's going to add all the
colors throughout the artwork.
| | 03:11 | Now you'll see that I'm using an awful lot of
whites and blacks which are already represented
| | 03:16 | by a swatch inside this document.
| | 03:19 | And the thing is Illustrator is very careful
not to duplicate any swatches, so it's just
| | 03:23 | going to add the colors that are so
far not represented by swatches.
| | 03:27 | So I'll go ahead and choose the Command and
you can see that adds an awful lot of swatches
| | 03:32 | to my Swatches panel.
| | 03:33 | Notice they all come up as global
colors as well which is awesome.
| | 03:37 | There is one color right here that is not
global and that's a color that's left over
| | 03:42 | from the delete operation;
this dark shade of green.
| | 03:45 | I could've gotten rid of it a minute or two
ago, but I decided to keep it because it is
| | 03:49 | a kind of color I want to
use with some modifications.
| | 03:53 | So I am going to go ahead and drag it
down to this location right there.
| | 03:57 | And then I'll double-click on it in order
to bring up the Swatch Options dialog box,
| | 04:02 | and I'm going to slightly
modify these values here.
| | 04:05 | I am going to select the C value and press
Shift+Down Arrow to reduce it by 10, then
| | 04:09 | I'll tab to the Magenta value and press
Shift+Up Arrow to increase it by 10.
| | 04:13 | If I tab to the Yellow value and press Shift+
Down Arrow, you'll see that reduces it from 95
| | 04:18 | to 90, so it only reduces it by 5%.
| | 04:20 | But what it's really doing is
going for the nearest 10% increment.
| | 04:24 | So I am going to take that guy farther down
to 85% and then I'll tab to the K value and
| | 04:29 | press Shift+Down Arrow to take it down to 20%.
So not a terribly different color than
| | 04:33 | it was before, but slightly different.
| | 04:35 | Notice that Illustrator automatically changed
the swatch name to represent my new values.
| | 04:41 | However I am going to
change it to something else.
| | 04:43 | So I am going to go ahead and call this guy
Card table and turn on the Global check box
| | 04:48 | as well, and then click OK.
| | 04:50 | And this time around even though I renamed
the swatch and I turned on the Global check
| | 04:55 | box, the new name survives.
| | 04:58 | So I am not sure what that's about. There
might be a bug associated with selected objects,
| | 05:02 | but it's good news for us.
| | 05:04 | Now what we have instead of a disorganized
array of colors that we'll never use is a
| | 05:09 | specific group of colors that
we'll be using on a regular basis.
| | 05:14 | Thanks to our ability to delete and add
entire collections of swatches at a time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assigning and eyedropping colors| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you a few different
ways to assign colors to paths inside Illustrator,
| | 00:05 | both from the Swatches panel as well as a
few tricks that involve the Eyedropper tool,
| | 00:10 | and drag and drop.
| | 00:11 | I am going to go ahead and zoom in on the
series of circles that surrounds the God's head.
| | 00:16 | And we are going to color every one of these
seven circles that is currently transparent,
| | 00:21 | starting with the one with a purple stroke.
| | 00:24 | So go ahead and click on its path outline.
| | 00:26 | You have to click on the outline
because the path is unfilled.
| | 00:30 | If you click inside of any of these circles,
you'll select the first filled circle which
| | 00:34 | is this green circle near the outside.
| | 00:36 | So I'll click on this guy.
| | 00:38 | And because the fill is active, I can just
go up here to the Swatches panel and click
| | 00:42 | on the desired color which happens to
be this one called Imported Beetle.
| | 00:46 | So I'll go ahead and
click it, and I was wrong.
| | 00:48 | Look at that! The fill is not
active. The stroke is active.
| | 00:51 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac
to undo that modification, and I'll press
| | 00:55 | the X key to ensure that now the fill is active,
and I'll try again by clicking on Imported
| | 01:01 | Beetle right there, and this time it works.
| | 01:04 | Another way to work that provides you with
less ambiguity is to select the desired path
| | 01:09 | outline which is the next circle up, and then go up
to the Control panel and click on the Fill Swatch.
| | 01:15 | That way you know, regardless of whether the
fill or stroke is active, that you're going
| | 01:19 | to assign the color to the fill, and then
this time around, I will select the next swatch
| | 01:23 | in which is called The Rich Dirt.
| | 01:25 | That goes ahead assigns
that fill to the artwork.
| | 01:27 | Now I'll click the next circle out, and I'll
go back up to the Control panel, click on
| | 01:32 | that fill swatch, and select the next
swatch to the right which is earth red.
| | 01:37 | This ends up covering up the previous
circle because apparently it's in back.
| | 01:41 | Stacking order is always a big
issue inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:44 | So we'll address all the
stacking problems in a later movie.
| | 01:47 | Next, I want to select this circle here, and
I want to assign the next swatch which is
| | 01:52 | called Stone violet.
| | 01:53 | And of course I can do that just by clicking
on the swatch, but then, we wouldn't learn
| | 01:57 | anything, would we? We just sit here and fill a
bunch of circles which gets boring after a while.
| | 02:02 | So I want to show you
special eyedropper trick.
| | 02:04 | I'll press I key in order to
switch to the Eyedropper.
| | 02:08 | And if you end up clicking inside of a shape,
for example, let's say I click inside this
| | 02:14 | green circle, then I'll transfer both its fill and
its stroke attributes to the selected path outline.
| | 02:20 | But that's not what I want.
| | 02:21 | I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on a Mac to undo that change.
| | 02:24 | I'm happy with a thick white stroke.
| | 02:26 | What I want to do is fill the shape with that
violet that is currently assigned to the stroke
| | 02:32 | of the green circle.
| | 02:33 | So if you want to lift one attribute and put
it in another place, for example, I want to
| | 02:37 | take the stroke attribute and assign it to
the active attribute for the selected shape
| | 02:41 | which is the fill, then you press the Shift
key and you click. Not on the fill because
| | 02:46 | if I did that, I'd just go ahead and
lift the fill as you use see right there.
| | 02:50 | So I lift green and put it inside the fill.
| | 02:53 | I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z or
Command+Z on the Mac to undo the change.
| | 02:56 | Instead, I want to Shift+Click on the stroke,
and that goes ahead and puts the stroke color
| | 03:01 | inside the active attribute
which again is the fill.
| | 03:04 | All right, another way to work--I'll press
Ctrl+Shift+A, or Command+Shift+A on the Mac
| | 03:08 | to deselect the artwork--another way to work is to
press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac,
| | 03:13 | and that turns the eyedropper not into a kind of
sucking eyedropper, but rather into a squirting one.
| | 03:20 | So let me show you what I mean there.
| | 03:21 | I'll press the D key in order to establish
the default attributes, and then I'll go up
| | 03:26 | to the Control panel, click on the Fill icon
right there, and change it to the next swatch
| | 03:31 | which is Faded Blanket.
| | 03:33 | Now notice that I've got this brownish fill,
and a black stroke that's 1 point thick.
| | 03:39 | If I press the Alt key or the Option key on the
Mac and click on that stroke, very important
| | 03:44 | that you click on the outline and not inside
the shape because it currently has no fill,
| | 03:48 | and you'd end up affecting this
green shape in the background.
| | 03:51 | Go ahead and Alt+Click or Option+Click on
the path outline, and you will assign that
| | 03:55 | brown fill and that black
stroke to that circle.
| | 03:59 | All right, now let's take
a look at drag and drop.
| | 04:01 | Let's say I want to take Native Skin which
is the next swatch, and I want to assign it
| | 04:05 | to the next circle out.
| | 04:06 | I'd go ahead, and drag that swatch and drop
it again on the path outline, very important
| | 04:12 | because the fill is not existent.
| | 04:14 | And as soon as you drop, then you will
assign that swatch to the active attribute which
| | 04:19 | in our case is the fill.
| | 04:20 | But let's say it wasn't.
| | 04:22 | I'll go ahead and switch over to the Color
panel, so we can see if I press the X key,
| | 04:26 | I've now made the stroke active.
| | 04:28 | Now I'll switch back to the Swatches panel, and
let's say I want to assign this guy, Imported
| | 04:32 | Cocoa, to this final circle. The one
that hasn't been colored so far.
| | 04:37 | I'll go ahead and grab it and drag it and
drop it onto the stroke because that's all
| | 04:41 | I have to work with, and that changes the
color of the stroke not because I dropped
| | 04:45 | it onto the stroke but rather
because the stroke is currently active.
| | 04:49 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac to undo that change.
| | 04:52 | If you run into that scenario, but you still
want to do a drag and drop, here's what you do.
| | 04:56 | You go ahead and drag that color swatch,
then you press the Shift key, and drop it, and
| | 05:01 | that will go ahead and
affect the inactive attribute.
| | 05:04 | And those, my friends, are the various ways
to apply color swatches to path outlines here
| | 05:09 | inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assigning colors to paths inside groups| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you a couple of different
ways to assign swatches to path outlines inside
| | 00:05 | of groups, because even as groups afford us a
lot of opportunities inside of Illustrator,
| | 00:11 | they present challenges as well.
| | 00:13 | So I am going to go ahead and zoom out a couple of
clicks here to take in a little more of the artwork.
| | 00:17 | And notice this series of inset 4
point stars that surround the God's face.
| | 00:22 | Let's say I want to fill the
innermost stars independently.
| | 00:26 | So I'd go ahead and click
on either one of them.
| | 00:28 | I can see they're grouped together because
of the word group on the far-left side of
| | 00:31 | the Control panel.
| | 00:32 | Well, I want to fill in one of these stars
with this light shade of green which goes
| | 00:37 | by the name C=25, M=0, Y=55, and K=0.
| | 00:41 | And it's so auto-named because it was part of that
group of swatches that I created automatically.
| | 00:47 | But if I click on that swatch, I'm going to
change the stroke because the stroke is the
| | 00:51 | active attribute which is not what I want,
so I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac
| | 00:55 | to undo that change, and then I'll press the
X key to switch from the stroke to the fill
| | 00:59 | and I'll try again.
| | 01:01 | This time around, I'll change the fill, but
I change the fill of both of the paths, and
| | 01:06 | that's not what I want.
| | 01:07 | What if I want to change the fill of the
innermost path independently, why then I drag and drop?
| | 01:13 | So whether the path outlines are
selected or not, doesn't matter.
| | 01:16 | I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Shift+A, or Command+
Shift+A on the Mac to deselect them, and then I'll
| | 01:20 | grab this shade of green here, grayish
green, and drag it from the Swatches panel.
| | 01:25 | And now I can drop it inside of the
star because the star has a fill.
| | 01:30 | So as soon as I drop it, I
change the fill of that star.
| | 01:33 | So that's pretty easy, dragging and
dropping inside shapes. No problem.
| | 01:37 | However, what do you do if things get a little
more complicated? For example, notice these
| | 01:41 | angled bars that connect the
blue rectangles to the God's head.
| | 01:45 | I want all of them to be filled with violet.
| | 01:48 | So what I can do is grab Stone Violet from
the Swatches panel, drag it and drop it into
| | 01:53 | any one of those stars, not inside the star
because after all, the bars don't currently
| | 01:57 | have any fill, and as a result, I end up
filling in the big rectangle in the background.
| | 02:03 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac to undo that change.
| | 02:05 | Then, I'll drag Stone Violet, and this time
I'll drop it on the bar's path outline and
| | 02:10 | I end up changing that one bar only.
| | 02:14 | So what I need to do instead is
switch to the White Arrow tool.
| | 02:16 | So I'll press the A key in order to get the white
arrow, and then I'll Alt+Click or Option+Click
| | 02:22 | on any one of the bars to select the entire
path independently of the rest of the group.
| | 02:26 | If I Alt+Click or Option+Click again, I'll
select up the hierarchy, so this time I've
| | 02:31 | selected all of the grouped bars.
| | 02:33 | I could see they are a group because of the
appearance of the word Group on the far-left
| | 02:36 | side of the Control panel.
| | 02:37 | If I Alt or Option+Click a third time, then I
select all of those other angled rectangles
| | 02:43 | that are part of the larger group.
| | 02:45 | That's not what I want.
| | 02:46 | So I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A, or Command+Shift+A
on the Mac to deselect the paths, and I'll
| | 02:51 | Alt+Click or Option+Click just twice on any
one of those bars to select all eight of them,
| | 02:56 | and then I'll return to the Swatches panel
and click on Stone Violet, and that goes ahead
| | 03:00 | and fills all of them.
| | 03:02 | So you can see in this case, it's a lot
easier to select all eight of the bars at a time
| | 03:07 | as opposed to dragging and dropping a color
from the Swatches panel eight different times.
| | 03:11 | All right, now I want to fill in the big
eight pointed stars around the outside.
| | 03:15 | Again, they're part of a larger group.
| | 03:18 | So I need to perform a drag and drop.
| | 03:20 | I don't even have to bother to deselect
the stuff that's selected currently.
| | 03:23 | For example, I want to fill this innermost
eight pointed star with this swatch right
| | 03:28 | here, this pale shade of brown
which is C=10, M=15, Y=20, K=0.
| | 03:33 | So I will go ahead and drag it and drop it
onto the outline of the star, like so, and
| | 03:38 | that goes ahead and fills it in
even though the bars remain selected.
| | 03:42 | Next, I'll grab the sort of grayish blue,
which is C=50, M=35, Y=20, K=0, and I'll drag
| | 03:48 | it and drop it onto the next
star out, and I'll fill it.
| | 03:52 | Now I have to admit however that
this is a precarious way to work.
| | 03:56 | I can tell that my bars have not been affected,
because I see that the Stone Violet swatch
| | 04:01 | is still active inside the Swatches panel.
| | 04:03 | However, because the eight pointed stars are
in front, they're obscuring what's going on.
| | 04:08 | So I can't really visually track my artwork.
| | 04:11 | And that's always a dangerous thing.
| | 04:12 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Shift+A, or
Command+Shift+A on the Mac, and that goes
| | 04:16 | ahead and protects those bars
from any potential future harm.
| | 04:19 | All right, now for some more dragging and
dropping, co-incidentally, Stone Violet is
| | 04:24 | the swatch I'm looking for.
| | 04:25 | So I'll go ahead and drag it and drop it onto
the uppermost of these outside star shapes,
| | 04:30 | and that goes ahead and fills in the big star.
| | 04:33 | Then I'll Alt+Click or Option+Click using
the White Arrow tool on the lower of the two
| | 04:38 | outside stars in order to select it, and then
I'll press Shift+X in order to swap the fill
| | 04:43 | and the stroke, so I no longer have any
stroke at all, and the fill becomes black.
| | 04:47 | And I end up with this final effect which
we can see by switching to the wider view.
| | 04:53 | So those are a couple of different ways,
dragging and dropping and using the White Arrow tool
| | 04:57 | to assign swatches to path
outlines inside groups.
| | 05:00 | But we've got a larger problem here which
is this big eight pointed star is covering
| | 05:04 | up the other stuff in the artwork.
| | 05:06 | That's a stacking order problem that we
will begin to address in the next movie.
| | 05:11 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the stacking order| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to adjust
problems associated with stacking order using
| | 00:04 | the Bring to Front and Sent to Back commands.
| | 00:07 | So I'll go ahead and switch to the wide
view of my illustration in progress.
| | 00:11 | And stacking order is the way that the
various objects are stacked on top of each other.
| | 00:16 | So in Illustrator, everything is a path
outline or some other kind of object that exists at
| | 00:22 | some layer inside of the stack.
| | 00:24 | And then you can pack these things inside of
groups and then inside of layers, and so forth.
| | 00:29 | But there is ultimately something way at the
back of the stack and then something way at
| | 00:33 | the front and then hundreds, if not
thousands, of various path outlines in between.
| | 00:38 | So in our case we've got these stars that
are obnoxiously in front of everything else.
| | 00:43 | For the moment, what I want you to do is twirl
open the calendar layer here inside the Layers
| | 00:47 | panel, and you'll see this second object
down, it's a group called rear stars.
| | 00:53 | For now, I'm just going to hide these objects
by clicking on the eyeball in front of them.
| | 00:57 | And then what I want to do is fill in some of these
larger circles along the outside of the calendar.
| | 01:03 | So I'll press the V key to switch to the
Black Arrow tool, because none of these circles
| | 01:07 | are grouped together.
| | 01:08 | And I'll click on the first circle out that's
not filled, the one that runs on the outside
| | 01:14 | of these rectangles here,
| | 01:15 | in order to select that shape, and assuming
that your fill is still active, go to the
| | 01:19 | Swatches panel and click on that dull blue,
the one that says C=50, M=35, Y=20, K=0 in
| | 01:25 | order to fill that shape.
| | 01:26 | And now we end up with this strange bowling ball or
something with a bunch of different holes in it.
| | 01:33 | Obviously, this circle is totally at
the wrong location in the artwork.
| | 01:37 | You can see that it's very close to the top
here inside the Layers panel, because it is
| | 01:40 | the next path down below rear stars.
| | 01:43 | Let's go ahead and turn it off too, so
we can better see what we're doing.
| | 01:46 | Next, if you're working along with me, I want
you to click on the topmost of these two circles
| | 01:50 | right there, this guy, in order to select it
and we want to fill this with the dark green
| | 01:56 | that is called Card table,
inside the Swatches panel.
| | 01:59 | Again, it's covering everything up, but
we should be able to work around it.
| | 02:03 | I'm going to click the next shape down or
you could go up to the Select menu and choose
| | 02:09 | Next Object Below, which will select the next
object directly below the selected one, and
| | 02:15 | that ends up getting us the
shape that we're looking for.
| | 02:19 | And I just want to reverse its fill and stroke,
so I'll press Shift+X, so that we now have
| | 02:23 | a black fill and no stroke
associated with the shape.
| | 02:25 | Then I'll return to the Select menu and
choose Next Object Below again, and this time I'll
| | 02:30 | assign a very pale beige; it's C=0, M=6, Y=12,
K=12 here inside the Swatches panel.
| | 02:37 | And then finally, I'll
choose that command again.
| | 02:40 | You can bother to remember the keyboard
shortcut if you want to, this isn't one of the ones
| | 02:43 | that I've assigned to memory.
| | 02:45 | And that will select that outermost circle
and then I'll fill it with an even paler beige
| | 02:50 | C=0, M=3, Y=7, K=7, in order
to create this effect here.
| | 02:55 | Now I don't want either of
these two circles to have strokes.
| | 02:58 | So I'll just go ahead and marquee partially
around them, like so, and then I'll go up
| | 03:03 | to the Control panel, click on the
second swatch in and change it to None.
| | 03:07 | And then finally, I want to select all these
shapes and send them to the back of the stack.
| | 03:11 | So I'll scroll down my list a little
bit here, inside the Layers panel.
| | 03:14 | I'll turn back on that blue circle and I'll
Shift+click on the meatballs associated with
| | 03:19 | the black, green and blue circles, in order
to add them to the selection. That's going
| | 03:25 | to be the easiest way to work where
this particular artwork is concerned.
| | 03:29 | Now what you want to do is right-click
inside the illustration and choose Arrange.
| | 03:33 | And notice that that brings up
a series of stacking commands.
| | 03:37 | So we've got Bring to Front, which brings the
objects all the way to the front of a given container.
| | 03:43 | So because these guys are not grouped, they'd
go all the way to the top of the layer, or
| | 03:47 | you can send them all the way to the back of
the layer and you can also bring them forward
| | 03:52 | or send them backward incrementally.
| | 03:54 | Now Bring to Front is exactly
the opposite of what we want.
| | 03:58 | That's going to take these objects all the
way to the front of the stack, so they cover
| | 04:01 | up everything inside the artwork, because
this artwork contains one and only one layer,
| | 04:07 | whereas, if I right-click, choose Arrange
and then choose Send to Back, we're going
| | 04:12 | to get the effect that we're looking for.
Which is to say the circles will go to the
| | 04:15 | very back of the calendar.
| | 04:17 | Now a note about these keyboard shortcuts,
even though I told you I don't really use
| | 04:21 | those keyboard shortcuts for Next Object Above and Next
Object Below, the selection commands, I do use these.
| | 04:27 | And they're very similar.
| | 04:29 | They both rely on square bracket keys.
| | 04:31 | So we have Ctrl+Shift+Right bracket to send
things to the top of the stack, and we have
| | 04:36 | Ctrl+Shift+Left bracket to send the
selection to the bottom of the stack.
| | 04:40 | And while this may not make a lot of sense,
if you come from another software, you may
| | 04:43 | wonder well, Bring to Front, why isn't that
just Ctrl+F or Command+F? And send it back,
| | 04:48 | what's wrong with Ctrl+B or Command+B?
| | 04:49 | Well, those shortcuts are devoted to much
better commands, as we'll see in the next movie.
| | 04:55 | For now, I'll tell you that the good news is
that these same shortcuts appear in other
| | 05:00 | Adobe products, most notably Photoshop.
| | 05:03 | So anyway choose Send to Back or press Ctrl+Shift+Left
bracket to send those circles to the back of the stack.
| | 05:09 | Next, I'm going to switch to the
zoomed-in version of my artwork here.
| | 05:13 | And notice that Illustrator
has not kept up with things.
| | 05:16 | We should be seeing the exact same progress,
after all this is the exact same piece of
| | 05:21 | artwork, but we have a screen refresh problem.
| | 05:23 | So I'm going to press Ctrl+- or Command+- on
the Mac just to step out a little bit here,
| | 05:28 | and that forces Illustrator to redraw the
screen, so we can see what's actually going on.
| | 05:34 | Notice these inset four-point stars.
| | 05:36 | They're currently located just above the
larger blue star. They should be located in front
| | 05:42 | of those rectangular bars right there.
| | 05:45 | What I need to do is bring them up incrementally
and I can do so by right-clicking in the artwork
| | 05:50 | once again, choosing Arrange and this time
I want not bring all the way to front, but
| | 05:54 | rather Bring Forward.
| | 05:55 | And Bring Forward and Send Backward are going
to change the stacking of the selected objects
| | 06:01 | just one object up or down.
| | 06:04 | So if I choose Bring Forward, that's
going to move that artwork just one step up.
| | 06:09 | And as you can see here, it provides us
with exactly the results we are booking for.
| | 06:14 | So that's how you select objects up and down
the stack as well as arrange objects using
| | 06:19 | commands like Send to Back and Bring Forward.
| | 06:22 | In the next movie, I'll show you another way to
select up and down the stack using a special
| | 06:27 | trick associated with the Black Arrow tool.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting down a stack of paths| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you a special trick
for selecting down a stack of objects using
| | 00:05 | the Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:07 | Now in the case of our artwork, you may recall
that we lost one of our circles when we were
| | 00:11 | filling these circles in the previous movie.
| | 00:14 | And specifically, I'll go ahead and switch
to the final version of the illustration.
| | 00:18 | It's this circle that
I've selected right there.
| | 00:21 | So we've got the bright green circle followed
by a kind of dull beige one, then the reddish
| | 00:25 | one, a purple one, and so forth, whereas if
I switch to the wide version of my artwork
| | 00:30 | in progress, you can see that
that beige circle is missing.
| | 00:33 | All right, I'll go ahead and advance to the
zoomed version of the illustration and I'll
| | 00:37 | zoom in even farther here, so
that I can show you this trick.
| | 00:40 | Now it only works with the Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:43 | It doesn't work with the White Arrow tool.
| | 00:45 | And it hinges on pressing and holding the
Ctrl key or the Command key on the Mac, which
| | 00:50 | switches you on-the-fly to the other arrow.
| | 00:54 | So you have to know kind of what you're
looking for, even though you can't see it, you have
| | 00:58 | to know it's back there at someplace.
| | 01:00 | And then you keep that Ctrl key down or the
Command key down on the Mac and you click
| | 01:04 | inside of a path outline.
| | 01:06 | Now the first time you click, you will select
the entire path directly below your cursor
| | 01:10 | and then the cursor appears as a white arrow
with the sideways caret next to it, showing
| | 01:15 | you that you are now going
to select down the stack.
| | 01:18 | So again, keep that Ctrl key down, that's
the Command key on a Mac, and click again
| | 01:22 | and you'll select the next object down, this time
the purple circle, just outside of the reddish one.
| | 01:28 | So it's analogous by the way to going up to
the Select menu and choosing Next Object below.
| | 01:34 | The advantage is you don't have to choose
this command over and over again, you can
| | 01:38 | just Ctrl or Command click
inside the illustration.
| | 01:41 | So I'll go ahead and do it again,
Ctrl+click or Command+click.
| | 01:44 | That starts things over unfortunately.
| | 01:47 | I'll Ctrl+click, Command+click several times in a
row until I eventually select that hidden circle.
| | 01:54 | And that happens that six times I believe
you have to click after pressing that key.
| | 01:59 | Now you may end up getting a different effect.
| | 02:00 | I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
on the Mac in order to deselect the artwork.
| | 02:05 | If you are positioned directly over a
segment associated with the path, then eventually
| | 02:11 | as you Ctrl+click or Command+click down the
path outlines, you'll end up just partially
| | 02:17 | selecting the circle as I've done here.
| | 02:19 | In which case, go ahead and press the Ctrl+Alt
keys or the Command+Option keys on a Mac and
| | 02:24 | click to select the entire shape.
| | 02:26 | Now we need to bring it up the stack.
| | 02:28 | So one way to work is to right-click inside
the document window, choose Arrange and then
| | 02:33 | choose Bring Forward, and that is going to
nudge the path outline one object upward,
| | 02:40 | which means we still can't see it. Which is
why the keyboard shortcut comes in very handy.
| | 02:44 | So if I press Ctrl+Right bracket or Command+Right
bracket on the Mac, I will eventually see that circle.
| | 02:50 | So after I press that keyboard shortcut five
times in a row, it ends up coming in front
| | 02:56 | of the reddish path outline.
| | 02:57 | Now I don't want to go any farther, because
then I'll end up covering up that bright green
| | 03:01 | circle at which point I would need to press
Ctrl+Left bracket or Command+Left bracket
| | 03:06 | on the Mac to send it backward one step.
| | 03:09 | So remember, as long as you're armed with
the Black Arrow tool--this trick doesn't work
| | 03:13 | with the White Arrow tool--you can Ctrl+click
or Command+click inside of the path outline
| | 03:18 | to select down the stack.
| | 03:20 | However, you've probably gotten a sense here
that using something like Bring Forward or
| | 03:24 | Send Backward doesn't get you where you want
to go very quickly, which is why Illustrator
| | 03:30 | provides two relative stacking commands
which I'll demonstrate in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Pasting in front and in back| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to work with
Illustrator's relative stacking commands,
| | 00:05 | Paste in Front and Paste in Back.
| | 00:06 | I'll start by switching to the wide view of my
artwork and then I'll twirl open the calendar
| | 00:11 | layer once again here inside the Layers
panel, and I'll turn back on rear stars.
| | 00:16 | Obviously, they're a big problem.
| | 00:18 | Now I will click anywhere on them with the
Black Arrow tool to select the entire group.
| | 00:22 | Now they need to go to the back of the
stack, but not all the way to the back.
| | 00:25 | If I right-click inside the window, choose
Arrange, and choose Send to Back, then even
| | 00:29 | though they are pretty big where this art
work is concerned, they're not nearly as big
| | 00:34 | as the circles that are now covering them.
| | 00:36 | Then I could sit here for a while and press
Ctrl+Right bracket or Command+Right bracket
| | 00:41 | on the Mac to nudge them forward, but that
would be an enormous waste of my time given
| | 00:46 | that Illustrator provides
me with better options.
| | 00:48 | And here's how they work.
| | 00:50 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac to undo the change.
| | 00:53 | Then I'll go up to the Edit menu and I'll
choose the Cut command, or you can press Ctrl+X
| | 00:58 | or Command+X on the Mac.
| | 01:00 | Now if you're not that used to Cut it may
seem that we just deleted the shapes entirely.
| | 01:04 | What we've really done is transferred them to
little bit of memory called the clipboard.
| | 01:09 | So it's the same place that objects go when
you choose the Copy command, except that Cut
| | 01:14 | removes them from the artwork.
| | 01:15 | Then you want to return to the Edit menu and
notice that you've got a couple of commands
| | 01:19 | here, Paste in Front and Paste and Back and they
have very easy to remember keyboard shortcuts
| | 01:24 | of Ctrl+F or Command+F
and Ctrl+B or Command+B.
| | 01:27 | And they've been with us
since Illustrator 1.0,
| | 01:30 | they're really pretty much as revolutionary
as the Pen tool at that time, because they
| | 01:34 | allow you to make relative adjustments.
| | 01:37 | For example, if I choose Paste in Front,
because nothing is selected my artwork, I will paste
| | 01:42 | those objects in front of
everything else inside the active layer.
| | 01:46 | Obviously, that's not what I want.
| | 01:48 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 01:50 | What I need to do instead is select something
that should be in front or behind those stars.
| | 01:56 | Now I happen to know that these rectangles right
here should be directly in front of the stars.
| | 02:01 | So I'll go ahead and select them to make them
active, and then I'll go up to the Edit menu,
| | 02:06 | and I could choose Paste in front, but that'll put
the stars in front of those shapes. Not what I want.
| | 02:10 | Instead I'll choose Paste in Back or I could
press Ctrl+B or Command+B on the Mac in order
| | 02:15 | to achieve this effect here, and that's exactly
where those stars need to be, which is something
| | 02:21 | like 20 objects down the stack and yet I'm able
to pull it off with just a couple of commands.
| | 02:26 | So you've got the Cut command followed by
either Paste in Back or Paste in Front.
| | 02:32 | Something else to note.
| | 02:33 | Illustrator goes ahead and keeps the objects at
their original horizontal and vertical positions.
| | 02:39 | So it's just as if you had chosen the Paste
in Place command except that you also have
| | 02:44 | stacking control.
| | 02:46 | I'm going to switch to zoomed in version of my
artwork and we are missing another path outline.
| | 02:51 | It's right here.
| | 02:52 | You can see it, by the way, if
we switch to the final version.
| | 02:55 | Notice that there is that kind of darkish
beige sort of circle that's surrounding the
| | 03:00 | white eggs, whereas if I switch my
illustration in progress, that circle is missing.
| | 03:05 | Well, it's down there in some place and I
could do that Ctrl or Command clicking trick
| | 03:08 | that I showed you in the previous movie, but
here's an even easier way to work, if you like.
| | 03:13 | Just press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on the Mac
to switch to the outline mode, and you'll
| | 03:19 | see that there is a path right there.
| | 03:21 | A circle that is to say and I just went
ahead and clicked on it to select it.
| | 03:25 | If you want to confirm that that's the right
object, you just have to press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y
| | 03:30 | again to switch to the Preview mode and you'll
see that you have an entire circle here that
| | 03:35 | is hidden from view.
| | 03:37 | Now go up to the Edit menu and choose the Cut
command, and then I'll click on this circle
| | 03:43 | right there, the one directly
behind the white so-called eggs.
| | 03:48 | I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose this
time Paste in Front, or press Ctrl+F or Command+F
| | 03:53 | on the Mac, and that puts that formerly
missing circle exactly where it needs to be.
| | 03:58 | Now I'm going to zoom out a little bit
here to take in more of my artwork.
| | 04:02 | So that's how you take advantage of
Illustrator's oldie but goodie relative stacking commands;
| | 04:08 | Paste in Front and Paste in Back.
| | 04:11 | I'm going to go ahead and zoom out
from my artwork just a little bit here.
| | 04:13 | There is one item that I need to recolor
here, and that's this big brown circle.
| | 04:18 | It shouldn't be brown. It should
be this dark card table green.
| | 04:22 | So with that object selected I'll go ahead
and click on a card table swatch here inside
| | 04:27 | the Swatches panel.
| | 04:28 | And that didn't do anything.
| | 04:29 | What in the world is going on? I just want
you to note this, in case you run into the
| | 04:34 | same problem inside of your artwork. Things
can get so complicated inside of Illustrator
| | 04:39 | that you swear the program is just
malfunctioning at times when actually there's just something
| | 04:45 | going on under the hood.
| | 04:46 | So in our case, the fill is active.
| | 04:49 | You can see that.
| | 04:50 | The first swatch up here in the Control panel
tells us that's the case, but we've got this
| | 04:53 | little warning and it's telling me
that the top most Fill is not active.
| | 04:58 | If you want to make it active then you need
to click on a caution icon there, and that
| | 05:02 | I'll tell you no actually
the top Fill is brown.
| | 05:05 | Then it's like, okay, I don't even know
what you're talking about, but fine.
| | 05:09 | I'll go back over here card table and
click on it again and this time it works.
| | 05:13 | Well, let me show you why this is happening,
because it's a lead-in to the next movie.
| | 05:18 | I'll go to the Window menu and choose the
Appearance command, and that's going to switch
| | 05:22 | us over to the Appearance panel which shows
me that this path includes a black stroke
| | 05:26 | as well as two now green fills.
| | 05:29 | A moment ago, I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac we had made the bottom of the two
| | 05:34 | fills green, and it was getting
completely covered up with the brown fill.
| | 05:38 | So in other words, you can have multiple fills
and strokes going on, on a single path outline,
| | 05:43 | and they too are stacked inside of the paths just as
the paths are stacked inside of the larger artwork.
| | 05:50 | The better solution in this case is to grab
that top fill and just drag it to the little
| | 05:55 | trash icon at the bottom of the panel to get
rid of it, because why do we need two fills,
| | 05:59 | especially when one is
just covering up another.
| | 06:01 | Well, in this case we don't need two fills.
| | 06:04 | So it was a good thing we got rid of them.
| | 06:05 | But there are times when multiple fills can be
very, very handy and I'll show you a couple
| | 06:11 | of examples in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining multiple fills| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you how to add
multiple fills to path outlines, and I'll
| | 00:04 | give you a sense for why you'd
even want to do such a thing.
| | 00:07 | In the end, we are going to try to
achieve two very different effects.
| | 00:10 | First, we need to fill in the irises and add
pupils and highlights to the God's eyes, and
| | 00:15 | then we are going to create these beveled
ellipses that surround the entire calendar.
| | 00:20 | So I'll go ahead and switch over to my illustration in
progress, and zoom in on the God's face right there.
| | 00:25 | Now if I click on one of the eyes using the
Black Arrow tool, we can see that much of
| | 00:29 | his face has been grouped together.
| | 00:32 | So the easiest thing to do is going to be to
enter the Group Isolation mode by double-clicking
| | 00:36 | on any of these outlines.
| | 00:38 | Now I can click on one of these inner circles
here and Shift+Click on the other with the
| | 00:42 | Black Arrow tool to select them both.
| | 00:44 | So you can see right now the God has these
kinds of little orphan Annie eyes, in other
| | 00:48 | words, no irises, no pupils.
| | 00:51 | But if I check out my Appearance panel
here, I can see that I've got a stroke.
| | 00:55 | If I click on the Stroke swatch in order to
make it active, that will bring up a list
| | 00:59 | of my swatches, and it will show me the active swatch,
as this one right here, C=30, M=60, Y =70, K=50.
| | 01:06 | I am going to take that same swatch and apply
it to the fill by clicking on the Fill Swatch.
| | 01:11 | So you can get to all of your
swatches from the Appearance panel as well.
| | 01:15 | Then, I'll go ahead and select that same
color there; C=30, M=60, Y=70, K=50 in order to
| | 01:21 | fill in those eyes.
| | 01:22 | Now I want the eyes to be lighter than this.
| | 01:25 | So I'll press the Escape key in order to hide
that popup panel and then I will press the
| | 01:29 | Shift key and click on that same swatch in order
to bring up the popup view of the Color panel.
| | 01:36 | And notice that I don't have
access to my CMYK values.
| | 01:38 | I can see what they are, but
I'm left with a single T value.
| | 01:42 | The T stands for tint.
| | 01:44 | And if I were to reduce the Tint value, I'd
get a lighter version of my swatch color.
| | 01:49 | That's because anytime you're working with
a global swatch, Illustrator is loathe to
| | 01:53 | permit you immediate access to the CMYK
values because that would break the link.
| | 01:57 | However, I don't want a tint of this color.
| | 02:00 | I want something different.
| | 02:01 | So I am going to increase the Tint value back
to 100%, and I am going to click on this little
| | 02:06 | CMYK icon to break the link to the global
swatch and to give me access to the CMYK values.
| | 02:12 | Now I'll take that K value and reduce it to
20%, and press the Tab key, and you can see
| | 02:17 | that we're left with a very
different effect indeed.
| | 02:20 | But the fill is no longer linked to any of
the swatches inside the Swatches panel.
| | 02:24 | All right, next thing we want to do is add
another fill and you do that by dropping down
| | 02:29 | to the second icon in the bottom-left corner
of the Appearance panel, Add New Fill, and
| | 02:33 | then go ahead and click on it.
| | 02:34 | Now I am going to change that fill
from the shade of brown to black.
| | 02:39 | That ends up absolutely covering
up the fill as you can see here.
| | 02:43 | A lot of people wonder why
in the world you do this.
| | 02:45 | Why would you just cover up one fill with
another, even if you were to change let's
| | 02:50 | say the opacity of the top fill? There are
better ways to achieve effects like that.
| | 02:55 | Well, because then we can
heap on a dynamic effect.
| | 02:58 | For example, I can shrink the size of these
black fills by making sure that the black
| | 03:03 | fill is active. That's very important.
| | 03:05 | Then you go up to the Effect menu, choose
Distort & Transform, and choose the effect
| | 03:11 | that has to have the most prosaic name but is
possibly the best effect of them all, Transform.
| | 03:16 | That will bring up this
Transform Effect dialog box.
| | 03:19 | Next, I want you to change both the
horizontal and vertical scale values to 50%, and then
| | 03:24 | turn on the Preview check box and you can see
that that shrinks those black fills to pupil.
| | 03:29 | Then go ahead and click OK.
| | 03:31 | Now we want to add some highlights.
| | 03:33 | So go ahead and click on that black
fill once again to make it active.
| | 03:37 | Then drop down to the little Page icon at the
bottom of the Appearance panel and click on it.
| | 03:41 | And that makes a duplicate of not only the
black fill but its Transform effect as well.
| | 03:46 | Now click on the Fill Swatch and change it
to white and that will cover up the little
| | 03:50 | black fills with little white fills.
| | 03:52 | That's not what we want.
| | 03:53 | So click on the word Transform immediately
below the White swatch there, in order to
| | 03:58 | revisit the Transform Effect dialog box. This
time our settings will affect the White fill
| | 04:04 | independently of the Black fill.
| | 04:06 | So I am going to change both the Horizontal and
Vertical values to 30%, turn on the Preview check box.
| | 04:11 | That centers the white highlights inside of
the black pupils, which is not what we want.
| | 04:16 | So I will click inside this Horizontal Move
value and press the down arrow key to reduce
| | 04:20 | it to -1, and then I will tab to the Vertical
Value, and press the down arrow key to reduce
| | 04:24 | it to -1 as well which not
intuitively shifts the highlights upward.
| | 04:30 | So positive values are going to move things down.
Negative values are going to move them up.
| | 04:34 | In any case, this is exactly what we want.
| | 04:35 | So click OK in order to
accept that modification.
| | 04:38 | Then I will the press the Escape key in
order to escape out of the Group Isolation mode,
| | 04:42 | and I will press Ctrl+Shift+A, or Command+
Shift+A on the Mac to deselect those irises.
| | 04:47 | Next, what we want to do is
work on these ellipses here.
| | 04:50 | So I will zoom out a little
bit so we can take them in.
| | 04:53 | And they too are a part of
a group as you can see.
| | 04:56 | So I will double-click on them to enter the
Group Isolation mode, and then I will click
| | 05:00 | on any one of these black ellipses to select all
of them because they're all grouped together.
| | 05:04 | Now this time around, you can see that the
group doesn't have any Fill or Stroke attributes
| | 05:09 | here inside the Appearance panel.
| | 05:10 | Instead, we see below group, we see contents.
| | 05:13 | And if you double-click on Contents, that's
going to show you the stroke and fill that
| | 05:17 | are applied to each one of the path outlines
independently, which is to say no stroke,
| | 05:22 | and a black fill.
| | 05:23 | Click on that fill swatch and change it to
None because we want to get rid of the fill
| | 05:28 | and stroke that are associated
with the individual path outlines.
| | 05:31 | Now go back to Group which says Group:
No Appearance, double-click on it.
| | 05:36 | That will restore focus to the group.
| | 05:39 | Now we need to add fill attributes to this
group by dropping down to the Add New Fill
| | 05:44 | icon and clicking on it.
| | 05:45 | That will give us both a fill
and a stroke as you can see here.
| | 05:48 | A black fill is exactly
what we are looking for.
| | 05:51 | I want to add another yellow fill by
clicking again on the Add New Fill icon.
| | 05:56 | This time, I will dial in a fill manually because
none of the swatches are going to quite work.
| | 06:00 | So I will Shift+Click on that fill swatch
in order to bring up my CMYK values, and a
| | 06:05 | Cyan value of 0 is just fine.
| | 06:07 | I want the Magenta value to be 10%, Yellow
should be 35%, and then K, Black should be
| | 06:13 | 0% in order to create this
pale yellow fill right here.
| | 06:18 | Now with fill active, once again we are going
to visit Transform by going up to the Effect
| | 06:22 | menu, choosing Distort & Transform,
and choosing the Transform command.
| | 06:27 | But this time around, we are
just going to apply a movement.
| | 06:29 | I am going to change the
Vertical Move value to -2.5.
| | 06:32 | I just happen to know that works for this
effect, and I will turn on the Preview check
| | 06:36 | box and that shifts those fills upward.
| | 06:39 | Now click OK in order to apply that effect.
| | 06:42 | Of course, we need add a stroke, so click on the
little stroke swatch and change it to black.
| | 06:47 | It's is not positioned correctly of course,
because no transform effect has been assigned
| | 06:52 | to the stroke, just that yellow fill.
| | 06:54 | So here is what you do.
| | 06:55 | You press and hold the Alt key or the Option
key on the Mac and you drag the word Transform
| | 07:00 | upward like so, and you drop it onto stroke.
| | 07:03 | That will go ahead and transform
the stroke by the exact same amount.
| | 07:07 | By virtue of the fact that you press the Alt
or Option key when you're dragging transform,
| | 07:11 | you made a duplicate of it.
| | 07:13 | I'll click off the paths to deselect them.
| | 07:15 | I will press the Escape key in order to escape
the Group Isolation mode and then I'll switch
| | 07:20 | back to my zoomed out
view of the illustration.
| | 07:23 | And that folks is how and why you go about
assigning multiple stacked fills to single
| | 07:28 | path outlines here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Trapping your art with rich blacks| 00:00 | In this last movie of the chapter, I'm going
to introduce you to a topic that may seem
| | 00:04 | a little esoteric, but it can really turn
out to make a difference in your artwork,
| | 00:09 | and it's all about this concept of rich black.
| | 00:13 | Now by default, blacks inside of
Illustrator are set to black ink and nothing more.
| | 00:19 | So I've gone ahead and switched over to the
Color panel and I've made my Stroke active.
| | 00:22 | It happens to be black.
| | 00:24 | You can see that the C, M, and Y values are
also set to 0% and the K value alone is set
| | 00:29 | to 100%, and that's what's known
as a plain black or a weak black.
| | 00:35 | There are two problems
potentially with weak blacks.
| | 00:38 | One is that you can end up
having registration problems.
| | 00:41 | So in other words, if a black object
immediately neighbors an object that contains no black
| | 00:45 | whatsoever, then you may see tiny slivers of
paper between those inks, if there is any
| | 00:51 | mis-registration whatsoever.
| | 00:53 | Now most commercial printers do a pretty
good job of registering their plates, and a lot
| | 00:57 | of printers are going to take care of
that kind of problem by overprinting black.
| | 01:01 | But there is a second problem associated with
weak blacks, which is they aren't very dark.
| | 01:07 | A 100% black ink is pretty darn dark, but
it's really a kind of very dark gray, whereas
| | 01:13 | if you pile in a few more inks
you're going to get a rich jet black.
| | 01:18 | So here's how it works.
| | 01:19 | We're going to start off by pressing Ctrl+K or Command+K
on the Mac to bring up the Preferences dialog box.
| | 01:25 | Then you'll see this final
option Appearance of Black.
| | 01:28 | Go ahead and select it.
| | 01:30 | Then you want to set On Screen to Display
All Blacks Accurately as opposed to Display
| | 01:35 | All Blacks as Rich Black, because if you
display all blacks as rich black and you can't tell
| | 01:39 | which blacks are rich and which aren't.
| | 01:42 | So go ahead and select
Display All Blacks Accurately.
| | 01:45 | It's going to make can make just a tepid
difference in the appearance of your artwork, but you'll
| | 01:49 | be able to see the
difference in just a moment.
| | 01:51 | So I'll click OK.
| | 01:52 | If you keep a very close eye in the blacks on screen,
you may see them lighten up just a little bit.
| | 01:58 | That's to show you that you now do have blacks inside
of your illustration, but they're single ink blacks.
| | 02:05 | The next thing you want to do is
switch over to your Swatches panel.
| | 02:08 | Make sure nothing is selected in the artwork.
| | 02:10 | So press Ctrl+Shift+A or
Command+Shift+A just to be sure.
| | 02:13 | Then click on the little Page icon at the
bottom of the Swatches panel, and we're going
| | 02:17 | to name this swatch Rich black like so, and
I'll turn on Global, because we do want to
| | 02:22 | make this a Global Swatch.
| | 02:24 | Now there are all kinds of recipes for rich black
and it really depends on your commercial printer.
| | 02:29 | However, it's a safe bet that the one I'm
going to give you is going to work just fine,
| | 02:34 | which is 50% Cyan, 50% Magenta,
50% Yellow, and 100% Black.
| | 02:38 | Now you could definitely come up with
something that is better ideally suited to a specific
| | 02:43 | press and get you a little bit darker than
this, but this specific formula will work
| | 02:48 | across the board.
| | 02:49 | Now I'll go ahead and click OK in
order to create that new black.
| | 02:52 | If you look very closely the difference
between those swatches, you'll see that the black
| | 02:56 | swatch is slightly lighter
than the rich black swatch.
| | 03:00 | Now we need to find all of the
black strokes inside the illustration.
| | 03:04 | So switch to the Color panel, confirm that my
Stroke is active, which it is, switch back
| | 03:09 | to the Swatches panel and click on the
standard black swatch to make it active.
| | 03:14 | Then go up to the Select Similar Objects icon
in the Control panel, click the Down Pointing
| | 03:18 | Arrow Head, and choose Stroke Color, and that will
select all the strokes that match that weak black.
| | 03:25 | Now all you need to do is click
on rich black to switch them out.
| | 03:30 | Now all of your strokes are set
to rich black across the board.
| | 03:33 | I'm going to click off the shapes to deselect
them, and I'm going to go ahead and zoom in
| | 03:37 | on this point in this purple star shape right
here, and now I believe you can see the difference
| | 03:42 | between the rich black
stroke and the weak black shadow.
| | 03:46 | Now we need to make all of
our fills rich black as well.
| | 03:49 | So switch back to the Color panel, press the X
key, and confirm that your fill is now active.
| | 03:54 | This is very important.
| | 03:55 | Now return to the Swatches panel.
| | 03:58 | Change the fill to black by
clicking on the black swatch.
| | 04:01 | Then go up to the Select Similar Objects icon,
click on the down pointing arrow head right
| | 04:05 | next to it, and choose Fill color, and that will
select all the objects that are filled with black.
| | 04:11 | Now go ahead and change that fill
from black to rich black, like so.
| | 04:15 | And did you see that shadow
darken up? Now it's nice and rich.
| | 04:19 | Now we have missed a couple things.
| | 04:21 | You want to zoom out here.
| | 04:22 | We've hit almost everything except for the
dynamic fills, that is, those shapes that have
| | 04:28 | more than one fill going on.
| | 04:30 | So for example, these guys right here, I'll
zoom in on them, they have both weak fills
| | 04:35 | and weak strokes associated with them.
| | 04:37 | So I'll double-click on one of these beveled
yellow ellipses to enter the Group Isolation mode.
| | 04:43 | Then I'll click on any one of these ellipses to
select it, and you can see up here in the Control panel,
| | 04:50 | ignore the caution icon. That's just
telling us that we also have a yellow fill.
| | 04:54 | We don't care about it.
| | 04:56 | We're concerned about the black stuff.
| | 04:57 | So click on the Fill Swatch and you'll
see that it's still set to regular black.
| | 05:02 | Change it to rich black and
then click on the Stroke Swatch.
| | 05:05 | It's still set to regular black,
change it to rich black as well.
| | 05:09 | Now that that's taken care of, let's zoom out a
little bit so that we can find the God's face.
| | 05:14 | Zoom in on it as well.
| | 05:15 | We're in a Group Isolation mode, so I have
to press the Escape key to get out of it.
| | 05:20 | Then double-click anywhere on any of these face
shapes to enter the Group Isolation mode for them.
| | 05:26 | Click on one of the irises,
Shift+Click on the other.
| | 05:29 | Then this time we're going to have to go to
the Appearance panel, because we're not going
| | 05:31 | to find the right fill up
here in the Control panel.
| | 05:34 | So go ahead and click on our black fill swatch
in order to bring up the Swatches panel, and
| | 05:38 | change that fill to rich black, and
that's going to darken up those pupils.
| | 05:43 | So they're as black as they could possibly be.
| | 05:47 | Now I'm going to press the Escape key in
order to escape out and I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A
| | 05:51 | or Command+Shift+A on the Mac in
order to deselect the artwork.
| | 05:54 | I'll go ahead and press the F key a couple
of times in order to enter the full screen
| | 05:58 | mode and I'll zoom on into the artwork and
this is the final version of the art with
| | 06:05 | all swatches and colors applied replete with
multi-ink for rich blacks that you can create
| | 06:11 | and apply so very easily
here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
13. Strokes, Dashes, and ArrowsThe rich world of strokes| 00:00 | In Illustrator, you fill the interior of a path
or a text object, and you stroke its outline.
| | 00:06 | The stroke is always defined by a color and
a line weight, the latter of which is the
| | 00:11 | thickness of the stroke.
| | 00:12 | But it can be so much more.
| | 00:15 | In fact, strokes have received so much
attention in the last two versions of Illustrator, that
| | 00:19 | they practically qualify as a new feature.
| | 00:22 | You can assign caps and joins to define the
appearance of endpoints and corners. You can
| | 00:27 | assign perfectly aligned dashes, as well as
arrowheads and tails, some of which look like
| | 00:33 | pointing hands and scissors.
| | 00:35 | You can create variable line weights
using the groundbreaking Width tool.
| | 00:39 | And you can even design waving
strokes like these using dynamic effects.
| | 00:44 | These aren't your grandpappy's strokes. They
are modern, flexible and flat-out powerful
| | 00:50 | as you're about to see.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing the Stroke panel| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll introduce you to the options
that are available to you in the Strokes panel.
| | 00:04 | It will end up converting these hand-drawn
numbers at the bottom of the artwork, modeled
| | 00:08 | after Adobe Caslon by the way which we're
seeing at the top into these thicker rounded
| | 00:15 | numbers that you see below.
| | 00:16 | So I'll switch back to my base image here, and you
get to the Stroke options in a couple of ways.
| | 00:21 | First of all go ahead and select all these
numbers by marqueeing them with the Black Arrow
| | 00:24 | tool, and then notice up here in the Control
panel that we see a line weight value. Illustrator
| | 00:30 | calls it Stroke Weight but just about everybody else
on the face of the planet calls it line weight.
| | 00:35 | And you'll only see that value, by the way,
if the entirety of every single path that's
| | 00:40 | selected is selected.
| | 00:41 | So in other words, if I switch to the White
Arrow tool here and I Shift+Click on a single
| | 00:46 | point to deselect it, then we
lose that line weight value.
| | 00:50 | But you can still adjust the line weight if
you want to, by going to the Window menu and
| | 00:54 | choosing the Stroke command which has a
keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+F10, Command+F10 on a Mac.
| | 00:59 | Anyway, at the very least you'll see this tiny
Stroke panel with a single value which is Weight.
| | 01:06 | So you can always change the line weight,
you just have to know where to look for it.
| | 01:10 | Anyway, if I go back here to this little
deselected point and I Shift+Click, to reselect it, now
| | 01:15 | everybody in the selected paths is selected
and therefore I can see the Stroke option
| | 01:20 | up here in the Control panel.
| | 01:21 | Now there is a variety of
different ways to change the line weight.
| | 01:24 | If you click this little up arrow button you'll
increase the Weight value in increments of one.
| | 01:29 | If you press the Shift key and click on the
up arrow button, then you'll advance to the
| | 01:33 | nearest increment of 10 as you can see here.
| | 01:36 | The same goes for the down arrow. It will
reduce in increments one, or if you press the
| | 01:41 | Shift key and click on it, it will
reduce to the next 10 point increment.
| | 01:45 | You can of course dial in a value, and by the
way, these values are accurate to 1/100th of
| | 01:52 | a point, so I could enter 12.75 for example,
or you can click on the down pointing arrow
| | 01:58 | head and you can choose a value.
| | 02:00 | And notice that the smallest value that's
available in this menu here is 0.25 pt which
| | 02:06 | is really as low as you want to go.
| | 02:09 | I'll go ahead and zoom in on this text and
press Ctrl+H or Command+H on a Mac to hide
| | 02:13 | my selection edges.
| | 02:15 | Consider that a quarter of a point is 1/4th
of a 72nd of an inch, so it's 1/288th of an
| | 02:23 | inch, which means that you're printing about the
thinnest line that your output device can handle.
| | 02:29 | So I don't recommend you go any thinner than
that. Routinely a value of 0.3 is considered
| | 02:34 | to be a hairline.
| | 02:36 | I typically don't go any lower than that.
| | 02:38 | Now in this case we don't want tiny little
hairlines, we want big thick meaty lines so
| | 02:43 | I'm going to change that line weight value to 16
points in order to produce this effect here.
| | 02:48 | All right, next door you can see that we've
got the word Stroke right there, and I'm going
| | 02:53 | to press Ctrl+H or Command+H on a Mac so
that I'm bringing back my selection edges.
| | 02:58 | And what I want you to know is that by default
the Stroke is centered on the path outline.
| | 03:04 | So we've got a 16-point stroke which means
eight points of the stroke, half of it is
| | 03:09 | on the inside edge of the path outline and
the other half, eight points, is on the outside
| | 03:14 | edge of that path outline.
| | 03:16 | Now there may be cases where you prefer the
stroke be entirely inside the path or outside.
| | 03:21 | And if that's the case and you click on the
word Stroke and that will bring up the entire
| | 03:25 | Stroke panel, and by the way, if you have a
point deselected and you're not seeing the
| | 03:29 | Stroke option up here in the Control panel,
then you can click this double arrow head
| | 03:34 | icon in the Stroke tab in order to
expand the official Stroke panel.
| | 03:38 | But I'm going to make it tiny again
because I don't have that much room on screen.
| | 03:41 | All right, now I click in the word Stroke
and notice this option right Align Stroke,
| | 03:46 | and by default it is set to Align Stroke to
Center which is the official way things are
| | 03:50 | done on a PostScript printer.
| | 03:52 | You can however set Stroke to Inside.
| | 03:54 | Now if you do click on that option, it's not
going to make any difference for some of the
| | 03:59 | paths that we're seeing, in fact all of
the paths that I'm seeing right now.
| | 04:02 | And that's because this option is not
applicable to open paths, and all of these numbers with
| | 04:09 | the exception of the eight which is a closed
path that loops all the way around, all the
| | 04:13 | others are open paths and
they are not affected.
| | 04:16 | So you can see what happens when I scoot the
stroke on the inside of the 8, it doesn't
| | 04:20 | look good in this case, it's not what we
want, but in some cases it'll do you well.
| | 04:24 | You can also align the stroke to the outside if you
prefer and that would produce this effect here.
| | 04:30 | But of course, what I really want is to align
the stroke to center for all of these numbers.
| | 04:34 | So there is your introduction to the Stroke panel,
specifically the line weight and alignment options.
| | 04:40 | In the next movie, I'll show you how to work
with a few other options available inside
| | 04:45 | this panel, specifically
the Cap and Corner options.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Caps, joins, and miter limits| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to adjust
the cap and corner options as well as the
| | 00:05 | miter limit, and of course, I'll also give you a
sense for why you'd want to do these things.
| | 00:09 | But I am going to start off with a little
trick that you're just going to love. I am
| | 00:13 | way zoomed in here, and I've managed to deselect my
numbers, which means I'm faced with a proposition
| | 00:19 | because the numbers are not grouped together,
| | 00:21 | of zooming out and marqueeing them, or what I
ended up doing was twirling open the numbers
| | 00:26 | layer, and then clicking on the meatball for
the one and Shift+Clicking on the meatball
| | 00:29 | for the two, and Shift+Clicking on
meatball for the three, and so forth.
| | 00:33 | Here is the trick.
| | 00:34 | After I did that, because these are not
grouped together, I went up to the Select menu and
| | 00:38 | I chose the Save Selection command, which
is this really great feature that very few
| | 00:42 | people know about here inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:45 | And after you've done that your saved
selection appears right down there, so all you do is
| | 00:49 | you just choose this command and
name the selection, that's it.
| | 00:52 | Now if I choose my selection that I saved,
the numbers, then I select all the numbers
| | 00:57 | in the document and this saved selection is
saved as part of the illustration, so you
| | 01:03 | can always come back to it later.
| | 01:05 | Isn't that absolutely great?
| | 01:06 | Anyway, I am going to Shift+Tab away my
panels and zoom out just a little bit, so that I
| | 01:10 | can take in more numbers at a time, and I want to be
able to see the 4, 5 and 6 to start things out here.
| | 01:17 | Now if I go up to Stroke panel, now if I
click on the word Stroke up here in the Control
| | 01:21 | panel, you'll see that I have got three Cap
options and three Corner options, plus the
| | 01:26 | miter limit right there.
| | 01:28 | We'll start with Cap, the Cap option determines if
and how the stroke wraps around an end point.
| | 01:33 | So every one of the numbers except for the 8
has end points associated with it; the point
| | 01:39 | at which the path starts and a
point at which the path ends.
| | 01:42 | Notice by default the stroke ends abruptly
at that end point, and that's a function of
| | 01:47 | this first hilarious setting, Butt Cap.
| | 01:50 | Now if you want to go ahead and wrap this
stroke around the end point you have two options,
| | 01:55 | one is Round Cap, which goes ahead and rounds
off the Cap right there at the corner, and
| | 01:59 | you can see that the Cap actually extends half the
line weight that is 8 points beyond that end point.
| | 02:05 | Your final option is Projecting Cap, which
goes ahead and creates a kind of square off
| | 02:11 | the end point, and again it's going
to extend half the line weight out.
| | 02:15 | And you may find Projecting Caps specifically
useful when you're trying to get two different
| | 02:20 | strokes to align with each other,
so you are trying to fill in a gap.
| | 02:22 | So just bear in mind, it's going to be
half the line weight when you do that.
| | 02:25 | In my case, it's a bad thing because notice
here at this end point of the 6, we've got
| | 02:30 | the Projecting Cap extending
out be on that left-hand edge.
| | 02:35 | So what we really want for these rounded letters,
that's the effect I am going for, is Round Caps.
| | 02:40 | So I'll go ahead and apply those.
| | 02:42 | Next we've got the Corner option.
| | 02:43 | Now by default, it's a Miter Join, meaning
that we should get nice sharp corners at every
| | 02:50 | single corner point and we are not going to
see anything in the way of corners, it's smooth
| | 02:54 | points. So smooth points are always going to
be smooth. Only at corner points and cusp
| | 02:57 | points are we going to see
these sharp corners right here.
| | 03:01 | But not always, notice the
3, right next door here.
| | 03:05 | So we've some big spikes coming off the 4, so
spiky in fact that the 4 is encroaching on the 3.
| | 03:10 | The 3 though is just beveled off and that's
because it is too acute of a corner to be
| | 03:18 | accommodated by the Miter Join at
the current Miter Limit setting.
| | 03:22 | So I'll bring back the Stroke panel, you can
see that Limit value right there, it's 10x.
| | 03:26 | A little confusing. What it means
is 10 times half the line weight.
| | 03:31 | So in this case, Illustrator is willing to
create a spike off the end of that 3, that
| | 03:35 | is 10 times 8, that is to say 80 points
long, but it's not going to go any longer.
| | 03:41 | Let me show you how long
you have to go for this 3.
| | 03:44 | I am going to go ahead and zoom out here a
little bit so you can take it in, and I'll
| | 03:48 | go ahead and bring up the Stroke panel again.
| | 03:50 | I'll click in the Limit Value and I'll press
Shift+Up Arrow, now it's 20, now it's 30 times,
| | 03:54 | now it's 40 times, now it's 50 times.
| | 03:56 | So I am saying, all right 50
times 8, which is what 400 points.
| | 04:00 | So it can go ahead and extend 400 points if
it wants to, but it's not, because it can't.
| | 04:04 | That's not enough.
| | 04:05 | So we would have to keep increasing that
value to--well at some point you would think
| | 04:10 | it's actually going to--but there we go!
| | 04:13 | At a miter limit of 150 times,
half of the light weight.
| | 04:17 | So whatever the math there is.
It's extraordinarily long.
| | 04:20 | You can see that the 3 has this sort of Pinocchio nose
coming off of it, so it's not a becoming effect at all.
| | 04:28 | But turns out, that's okay because we don't
even want a miter join, what we want is the
| | 04:33 | next join in here, which is Round Join, and
that's going to go ahead and give us these
| | 04:39 | nice round joins that are specifically
designed to accommodate these numbers.
| | 04:43 | So we are going to get these wonderfully
rounded numbers as a result.
| | 04:47 | Notice the Limit value goes way, because it's only
available to us when we're applying a miter join.
| | 04:53 | And then finally, you have got a Bevel Join,
which is just going to clip everybody off
| | 04:56 | the way, the corner of the 3 was
clipped off just a moment ago.
| | 05:00 | So we have clipped corners on the 4, the 5,
the 2 and of course, for all the numbers.
| | 05:06 | The only number that's not affected by any
of these settings by the way, either the Cap
| | 05:11 | or Corner settings, is this guy right here,
the 8, and that's because he has no end points
| | 05:16 | and he is made up
exclusively of smooth points.
| | 05:18 | Anyway, I'm going to click on Stroke once
again and change it to Round Join like so,
| | 05:24 | and then we end up getting the round joins that we
are looking for throughout all of these numbers.
| | 05:29 | And that friends, is how you exploit the power of
caps, joins, and miter limit here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Dashes and arrowheads| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll take a look at the second-
half of the Stroke panel which includes the dashed
| | 00:05 | line and arrowhead options.
| | 00:07 | Now as usual, I've got my
numbers selected here.
| | 00:09 | If you're working along with me and you want
to select them, all you have to do is go up
| | 00:12 | to the Select menu, and
choose the Numbers command.
| | 00:15 | And that will select the numbers.
| | 00:17 | Totally amazing, often overlooked
option here inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:20 | All right, let's bring back the Stroke panel.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to reduce the Weight value to 6
points, and I'm also going to reset these
| | 00:27 | Cap and Corner options.
| | 00:29 | I'm going to change the Cap back to Butt Cap, and
I'm going to change the Corner back to Miter Join.
| | 00:34 | But I'm not going to set
the Miter limit to 150.
| | 00:38 | I'm going to take that down to 10x, like so, so
that we don't have a lying number 3 because
| | 00:44 | of the Pinocchio nose. Don't you know?
| | 00:46 | All right, I'll bring
back the Stroke panel here.
| | 00:49 | Now I'm going to turn off Dashed Line.
| | 00:50 | And by the way, the reason I reset these options is
because they can end up affecting dashed lines.
| | 00:56 | Each dash for example is affected by the Cap
setting, and we'll see what that looks like
| | 01:01 | in a later movie.
| | 01:02 | But for now, I'm going to turn on Dashed Line,
and these are the values I came up with; a
| | 01:07 | Dash value of 12 point,
and a Gap value of 1 point.
| | 01:10 | But you can increase either of those values.
| | 01:12 | In this case, I'm increasing the Gap value so
that we now have 12-point gaps between each dash.
| | 01:19 | And if you really want to get complicated, then you
can create dash and gap series up to 3 pairings.
| | 01:25 | So I could say you know what, then I want
a 6-point dash, and then I want a 3-point
| | 01:30 | gap, and we end up getting this effect here.
| | 01:33 | You can get as elaborated as you want.
| | 01:35 | I'm just going to set the Gap value to 1 and
then I'll delete the second Dash and Gap value,
| | 01:40 | so you delete Dash, and the
Gap value goes away too.
| | 01:43 | Notice this wonderful setting here that aligns
the dashes to the corners, and the endpoints,
| | 01:48 | adjusting the length of the dashes to fit.
| | 01:51 | So if I turn it off and I just go back to
preserve the exact values, then we may end
| | 01:56 | up with things getting cut
off at different locations.
| | 01:58 | It's not quite as noticeable as it
might be if I crank this Gap value up.
| | 02:03 | You can see for example over here on the 4,
that the dashes don't necessarily align to
| | 02:07 | the corners, whereas, if I go ahead and turn
on this new function which is on by default,
| | 02:12 | then we have perfect alignment
at each one of the corners.
| | 02:16 | And Illustrator just goes ahead and
scales the dashes and gaps as need be.
| | 02:20 | Anyway, I'm going to restore that
Gap value once again to 1 point.
| | 02:24 | Next, let's take a look at the arrowheads.
| | 02:26 | Now the arrowheads are going
to appear at the endpoints.
| | 02:29 | So for example, I could go ahead and set the
end arrowhead, so there is one arrow for the
| | 02:35 | end of the path and another
arrowhead for the beginning of the path.
| | 02:38 | Of course, you don't always know which is which
when you're drawing path outlines in Illustrator.
| | 02:43 | But what you can do is just
experiment, and find out.
| | 02:45 | I'm going to switch over to arrow 4 here which is
going to create these ginormous arrowheads way too big.
| | 02:51 | So I'll go ahead and change that value
to 25% there in order to take it down.
| | 02:56 | And that's going to be measured by the
way as a percentage of the line weight.
| | 02:59 | So as you increase the line weight,
the arrowhead is going to grow as well.
| | 03:04 | If you get it wrong by the way you can just
swap by clicking on this little Swap start
| | 03:08 | and end arrowheads, and you'll end up getting
this effect instead; so very easy to use here.
| | 03:13 | However, I'm going to switch this guy to Arrow
35 is the one I'm looking for which is a little
| | 03:19 | hand, and we end up getting that effect.
| | 03:20 | Then, I'm going to switch this end guy to
Arrow 36 right next door, which is another
| | 03:26 | hand; a little bit big, kind
of totally ruined the effect.
| | 03:31 | I'll take the Scale value down to 25% and we end
up with these much more reasonable hands here.
| | 03:36 | Now notice that the arrowheads
fit inside of the path outline.
| | 03:40 | So the arrowhead doesn't go
any farther than the endpoint.
| | 03:43 | If you want to extend those arrowheads, so
that they begin at the endpoint instead of
| | 03:46 | ending there, then you click on this first
Align icon which goes ahead and extends those
| | 03:50 | arrowheads like so.
| | 03:52 | I decided that was the better looking effect,
at least where these numbers are concerned.
| | 03:56 | Now I'll tell you, dashes and arrowheads
can be very useful, especially dashes.
| | 04:01 | And we'll be taking a look at them in more
detail in future movies, but consider that
| | 04:06 | your introduction to applying dashed
lines and arrowheads here inside Illustrator.
| | 04:12 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Width tool to vary the line weight| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll take a look at variable
width strokes and how you can create your
| | 00:04 | own custom variable width
strokes using the Width tool.
| | 00:08 | Now so far all of the strokes that we've seen
have been uniform in terms of their line weight.
| | 00:13 | For example, if I marquee this black stroke
here, we can see that its line weight value
| | 00:17 | is set to 50 points and the option next to
it says, Uniform meaning that the thickness
| | 00:22 | of the stroke is 50 points all
the way along the path outline.
| | 00:26 | But it doesn't have to be that way.
| | 00:28 | You can select one of the variable width
profiles from this pop-up menu, up here in the Control
| | 00:33 | panel, and you just have six to start with
by the way, but you can create your own and
| | 00:37 | save them off as well if you like.
| | 00:39 | But we'll start with this
guy here, Width Profile2.
| | 00:43 | And notice that now we have what is
obviously a variable width stroke, and now the line
| | 00:48 | weight value represents the maximum
width of the stroke at any location.
| | 00:53 | So if I were to increase line weight to 80
points, for example, I am going to increase
| | 00:57 | not only the thickness of the thickest points,
but those of the thinness points as well.
| | 01:03 | And the same goes for
reducing the line weight value.
| | 01:06 | If I say that I want the maximum line weight
to be 30 points, then that's going to reduce
| | 01:10 | the thickness of the line
throughout the stroke.
| | 01:13 | But I am going to go ahead and actually price Ctrl+Z
or Command+Z on a Mac to restore a maximum
| | 01:17 | line weight of 80 points.
| | 01:18 | And then I am going to customize this variable
width stroke using this tool right here, the
| | 01:23 | Width tool, which has a
keyboard shortcut of Shift+W.
| | 01:27 | And when you select the Width tool and then
hover over the path, every one of those white
| | 01:32 | circles--not the dark blue squares, those are
anchor points, but the white circles--those
| | 01:37 | represent width points along my path outline.
| | 01:41 | You also have another one that trails along
with your cursor that just indicates that
| | 01:45 | if you click, you are going to set
a width point at that location.
| | 01:48 | And you always have width points at the
end points of an open path by the way.
| | 01:53 | So if you want to adjust a width point, you
can click on it to sort of lock it down.
| | 01:58 | And that way, even if you sort of move your
cursor around, you'll still see those little
| | 02:02 | handles right there that you can drag in
order to make the path thinner at that location
| | 02:07 | or thicken it up, or you can just hover over
a point, like so, and then move your cursor
| | 02:13 | out to one of the handles--this is little
trickier, but it does work and then you can
| | 02:17 | drag the handles around
to any extent you like.
| | 02:19 | All right, I am going to make this guy thinner
at this location and then I am going to add
| | 02:24 | my own width point by clicking and dragging
at the bottom of the path outline, like so.
| | 02:30 | So that will go ahead and add a
width point to the proceedings.
| | 02:32 | I want to make my endpoints little thicker
right there, so I'll drag them out as well.
| | 02:38 | And I think that's finally it.
| | 02:39 | Let's say, by the way--and you
end up doing one of these numbers
| | 02:42 | where you accidentally set one width point too close to
another, and you end up with this unfortunate result.
| | 02:47 | Well, you can select a width point, just
by clicking on it with the Width tool.
| | 02:51 | So what you want to do to get rid of the width
point is click on it to select it, then move
| | 02:55 | your cursor away to make sure that point and
only that point is selected, then press the
| | 02:59 | Backspace key or the Delete key on
a Mac in order to get rid of it.
| | 03:02 | Now I am going to work on this red arrow,
and notice now, I want you to remember that
| | 03:08 | the black path is selected.
| | 03:09 | You can see that it's selected in the
background when I move the Width tool away from it, and
| | 03:13 | that's because I marqueed
it with a Black Arrow tool.
| | 03:15 | The red path outline is not
selected and yet I can still modify it.
| | 03:20 | And that might seem like a really great
convenience item that you can modify any path inside your
| | 03:25 | artwork. It's actually in
my experience a big gotcha.
| | 03:28 | It means that you can end up very
easily modifying the wrong path.
| | 03:31 | So just keep an eye out for that.
| | 03:33 | Now the second I add a width point at this end
point, so I started dragging inside the arrow.
| | 03:38 | And I want you to notice something.
| | 03:39 | I am increasing the width of the end point
right there, but that does not have any impact
| | 03:45 | on the arrowhead itself.
| | 03:46 | So the arrowhead is going to stay
whatever size it was in the first place.
| | 03:50 | That also goes ahead and adds a width point
automatically at the other and point and I
| | 03:54 | am going to reduce it's size, and then
actually don't want this guy to be the six, so I'll
| | 03:58 | taper him a little bit.
| | 03:59 | And I am going to add a width point at this
location make it nice and thick, which isn't
| | 04:04 | isn't necessarily a good look
for the path, but watch this.
| | 04:07 | You can move a width point to
any location just by dragging it.
| | 04:11 | You'll actually see the path outline modify
on the fly, so it gets thicker and thinner
| | 04:17 | at various locations on the fly, as you drag
that guy around, as if we're working inside some sort
| | 04:22 | of crazy tape worm.
| | 04:23 | All right now, let's say, I want to
modify this line from the Stroke panel.
| | 04:28 | If I go up to the Control panel, I might be
surprised to see that the stroke is black
| | 04:32 | when it looks to me like I
am working on the red arrow.
| | 04:35 | In fact, even though you're seeing this width
point selected inside the red arrow, the red
| | 04:40 | arrow is not selected.
| | 04:42 | It's the black path in the
background that's actually selected.
| | 04:45 | If you want to make the red arrow active,
you have to press the Ctrl key or the Command
| | 04:48 | key on the Mac to temporarily access the Black
Arrow tool or you can press the V key to the
| | 04:52 | Black Arrow tool and click on that path
outline to make sure it is selected.
| | 04:56 | And now you can see we've got a red stroke
and now click on the word Stroke to bring
| | 05:00 | up the Stroke panel and I'll drop down
here to this item that says Flip Along.
| | 05:05 | And if you click on Flip Along, that'll change
the direction in which the path outline flows.
| | 05:10 | So this will perhaps be a little
more obvious if I do this number here.
| | 05:14 | I'll go ahead and be extremely surprised by
the location of my width points inside of
| | 05:21 | this path outline.
| | 05:22 | I've got this thin one at the end I
guess, I'll make it even thinner.
| | 05:26 | I'm surprise to see that I've got this one
that I don't recall making but I'll go ahead
| | 05:30 | and click on it to make it active, and press the
Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac.
| | 05:34 | And the reason I am making a big deal about
this is because Width tool does end up sometimes
| | 05:38 | just adding its own points for you in order to
reconcile what it considers to be tough situations.
| | 05:44 | All right, now we've got thick at one end
and very thin at the other, I'll bring up
| | 05:48 | stroke and I'll click Flip Along, and you'll see
that that changes the direction of the stroke.
| | 05:52 | So now it starts thin and ends up thick.
| | 05:54 | If you don't want that, you can
just click flip along again.
| | 05:57 | Next door, we have a Flip Across icon but
it's dim and that's because the line weight
| | 06:02 | is symmetrical as it flows along the path
outline, but it doesn't have to be that way.
| | 06:07 | I am going to go ahead and Ctrl+Click or Command+
Click on that background black path to make it active,
| | 06:13 | just so that I know it's active in advance.
| | 06:14 | And let me show you something.
| | 06:16 | When you drag those handles, they move
symmetrically as I can see right there.
| | 06:20 | But let's say, I move this guy way out like
so and then I press the Alt key or the Option
| | 06:24 | key on the Mac and drag the inside handle, now
it moves exclusively of the outside handle.
| | 06:31 | And I'll do the same thing over here, I'll
Alt+Drag or Option+Drag this outside handle,
| | 06:35 | Alt+Drag or Option+Drag inside
handle as well to move it independently.
| | 06:39 | And by the way, if after creating
asymmetrical handles like this, you drag either of the
| | 06:44 | handles without pressing the Alt or Option key,
they'll both moved together albeit asymmetrical.
| | 06:49 | All right, now I am going to do this guy here.
I'll go ahead and Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
| | 06:53 | this guy down and then Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
this guy down as well in order to create this
| | 06:58 | completely lumpy effect.
| | 06:59 | Then, I'll go up to the Stroke panel and now
you can see that we not only have Flip Along,
| | 07:03 | so I can click on it, it's not going to make a
big difference, but I also have Flip Across,
| | 07:08 | which will make a big difference as you see
here, and actually the flip across version
| | 07:12 | I think is better.
| | 07:14 | All right, there's just one last thing to
know about the Width tool. So far we've been
| | 07:17 | modifying the width of the path completely
by hand, which means that don't really have
| | 07:22 | numerical control over what's going on.
| | 07:25 | Notice now the line weight value is a 102.468
in my case, meaning that I have thousands
| | 07:31 | of a point of control over the line weight
apparently, and I've managed to increase the
| | 07:36 | maximum line weight as I've
been modifying the stroke.
| | 07:39 | What if you want absolute control?
You want numerical precision.
| | 07:41 | In that case, you go ahead and find a width
point and you double-click on it using the
| | 07:46 | Width tool once again, and that brings up
the Width Point Edit dialog box right here,
| | 07:50 | and you can change the handle values independently
of each other, you can change the Total Width
| | 07:55 | value, for example if I take this down to 60,
the two values will change proportionally.
| | 08:01 | You can link then together if you like. You can also
delete a point by clicking on the Delete button.
| | 08:05 | The only time the Delete button will be
dimmed is when you're working on an endpoint.
| | 08:09 | In fact, let me show you that, because
there's something else I want to show you.
| | 08:12 | I'll click OK and I'll double-
click on this end point right there.
| | 08:16 | Notice the Delete button is dimmed because
you can't delete the beginning and ending
| | 08:21 | width points. They have to be there.
| | 08:22 | However, notice this guy, Adjust Adjoining
Width Point, so I could modify just this one width
| | 08:28 | point, for example, by taking it up to a 100
points or I could turn on Adjust Adjoining
| | 08:33 | Width Points, and that's going to affect the
other width points. In this case, it's making
| | 08:38 | the line thicker, based on their
proximity to the active points.
| | 08:42 | So notice the final end point doesn't change
but the other width points in between do,
| | 08:47 | and then I'll go ahead and click
OK in order to accept that change.
| | 08:50 | All right, so that's how you create variable width
strokes and how you use Width tool in Illustrator.
| | 08:54 | In the next movie, I'll show you how to gain more
control when you're working on closed path outlines.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the width of closed path outlines| 00:00 | All right, it's one thing to demo the Width tool. It
demoes great, because it looks like magic and stuff.
| | 00:05 | However, it's another thing to get precise
results out of it especially when you're working
| | 00:10 | with close path outlines and that's
where things can get quite wonky.
| | 00:14 | So in this movie, I am going to show you a
real-world application of the Width tool, and I'll
| | 00:18 | also show you how to create your
own custom variable width profile.
| | 00:22 | Here is the setup.
| | 00:23 | Most fonts don't include an infinity symbol.
| | 00:27 | So in addition to my digits one through nine,
I wanted to create a matching infinity, so
| | 00:31 | I'll go ahead and click on that guy to select
him, and then I'll change his line weight to
| | 00:35 | 16 points and he matches.
| | 00:37 | It's that simple, and that's because all
these rounded numerals down here are uniform in
| | 00:42 | terms of the line weight.
| | 00:43 | But what if I am trying to create an infinity
symbol that matches Adobe Caslon, which is
| | 00:48 | one of the almost all fonts out
there that don't include infinity.
| | 00:52 | Well, if I were trying to just fake it, I
would create this guy right here, which is
| | 00:57 | an 8 toppled over on its side.
| | 01:00 | And you can see that it's an 8, because
whereas the 9 is thicker in its vertical segments
| | 01:05 | and thinner in its horizontal
segments, the 8 is exactly the opposite.
| | 01:10 | So it doesn't match.
| | 01:12 | So my mission was to create an
infinity symbol that does match.
| | 01:16 | So I'll start with this guy right here, the
second of the two infinity lines, and I'll
| | 01:20 | change its line weight to 24 points, and that will
represent the maximum thickness of this line.
| | 01:25 | Now I'll go ahead and switch over to the Width
tool here and I'll drag at exactly one location
| | 01:31 | by the way in order to create a width point
that makes the stroke thinner at this location.
| | 01:37 | And just by the virtue of effect that I
dragged at this one location, I end up creating two
| | 01:41 | more width points, at least
actually two more width points.
| | 01:44 | There's actually three.
| | 01:46 | Two of them are on top of each other
and then there's this guy right here.
| | 01:49 | Well, he needs to get thinner, so I'll go
ahead and drag those handles in, and then
| | 01:53 | I'll click and drag right there in order to
create a thicker point along the stroke.
| | 01:57 | And I'll drag from here in order to create a
thinner one and I'll drag down here to create--
| | 02:02 | oh I've already got one at this location!
And you can tell that Illustrator has created a
| | 02:06 | width point for you if you start dragging
and it doesn't change the handles, and rather
| | 02:12 | dragging will move the width
point to a different location.
| | 02:15 | In which case, just go ahead and drag the
handles, but you have to keep an eye out for
| | 02:18 | this, because this can
really throw you later on.
| | 02:20 | If you just sort of happily working along,
you get one of these where you get two width
| | 02:24 | points right next to each other,
and it's like, I don't want that.
| | 02:27 | That's just going to cause problems later
if I end up doing one of these numbers.
| | 02:31 | So I'll go ahead and press
Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 02:34 | That guy is selected, I'll press the Backspace
key to get rid of it, but you can end up with
| | 02:38 | like 30 width points where you
thought you only had six or seven.
| | 02:41 | All right, I am going to go ahead and drag this
guy out. This is another one that Illustrator
| | 02:45 | kindly created for me.
| | 02:47 | Here is where we get in trouble.
| | 02:48 | Right now, I think this actually doesn't look
that good. I might create a point right here.
| | 02:52 | I am actually having problems getting Illustrator
to recognize where I want this width point. Right
| | 02:57 | there is where I want it, and
I want to thicken things up.
| | 03:00 | But I also want to make this guy thinner.
| | 03:03 | And if I start to in this number, I think
I messed something up here, and then oh boy,
| | 03:08 | I've got no control.
| | 03:10 | I don't know what I am doing now.
| | 03:12 | And now making this guy thin and this guy
remains thick. Well here is why this is happening.
| | 03:17 | I'm exaggerating a little bit, but what's
happening is that there is a perceived endpoint
| | 03:22 | even on a closed path outline when
you're working with the Width tool.
| | 03:26 | So we have two width points that are right
next to each other and we can delete either
| | 03:31 | them. We can move them in the different locations,
but if we start doing that and we can manipulate
| | 03:34 | them independently and then we're
going to run into even bigger problems.
| | 03:38 | So what's the solution?
| | 03:40 | Well, the Width tool is just plain unpredictable
when you're working with closed path outlines,
| | 03:45 | but when you're working with open path outlines,
it's a lot easier to figure out what you're doing.
| | 03:49 | So what I am going to do in this case is I
am going to change this line right here to
| | 03:54 | a variable with stroke that looks like the
one just below it and then we'll save that
| | 03:58 | off as a variable with profile and then we'll
apply it to our infinity symbol. So here it goes.
| | 04:03 | For starters here, I'll go ahead and Ctrl+
Click or Command+Click on this line in order to
| | 04:09 | select it and I'll change it's
line weight value to 10 points.
| | 04:12 | That's where we start.
| | 04:13 | And then I'll go ahead and double-click
right there in the center of the stroke like so
| | 04:17 | in order to bring up the Width Point Edit
dialog box and I'll just change the total
| | 04:21 | width value to 24 points, by default
Illustrator will go ahead and equally distribute that
| | 04:25 | value between the two
handles, Side 1 and Side 2.
| | 04:28 | So we've got 12 points a
piece, and then I'll click OK.
| | 04:31 | So in other words
everything is nice and symmetrical.
| | 04:33 | Right now let's create another point of
thickness at this location right there.
| | 04:36 | Double-click, change that line weight value
to 24, press Tab, everything is good, click
| | 04:41 | OK, and create another one right here.
| | 04:43 | So I am just eyeballing it by the way.
| | 04:46 | And I happen to know that this is the basic
shape I'm looking for, the basic contour that
| | 04:50 | is, and I know that because I puzzled around
with my infinity symbol, I saved out a custom
| | 04:55 | profile, I went ahead and applied it to this
line, and then I picked it apart and made it
| | 04:59 | better, but now I am just showing
you how you do it in the first place.
| | 05:02 | Anyway, I'll click OK in order to accept that
change and then we want a thinner point right there.
| | 05:07 | So we'll double-click there and change the
total width value to 10 points, click OK.
| | 05:12 | Let's create another one right there. Go ahead
and change it's Total Width value to 10 point,
| | 05:17 | click OK, and then we need a
couple of more points here.
| | 05:20 | We need one here.
| | 05:22 | So double-click at that location, change it to
10 point, so we're just going with 10 points
| | 05:25 | and 24 points, that's it. Click OK, and then
we want one right about here it looks like,
| | 05:30 | and I'll change it to 10 points.
| | 05:32 | Now we need more because notice we get this
kind of flaring right there, and when these
| | 05:37 | two flair points come together they are going
to create a kind of corner. So to even things
| | 05:42 | out, double-click at this location, change that
to 10 points. We just want that to be as flat
| | 05:47 | as possible. You could get fussy and set
another point right there if you wanted to.
| | 05:50 | I am not sure it's worth it.
| | 05:51 | I am going to a set a point there though,
double-click and change it to 10 points.
| | 05:55 | And go ahead and press the Enter key or the
Return key on the Mac and we've got the variable
| | 06:00 | width stroke that we're looking for.
| | 06:01 | Now the great thing about this you may have
noticed, throughout this, I never dragged with
| | 06:04 | the tool. I just double-clicked with the tool
and entered numerical values, that way I know
| | 06:08 | exactly what I'm doing.
| | 06:10 | And because we are working on a straight line
with no curves whatsoever, Illustrator wasn't
| | 06:14 | tempted to automatically
generate a few width points for me.
| | 06:18 | So everything is as predictable as it gets.
| | 06:21 | All right, with this line selected, which
I believe it is, I'll go ahead and switch
| | 06:24 | my Black Arrow tool and I
can see that it is selected.
| | 06:27 | So I'll go up to the Control panel and click
on the Variable Width Profile option, and you
| | 06:31 | can see that it's actually showing me my
custom profile so far, but we need to go and save
| | 06:36 | it out by clicking on the Add to Profiles
button right there, and I'll name this guy
| | 06:41 | Three humps, because that's
basically what he is, and click OK.
| | 06:45 | All right, the thing to note about variable
width profiles, unlike a lot of this stuff I've
| | 06:50 | shown you, such as swatches and we saved a selection
in an earlier movie; those things are saved
| | 06:56 | along with the document. Custom profiles are
not, which is too bad frankly. Instead they
| | 07:02 | are saved as an Illustrator
preference setting.
| | 07:05 | So I managed to make three humps, go ahead
and Escape out there, and I'll scroll over
| | 07:10 | to my horrible looking infinity symbol.
| | 07:12 | I'll click somewhere in the path outline to
select it, I'll go up to the Variable Width
| | 07:16 | Profile option up here in the Control panel,
and I'll select Three humps, and look at that.
| | 07:22 | It looks pretty darn good.
| | 07:23 | It could use some additional modifications,
probably a little fine-tuning, but it looks
| | 07:27 | so much better than anything I would've
gotten where I to try to edit the shape directly.
| | 07:33 | And I'll go ahead and zoom out here, it very
closely matches the existing numerals associated
| | 07:38 | with the font Adobe Caslon, and that's how you
go about precisely controlling the behavior
| | 07:43 | of the Width tool even when you're
working with closed path outlines.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making a coupon border with scissors| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll transition from a real-
world application of the Width tool to a real-world
| | 00:05 | application of all of the
stroke options working together.
| | 00:08 | Specifically, we're going to take this base
art and we're going to combine a bunch of
| | 00:12 | different stroke options in order to
create this final golden ticket effect here.
| | 00:18 | And there is an awful lot of stuff going on.
| | 00:20 | I'll go ahead and zoom in so that we can see.
In addition to this multi-stroke effect that
| | 00:24 | I've applied to the headline text,
| | 00:26 | we also have these engraving lines in the
background that are all based on a single
| | 00:30 | horizontal line, and that's it.
| | 00:32 | Now we're going to start the things off by
creating this kind of coupon border with a
| | 00:36 | pair of scissors cutting into it, a
relatively classic common effect.
| | 00:40 | So I'll switch back to the base art here and
I'll click on the outer rectangle with the
| | 00:45 | Black Arrow tool to select it, and then I'll
bring up my Stroke panel from the Control panel.
| | 00:50 | And I'll change the line weight value to three points,
and then I'll turn on the Dashed Line check box.
| | 00:55 | And I want to dial in a dash value of
20 points and a gap value of 12 points.
| | 01:01 | So in other words, each one of these dashes is 20
points long and the gaps are 12 points wide in between.
| | 01:07 | Now the Stroke panel tends to remember the last
settings as you applied in the given session.
| | 01:11 | So in my case Preserves exact dash and gaps
lengths is turned on, which means that I have
| | 01:16 | some random behavior around the corners.
| | 01:18 | In the upper-right corner, we've got a long
horizontal dash and a short vertical one,
| | 01:23 | down here in the bottom-right corner,
it's strictly horizontal dash.
| | 01:26 | In the bottom-left corner, we have just a
tiny bit of vertical dash, and so forth.
| | 01:31 | If you want to even things out, then click
on a second icon Align dashes to corners and
| | 01:36 | path ends, and we'll end up getting this
better distribution of dashes around the corners.
| | 01:41 | All right finally, I want to add those scissors,
and scissors are one of your arrowhead options.
| | 01:45 | So I'll go over here to my start arrowhead,
click on it, and scroll down to Arrow 33 is
| | 01:51 | the one I am looking for.
| | 01:52 | If you go with 34, you'll put the
scissors inside the rectangle.
| | 01:55 | I want them outside, so
I'll select Arrow 33 like so.
| | 01:59 | The problem is Illustrator has it in its head
that the beginning of the path is down here
| | 02:04 | in the bottom-right corner
and I am not happy with that.
| | 02:07 | I want to see the scissors
in the upper-left region.
| | 02:09 | So I'll go ahead and zoom into that area,
and coincidentally, the tool that you need
| | 02:13 | to use to set this scissor in a different
position is this is the Scissors tool.
| | 02:18 | So go over here to the Eraser tool, click
and hold on it, and select the Scissors tool
| | 02:21 | from the flyout menu or
you can press the C key.
| | 02:24 | And then you want to click somewhere along
this top segment in order to create a couple
| | 02:29 | of coincident endpoints.
| | 02:31 | So you've just created a cut in the
path outline at this specific location.
| | 02:36 | And I'll show you what I mean.
| | 02:37 | I'll press Shift+Right Arrow a couple of times,
and now you can see the gap between the points.
| | 02:41 | Unfortunately, only one of those end points
is selected. I want them both to be selected,
| | 02:45 | so I'll press Shift+Left Arrow a couple of
times to fuse them back together. I'll press
| | 02:49 | the A key to switch to the White Arrow tool,
and then I'll go ahead and marquee those two
| | 02:53 | coincident end points to select them.
| | 02:55 | And now I am going to take those points and
drag them so that they snap into alignment
| | 02:59 | with the upper-left corner point.
| | 03:02 | And you can press the Shift key as well if
you want to in order to constrain the angle
| | 03:04 | if you drag to exactly horizontal.
| | 03:07 | You want look out for that white stepping
cursor right there, or if you have Smart Guides
| | 03:11 | turned on, I don't, you'll see some sort of green
information that's telling you that you're snapping.
| | 03:16 | Anyway I'll go ahead and release.
| | 03:18 | Now I don't actually want
to see a gap like this.
| | 03:22 | In other words, we're missing a little
bit of dash right at this location.
| | 03:26 | And so what you need to do is
bring back up the Stroke panel.
| | 03:29 | Now currently, I just have a couple of points
selected, so I am not seeing the word Stroke
| | 03:34 | up here in the Control panel.
| | 03:35 | So I'll switch to the Stroke panel manually
and expand it by clicking on the little up
| | 03:40 | down arrow icon a couple of times.
| | 03:42 | And I'll select this first Align icon, extend
arrow tip beyond end of path so that the scissors
| | 03:48 | jump over to the upper-left
corner of that rectangle.
| | 03:52 | Now I am going to go ahead and nudge
my selected points over to the right.
| | 03:57 | And if you're following along with me, press
Ctrl+K or Command+K on the Mac to bring up
| | 04:00 | the Preferences dialog box, and confirm that
the Keyboard Increment is set to one point.
| | 04:05 | And then click OK.
| | 04:07 | And now I'll press Shift+Right Arrow, one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
| | 04:12 | nine times in a row in order to scoot those
scissors over so that the two half dashes
| | 04:18 | that are merged together at the location of
these coincident endpoints ends up being about
| | 04:23 | as wide as the dashes next to them.
| | 04:25 | All right, now click off the rectangle to
deselect it, press Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on
| | 04:30 | the Mac to zoom out, and that is how you create
a classic coupon border complete with scissors
| | 04:35 | here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining dashes with round caps| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to combine
dashes and round caps to create a dotted outline,
| | 00:06 | and we'll be using that dotted outline to create this
gear logo in the lower left corner of the artwork.
| | 00:11 | And for your viewing pleasure, I've gone ahead
and created a second window into this document
| | 00:15 | in which we are zoomed in tight.
| | 00:17 | The first order of business will be to create this white
rim that's tracing around the inside of the circle.
| | 00:23 | So I am going to switchover to my artwork in
progress, and you can see that I have just
| | 00:26 | two path outlines; a white lightning bolt
that I drew with the Pen tool, and then an
| | 00:30 | orange circle that of course I
drew with the Ellipse tool.
| | 00:33 | I'll go and select that orange circle and
then switch to the Appearance panel by going
| | 00:37 | to the Window menu and
choosing the Appearance command.
| | 00:40 | My Stroke panel is so big that I can barely see
anything going on inside the Appearance panel.
| | 00:45 | So I'll click the double arrow icon
just once to slightly contract the panel.
| | 00:49 | And then I'll click on the Fill option here
inside the Appearance panel, and I'll drop
| | 00:53 | down to the second icon in the lower left
corner of the panel Add New Fill and I'll
| | 00:58 | click on it in order to add a new fill,
and I'll change that fill to white.
| | 01:03 | Now I need to make the fill smaller.
| | 01:05 | So we'll make sure that the fill is selected,
that's very important, then go out to the
| | 01:09 | Effect menu, choose Distort & Transform,
and choose the Transform command.
| | 01:14 | And through trial and error, I came up with scale
values of 75% for both horizontal and vertical.
| | 01:20 | Now if I turn on the Preview check box, you can
see that that creates an inset white circle.
| | 01:25 | All right now, click OK to accept the effect.
| | 01:27 | And you can see that the transform effect
is assigned strictly to the white fill.
| | 01:32 | Now I want to create a copy of that fill by
clicking on it to make it active and then
| | 01:35 | you click on a little page icon at the bottom
of the panel and that goes ahead and copies
| | 01:40 | not only the white fill but
its transform effect as well.
| | 01:43 | And I'll go ahead and switch
the color of the fill to orange.
| | 01:46 | And by the way, if you don't have access to
the sample file, I'll go ahead and show you
| | 01:50 | the CMYK values by double-clicking on this
gold shadow swatch here in the Swatches panel.
| | 01:55 | This particular orange
is C 15, M 50 and Y 100.
| | 02:00 | As you can see, the black K value is set
to 0%, so I'll go ahead and cancel out.
| | 02:04 | Now because this fill is transformed to the
same extent as the fill behind it, it goes
| | 02:08 | ahead and covers it up.
| | 02:10 | So we need to make it smaller by clicking
on a word Transform under the orange fill,
| | 02:14 | and I am going to change both the horizontal
and vertical values this time around to 64%.
| | 02:19 | Turn on the Preview check box and we
end up getting this effect here.
| | 02:23 | That makes it look like the lightning is actually coming
out of the circle; like it's actually drawn into it.
| | 02:28 | Then I'll click OK in
order to apply that effect.
| | 02:31 | Now the next thing that we want to do is add
a dotted stroke, but before I show you that
| | 02:36 | effect, because it's a rather specific
application, I am going to show you what dotted strokes
| | 02:41 | look like in general.
| | 02:42 | I'll go ahead and scroll up a little bit and
I'll draw a line like so using the Line tool,
| | 02:48 | just a horizontal line, so I press
the Shift key as I was dragging it.
| | 02:51 | And now I'll change the line width value,
let's say, to 10 points and I end up with
| | 02:54 | a thick black line.
| | 02:56 | And I can see my Stroke panel up over
here on the right-hand side of the screen.
| | 02:59 | That's great, because that way I
am not covering up the artwork.
| | 03:02 | I'll go ahead and turn on the Dashed Line
check box and we end up seeing the last dashed
| | 03:06 | line we applied the one
from the previous movie.
| | 03:08 | I am going to change the dash value to 0 and I'll
leave the gap value set to 12 points for now.
| | 03:13 | You can see that ends up creating these tiny
little dashes, these sort of line spikes here,
| | 03:19 | that probably won't survive the print process.
| | 03:21 | But each and every dash is regarded
by the Stroke panel as an endpoint.
| | 03:28 | So that means you can put a cap on to it.
| | 03:30 | So if you throw on a projecting cap, you'll
end up tracing squares around each one of
| | 03:34 | those dashes, whereas if you throw on
a round cap, you'll trace circles around them.
| | 03:39 | Now there are only circles,
because the dash value is set to 0.
| | 03:42 | I'll go ahead and expand this gap value to
say 24 just so that I have plenty of room
| | 03:46 | here, and if I start taking that dash value up,
you can see that the dots transform into
| | 03:53 | Good & Plenty's here, so that we're tracing half
circles around the outside of each one of the dashes.
| | 03:59 | That's why it's very important
| | 03:59 | if you want a classic dotted outline, you
want the dash value to be set to 0 and then
| | 04:04 | you want the gap value typically to
be set to twice the line weight.
| | 04:09 | In this case, that would be 20 points.
| | 04:11 | All right, so that's your standard
everyday average dotted outline.
| | 04:15 | We're going to create a special application
here, so I am going to press the Backspace
| | 04:18 | key or the Delete key on the Mac, press the V
key to switch back to the Black Arrow tool,
| | 04:22 | and click on that circle once again.
| | 04:24 | All right, so what we want to do--I am going
to scroll down a little bit here and switch
| | 04:28 | back to the final version of the artwork.
You'll see that I am cutting the circular grooves
| | 04:33 | in the outside of the circle, and those are
round dashes that are doing the work for me.
| | 04:39 | So we've got a gear that's a kind of bicycle gear
actually as opposed to watch gear, if you will.
| | 04:45 | Anyway I am going to switch back and I'll of
course look down here to the Appearance panel.
| | 04:49 | I am going to go ahead and collapse my Stroke
panel further, so I have more room to work.
| | 04:53 | I want to add a white stroke, so I'll go
ahead and change the color of that stroke, which
| | 04:57 | is currently none, to white.
| | 04:59 | I'll go ahead and increase my Line Weight
value to 9 points, so that we end up with
| | 05:03 | this thick white stroke.
| | 05:05 | And now I'll click on the word Stroke to bring
up the pop-up panel, so you can get to this
| | 05:09 | panel from all over the place
including here inside the Appearance panel.
| | 05:12 | And now I am going to do
the classic stuff here.
| | 05:14 | I am going to turn on the Dashed Line check box
and I've got a 0 point dash, 20 point gap.
| | 05:19 | I really don't know what the gap should be,
but I do know that I want to turn on the Round
| | 05:23 | Cap, and I end up with these gears, and they
look like all right, you know, that's okay.
| | 05:28 | But let's say you want a very specific number
of gears, like I knew I wanted 16 gear holes
| | 05:33 | tracing around this circle.
| | 05:35 | That's what I ultimately came up with.
| | 05:37 | Well, you're going to have do some
math. That's the warning for you.
| | 05:41 | Here's what you do.
| | 05:42 | First of all, you got to
figure out how big this circle is.
| | 05:44 | So you go to the Window menu while the circle
is selected and you choose the Info command,
| | 05:48 | and then you see, oh by golly, the width
and height of the circle are 70 points.
| | 05:53 | So that means we've got a 70 point diameter,
because the radius would be half of the width
| | 05:59 | of the circle and the diameter is the full
width of the circle, so we've got 70 points.
| | 06:03 | Somehow we have to translate that
into the circumference of the circle.
| | 06:07 | Now I'll tell you I was a math major in school. I
should know all the stuff, but I've forgotten
| | 06:11 | just about all of it.
| | 06:12 | So what I do, like any reasonable person,
is I go to the Internet, and so you can find
| | 06:18 | sites that will actually--you just dial in
the diameter value and, it will automatically
| | 06:22 | tell you what the circumference of
that circle is. So just do a search.
| | 06:27 | And then we take the circumference, which I found
out was 219.91 points, and you divide it by 60.
| | 06:35 | And so you'd whip out your trusty
calculator and you come up with 13.744.
| | 06:41 | All right, so fair enough.
| | 06:42 | Go to the Stroke panel bring it back up here,
our dash is 0, so we don't even to think about
| | 06:47 | the dash value. All we do just dial in 13.744
into the gap value, because that's the 16th
| | 06:53 | of the circumference.
| | 06:54 | And I'll press the Tab
key and see how it looks.
| | 06:56 | Now if it doesn't look exactly right, and by
exactly right, I mean, notice this circle
| | 07:00 | at top is centered on that anchor point and
this one centered on the right point. This
| | 07:04 | one centered on the bottom and this one centered on
the left-hand point. That's exactly what I want.
| | 07:08 | But this is a situation in which Align dashes to
corners and path ends can actually mess things up.
| | 07:14 | So what you want to do, if you know you've
got the right values, is turn on Preserves
| | 07:18 | exact dash and gap lengths, and that may not
make much of a difference, because I have
| | 07:22 | got such exact values in
here. I happen to nail it.
| | 07:25 | However, in your work if you're trying out
these kinds of effects, you may find that's
| | 07:28 | useful to switch back to
that old style option.
| | 07:32 | All right and that's it. I'll go ahead and
hide the Stroke panel, click off the shape
| | 07:35 | in order to deselect it, and we end up with an
automatically constructed gear shape. Didn't
| | 07:40 | require any drawing whatsoever.
| | 07:42 | Thanks to our ability to create dotted outlines
by combining dashes with round caps here inside Illustrator.
| | 07:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making an official money-like type effect| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to create the
effect that's assigned to the text Golden Ticket.
| | 00:05 | And it's a kind of official money like effect,
as you can see here, with an offset shadow
| | 00:10 | and this inset stroke that contains the
yellow fill, along with these white highlights.
| | 00:15 | So it's a combination of four fills
and two strokes working together.
| | 00:19 | Now it's very possible you don't have the
font Nueva Standard installed on your machine.
| | 00:24 | So I went ahead and converted this text to
path outlines by going to the Type menu and
| | 00:28 | choosing the Create Outlines command.
| | 00:31 | That converts the text to a group of static
path outlines, but the effect I am about to
| | 00:35 | show you is equally applicable
to live text inside Illustrator.
| | 00:40 | So let's see how it works.
| | 00:42 | I'll go ahead and switch over to my document
in progress and select the letters using the
| | 00:46 | Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:47 | Now you need to make sure your Appearance
panel is up on screen and you'll see the word
| | 00:50 | Group there along with Contents.
| | 00:52 | If you are working on live text, you would
see type on top in bold just like group and
| | 00:58 | you would see characters below it.
| | 01:00 | Either way you need to double-click in that
lower item, so either Contents, in our case,
| | 01:04 | or characters if you're
working with live text.
| | 01:07 | And then you'll see a
stroke and fill couple here.
| | 01:09 | Assuming Stroke is already set to none,
take the Fill and set it to none as well.
| | 01:15 | Now you need to go up to this time
that says Group: No Appearance.
| | 01:18 | It'll say Type: No Appearance if
you're working with live type.
| | 01:22 | Double-click on it in order to switch back
so that you're working on all of the letters
| | 01:26 | at the same time, then you want to drop down
to this icon here Add New Fill in the lower
| | 01:31 | left corner of the
Appearance panel and click on it.
| | 01:33 | And by the way, both of these functions Add New
Stroke and Add New Fill have keyboard shortcuts.
| | 01:39 | For Add New Fill its Ctrl+/ or
Command+/. That's a forward slash.
| | 01:44 | For Add New Stroke its Ctrl+Alt+/ or Command+
Option+/, but much of the time it's just as easy to
| | 01:50 | click on the icons.
| | 01:52 | Anyway we've got a fill.
| | 01:53 | Now ironically, I need it to be white, so I
am going to go ahead and change its color
| | 01:57 | by clicking in the Color Swatch and
selecting White from my swatches.
| | 02:01 | The reason I say ironically, because it makes the
text invisible except for those selection edges.
| | 02:06 | Now we're going to add a stroke.
| | 02:07 | So click on the work Stroke and just go ahead
and dial in a line weight value of 2 points
| | 02:12 | and that'll automatically make the text black.
| | 02:14 | And if you want to confirm that the text is
a rich black, then go ahead and select the
| | 02:18 | Rich black swatch.
| | 02:20 | Now those strokes are little too thick
and they're covering up the letters.
| | 02:23 | So what do you want to do is grab the stroke
and drag and drop it below the fill. Not below
| | 02:28 | contents or characters or what have you.
| | 02:31 | You don't want to go that low, but
just above contents or characters.
| | 02:35 | And this is one of the
reasons we have to work this way.
| | 02:37 | If we were working on the actual characters
and this was editable text, then you can't
| | 02:42 | move the fill and stroke around and you can't
assign multiple fills and strokes and all that stuff.
| | 02:47 | All right, now I want to create a shadow and I
am going to do that by duplicating this fill.
| | 02:52 | So I'll select the fill and Alt+Drag or Option+
Drag it below the stroke, and then I'll click on
| | 02:56 | the Fill swatch and change it to the
shade of orange which called Gold shadows.
| | 03:00 | And now I need to offset the fill, so it
looks like a shadow and I'll do that by going up
| | 03:04 | to the Effect menu choosing Distort &
Transform, and choosing Transform.
| | 03:09 | And by the way, it's very important that
the fill is selected for this to work.
| | 03:14 | All right, now I'll change both the move
values to 1.5 per piece, like so, and I'll turn on
| | 03:20 | the Preview check box, just so we can confirm
that we've got a shadow going in the background.
| | 03:24 | Sure enough, we do. I could move this
out of the way if you like, and then click OK.
| | 03:28 | All right, now I am going to zoom in on the
bottom of the L there, and you can see that
| | 03:32 | the shadow is not big enough to
accommodate the strokes text.
| | 03:36 | It's specifically the stroke
that's enlarging the text there.
| | 03:39 | So we need to similarly enlarge the shadow.
| | 03:41 | You could to that by adding a stroke, but
that's not the most efficient way to work.
| | 03:45 | I'll go ahead and twirl open Fill, so
we can see its transformer effect.
| | 03:48 | The best way to work is to apply another
effect by going to the Effect menu choosing Path
| | 03:53 | and choosing Offset Path, which will go
ahead and add the effect of a kind of stroke.
| | 03:58 | Now I'll change the Offset value to 1 point
and then I'll turn on the Preview check box.
| | 04:03 | And the reason that works so beautifully is
because since we have a 2-point stroke that
| | 04:07 | set against the white fill, one point of that stroke
is set in the fill and it's therefore covered up.
| | 04:14 | So we're only seeing the outer point of the
stroke and so adding an offset of just one
| | 04:18 | point is the way to go.
| | 04:19 | It's an exact match in fact.
| | 04:21 | Then go ahead and click OK in
order to apply that effect.
| | 04:24 | All right, now let's add that inset stroke
that really makes the text look official.
| | 04:29 | And I'll go ahead and zoom out a little bit,
so I can take in more of my letters at a time.
| | 04:34 | And I'll duplicate my existing stroke by
clicking on it and then I'll Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
| | 04:39 | it to the top of the stack and that makes a
copy of it, and now I'll change the line
| | 04:42 | weight to 1 point and we need
to offset this stroke inward.
| | 04:47 | By going up to the Effect menu--and notice
Illustrator goes and repeats the last effect
| | 04:51 | applied at the top of the menu.
| | 04:53 | You've got the single shot command that will
apply your last offset path setting of one
| | 04:57 | point. We don't want that. Or you can change
the setting by choosing the second command.
| | 05:01 | So I'll choose the second command and I want
this offset value to -2 and then I'll turn
| | 05:06 | on the Preview check box, so we can see what
it does, and that creates a carving effect
| | 05:10 | on the inside, which is perfect.
| | 05:12 | Click OK in order to accept that effect.
| | 05:14 | Now you may end up noticing some bevel joins.
I'll go ahead and click on the word Stroke.
| | 05:20 | That's going to be a function of the
miter limit, but for some reason I keep getting
| | 05:24 | different effects every time I try this out.
| | 05:26 | And so there is a good example.
| | 05:27 | We have got a bevel join there inside of the E and
the N and the bottom portion of the E as well.
| | 05:34 | And to get rid of those bevels, you want to
click on the word Stroke to bring up the Stroke
| | 05:37 | panel, so that you can gain access to limit
value and then you want to press Shift+Up
| | 05:41 | arrow a few times in order to increase that
value until you get spikes coming of the ends.
| | 05:46 | Now the problem, while this looks great for
the right side of the end, it's not so great
| | 05:50 | for the left side.
| | 05:51 | We've got this miter joint that's piercing through
the bottom serif and that's got to be painful.
| | 05:57 | So I am going to back off the limit value--
this is what I figured out for this text
| | 06:00 | effect--to 40 times and that ends up making
all the corners nice and spiky except for
| | 06:06 | those inside the N.
| | 06:08 | You can fix those manually by drawing little
spikes if you wanted to, but otherwise we'll
| | 06:11 | just take it as we got it.
| | 06:13 | So I am going to zoom out a little.
| | 06:14 | I want to make those strokes thinner and I
want to cover them up with yellow fill.
| | 06:19 | So I'll just add a new fill by dropping down
to the Add New Fill icon and I'll click on
| | 06:23 | it, or you can press Ctrl+/ or Command+/ on a
Mac, and then change the fill color to yellow.
| | 06:29 | And we want that same offset
that we applied to the strokes.
| | 06:31 | So I'll twirl open that top stroke, click on
Offset Path to make it active. Don't click
| | 06:35 | on the words. Click to the right, because if
you click on the words, you'll bring up the
| | 06:39 | dialog box again.
| | 06:40 | We don't want that, so just click
to the right to make it active.
| | 06:43 | Then press the Alt key or the Option key on
a Mac and drag that effect and drop it onto
| | 06:47 | the yellow fill and you'll end
up offsetting that fill as well.
| | 06:51 | All right, we have just one more fill to apply,
this time for the white highlights, and the
| | 06:56 | best way to make it is to make sure the top
fill is active then click on a little page
| | 07:00 | icon at the bottom of the Appearance panel to
duplicate it. Let's change the fill color to white.
| | 07:06 | That ends up completely covering up the yellow
fill, so click on the words Offset Path, and
| | 07:11 | if you don't see them go
ahead and twirl the fill open.
| | 07:13 | Click on those words that will bring up the
Offset Path dialog box, let's turn on the
| | 07:17 | Preview check box, and I came up with a
value of -5.5 points like so. Then click OK.
| | 07:23 | Now that ends up creating some
very nice centered highlights.
| | 07:27 | I want them offset to the right, so I'll
click on that white fill to make it active.
| | 07:30 | Then go up to the Effect menu, choose Distort
& Transform and choose the Transform command.
| | 07:35 | And for this text change the Horizontal value
to 2 points and then turn on the Preview check
| | 07:40 | box, and that goes ahead and scoots the
highlights over to the right and click OK in order to
| | 07:45 | accept that effect.
| | 07:46 | And that friends is how you create an official
money style text effect by building up a series
| | 07:54 | of fills and inset strokes
here inside the Appearance panel.
| | 07:59 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a wavy, engraving-line background| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to create
this pattern of wavy yellow engraving lines
| | 00:05 | at the back of the certificate.
| | 00:07 | As it just so happens it's a single horizontal line
with just two strokes assigned to it and that's it.
| | 00:14 | So let's see how it works.
| | 00:15 | I'll go ahead and switch over to my document
in progress and I am going to select this
| | 00:20 | top horizontal line
using the Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:23 | Then I'll go ahead and drag it upward like
so to about this location, kind of splitting
| | 00:27 | the difference between its previous location
and the top of the yellow rectangle, and then
| | 00:32 | in mid-drag I'll press and
hold the Shift and Alt key.
| | 00:35 | That will be the Shift and
Option keys in the Mac.
| | 00:37 | Keep those keys down and then release
the line in order to create a copy of it.
| | 00:42 | Then I decided I needed to scale the line so
it's at least as wide as the certificate.
| | 00:46 | So I'll double-click on the Scale tool icon
here in the toolbox, and I went with
| | 00:51 | some Non-Uniform values here.
| | 00:52 | I changed Horizontal to 130% and left
Verticals set to 100%, then clicked the OK button in
| | 00:59 | order to scale that line.
| | 01:01 | Now I'll press the V key to switch back to
the Black Arrow tool, and notice that I have
| | 01:04 | got my Appearance panel up on screen.
| | 01:06 | I'll click on my black
stroke in order to select it.
| | 01:10 | We are ultimately going to be changing
that stroke to a very thin yellow line.
| | 01:13 | But if we do that right now we will
barely be able to see the effects.
| | 01:16 | So let's leave it fairly
thick and black for the moment.
| | 01:18 | Click on it to make it active.
| | 01:20 | Then go up to the Effect menu, choose Distort &
Transform, and choose the final command Zig Zag.
| | 01:25 | And this is actually
pretty interesting filter.
| | 01:28 | If you turn on the Preview check box you'll
see that it turns the line into a kind of
| | 01:33 | predictable jagged line.
| | 01:34 | In other words, there is no random
quality associated with Zig Zag.
| | 01:38 | However, I don't want these
sort of mountains and valleys.
| | 01:41 | I want a continuous curve.
| | 01:43 | So I'll change the Point setting to Smooth,
and we end up with this smoothly flowing line.
| | 01:49 | Then I'll increase the
Ridges per segment value.
| | 01:52 | I am going to start by taking it up to 20, and I'll
press the Tab key just so I can see what's going on.
| | 01:56 | Now what I want you to notice here is when we
have got even value like 40, the line begins
| | 02:02 | as a valley at the beginning of yellow box
and we are going to be putting this engraving
| | 02:06 | pattern inside the box.
| | 02:07 | So it begins as a valley there and then it ends over
here in the right edge of the box as a mountain.
| | 02:12 | I want them to both be the same. Whether
they're mountains or valleys, I don't care.
| | 02:16 | So I press the Up Arrow key in
order to increase that value to 41.
| | 02:20 | Anytime you have an odd value at least where
this artwork is concerned, then the valleys
| | 02:25 | end up aligning of both sides.
| | 02:28 | Now let's take the Size value down.
| | 02:29 | I'll click it in and then press the Down Arrow key
until I reduce that value to 6 points as you see here.
| | 02:35 | Next click OK.
| | 02:36 | Now at this point I told you that we only
needed two strokes to pull of this effect,
| | 02:40 | but it dawns on me, we only need one.
| | 02:43 | So I'll make sure that the stroke remains
active and I'm going to duplicate it and flip
| | 02:47 | it by going up to the Effect menu, choosing
to Distort & Transform, and then choosing
| | 02:51 | the Transform command.
| | 02:52 | Now you want to turn on the Reflect Wide check
box right there, and that will reflect the line
| | 02:57 | vertically, then turn on the Preview
check box and that goes ahead and flips it.
| | 03:01 | We need to regain the original, and you do
that by changing the Copies value to 1 and
| | 03:06 | you end up with this effect here.
| | 03:08 | Now I'll click the OK button in order to
accept that effect and now what we want to do is
| | 03:12 | go ahead and zoom in a little bit so that we can see
what we're doing once we change this line to yellow.
| | 03:18 | I am going to change the Stroke from black
to yellow and then I am going to change the
| | 03:21 | line weight to about as thin as I dare
go, which is 0.3 points, and we end up with
| | 03:26 | this effect here.
| | 03:27 | By the way, 0.3 is 124th of an inch.
| | 03:32 | So it's very thin indeed.
| | 03:33 | Now I am going to go ahead and nudge that
line from the keyboard until it cuts through
| | 03:37 | the top of the coupon board and
that's just for alignment purposes.
| | 03:41 | Now we need to make a bunch of duplicates
of this line and we are going to do that by
| | 03:45 | clicking on Path this time around.
| | 03:48 | Then go on to the Effect menu, choose Distort
& Transform, and choose the Transform command
| | 03:53 | once again, and I came up with a
vertical value of 3.33 points.
| | 03:57 | It just happened to look good.
| | 04:00 | I'll turn on the Preview check box and that
just goes ahead and nudges that guy down.
| | 04:03 | We create copies of course by increasing the
Copies value and I'm just pressing and holding
| | 04:08 | the up arrow key in order to fill the screen
with copies, and then you got click OK in order
| | 04:13 | to accept the effect and then zoom out, because you
can't zoom out when you're inside that dialog box.
| | 04:18 | Now I'll click on the word Transform, not the
one that's assigned to the stroke, because
| | 04:22 | that's the one that's flipping the stroke,
but rather the one that's assigned to the
| | 04:25 | entire path outlined that
listed down at the bottom here.
| | 04:29 | Click on a word Transform, turn on the Preview
check box, and continue to increase that Copies value.
| | 04:35 | At a point I press Shift+Up Arrow a bunch
of times until I arrived in a copies value
| | 04:40 | of 140, and that ended up filling in the entire coupon,
and then click OK in order to apply that effect.
| | 04:48 | Now I'll go ahead and zoom in so we can see
just how darn good-looking this effect is.
| | 04:52 | Of course, there's a
couple of big problems here.
| | 04:54 | The first problem is that the yellow wavy
engraving lines are covering up everything behind them.
| | 05:00 | So press Ctrl+Shift+Left bracket or Command+Shift+Left
bracket on the Mac to send them to the bottom of the layer.
| | 05:06 | Then switch over to the Layers panel, expand
the layer, and go ahead and scroll all the
| | 05:11 | way down to the bottom.
| | 05:12 | The selected path is called high line and that's
because it's based on this high line right there.
| | 05:17 | This is the high line, this is low
line, above and below the headline.
| | 05:20 | I want to change the name of
this guy though to engraving.
| | 05:24 | So now we've got the line situated where they
need to be, but they need to appear inside
| | 05:29 | of the rectangles as well.
| | 05:30 | That means we need to mask these engraving
lines inside the yellow rectangle and I'll
| | 05:35 | show you exactly how that
works in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Masking a pattern inside a background| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to place
the wavy yellow engraving lines inside of
| | 00:05 | this yellow box, using
what's known as a clipping mask.
| | 00:09 | Now I'll be devoting an entire chapter to
the topic of clipping masks in the advanced
| | 00:13 | course in the series, but this will give
you an early taste of what's going on.
| | 00:17 | So here's how it works. It's little bit
weird but what you want to do is twirl open the
| | 00:21 | ticket layer here inside Layers panel, then
go ahead and scroll down, and you'll find
| | 00:26 | this box item right there.
| | 00:28 | And that is a yellow rectangle that we are
going to use as a container, and then we've
| | 00:32 | got the engraving lines that are located below, and
those are the lines that we created in the previous movie.
| | 00:38 | When you're creating a clipping mask, the
thing that's going to do the masking needs
| | 00:41 | to be on top. Fortunately, that's
the way things are arranged for us.
| | 00:45 | The next thing we want to do is meatball the
engraving path, and then shift meatball the
| | 00:49 | rectangle which goes by the name box,
so that they're both selected.
| | 00:53 | You could also select them here
inside the document window if you prefer.
| | 00:57 | Then go up to the Object menu > Clipping Mask >
Make, and that will go ahead and clip those engraving
| | 01:03 | lines inside of the rectangle.
| | 01:06 | And notice we end up with this clipping group
right here, and if you twirl it open you'll
| | 01:10 | see that the box is on top and
engraving is underneath it.
| | 01:14 | So the box is the clipping mask and the
yellow wavy engraving lines are the contents.
| | 01:19 | All right, now what we need to do is reinstate
that stroke that we just lost. Any time you
| | 01:24 | make a clipping mask, you end up losing the
fill and stroke of the clipping mask itself,
| | 01:29 | that is to say, the rectangle in our case.
| | 01:31 | And so what you need to do to solve that problem,
the easiest way, is to go up here to the Control
| | 01:35 | panel, notice you've got two icons right
there Edit Clipping Path and then Edit Contents.
| | 01:41 | Click on Edit Contents in order to make it
active. If you see a little warning icon over
| | 01:46 | here just ignore it, and then you want to
go back and click on Edit Clipping Path to
| | 01:51 | make it active. So you kind of have to
switch back and forth between the two.
| | 01:55 | Notice now that I can see I've got no fill
and no stroke, change the stroke to Aztec
| | 02:00 | Gold which is that shade of yellow, and then
increase the line weight value to 3 points, and
| | 02:05 | we end up reinstating that stroke, as well as
clipping those engraving lines. So everything
| | 02:10 | is perfect and it's not all that hard
once you wrap your mind around it.
| | 02:13 | Although, I have to tell you, when we get into
clipping masks in that advanced chapter,
| | 02:17 | there is an awful lot you can do with it.
It's a very, very powerful feature.
| | 02:21 | But we do have problems here. I'm going to
scroll down and you can see that because I
| | 02:27 | have a white lightning bolt and I have got
these white circles associated with the dotted
| | 02:31 | outline, that they're essentially
covering up the engraving lines.
| | 02:34 | The way to solve this is to
select both of these objects.
| | 02:37 | So click on the circle in order to select
it, and then Shift+Click on the lightning
| | 02:40 | to select it as well.
| | 02:42 | Go up to the Object menu, choose the Group
Command or you can press Ctrl+G or Command+G
| | 02:46 | on a Mac and that way we can blend
both of these objects together.
| | 02:50 | And then you want to go up to the Control
panel, notice the word Opacity here? Click
| | 02:53 | on it and then you want to change the blend
mode from Normal to the best of the Darkening
| | 02:59 | modes, and I'll be devoting an entire chapter
to blend modes as well in the advanced course, but
| | 03:04 | for now just go ahead and choose
Multiply and we end up with this effect here.
| | 03:08 | Notice that we are seeing through the logo
to the engraving lines almost as if the logo
| | 03:12 | were overprinted.
| | 03:14 | So in other words, your inks are mixing together.
Because I did that, I've got to do it for the
| | 03:18 | other orange objects as well.
| | 03:19 | So I'll go ahead and select this text here,
and then go up to the Opacity option in the
| | 03:23 | Control panel and change it
from Normal to Multiply.
| | 03:28 | And that will go ahead and blend those letters
into place. I'll go ahead and zoom in so you
| | 03:32 | can see what I am talking about. Notice that
we can see the engraving lines through the
| | 03:36 | orange text just as we can in the orange logo.
| | 03:39 | And then finally what we need to do--I'll go ahead
and scroll up here--we need to able to see those
| | 03:43 | engraving lines just for the sake of continuity
through those orange shadows that are associated
| | 03:48 | with the headline text.
| | 03:49 | So go ahead and click on that text to select
all those letters, and instead of changing
| | 03:54 | all of the text to multiply, I'll
show what that would look like.
| | 03:57 | If I click Opacity and change the blend mode
to Multiply, we would end up losing all the
| | 04:01 | whites, which is not what I want at all.
| | 04:03 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac to undo that change. Instead you
| | 04:07 | need to switch over to the Appearance panel
and then click on the orange fill, which is the
| | 04:12 | shadow of course,
| | 04:12 | in order to make it active independently of
the other attributes, then go up to Opacity,
| | 04:17 | click on it, and change the blend
mode from Normal to Multiply.
| | 04:21 | And if I go ahead and zoom in here, you can
see that now we can clearly see those engraving
| | 04:26 | lines through the shadows behind the letters.
| | 04:29 | All right and that takes care of it. Press
Ctrl+O or Command+O on a Mac in order to zoom
| | 04:33 | out, and you know what? I
don't need these guidelines.
| | 04:36 | So I'll press Ctrl+; or Command+; on
the Mac in order to hide them, and that
| | 04:41 | is how you go about placing one
group of objects inside of another.
| | 04:45 | Specifically in our case, we took those yellow
wavy engraving lines and set them inside
| | 04:50 | of the yellow rectangle.
| | 04:51 | In the next movie, we will take these black
lines above and below the headline text and
| | 04:56 | we'll go ahead and turn them
into these variable width rules.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating tapering rules (with inset strokes)| 00:00 | In this final movie of the chapter, I'll
show you how to create the variable width rules
| | 00:04 | that appear above and below the headline text.
| | 00:06 | And as you can see, it's a combination of
two variable width strokes working together.
| | 00:12 | They both taper off at the outside edges.
| | 00:15 | Now while this is a very effective technique,
you may find yourself using it quite often
| | 00:19 | inside Illustrator, it could
not be easier to pull off.
| | 00:23 | So I'll go ahead and switch over to my final
progress file here and I'll click on the top
| | 00:28 | line, Shift+Click on the bottom line in
order to select both with the Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:32 | I might as well go ahead and zoom in
so we can better see what we're doing.
| | 00:35 | And I am also going to press Ctrl+H or Command+H
on the Mac in order to hide the selection
| | 00:40 | edges, so we can see the lines by themselves.
| | 00:42 | Now something I need to tell you.
| | 00:43 | There is something to watch out for when you're
working from the Appearance panel in particular.
| | 00:47 | As you notice, I could see the word path at
the top of the Appearance panel which tells
| | 00:51 | me that I've a path selected.
| | 00:53 | Watch what happens to that word right
there if I click off of the path.
| | 00:57 | In this case, it's says group and that's
because I've gone ahead and selected the clipping
| | 01:00 | group in the background, but if I click on
an empty region, I'll see no selection.
| | 01:05 | And what you can find yourself doing is
spending a lot of time building up attributes, like
| | 01:09 | I could say, all right, I want to set
my stroke to 16-point line weight.
| | 01:14 | And I'll click on the word Stroke and change
the profile, this first guy right there Width
| | 01:18 | Profile 1, and why isn't
anything changing on screen.
| | 01:22 | And that's because all I am doing is sitting
here and adjusting the default settings for
| | 01:26 | the next path outline that I create,
because I don't have anything selected.
| | 01:30 | So what I need to do in this
particular case is select something.
| | 01:34 | So I'll go ahead and click on the top path
and Shift+Click on the bottom path and now
| | 01:38 | I've selected them both. I can tell that
because it says mixed appearances.
| | 01:43 | Let's see what I have selected.
| | 01:44 | I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the Mac.
| | 01:46 | I don't have what I thought selected.
| | 01:48 | Kind of a problem when you're
not seeing your selection edges.
| | 01:51 | All right, let's start over.
| | 01:52 | I'll click of the path to deselect it.
| | 01:54 | Click on this guy and Shift+Click on this one.
| | 01:57 | Now they're both selected. Now I don't
have mixed appearances. That's great.
| | 02:00 | Press Ctrl+H and don't click anymore Deke.
| | 02:03 | Now here in the Appearance panel, we
can see the word path. That's great.
| | 02:07 | We don't see paths but that's what we have.
| | 02:09 | Click on the stroke to make it active, change
the color of the stroke to Aztec Gold, that
| | 02:13 | shade of yellow, change the line weight to
16 points, and then click on a word stroke
| | 02:17 | in order to bring it up, drop down
to the Profile option, click on it.
| | 02:21 | And notice that some of these strokes are
symmetrical vertically and some of them aren't.
| | 02:27 | For example, one is and then six is not.
| | 02:30 | And then other strokes are symmetrical
horizontally; one is as well and others are not.
| | 02:36 | For example, Width Profile 4 is
not symmetrical horizontally.
| | 02:40 | So the thing to bear in mind is that when
you're working with a closed path, if you
| | 02:44 | want everything to be seamless, then your width
profile needs to be symmetrical horizontally.
| | 02:52 | It doesn't have to be symmetrical vertically,
but it does have to be symmetrical horizontally.
| | 02:55 | When you're working with open paths as we
are, it doesn't really matter. You can get
| | 02:58 | away with either.
| | 02:59 | What I want though is Width Profile 1,
because I want to create this kind of lozenge.
| | 03:04 | I want the rules to taper toward the
outside edges of the certificate.
| | 03:09 | So one stroke down here, I am going to drop
down to the little Add New Stroke icon in
| | 03:13 | the bottom left corner of the Appearance
panel, and click on it to make another stroke.
| | 03:17 | I am going to change it to white and I am
going to change its line weight to 3 points
| | 03:23 | and then press the Enter key
or the Return key on the Mac.
| | 03:25 | Now I want you to see something.
| | 03:26 | If I go ahead and zoom in here, so that I
can see both of the lines, notice that the
| | 03:30 | uniform white strokes are extending beyond
the edges of the tapering yellow stroke, which
| | 03:36 | of course is not what we want.
| | 03:37 | I want you to see something else as well.
| | 03:39 | If I click out the stroke here inside the
Appearances panel, you can see that the 16-point
| | 03:43 | stroke has an asterisk after it
and the 3-point stroke does not.
| | 03:46 | That asterisk tells you that the stroke may
get thinner than that. So in other words, it's
| | 03:52 | no thicker than 16 points, but it might get
thinner thanks to, for example, a variable
| | 03:57 | width profile being assigned to it.
| | 03:59 | Whereas this guy, if you don't see an
asterisk, then it's a uniform stroke.
| | 04:03 | We don't want it to be uniform, so click on the
word stroke in order to bring up the Stroke
| | 04:06 | panel, and change the profile this time to
this third guy, Width Profile 3, which as you
| | 04:11 | can see, tapers very quickly.
| | 04:13 | So Width Profile 1 tapers very slowly, Width
Profile 3 tapers quickly, and that's what
| | 04:18 | we want, because we're working with a
thinner stroke, as you can see here.
| | 04:22 | So it starts tapering it about this location where
the yellow stroke starts tapering in its middle.
| | 04:27 | And folks I've got news for you.
| | 04:28 | That's all there is to it.
| | 04:30 | So hopefully you now feel like you have a
thorough sense of how to exploit the power
| | 04:35 | of strokes here inside Adobe Illustrator.
| | 04:39 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
14. Gradients and the Gradient ToolHow gradients work| 00:00 | In this chapter, we'll discuss gradients.
| | 00:03 | A gradient is any fill or stroke that
gradually transitions from one color to another.
| | 00:09 | You can use gradients to
convey shine and depth.
| | 00:12 | You can use them to
create spot-lit backgrounds.
| | 00:15 | You can use them to create volumetric
forms, such as these glowing radiant eyes.
| | 00:20 | And you can even apply
gradients to text and strokes.
| | 00:23 | A single gradient can include as many
colors as you can physically stuff inside it.
| | 00:28 | You can precisely control the location of those
colors as well as speed at which they transition.
| | 00:35 | You can introduce
transparency into a gradient.
| | 00:37 | You can apply and modify gradients directly inside a
shape using the world-class gradient annotator.
| | 00:44 | And in Illustrator CS6, you can
flow a gradient along a stroke.
| | 00:49 | Illustrator wasn't the first
program to introduce gradients.
| | 00:52 | In fact, it was one of the last.
| | 00:54 | But nowadays its gradients
are the best in the business.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assigning and modifying a gradient fill| 00:00 | In this first movie, I'll show you how to assign
and modify a gradient fill inside Illustrator.
| | 00:06 | Gradients can make a terrific difference where
your artwork is concerned. For example, over
| | 00:09 | the course of this chapter, we are going to
take these raw path outlines and we are going
| | 00:13 | to assign some drop shadows and
gradients in order to create this final effect.
| | 00:18 | We are going to start things off by assigning
the gradient to the cat's forehead here.
| | 00:23 | So I'll switch back to my raw file and I'll
click on the forehead shape to select it.
| | 00:28 | Notice that it has a red stroke
currently as well as a rich black fill.
| | 00:33 | We don't want any of these red strokes. They are just
there in order to make the path outlines visible.
| | 00:38 | So go up to the strokes swatch, the second
swatch in the Control panel, click on it and
| | 00:42 | change it to None.
| | 00:43 | Now to assign the gradient fill. There's a
variety of ways to assign gradients. I am
| | 00:47 | going to review them all very
quickly here, so that you know them.
| | 00:51 | None of them are particularly difficult
however they're not necessarily intuitive either.
| | 00:55 | Your first option is to, in my case, switch to
the two column toolbox, so I can see these
| | 00:59 | color options down here at the bottom.
| | 01:02 | And notice that my fill is active. That's
very important, and right in the row here
| | 01:06 | we've got Color which is a
solid fill, gradient and None.
| | 01:10 | So you can just go ahead and click on that
gradient swatch, or you can take advantage
| | 01:13 | of the keyboard shortcuts, which are also
right in a row on an American keyboard.
| | 01:18 | That is we've got the comic key for solid
color. You have period, which will assign
| | 01:23 | a gradient, and then if you tap the slash key
you'll end up getting none. In our case, we
| | 01:27 | want a gradient, so I'll press the period key.
| | 01:29 | So that's one way to would work.
| | 01:30 | We will go ahead and press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac in order to undo that change so
| | 01:34 | I can show you another way here.
| | 01:36 | If you go up to the Window menu, you can
choose the Gradient command in order to bring up
| | 01:39 | the Gradient panel.
| | 01:40 | Now in my case, it's already up because I
just got done assigning that gradient there.
| | 01:44 | When the Gradient panel is visible, you can
just click on the gradient bar in order to
| | 01:48 | assign a gradient, or if you go and expand
the Gradient panel by clicking on a double
| | 01:53 | arrow icon a couple times, then you'll see you have
got this gradient swatch here. You can click on it,
| | 01:58 | or you can click the down pointing arrow head
in order to select from the gradients that
| | 02:02 | are loaded into this particular document, and
these by the way, are the default gradients
| | 02:07 | for print documents in Illustrator CS6.
| | 02:11 | Now my problem with these gradients, White
Black, which is the default, as well as super
| | 02:15 | soft black vignettes which
features black of course,
| | 02:18 | is that they include weak blacks, whereas all of
the blacks inside of these document currently
| | 02:23 | are rich blacks, as you can
see up here into Color panel.
| | 02:25 | We have got 50% Cyan, 50% Magenta 50% Yellow and
a 100% Black, so we need to go and match that.
| | 02:32 | Well, if you want to take a color that's already
assigned to a shape and add it to a gradient,
| | 02:38 | then you just go ahead and
drag its swatch, like so.
| | 02:41 | So I am dragging the fills swatch from the
Color panel, you can also drag from the Swatch
| | 02:44 | panel, and then drop it into place
somewhere inside the gradient.
| | 02:48 | Now if I wanted to replace white in my
default gradient, I would drag to the beginning of
| | 02:52 | the gradient. I want to replace black however.
| | 02:54 | So I'll go ahead and hover over the end there
and then release, and I now have a white to
| | 02:59 | rich black gradient.
| | 03:01 | That happens to be going at the wrong angle.
I could change that angle to get the results
| | 03:05 | I'm looking for, by dialing in a value of -90 degrees
and that will create white at the top
| | 03:11 | and black at the bottom which is exactly what
I want, or notice that you also have the option
| | 03:15 | of reversing the order of the color stops.
| | 03:18 | And so if you click on Reverse Gradient, that's
not a toggle by the way, that just goes ahead
| | 03:22 | and swaps the color stops around, as you're
seeing, and then of course having done that
| | 03:26 | I would need to change my
angle value to +90 degrees instead.
| | 03:30 | I am also going to change the location of
this first color stop, and I could do that
| | 03:34 | by the way just by dragging like so, or I
can dial in a Location value and I want this
| | 03:40 | black stop at the beginning of the gradient to
be located at 10% into the gradient, like so.
| | 03:46 | So that the very corners of this shape here are
filled with black. Few other things you can do.
| | 03:51 | You can double-click on the color stop in
order to bring up the Color panel, or you can
| | 03:56 | switch over to the Swatches panel
just by clicking on that icon there.
| | 03:59 | You also have control over the opacity of
the color stop. We will be looking at that
| | 04:03 | in greater detail in a later movie, and by
the way, you can change the Opacity value
| | 04:07 | right here as well for
this independent color stop.
| | 04:11 | In addition to moving a color stop around
you can duplicate it, and you do that, by
| | 04:15 | pressing the Alt key or the Option key on
the Mac and dragging a color stop like so.
| | 04:21 | If you just want to create a new color stop,
notice that as soon as you move your cursor
| | 04:24 | below the gradient bar, it changes to a white
arrow with the plus sign next to it, and shows
| | 04:28 | you that if you click, you'll create a new
intermediate color stop at that location and
| | 04:34 | Illustrator will automatically assign
an intermediate color as you can see.
| | 04:38 | If you want to get rid of the selected color
stop then you can click on a little trash
| | 04:41 | can icon right there, but it's even easier to
just go ahead and grab the color stop and
| | 04:46 | yank it down and that will remove
that stop from the gradient as well.
| | 04:50 | All right, so I know I'm firing a lot at you,
but we will be reviewing this information
| | 04:55 | several times over the course of future movies.
That is how you go about assigning and modifying
| | 05:01 | gradient fills here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Gradient tool and annotator| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show
you a couple of things here.
| | 00:02 | First of all, I'll show you how to lift a
gradient using the Eyedropper tool, and secondly,
| | 00:06 | I will show you how to use the Gradient tool
along with its on-screen gradient annotator.
| | 00:11 | So we want to start things off by duplicating
the gradient fill that's inside the forehead
| | 00:16 | shape to all of the shapes
that are stroked with red.
| | 00:19 | So I will go ahead and click in the path
outline for this left ear for example.
| | 00:23 | You don't want to click inside the
ear because it doesn't have any fill.
| | 00:27 | Then, go up to the Select Similar Objects
icon, click on the down-pointing arrowhead
| | 00:31 | right next to it, make sure it's set to All,
and then go ahead and click on the icon itself
| | 00:35 | to select all of the shapes with red strokes.
| | 00:38 | Now we don't want those strokes. They're just there
to help us find the shapes in the first place.
| | 00:41 | So go up to the Red Stroke
swatch there, and change it to None.
| | 00:45 | All right, next I will press the Escape key to
hide that panel, and then I will press Ctrl+Y
| | 00:49 | or Command+Y on the Mac to
switch to the Outline mode.
| | 00:52 | And armed with my Black Arrow tool, I will
press and hold the Shift key, and marquee
| | 00:56 | around the inside of the nose like so, and
that adds to the selection; the two nose shapes,
| | 01:01 | the two muzzled shapes, and
this brow path outline as well.
| | 01:05 | All right, now I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y
on the Mac to switch back to the Preview mode.
| | 01:10 | Make sure that your fill is active and I can
see that it is here inside the Color panel.
| | 01:14 | All right, next we want to lift that gradient,
and assign it to the selected shape, and we
| | 01:18 | can do that using the Eyedropper tool, which
you can either select from the toolbox or
| | 01:22 | get to by pressing the I key.
| | 01:24 | Now you naturally think you just go ahead
and click inside of the object in order to
| | 01:28 | lift its gradient, but there
are a couple of problems.
| | 01:31 | First of all, we lifted both the gradient
fill and the None stroke setting, so we lost
| | 01:35 | all of the strokes that were
associated with those inner white shapes.
| | 01:39 | We don't want that.
| | 01:40 | And also, notice that none of the gradients
are at the right angle. They go from black
| | 01:45 | on the left to white on the right instead of
from black at the bottom to white at the top.
| | 01:49 | So we can solve both of those problems by
first pressing Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the
| | 01:53 | Mac to undo that change, and then you want to
press the Shift key, and click on the shape.
| | 01:58 | However you don't want to
click inside the shape.
| | 01:59 | If you Shift+Click inside the shape, you will
lift just whatever shade of gray you click
| | 02:04 | on, and you will go ahead and assign it, in my case as
a fill, but as a solid color instead of a gradient.
| | 02:10 | So I will press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z again.
| | 02:13 | Now before we perform this next step, do take
a moment if you're working along with me to
| | 02:16 | make sure that your fill is active and then
you press the Shift key and click on the path
| | 02:21 | outline for that forehead shape, and that
goes ahead and lifts just the gradient fills.
| | 02:26 | It does not replace the
strokes as you can see here.
| | 02:28 | And all the gradients are going at the right angle
from black at the bottom to white at the top.
| | 02:33 | We do however want to
adjust the order of the colors.
| | 02:35 | So click on the Reverse Gradient button here
inside the Gradient panel, and then grab that
| | 02:40 | black color stop and drag it all the way to the
right, so the Location setting is restored to 100%.
| | 02:45 | All right, so much for the eyedropper. I am
going to press the V key to switch back to
| | 02:49 | my Black Arrow tool, and then I will press
Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A on the Mac
| | 02:52 | to deselect the shapes, and I will click on
the central brow shape to select just it.
| | 02:57 | Now I want to manipulate that gradient directly
inside the document window, and I can do that
| | 03:02 | by switching to the Gradient tool which you can get
to inside of illustrator by pressing the G key.
| | 03:07 | And that should automatically show you
this gradient annotator right there.
| | 03:11 | Now if you're not seeing the annotator on
screen, it might be turned off, in which case,
| | 03:15 | you'd go up to the View menu, and choose the
command that will appear as Show Gradient Annotator.
| | 03:19 | Notice it has a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Alt+G
or Command+Option+G on the Mac, which means
| | 03:24 | you can press that keyboard shortcut to hide and
then show the gradient annotator anytime you like.
| | 03:30 | Now when your cursor is off the annotator, it
appears as a circle down there at the bottom,
| | 03:35 | straight line, and then a square at the top.
| | 03:37 | When you hover over it, you get
more controls as you can see here.
| | 03:41 | Now this circle down here at the bottom,
that's the gradient origin, and then this diamond
| | 03:46 | shape up at the top is the Gradient Terminus.
That's not my name. That's Adobe's incidentally.
| | 03:51 | But it does tell the story
even if it's a little fancified.
| | 03:54 | Here's how things work.
| | 03:55 | The origin is of course the first color stop
in the gradient, but it's more than that.
| | 03:59 | And also if you drag it around, moves the
entire gradient to a different location.
| | 04:04 | So it moves the last color, it moves
all the colors in between as well.
| | 04:07 | Notice, if you drag far enough away, you will
see this kind of dotted rectangle, and that's
| | 04:11 | showing you that the parallel
side of that dotted rectangle.
| | 04:14 | In other words, in my case, the right side
of the rectangle is where the gradient is
| | 04:18 | really going to land when you release.
| | 04:21 | And so it's definitely worth paying attention to.
We'll see another example of that in just a moment.
| | 04:26 | The terminus works differently.
| | 04:27 | If you drag the terminus around, notice that I
can't get any kind of dotted rectangle going.
| | 04:33 | All I am doing is moving the last point of the
gradient as well as any color stops in between.
| | 04:39 | Now if I do have color stops in
between, I am moving them incrementally.
| | 04:41 | But I am not moving the origin as you can see
there, and I'm not changing the angle either.
| | 04:47 | If you want to change the angle, then you
move your cursor very close to the terminus
| | 04:52 | but not directly on top
of it, and then you drag.
| | 04:55 | And notice that I'm getting this darn
rectangle again, that opposite parallel side, which in
| | 05:00 | my case is the upper-right dotted line,
indicates where the gradient is going to land.
| | 05:05 | And so, as soon as I release,
notice that it pops to that location.
| | 05:08 | Well, what I want is to move
this origin down here to the chin.
| | 05:12 | But if I drag it right now, notice I get the
dotted rectangle again, so as soon as I release,
| | 05:17 | it's going to snap back to that location.
| | 05:19 | And that's because I am not going to get it
down where I want it to be until I restore
| | 05:22 | the vertical angle of the gradient.
| | 05:24 | You can do that in one of two ways.
| | 05:26 | You can change this angle value to 90 degrees
or what have you, there inside the Gradient
| | 05:30 | panel, or you can go ahead and position your
cursor very close to the terminus once again
| | 05:35 | and drag and then press
the Shift key as you drag.
| | 05:38 | And when you have the Shift key down, you're going to
snap into alignment with the nearest 45 degree angle.
| | 05:44 | But if you drag directly upward, as I am here,
then you're going to ultimately get a vertical
| | 05:48 | gradient, and then go ahead and release.
| | 05:50 | Next, you want to drag the origin point down
to the chin, and release it, and then this
| | 05:55 | terminus needs to be just slightly up, so
it's near the upper portion of the eyes.
| | 05:59 | We don't want to go so high that we extend
outside of the shape because then of course
| | 06:04 | we'll see a cutoff line where the black of the
background transitions into the gray of the brow.
| | 06:10 | So we want to keep the top of
the brow nice and black like so.
| | 06:12 | A few other things you can do by the way.
| | 06:15 | When you hover over the Gradient Annotator,
you can see the color stops, in which case
| | 06:19 | you can double-click a color stop to bring
up either the Swatches panel, or the Color
| | 06:24 | panel, and you can change the Opacity and
the Location settings on-the-fly as well.
| | 06:28 | You can do all that other stuff that you can
do in the Gradient panel as well, by which
| | 06:32 | I mean if you move your cursor on one side of
the gradient, in my case on the right-hand
| | 06:36 | side, you're going to see the little white
arrow with the plus sign which tells you that
| | 06:39 | if you click, you're going to add
a gradient stop at that location.
| | 06:42 | And it's going to be an intermediate color
as you can see right here. Or if you want
| | 06:46 | to duplicate an existing color stop, then
you just go ahead and Alt+Drag or Option+Drag
| | 06:50 | it into the desired location.
| | 06:52 | If you want to remove a color stop, then
you just grab it and drag it off like so.
| | 06:56 | So I will just go ahead and drag away from
the Gradient Annotator to get rid of those
| | 07:01 | extra color stops.
| | 07:03 | And that friends, is how you lift a gradient
by Shift+Clicking on the path outline using
| | 07:07 | the Eyedropper tool, as well as modify a
gradient directly inside the document window, using
| | 07:13 | the Gradient tool and its on-
screen Gradient Annotator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing multiple gradients at a time| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to edit
multiple gradients at a time using the Gradient tool.
| | 00:04 | However, before we start I want to show you
a limitation of the Gradient tool and then
| | 00:09 | a special thing that you can do with it
that you can't do from the Gradient panel.
| | 00:13 | So first the limitation; you can't assign
a gradient using the Gradient tool, which
| | 00:18 | just seems counterintuitive to me.
| | 00:20 | But I'll start by selecting the outline of
the cat's face using the Black Arrow tool,
| | 00:24 | then I'll switch to the Gradient tool.
| | 00:26 | And I'll drag inside of the head.
| | 00:28 | And we're seeing an annotator just as
if we were working with the gradient.
| | 00:32 | So it gives you all the feedback as if you
could assign a gradient using the tool, but
| | 00:36 | as soon as you release, the
gradient is not assigned.
| | 00:40 | And if you go up to the Edit menu, there's
nothing to undo; the Undo command is dim.
| | 00:44 | And if it's not dim then you're going to end up
undoing the last thing that you did previous
| | 00:49 | to dragging with the tool.
| | 00:50 | All right, so that's the
downside; here is the upside.
| | 00:53 | I'll press the Ctrl key or the Command key
on the Mac to temporarily switch over to my
| | 00:57 | Black Arrow tool, and then I'll
click on the cat's nose like so.
| | 01:00 | And now notice what happens if
I drag the origin point down.
| | 01:03 | Like I'll drag it so far down that the
gradient no longer appears inside the path outlines,
| | 01:09 | so the entire path is filled with black, and that's
not something you can do from the Gradient panel.
| | 01:13 | You can start the gradient anywhere inside
the shape and you can end it inside the shape
| | 01:18 | as well, but you can't extend it
outside the shape as I've done here.
| | 01:21 | And that can be pretty advantageous, because that way
you don't have to fiddle around with the color stops.
| | 01:25 | For example, if I don't want the nose to
appear that dark but I don't want white to appear
| | 01:29 | inside the nose either, then I'll drag the
origin point to about here along the muzzle,
| | 01:34 | and then I'll drag up on the terminus point
until it's aligned to the top of the nose,
| | 01:39 | and we end up with this effect.
| | 01:40 | Now we can't really see the effect very
well because the annotator is in the way.
| | 01:44 | You could press Ctrl+Alt+G or Command+Option+
G on the Mac in order to hide it, or you can
| | 01:48 | just press and hold the Ctrl key or the
Command key on the Mac to temporarily switch to the
| | 01:52 | Black Arrow tool.
| | 01:53 | Now as you can see here, as long as you have a Ctrl
or Command key down, that annotator will hide.
| | 01:58 | And as long as I have my Black Arrow tool handy,
so I've got the Ctrl or Command key down.
| | 02:02 | I'll go ahead and click on this muzzle shape
and then I'll Shift+click on the muzzle right
| | 02:06 | next to it, so that I've got both shapes selected,
and then I'll release both the Ctrl and Shift
| | 02:11 | keys or the Command and Shift keys on the Mac.
| | 02:14 | And you can see that we now have a
gradient editor for each one of the paths.
| | 02:18 | Now you can just go ahead and modify
them independently of each other.
| | 02:23 | For example, I want the origin to appear
right about there at the corner of the gradient
| | 02:27 | under the eye, and then I'll drag this guy
down. Actually now that's not going to work.
| | 02:32 | I need to drag outside of the terminus
point there in order to rotate it downwards.
| | 02:38 | And I'll press the Shift key in order to
constrain the angle of that gradient to exactly vertical
| | 02:43 | and then I'll drag the
terminus point downward like so.
| | 02:45 | And you can see, that was three separate
operations, and now I've got to reapply them
| | 02:50 | for the other gradient annotator, whereas it's
much easier to simply drag from a new point
| | 02:56 | using the Gradient tool.
| | 02:58 | So if I were to just drag from this point
and the corner of the gradient under the eye
| | 03:03 | downward while pressing the Shift key in order
to constrain the angle of my drag to exactly
| | 03:07 | vertical, I will replace both of those
gradient annotators with a new one like so.
| | 03:11 | So I now have a single
gradient annotator for both shapes.
| | 03:15 | You can also use this technique, by the way, to
create continuous gradients across multiple shapes.
| | 03:20 | So if I were to drag horizontally, for example,
across the muzzle shapes, then I would create
| | 03:25 | one gradient that spans both of them.
| | 03:28 | That's not what I want however, so I'll drag
the way I did before, from the top of the
| | 03:31 | corner of that gradient below the eye and
down to the bottom of the muzzle in order
| | 03:35 | to create this effect here.
| | 03:37 | Now if later it turns out you want to once
again separate these shapes from each other
| | 03:41 | so that they have
separate gradient annotators,
| | 03:43 | all you have to do is deselect them by
pressing Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A on the Mac,
| | 03:47 | and then reselect them.
| | 03:49 | I am Ctrl+clicking and Ctrl+Shift+clicking; that
would be a Command+click and the Command+Shift+click
| | 03:53 | in the Mac, then you'll release those keys
and you once again have independent annotator.
| | 03:57 | Anyway I've already got the effect I want, so
I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
| | 04:01 | on the Mac in order to deselect those shapes
and that folks is how you drag with the Gradient
| | 04:05 | tool in order to fuse gradients together or to
modify the gradients inside multiple selected
| | 04:11 | shapes simultaneously.
| | 04:14 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Establishing symmetrical gradients| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to establish
exactly symmetrical gradients, which is great
| | 00:05 | for creating stylized effects like we have
going here. And to give you sense of what
| | 00:09 | I am talking about, I'll switch to the
final version of the illustration.
| | 00:12 | These might be gradients that go in exactly
opposite directions, such as a gradients inside
| | 00:16 | the cheeks and around the creature's eye.
| | 00:18 | Or they might be reflected
gradients like those inside of the ears.
| | 00:23 | So I'll go and switch back to
my illustration in progress.
| | 00:26 | I'll press the V key to get my Black Arrow
tool and then I'll click and Shift+Click on
| | 00:30 | each of the cheek shapes, and I'll also Shift+
Click on those gradients around the white eyes.
| | 00:36 | And now I'm going to press the G key to switch
back to my Gradient tool. Notice that we now
| | 00:39 | have four gradient annotators,
one for each of the shapes.
| | 00:42 | And I'm going to overwrite all of them by
dragging from just above the eyes here to
| | 00:48 | bring pretty much aligned exactly
with the bottom of the cheeks.
| | 00:51 | And I am pressing the Shift key as I do to
constrain the angle of my gradient to exactly vertical.
| | 00:55 | All right, so that works out beautifully for
the cheeks in my opinion, but that's not the
| | 01:00 | effect I want for the eyes. I want those gradients
around the eyes to start dark and end up light,
| | 01:05 | however I want them to extend
across the exact same range.
| | 01:08 | So I'll press the Ctrl+Shift keys or the
Command+Shift key on the Mac and click on
| | 01:12 | each one of the cheek outlines in order to deselect
them, and then I'll go ahead and release those keys.
| | 01:17 | And now I'll just go ahead and switch the angle of
the gradient here inside the Gradient panel.
| | 01:21 | So as opposed to redrawing the gradient using
the Gradient tool, which would require some
| | 01:25 | additional work and I would have to
make sure I have got it exactly right,
| | 01:28 | I'll just change that angle from -90 degrees to +90
degrees and the deed is done. Or if you don't
| | 01:35 | work that way, I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z
or Command+Z on the Mac because after all,
| | 01:39 | sometimes it's not as easy to figure out.
| | 01:40 | It might be 0 changing to 180 degrees, but if it's
anything else, if it's like 32 degrees and you have
| | 01:46 | to do the math, that's not very convenient.
| | 01:48 | So we just go ahead and click on the Reverse
Gradient button and that works just as well.
| | 01:53 | All right, now for the ears. I'll go ahead and Ctrl+
Click on one of the ears and then Ctrl+Shift+Click
| | 01:58 | on the other one, that's a Command+Click and
Command+Shift+Click on the Mac, and I'll go
| | 02:02 | ahead and drag from slightly outside
the ear like so to well within the ear,
| | 02:08 | so that we don't see the gradient edge. It
appears as a continuous black going into the
| | 02:13 | cat's head in the background.
| | 02:15 | That takes care of one of the ears, but not
the other one, and if I were to Ctrl+Shift+Click
| | 02:20 | or Command+Shift+Click on that first ear, the
one that's taking care of in order to deselect
| | 02:25 | it, I can see I have got this Gradient Editor
way up here, and changing its angle or reversing
| | 02:31 | the order--none of those tricks are really
going to work for me. Not if I want the exact
| | 02:34 | same gradient just reflected.
| | 02:37 | So here's what you are doing instead, and this may seem
fairly obvious but it's definitely worth knowing.
| | 02:43 | You get rid of the ear. You press the Backspace key or
the Delete key on a Mac in order to get rid of the ear
| | 02:47 | that's not colored properly, and then you
press the V key to switch the Black Arrow tool.
| | 02:51 | Go ahead and click on the good ear in order
to select it, and then go ahead and grab your
| | 02:55 | Reflect tool from the
Rotate tool flyout menu.
| | 02:58 | Now I have gone ahead and marked the center
of this Illustration with the guideline and
| | 03:01 | you can bring back those guides by pressing
Ctrl+; or Command+; on the
| | 03:05 | Mac and then Alt+Click or Option+Click on
that vertical guide in order to bring up the
| | 03:10 | Reflect dialog box, make sure Axis is set to
Vertical and then click on the Copy button
| | 03:15 | in order to copy it.
| | 03:16 | Now I'll press Ctrl+; or Command+; on the Mac
in order to hide those guides.
| | 03:21 | And now if I press the G key, notice that
not only did the ear flip but the gradient
| | 03:26 | flipped as well, and this is true for
all your transformations by the way.
| | 03:31 | If I were to switch to Scale tool and then click
at the top of the ear to set the transformation
| | 03:36 | origin like so, and then Shift+Drag down in
order to create this monstrously big ear, and
| | 03:42 | then press the G key to switch back to the
Gradient tool, you can see that that scaled
| | 03:46 | the gradient Annotator as well. Same goes
for rotations. Same goes when you move the
| | 03:51 | shape, and so forth.
| | 03:53 | Again, it might be obvious but I just want
to make sure in case it isn't that you know
| | 03:57 | about that. I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on a Mac in order to undo that operation.
| | 04:01 | Now let's add some drop shadows, and drop shadows
are another form of gradient inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:06 | The difference is that they appear behind
the shape, and that rather than going from
| | 04:11 | black to white for example, they go from black to
transparent or some other color to transparent if you prefer.
| | 04:18 | So I am going to press the V key to switch
back to my Black Arrow tool, and I am going
| | 04:22 | to click on this brow shape to select it.
I'll Shift+Click on the nose in order add
| | 04:26 | it to the selection, and then I'll Shift+Click on
each of the white eyes to select them as well.
| | 04:31 | Then what you want to do is go up to the
Effect menu, choose Stylize and choose Drop Shadow,
| | 04:36 | and if you're working along with me, you want
the mode to be set to Multiply. That ensures
| | 04:39 | that whatever color you assign
darkens everything behind it.
| | 04:43 | The Opacity value should be
100%. The X Offset value is 0.
| | 04:47 | I am going to change the Y Offset to 5 points and I
am going to change the Blur to 5 points as well.
| | 04:52 | We want to make sure that the Color radio
button is turned on, and go ahead and click on
| | 04:56 | the color swatch to confirm
that the color is black.
| | 04:59 | So a 100% K; C, M, and Y can all
be set to 0 and then click OK.
| | 05:04 | If you go with Darkness instead, you are going
to create a darker version of the colors that
| | 05:08 | are already filling those
shapes and that's not what we want.
| | 05:12 | Then if you like, turn on the Preview check box so
that you can see the effects of those drop shadows.
| | 05:16 | So as you can see, they're just gradients
that are coming off of the shapes. For example,
| | 05:20 | from the brow into the creature's white eyes
and below the eyes into that gradient that
| | 05:25 | appears behind the white shapes.
| | 05:27 | Now I'll click OK to confirm that effect and
I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
| | 05:31 | on the Mac in order to deselect my artwork.
| | 05:34 | All right, that gets us pretty far there. You
can see that we've already achieved an effect
| | 05:38 | that's very much like the
final version of the artwork.
| | 05:40 | But we do have more work to do including
assigning a radial gradient to the background, and we
| | 05:45 | will do that in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a radial gradient| 00:00 | Now so far, we've been working with what are
known as linear gradients, that is gradients
| | 00:04 | that begin at one point and end at another.
| | 00:07 | In this movie, I'll show you how to work
with radial gradients, which allow you to fill
| | 00:11 | a shape with concentric rings of color, and we will
be assigning the radial gradient to the background.
| | 00:17 | So I'll go ahead and switch to my illustration in
progress, and then I'll click in the background
| | 00:21 | with Black Arrow tool in order to select it.
| | 00:24 | Now I'll go a head and assign a gradient.
| | 00:26 | By going up to the Color panel, make sure that's
visible if you are working along with me,
| | 00:30 | because I want to take this rich black and
assign it to this new gradient, and I'll do
| | 00:33 | so by dragging the color swatch from the Color
panel and dropping it on the far right side
| | 00:38 | of the gradient bar here inside the Gradient
panel, and we end up with this effect here.
| | 00:43 | Now I'll go ahead and zoom out a click, so we can
see what it means work with linear gradient.
| | 00:48 | In this case, we are going from white
on the left to black on the right.
| | 00:51 | And because the gradient is flowing horizontally,
its stripes of color are positioned perpendicularly
| | 00:56 | to the direction of the gradient.
| | 00:59 | So we have vertical strips of color
starting from white and ending in black.
| | 01:03 | So one way of think of this is that we have
little strips or rectangles of different shades
| | 01:08 | of gray, but there is a different
type of gradient available to you.
| | 01:11 | If you go over to the Gradient panel, you'll see
the Type pop up menu, switch it from Linear
| | 01:16 | to Radial, and now instead of filling the
shape with skinny rectangles, we are filling it
| | 01:20 | with concentric circles, and those circles
can be turned into ellipses instead, and I'll
| | 01:27 | show you that works.
| | 01:28 | Go and switch to the Gradient tool by pressing
the G key, and you will see the familiar gradient
| | 01:32 | annotator pop up on screen, but it's a little different. If you
hover inside of the area covered by the radial gradient,
| | 01:39 | now you're going to see this dotted circular
outline, and that outline shows you the size
| | 01:44 | of the gradients.
| | 01:45 | So it starts right there in the center and
ends at the dotted outlines. Doesn't go
| | 01:49 | in further than that. At which point you just
fill the rest of the shape with the ending
| | 01:54 | color, which in our case is black.
| | 01:57 | Now typically your radial gradients are going
to be light on the inside and dark on the
| | 02:00 | outside. If you're seeing the opposite, you can
just click on a Reverse Gradient button, like so.
| | 02:05 | Obviously that's not what I want.
| | 02:07 | So I'll go ahead and click on it again
in order to keep white in the center.
| | 02:10 | Now what I want to do is change the size of
the gradient, so I could drag the origin point
| | 02:15 | to move the gradient inside the shape, like
so, and that way we are only covering part
| | 02:20 | of the shape with the radial gradient.
| | 02:21 | It's not what I want though, so I will press
Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac, instead I
| | 02:25 | want to change its size.
| | 02:26 | So I will go ahead and drag this diamond
terminus point out, and I really want to align
| | 02:31 | it to more or less the top right corner of
the shape, but you are not going to be able
| | 02:35 | to change the angle as you are dragging the
terminus. You have to do that in a second operation.
| | 02:39 | So I'll just go ahead and align the end of
the gradient to the upper right corner for
| | 02:42 | now and then release.
| | 02:44 | Now notice, if you hover anywhere over that dotted
circle, you'll end up getting this rotate cursor.
| | 02:48 | I am going to move to about here, so that my
cursor is right next to the terminus point,
| | 02:54 | and then I'm going to drag it until it more or
less aligns with that top right corner. You're
| | 02:58 | not going to get a snap even
if Smart Guides are active.
| | 03:01 | All right, now at this point, all we've done
is we've rotated a circle, so that doesn't
| | 03:06 | make any difference in the
appearance of our gradient.
| | 03:09 | We need to go ahead and compress it so that
it's elliptical in shape, and you can do that
| | 03:13 | by dragging on this circular point at the
top of the circle, what was formerly the top
| | 03:18 | of the circle anyway, and I'm going to go
ahead and drag it down like so, and now you can
| | 03:23 | see that we have an
elliptical radial gradient.
| | 03:26 | Now if you want precise control over it then
you can visit this Aspect Ratio option here
| | 03:31 | inside the Gradient panel.
| | 03:32 | I am going to change that value to exactly 70%
and then I'll Shift+Tab back to the Angle
| | 03:37 | value, and I'll change it to -135 degrees, just so that
you can better follow along with what I'm doing.
| | 03:44 | All right, so that pretty much takes
care of the gradient with one exception.
| | 03:49 | Notice that in addition to the circular origin
point here, we also have another circle above
| | 03:54 | it, and what that does is it allows you to
move the beginning color, white in our case,
| | 03:59 | independently of the end color black.
| | 04:03 | So notice, if I go ahead and drag this
guy to right about there, let's say,
| | 04:08 | we have this very quick transition from black
around the outside to white right there at
| | 04:13 | the center. That's now the center of the gradient.
On the right side of the shape, in a very slow
| | 04:18 | transition from white at the center of the
gradient to black on the outside edge, on
| | 04:22 | the left side of the shape.
| | 04:24 | So you can essentially create these
hotspots inside of your gradient.
| | 04:28 | I don't want it to be that radical, so I'll
move to this small circle to right there on
| | 04:33 | that line at the beginning of the right
ear in order to create this effect here.
| | 04:38 | Now notice that throughout this my Angle value
has remained fixed at -135 degrees, and that's because
| | 04:44 | the whole thing is off now.
| | 04:45 | Notice if you change the Angle value to 0 degrees,
well in my case it must have done a pretty
| | 04:50 | good job, but notice if I drag this guy up
and over a little bit, it's still going to
| | 04:54 | read 0 degrees, and if I change it now to 90
degrees, it's going to be off kilter like so.
| | 04:59 | So that's kind of bug I would say, but it's
definitely something that you should bear
| | 05:04 | in mind as you work with these tools.
| | 05:05 | I am going to change the value back to -135 degrees
and I am going to drag this guy up to the
| | 05:11 | base of ear right there, and then I'll press
Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A on the Mac
| | 05:15 | to deselect the shape and
I'll go ahead and zoom back in.
| | 05:18 | So that we can see our new gradient background
created as a radial gradient here inside Illustrator.
| | 05:26 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the midpoint skew| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll begin working in
the cat's eyes, and along the way, I'll
| | 00:04 | show you how to adjust the midpoint
skew, which is the very middle point
| | 00:08 | inside of a gradient.
| | 00:09 | Now as you can see, I am zoomed in on
the final version of the artwork, and the
| | 00:13 | eyes are actually a couple of different shapes.
| | 00:16 | We have one shape for the
highlight inside of the pupil.
| | 00:18 | And so I have got my Black Arrow tool selected.
| | 00:21 | I'll go ahead and click on that shape in
order to select it, and you can see that
| | 00:25 | we've got a radial gradient
that goes to transparency.
| | 00:27 | I'll show you what's up
with that in a future movie.
| | 00:29 | Then I'll press the Ctrl key or the
Command key on the Mac, and I'll click once
| | 00:34 | and then twice in order to select the
shape and back of it, which actually
| | 00:38 | contains a total of three
gradients working together.
| | 00:41 | And you can see those gradients by
switching over here to the Appearance panel.
| | 00:43 | So we have got a total of three
gradient fills stacked on top of each other in
| | 00:48 | order to create this luminous effect.
| | 00:50 | So we'll start by creating
this first gradient right there.
| | 00:53 | And I'll do so by switching over to
my illustration in progress. I might as
| | 00:57 | well go ahead and zoom in on it as well,
and then click on the white eye shape
| | 01:01 | in order to select it.
| | 01:03 | Make sure that your fill is active here
in the Color panel and then if you are
| | 01:06 | working along with me,
you want to dial in these values.
| | 01:08 | We want a C value of zero, Magenta
value of 50, a Yellow value of 100, and then
| | 01:14 | a Black value of 50% as well.
| | 01:17 | Now, let's go ahead and take this guy
and use him to create a gradient by
| | 01:21 | dragging the brown color swatch and
dropping it on the far right side of the
| | 01:25 | gradient bar here inside the Gradient panel.
| | 01:27 | Now, right away this comes up as a
radial gradient for me because that's the
| | 01:31 | last gradient I applied.
| | 01:32 | If it's not radial in your case,
then go ahead and change it to radial.
| | 01:36 | And now I am going to press the G key in
order to switch to my Gradient tool, so
| | 01:40 | that I can see my gradient annotator.
| | 01:42 | And I am going to start by dragging
the origin point to roughly the center of
| | 01:47 | the pupil, because that's where this
gradient ought to start--even if it's not
| | 01:51 | the exact center of the shape.
| | 01:52 | And then drag the terminus point to
out beyond edge of the eye like so, and the
| | 01:58 | problem is I can't really see the dotted
circle as I am dragging, so I have made
| | 02:02 | it a little bigger than I wanted to.
| | 02:03 | So I'll go ahead and bring it back in
just a bit, and so it should be more or less that size.
| | 02:09 | We just want to make sure that the
gradient fills the entire shape and then some.
| | 02:13 | All right, now I want to devote more
the gradient to the light colors than the
| | 02:16 | dark colors, and you can do that by
hovering your cursor over the gradient
| | 02:20 | annotator like so, and notice that
square at the top of the gradient bar.
| | 02:24 | That is your midpoint skew, and it
determines the exact middle point of the gradient.
| | 02:30 | Now it's not like you're dragging a
separate color stop around when you move it,
| | 02:34 | because this is going to be the
point at which the middle color appears.
| | 02:39 | However, the gradient is going to
drift a lot more incrementally at the
| | 02:42 | beginning and a lot more quickly at
the end, more like you are bending the
| | 02:46 | gradient if you will.
| | 02:47 | You can also, buy the way, modify the
position of this diamond above the gradient
| | 02:53 | bar inside the Gradient panel.
| | 02:54 | So this is again the
midpoint skew for the gradient.
| | 02:58 | Either way is going to work.
| | 02:59 | The advantage of working inside the
Gradient panel is that you have this
| | 03:02 | location value, so as long as that
diamond is selected, you can enter a specific
| | 03:07 | value, such as in my case 80%.
| | 03:10 | So in this case what's happening is
Illustrator is spending the first 80% of
| | 03:15 | the gradient fading just 50% of the
colors and the last 20% of the gradient
| | 03:20 | fading the other 50%.
| | 03:23 | And that's how you work with midpoint
skew when modifying either radial or
| | 03:27 | linear gradients here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mixing gradients with blend modes| 00:00 | In this movie, we're going to give the
cat's eye a better sense of luminance
| | 00:04 | and dimension by adding a couple of
additional gradients set to different blend modes.
| | 00:08 | So I'll go ahead and switch to our eye so far.
| | 00:11 | I'll click on it with the Black
Arrow tool in order to select it.
| | 00:14 | Then go to the Appearance panel.
| | 00:15 | If you're not seeing it onscreen,
go up to the Window menu and choose
| | 00:18 | the Appearance command.
| | 00:20 | What we want is to duplicate our existing fill,
| | 00:23 | so go ahead and click on that fill to
make it active, and then click on the
| | 00:25 | little page icon at the bottom of the
Appearance panel to add another helping of it.
| | 00:30 | We want to go ahead and reverse the
direction of this particular gradient,
| | 00:34 | so we're going to start it dark in
the center and make it grow lighter on the outside.
| | 00:39 | Then we'll create an
interaction between those two.
| | 00:41 | Everything is pretty much fine from
this point, except we do want to change the midpoint skew,
| | 00:45 | so click on the diamond at the top of
the gradient bar and change the Location
| | 00:49 | value from now 20% to 50%.
| | 00:53 | Then, double-click on the final white
color stop in order to bring up the Color panel.
| | 00:57 | And if you don't see the Color panel,
if you see swatches instead, go ahead and
| | 01:00 | click on the little palette icon.
| | 01:02 | Then click on the Flyout menu icon,
switch to CMYK. And we want to leave all
| | 01:07 | the values set to 0 except for
yellow, which should be set to 50%.
| | 01:10 | Then, go ahead and press the Enter key
or the Return key on the Mac in order
| | 01:15 | to make that change.
| | 01:16 | All right, now we need to modify
things directly inside the document window,
| | 01:19 | so press the G key to
switch to the Gradient tool.
| | 01:22 | I'm going to hover next to the
terminus point on the gradient annotator, and
| | 01:26 | drag it down to right about here,
| | 01:29 | I figure. Actually, I want the angle
to be exactly -35 degrees, just in case
| | 01:34 | you're working along with me.
| | 01:36 | And I'll go ahead and drag the
terminus point inward to about this location for now.
| | 01:41 | All right, now currently, the new
gradient is covering up the old one, and it's
| | 01:46 | covering it entirely.
| | 01:47 | We're not getting any interaction whatsoever.
| | 01:50 | To create an interaction, make sure
that top fill is selected here inside
| | 01:53 | the Appearance panel.
| | 01:54 | Then go up to the word Opacity in the
Control panel at the top of the screen
| | 01:59 | and change the blend mode from Normal
to Multiply, which will burn the new
| | 02:03 | gradient into the old one to
create a uniform darkening effect.
| | 02:07 | So now, as you can see, we've got a
dark center to the eye. It brightens up along
| | 02:12 | this edge right here and then darkens
along the way to the far edge of the eye.
| | 02:17 | Now you might look at that and say well,
couldn't you accomplish that just by
| | 02:21 | adding color stops here
inside the Gradient panel?
| | 02:24 | And the answer is, so far yes.
| | 02:26 | We could have come up with the same effect.
| | 02:28 | However, it wouldn't be as flexible,
because now that we have two gradients
| | 02:32 | interacting with each other, I can
actually reposition the gradients with
| | 02:36 | respect to each other to come up with
a completely different effect, like so.
| | 02:40 | And what we're seeing now is not
something I could have pulled off with a single gradient.
| | 02:44 | Anyway, I'm going to drag this guy to
about there, the origin point that is, and
| | 02:49 | I'll drag the terminus point out
slightly to about this location.
| | 02:53 | All right, now I want to add a
shadow coming off of the brow.
| | 02:56 | Now, we already have a little bit of a
shadow in the form of a drop shadow, but
| | 03:00 | it's entirely black, which means that
we're ending up muddying the appearance of
| | 03:04 | the eye a little bit.
| | 03:06 | We can infuse in a little bit of
additional vibrancy by adding yet another
| | 03:11 | gradient, this time a linear gradient.
| | 03:12 | So I'll drop down to the top
fill in the Appearance panel.
| | 03:14 | If you will twirl it open, you'll see
that it's set to the Multiply blend mode.
| | 03:19 | Go ahead and click on the page icon and
you not only copy the gradient fill, but
| | 03:23 | you copy its blend mode as well.
| | 03:24 | So now we have two fills set
to a blend mode of Multiply.
| | 03:29 | And we're going to leave it that
way because we're creating a shadow.
| | 03:31 | But I do need to change a few settings here.
| | 03:33 | First, I need to change the
Type from Radial to Linear.
| | 03:37 | So we end up achieving this effect here.
| | 03:39 | I'm going to make this gradient
much shorter by dragging the terminus.
| | 03:42 | I'm going to change its angle as well,
to something along the lines of this.
| | 03:47 | I know that I want a specific value.
| | 03:49 | so I'll go ahead and dial it in here
inside the Gradient panel, and that value is -60 degrees.
| | 03:54 | Now I'll drag the origin point down to
right about there, I figure, next to the
| | 03:59 | pupil, as you can see.
| | 04:00 | I'll go ahead and drag this terminus
point up and to the left a little bit, so
| | 04:06 | that our gradient is about that long.
It's a little bit too dark, I think,
| | 04:10 | so I'm going to change the midpoint
skew by clicking on the diamond above the
| | 04:14 | gradient bar and entering
a new Location value of 35%.
| | 04:17 | All right, now I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A
or Command+Shift+A on the Mac in order
| | 04:23 | to deselect the shape, and the result
is a vibrant, reflective, volumetric form,
| | 04:28 | created by adding multiple gradients
set to different blend modes to a single shape.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding transparency to a gradient| 00:00 | In this move I'll show you how to
create a gradient that includes transparency.
| | 00:04 | Specifically, we are going to create
the highlights inside of the cat's pupils,
| | 00:08 | and we are going to do so not using a
blend mode, but rather by creating a
| | 00:11 | white-to-white gradient in which the
first color stop is opaque and the final
| | 00:15 | color stop is transparent.
| | 00:17 | Now I've gone ahead and zoomed out
from my artwork so I can see both eyes,
| | 00:20 | and you'll notice that I was
working on right eye and I haven't done
| | 00:22 | anything to left eye. So let's go ahead and
duplicate the right eye by clicking on the right eye with
| | 00:29 | the Black Arrow tool to select it.
| | 00:30 | Then I'll press the Backspace key or
the Delete key on a Mac to get rid of it.
| | 00:33 | Now, I'll select that right eye that
contains the three gradients. I'll press Ctrl+Semicolon or Command+Semicolon
| | 00:40 | on the Mac to bring back my guides, and
I'll press the O key in order to switch
| | 00:44 | to the Reflect tool.
| | 00:45 | Then I'll Alt+Click or Option+Click
right there on the vertical guideline to
| | 00:50 | bring up the Reflect dialog box, make
sure that the Vertical axis is selected,
| | 00:54 | and I'll click on the Copy button.
| | 00:55 | Now I'll press Ctrl+Semicolon or Command+Semicolon
| | 00:58 | on the Mac to get rid of the guides, and
I'll press the V key to switch back my
| | 01:02 | Black Arrow tool, and I'll click on
the right eye to once again select it,
| | 01:05 | because that's where I am
going to start with my highlight.
| | 01:08 | I'll press Ctrl+C or Command+C on a
Mac to copy it, and then I'll click on the
| | 01:13 | pupil, because a highlight has
to appear in front of the pupil.
| | 01:15 | That's why I can't do
this with yet another fill. I have to create a new shape.
| | 01:20 | I'll press Ctrl+F or Command+F on a Mac in
order to paste that eye shape onto the pupil.
| | 01:25 | Now I don't what all these gradients,
and I especially don't want the drop shadow
| | 01:28 | down here at the bottom.
| | 01:29 | So I'll click on the flyout menu
icon in the upper-right corner of the
| | 01:32 | Appearance panel and I'll Choose
Clear Appearance and get rid of everything.
| | 01:36 | That leaves us with no fill and no stroke.
| | 01:39 | Obviously, we want a fill.
| | 01:40 | My Fill is active, as you can see here.
| | 01:43 | So another way, by the way, to add a
color to gradient is to just go ahead and
| | 01:49 | drag and drop from these little swatches
right here at the bottom of the Color panel.
| | 01:53 | So let's say I want to make the final
color black--and I'm doing this just for
| | 01:57 | the sake of demonstration.
| | 01:58 | My first color is already white, as you can see.
| | 02:00 | So I'll go a head and drag black into that
final location so we have a white-to-black gradient.
| | 02:05 | In my case, it's automatically coming
up as Radial; it may or may not for you.
| | 02:10 | We do need to switch to it Radial however.
| | 02:12 | Then with that final color stop
selected, go ahead and change its Opacity value
| | 02:16 | to 0% and you'll end up with this effect.
| | 02:19 | But I want you to look closely at what
we've got here. Notice that we are fading
| | 02:23 | from white to black.
| | 02:24 | So an opaque white to a transparent
black, which means in these regions of
| | 02:29 | translucency in between, we are bringing up
some grays, which is absolutely not what you want.
| | 02:34 | So when you're creating a gradient
that goes from a color to transparent, it
| | 02:38 | needs to go to its same color.
| | 02:40 | So I'll double-click on that final
color stop there to select it and then I'll
| | 02:44 | click on the white swatch down here in
the bottom-left corner, and this assumes
| | 02:47 | by the way, that you're
looking at the Color panel.
| | 02:50 | I'll go ahead and click on it and we
now have white-to-white gradient, which is
| | 02:54 | exactly what we want. That way there is no certain of
muddiness or murkiness in the middle of the
| | 02:58 | gradient there as it's becoming transparent.
| | 03:01 | Next, I am going to scoot this
color stop over a little bit.
| | 03:04 | So I'll select it, and then I'll change
its Location value to 5%, which will just
| | 03:09 | open up the white area a little bit
so we've got more of a highlight.
| | 03:12 | I definitely don't want the
midpoint skew value over here at 80%.
| | 03:16 | That's totally wrong.
| | 03:17 | So I'll select the diamond by
clicking on it and then will change its
| | 03:20 | Location value to 20%.
| | 03:21 | So we'll end up this discreet
highlighting effect right here.
| | 03:25 | Now let's adjust its position by
pressing the G key to switch to the Gradient
| | 03:29 | tool. And just so I can better tell
what I am doing, I am going to change the
| | 03:32 | Angle value there in the Gradient
dialog box to -45 degrees and I'll go ahead and
| | 03:38 | drag this highlight up into the left little
bit to, about the location looks was pretty good.
| | 03:43 | Then I'll take in the size of the
Gradient by dragging the square gradient
| | 03:47 | terminus right there in
order to make it about yay big.
| | 03:51 | Now we need to take this gradient and
lift it and assign it to the other eye.
| | 03:55 | So I'll go and zoom out and then back
in here so that I can see both of the eyes at the same time.
| | 04:00 | Scroll down as well and I'll press the
V key to switch to the Black Arrow tool,
| | 04:04 | click on that left eye to select it, and again
press Ctrl+C or Command+C on a Mac to copy it.
| | 04:09 | Click on the pupil in order to select it
and then press Ctrl+F or Command+F on a Mac to paste it in front.
| | 04:15 | Once again we want to clear out the appearance,
| | 04:17 | so go to the Appearance panel
flyout menu and choose the Clear Appearance command.
| | 04:23 | Now we need to lift that
gradient using the eyedropper,
| | 04:25 | so I'll press the I key to select the
eyedropper and I'll click inside that
| | 04:29 | right-hand gradient, and that goes ahead
and lifts just about everything that's
| | 04:33 | associated with this
gradient except its position.
| | 04:36 | Notice that the highlight is in the
wrong location here, just dead center
| | 04:40 | inside of the shape.
| | 04:41 | If I press the G key, you'll see that the
angle is off and it's not the right size either.
| | 04:47 | Well, I want to get all that
information from the eye, and I can, but you don't
| | 04:51 | do so this time around by
Shift+Clicking on the outline.
| | 04:55 | That doesn't do any good, as you can see there.
| | 04:58 | Instead, what we want to do is
change a hidden eyedropper setting.
| | 05:02 | A pretty obscure one as well.
| | 05:03 | So I am going to press Ctrl+Z a couple
of times, Command+Z a couple times on
| | 05:06 | the Mac to get rid of that fill in the
left-hand eye, and then I'll double-click
| | 05:11 | on the Eyedropper tool icon here in
the toolbox in order to bring up these Eyedropper options.
| | 05:16 | And you'll see that by default
Illustrator goes ahead lift the Transparency
| | 05:20 | information. It lifts the
Focal Fill and a Focal Stroke.
| | 05:23 | That means the one fill and stroke
that Illustrator thinks is active.
| | 05:27 | So it's not going to lift multiple
strokes or multiple fills by default and it's
| | 05:31 | not going to lift all the
positioning information,
| | 05:33 | unless you turn on this check box
right here at the top, Appearance, in the
| | 05:37 | left-hand column, the one that says
Eyedropper Picks Up. That's what we want.
| | 05:41 | Go ahead and turn that Appearance check box on.
| | 05:43 | That will go ahead and
collapse Appearance, as you see there.
| | 05:45 | If you expand it again, the
check box goes off automatically.
| | 05:49 | So just turn it on, leave
it collapsed, and click OK.
| | 05:53 | Now if you click in the right-hand gradient--
| | 05:55 | well, in this case I've ended
up targeting the wrong thing.
| | 05:57 | Even though I clicked in the eye, Illustrator
thought I clicked inside of the brow shape,
| | 06:02 | so it went ahead and
lifted the wrong information.
| | 06:04 | I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the
Mac in order to undo that change, and I'll
| | 06:08 | try again and this time I got it.
| | 06:10 | So I just moved my cursor down and to
the right a little bit. And we've ended up
| | 06:15 | lifting all the information we had before.
| | 06:16 | I'll press the G key, and you can see
that now the gradient is at the right
| | 06:21 | angle, the center point's in the
same location it is in the right-hand
| | 06:22 | eye, and the gradient is the right size is well.
Now that's not exactly what I want,
| | 06:27 | so I am going to have to make a manual
change here by just dragging this origin
| | 06:31 | point ever so slightly to the right.
| | 06:33 | I am trying to make sure I
don't drag it up and down either.
| | 06:35 | Unfortunately, you can't press the Shift
key when you're using the Gradient tool.
| | 06:39 | You just have to go ahead and drag
manually. And you can't nudge a Gradient
| | 06:44 | using arrow tools either, because that will
end up actually nudging the selected shape.
| | 06:49 | That looks like it to me. I'll press
the V key in order to switch to the Black
| | 06:52 | Arrow tool, and I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A
or Command+Shift+A on the Mac in order to
| | 06:56 | deselect my artwork.
| | 06:58 | That's how you add transparency to a gradient.
| | 07:00 | Remember that you want to keep both
color stops the same, specifically when
| | 07:04 | creating these lustrous white
highlights here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying and editing dynamic effects| 00:00 | In this movie we'll create a few more
drop shadows and I'll also show you how to
| | 00:04 | edit an existing drop shadow
that's assigned to a shape.
| | 00:07 | Then we'll create these wiggling whiskers
by applying a dynamic effect called Zig Zag.
| | 00:12 | I'll go ahead and switch to my artwork
in progress and zoom out from it as well.
| | 00:16 | What you want to do at this point, if
you're working along with me, is switch back
| | 00:20 | over to Layers panel, as I have already,
and then twirl open the black cat layer
| | 00:24 | and you'll see this text
object that's currently hidden.
| | 00:28 | Go ahead and turn it on so that you
can see the text and then click on the
| | 00:32 | baseline of either text element to go
ahead and select both, because both of
| | 00:36 | these lines of point type are grouped together.
| | 00:38 | Then Shift+Click on the whiskers in
order to select them, and they're grouped
| | 00:42 | together as well, so you'll
select all eight of them at a time.
| | 00:45 | Make sure to click exactly in the path outline.
| | 00:47 | Otherwise, you'll end up
selecting the background.
| | 00:49 | Then finally, Shift+Click on
the outline of the cat's head.
| | 00:52 | Then go up to the Effect menu,
choose Stylize, and choose the Drop Shadow
| | 00:57 | command in order to bring up
the Drop Shadow dialog box.
| | 00:59 | If you've been working along with me,
your mode should still be set to Multiply,
| | 01:03 | your opacity value should be 100%,
and X Offset should be set to 0 points.
| | 01:07 | You want to take the Y Offset value up
to 10 points and you want to take the
| | 01:11 | Blur value up to 10 points as
well. Make sure the color is black.
| | 01:15 | If you like, you can go ahead and preview
the effect by turning on the Preview check box.
| | 01:18 | You may see a Gaussian blur progress
bar appear onscreen, and that's because
| | 01:22 | Illustrator uses Gaussian
blur to create the soft shadow.
| | 01:26 | Then click OK in order to accept that effect.
| | 01:29 | Now, at this point we've got a shadow
that looks good, where the head is concerned,
| | 01:33 | and it looks good for the text as well.
| | 01:35 | But because we set the Blur value so
high, to 10 points, we're losing the shadow
| | 01:39 | behind these two-point whiskers.
| | 01:41 | So press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A
on a Mac in order to deselect the
| | 01:45 | artwork and then click on the
whiskers to once again select them.
| | 01:48 | Now, you may think that the way to
modify a dynamic effect is to go up to the
| | 01:53 | Effect menu, choose Stylize, and choose
Drop Shadow again or choose one of these
| | 01:59 | first two commands here.
| | 02:01 | Either way, if you end up choosing a
Drop Shadow command, you're going to get
| | 02:04 | this warning where the Illustrator
tells you, hey, this is not how you modify
| | 02:08 | an existing effect.
| | 02:09 | This is how you apply a new one.
Is that what you want to do? In our case it is not,
| | 02:13 | so you would cancel out and then
switch over to the Appearance panel, at which
| | 02:17 | point you should see this Drop Shadow effect.
| | 02:20 | Now notice that it's
applied to the entire group.
| | 02:22 | If I were to double-click on Contents
to select each one of the individual
| | 02:26 | whiskers, then I can see I've got a
2-point white stroke assigned, no fill, but
| | 02:30 | there's no drop shadow either,
| | 02:32 | whereas the group has an effect assigned
to it and I know that because of the FX
| | 02:36 | icon over to the right of the
word group at the top of the panel.
| | 02:39 | So what you do if you find yourself in
this situation is double-click on the
| | 02:43 | word Group to once again switch the
focus back to the group and then you'll
| | 02:47 | see your drop shadow.
| | 02:48 | Now click on it in order to bring up
the Drop Shadow dialog box, complete with
| | 02:52 | the last settings you applied, and take
both the Y Offset and Blur values down
| | 02:56 | to 3 points apiece and then turn on the
Preview check box so you can see those
| | 03:01 | drop shadows merge.
| | 03:03 | Now click OK in order to assign that effect.
| | 03:05 | Now we need to wiggle the whiskers by
applying the Zig Zag effect, and you get to
| | 03:10 | it once again with the group active,
by going up to the Effect menu, choosing
| | 03:14 | Distort & Transform, and then
choosing the final command, Zig Zag.
| | 03:18 | Now in order to understand what's
going inside this dialog box, you really
| | 03:21 | need to turn on the Preview check
box and then you'll see these kind of
| | 03:24 | lightning whiskers here and that's a
function of the fact that the points are
| | 03:28 | by default set to Corner.
| | 03:30 | We want them set Smooth.
| | 03:31 | So go ahead and turn on that check box.
| | 03:33 | Also notice how these path
outlines are wiggling asymmetrically.
| | 03:37 | So over here on the right side of the
cat's face, they start high and end low,
| | 03:41 | and on the left side of the cat's
face they also start high and end low,
| | 03:46 | but if we were working from the inside of
the cat out, they start low and end high.
| | 03:50 | The solution to that is either to mess
around with your path outlines so they
| | 03:55 | are all going in opposite directions,
which would take quite a bit of work, or
| | 03:59 | just change this Ridges per segment
value from an even value to an odd value,
| | 04:04 | and notice that goes ahead
and takes care of that problem.
| | 04:07 | We now have symmetrical whiskers.
| | 04:09 | That said, the other
whiskers are looking pretty bad.
| | 04:13 | I'm going to go ahead and take that
Ridges per segment value up to 7 and then in
| | 04:17 | order to resolve the problems that
we're having and the fact that we have sort
| | 04:21 | of an overzealous wiggle going on,
I'm going to change the Size value from 10
| | 04:25 | points, which means that the zigzag lines
can differ from the actual path outline
| | 04:31 | by as much as 10 points. We want that
value to be a mere 2 points, like so.
| | 04:36 | Then click OK in order to accept that effect.
| | 04:39 | Now, what's great about both the Drop
Shadow and the Zig Zag effect is they're dynamic
| | 04:44 | effects that Illustrator has not
actually modified the path outlines.
| | 04:48 | So if you press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y
on a Mac to switch to the Outline mode,
| | 04:52 | you'll see that our original whisker
lines with just two anchor points apiece
| | 04:57 | remain intact, thereby
making them very easy to edit.
| | 05:00 | Whereas, if I press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y
again, if we had anchor points for the
| | 05:05 | top and the bottom of every one of
these little zig zags, that would make the
| | 05:09 | path outlines much more difficult to edit.
Also, I can change my mind anytime I want.
| | 05:13 | So as long as the whiskers are
selected, I can click on Zig Zag here inside
| | 05:16 | the Appearance panel, turn on the
Preview check box, and then I could say you
| | 05:20 | know what, I would like to take the Size value
up to 3, or even 4 or something along those lines.
| | 05:25 | So I can make changes any time I want.
I'm happy with what I had though,
| | 05:28 | so I'll just go ahead and click
the Cancel button, and then I'll press
| | 05:31 | Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A on a
Mac in order to deselect my artwork.
| | 05:35 | That, friends, is how you apply and edit
dynamic effects, specifically Drop Shadow
| | 05:41 | and Zig Zag here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assigning a gradient to editable text| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
assign a gradient to text, which is a lot
| | 00:05 | more difficult than it ought to be, and
sufficiently so that a lot of folks will
| | 00:09 | recommend that you convert your text to
outlines before filling the characters
| | 00:13 | with a gradient. That turns
out not to actually be necessary.
| | 00:16 | You can assign a gradient to live editable
text; you just have to know how it works.
| | 00:21 | So we're going to start things off by
selecting either line of text with the
| | 00:24 | Black Arrow tool. That will select both
of them because they're grouped together.
| | 00:27 | I want to edit each one independently,
but I don't want ungroup the text either,
| | 00:31 | because I will lose the drop shadow.
| | 00:33 | So instead, I'll just enter the group
isolation mode by double-clicking on
| | 00:37 | either line of type, and I am going to
go ahead and zoom out as well so that we
| | 00:40 | have plenty of room to work, and I'll click
on a top line of type in order to select it.
| | 00:45 | Now, if this were any other type of
object inside of Illustrator, then you would
| | 00:49 | make sure the fill is active and then
you would drop down to the Gradient bar
| | 00:52 | and you would click on it.
| | 00:54 | And Illustrator acts as if it's
assigning a gradient to the text; it's even
| | 00:58 | showing a gradient here inside the
Color panel, but what it shows you onscreen is just black text.
| | 01:05 | And that's because Illustrator is
trying to assign the gradient to the
| | 01:08 | individual characters or
type, which is not possible.
| | 01:11 | And if you go over to the Appearance
panel here, you notice that we are working
| | 01:14 | inside of a group but the type object
itself is active and then we've also got
| | 01:18 | this Characters Item.
| | 01:19 | If you double-click on the word
Characters, then you will go ahead and select
| | 01:23 | the text with the Type tool and
it'll show you that the fill is set to
| | 01:27 | Gradient. But it most certainly is
not, because you can't actually see the
| | 01:31 | gradient inside of the artwork.
| | 01:33 | So what you want to do is press
Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac in order to
| | 01:37 | restore the characters to white, then
go ahead and make sure that the type
| | 01:41 | object is active, which you can do by
double-clicking on the word Type.
| | 01:45 | It's already active, but it's a good
precaution. And then you want to add a fill and a
| | 01:49 | stroke to that object by clicking on
the Add New Fill icon down here in the
| | 01:54 | bottom-left corner of the Appearance panel.
| | 01:55 | Now you may notice the delay as you
work and that's because the drop shadow is
| | 02:00 | updating every time you make any kind of change.
| | 02:03 | All right, now let's assign the
gradient by clicking on that gradient strip
| | 02:08 | inside the Gradient panel, and this
time you can see that it actually works.
| | 02:11 | I have managed to collapse my panel
so I need to make it larger again.
| | 02:13 | And I'm going to double-click in
the black color stop in order make a
| | 02:17 | modification to it, and this is going to
go pretty slowly with that drop shadow.
| | 02:21 | But right now, I'm going to click on
the flyout menu icon and select CMYK
| | 02:25 | because I am working in the Color
subpanel and I'll change the Cyan value to
| | 02:29 | 25, and in fact, I'll change to
Magenta and Yellow values to 25 as well, and
| | 02:35 | then once Illustrator catches up with me,
I'll change the Black K value to 75%.
| | 02:40 | Then we'll press the Enter key or the Return
key on the Mac in order to make that change.
| | 02:44 | All right, now we want to switch the
gradient from Linear to Radial, so I'll go
| | 02:49 | ahead and do that. And we need to
position the Gradient, so I'll press the G key
| | 02:53 | in order to switch to the Gradient tool.
| | 02:55 | That's wrong, because you can see the
center is offset from the center the
| | 02:59 | text, so I'll press Ctrl+Semiclon or
Command+Semicolon on the Mac to bring back my guidelines.
| | 03:04 | I'll drag this origin point to the
center. We want it to be centered vertically
| | 03:09 | on the text as well.
| | 03:10 | You are not going to get a snap on the
guide, so you just need to eyeball this.
| | 03:14 | And then I want to drag the terminus
here out like so, until where about, looks
| | 03:20 | like a pica beyond the edge of the artboard.
| | 03:23 | And then finally, I wanted an
elliptical gradient, so I'll change this Aspect
| | 03:26 | Ratio value to 70% then I'll press the
Enter key or the Return key on the Mac.
| | 03:31 | All right, now let's duplicate our
work on to the bottom line of type.
| | 03:35 | So I'll press the V key to switch to my
Black arrow tool. I'll click on that bottom text.
| | 03:39 | I'll go ahead and select the
eyedropper by pressing the I key.
| | 03:41 | Now we have already set the
eyedropper so it's going to go lift all the
| | 03:44 | appearance attributes. So all you need to do ostensibly,
is click inside that text of the top of the screen.
| | 03:51 | The problem is Illustrator goes ahead
and lift the formatting attributes as
| | 03:54 | well, that is the text formatting attributes.
| | 03:56 | So press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac
to undo that change, then double-click
| | 04:00 | on the Eyedropper tool to bring up
that Eyedropper Options panel and turn off
| | 04:04 | both Character Style and Paragraphs Style,
just be totally safe, over here in the
| | 04:09 | left-hand column, and click OK.
| | 04:11 | Now if you click on the text of the top
of the screen, you'll lift the gradient,
| | 04:16 | but you will not lift the
character and formatting attributes.
| | 04:18 | All right, I'll press Ctrl+Semicolon
in order to hide my guidelines, and I'll
| | 04:22 | press the Escape key to
exit the group isolation mode.
| | 04:25 | All right, if you press Ctrl+Shift+A
or Command+Shift+A on a Mac and take a
| | 04:30 | close look at your text you may not be
able to use in the video, but you should
| | 04:32 | be able to see it on your
screen if you are working along.
| | 04:34 | We've got these slight white edges
around the text above the text, down here at
| | 04:40 | the bottom of the screen, and kind of
below the text of the top of the screen.
| | 04:43 | And that's because our characters
are still filled with white behind the
| | 04:48 | gradients that are assigned
to the text objects themselves.
| | 04:51 | To get rid of those white fills press
the T key to switch to the Type tool and
| | 04:55 | then triple-click inside your text in
order to select all it, and I'm starting
| | 04:59 | with the text of the bottom of the screen.
| | 05:01 | Then go up to the fill Swatch up here
in the Control panel, click on it, and
| | 05:04 | change it to None, and then you have
got to that same thing for the top text.
| | 05:08 | Go ahead and triple-click inside of
it and change its fill to None from the Control panel as well.
| | 05:13 | All right, now I'll press the Escape
key a couple of times, and then I'll press
| | 05:15 | Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A on the Mac.
| | 05:18 | And that, folks, is how you fill
live editable text with a gradient by
| | 05:22 | assigning the gradient not to the
individual characters, but to entire text objects at a time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing text that includes dynamic effects| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
edit text that has gradients and dynamic
| | 00:04 | effects assigned to it, because it
can be a really painfully slow process.
| | 00:08 | For example, let's say my client comes
me and tells me, "Our product is not called
| | 00:12 | Black Chat; it's called Black Cat Chat."
| | 00:15 | So I'll press the T key in order to get
my Type tool, click in front of the C in
| | 00:19 | chat, and then I type C-A-T-Spacebar from
the keyboard, and at first I just see a C
| | 00:24 | and then finally the A-T-
spacebar comes up on screen.
| | 00:27 | That delay is caused by the drop shadow.
| | 00:30 | So the solution, especially because
now I have to change the character
| | 00:33 | formatting, the solution is to go
ahead and turn that shadow off until my
| | 00:38 | changes are finished.
| | 00:39 | So I'll go head and press the
Escape key in order to accept my changes and
| | 00:42 | switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:44 | And then I'll go over to the Appearance panel.
| | 00:46 | I can see them a Type object is active,
but I don't see any drop shadow in this
| | 00:51 | list here, and that's because the
effect is assigned to the group.
| | 00:54 | So I need to double-click on the group
item there in order to switch focus to it
| | 00:58 | and then turn off the drop
shadow by clicking on its eyeball.
| | 01:02 | And now the one change is going to
make things significantly faster.
| | 01:06 | So I'll press the T key to switch back
to the Type tool, click inside my text of
| | 01:10 | the bottom of the screen, press
Ctrl+A or Command+A on the Mac in order to
| | 01:13 | select all that text. And then
I'll press Ctrl+Alt+Left Arrow or
| | 01:17 | Command+Option+Left Arrow several
times in a row, more than a dozen times in
| | 01:21 | fact in order to reduce a Tracking value.
| | 01:24 | And you can see the new Tracking
value inside the Character panel here.
| | 01:27 | It's this value right there.
| | 01:29 | And it actually ought to be
a little bigger than that.
| | 01:31 | I want it to be 350, like so.
| | 01:34 | And without overselling it here,
I want to stress the fact that if I had left
| | 01:38 | the drop shadow on, every single
time I press Ctrl+Alt+Left Arrow or
| | 01:42 | Command+Option+Left Arrow, it would have
required Illustrator to update the drop
| | 01:45 | shadow, which would have
really slow down my progress.
| | 01:48 | So the moral of the story is if the
dynamic effect or the gradient, for that
| | 01:52 | matter, is getting in your way, turn it off
temporarily until your changes are complete.
| | 01:57 | I'll go ahead and press the Escape
key in order to accept my modified text.
| | 02:01 | Then I'll return to the Appearance
panel, double-click on the word Group, and
| | 02:05 | finally, turn the drop shadow back on.
| | 02:07 | So while you're editing text,
go ahead and turn all the effects off;
| | 02:11 | when you're done with your
edits; turn them back on.
| | 02:14 | In the next movie, I'll show you
how to assign gradients to strokes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The new gradient stroke options| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to
assign gradients to strokes, which is a new
| | 00:04 | feature in Illustrator CS6.
| | 00:06 | And I'll actually show you
a couple of applications.
| | 00:08 | We'll create this neon stroke around
the cat's face, and then we will assign a
| | 00:12 | radial gradient to its whiskers.
| | 00:14 | So I'll go ahead and switch over to the
most recent version of my artwork and
| | 00:17 | using the Black Arrow tool, I'll click on
the cat's head in order to select it and
| | 00:21 | then I'll change the line Weight value
to 12 points, let's say. And there is a
| | 00:26 | little bit of a delay there, which is
all the encouragement I need to turn off
| | 00:30 | the Drop Shadow effect,
here inside the Appearance panel.
| | 00:33 | Next I'll select the stroke and
then I'll click on a Gradient bar here
| | 00:37 | inside the Gradient panel.
| | 00:38 | And notice that by default Illustrator
assigns this white-to-black gradient to
| | 00:42 | the stroke from white on the
left-hand side to black on right-hand side.
| | 00:47 | You can change the angle if you want to,
as well as your color stops, here inside
| | 00:51 | the Gradient panel, but you
can't use the Gradient tool.
| | 00:54 | Because if you press the G key in order
to switch to the Gradient tool, you'll
| | 00:57 | see that you get this little
Ghostbusters cursor, and the reason is the Gradient
| | 01:01 | tool is only applicable to gradient fills.
| | 01:05 | So I'll press the V key to
switch back my black arrow tool.
| | 01:08 | You do, however, have these three
stroke icons that you can select from.
| | 01:12 | The first one, the one that's
selected by default, is called Apply gradient
| | 01:16 | within stroke, and what it does is it
treats the stroke as if it's a filled path.
| | 01:20 | So you are just feeling in the stroke
area with a gradient and nothing more.
| | 01:25 | If you want wrap the gradient around
the stroke then you switch to the second
| | 01:29 | icon, Apply gradient along stroke, and
you end up getting this effect here, where
| | 01:33 | it starts wide at the cat's chin and
then progresses through the darker colors,
| | 01:38 | around the path outline, and eventually to black.
| | 01:40 | Now if you don't want that seam, then you
need to start and then colors to be the
| | 01:44 | same, and I am going to do that
by modifying my Gradient here.
| | 01:48 | I'll select the white color stop and
I'll change Location value to 50% and then
| | 01:52 | I'll double-click on the black color
stop, switch to my CMYK sliders, and I'll
| | 01:56 | change the C, M, and Y values to 50% apiece.
I'll leave the Black value set to a 200%.
| | 02:02 | Create a rich black.
| | 02:03 | And then finally, I'll Alt+Drag or
Option+Drag the black color stop to the
| | 02:07 | left-hand side in order to create a copy of it.
| | 02:10 | Now we have a gradient that goes from
black at the chin all the way around to
| | 02:13 | white at the top of the cat's head
and back down to black at the chin.
| | 02:17 | In order to show you the final
setting here, which goes ahead and applies a
| | 02:21 | gradient across the stroke, I am going
to increase my line weight value to let's
| | 02:26 | say 20 points, and then I'll go and
select that final option, and that now
| | 02:31 | orients to gradient so it starts black
along the outside, goes to white at the
| | 02:35 | center, and then returns to black on the inside.
And the result is a very easy-to-make neon effect.
| | 02:42 | Now, that's exactly the effect I want,
except I don't it to be that thick, so I
| | 02:45 | am going to reduce the line
weight value to 6 points, like so.
| | 02:49 | All right, now I am going to zoom in
on the cat and scroll down a little and
| | 02:51 | before I leave the cat's face, I
should go ahead and restore the drop
| | 02:55 | shadow, so I'll turn on the drop
shadow here inside the Appearance panel and
| | 03:00 | it is once again back. All right, now I'll click on the
whiskers to select them and I'll press Ctrl+H
| | 03:04 | or Command+H on a Mac to
hide the selection edges.
| | 03:07 | Now what I want is for the whiskers to be
white around the muzzle and black at their edges.
| | 03:13 | And so I want a radial white-to-black gradient.
| | 03:16 | However, if I go ahead and select the
stroke, which I can do right here inside
| | 03:21 | the Gradient panel--now you can switch
back and forth between the fill and the
| | 03:24 | stroke--and assign the gradient to it,
I'm not going to get the right effect, and
| | 03:28 | that's because I'm assigning my
gradient to each one of the whiskers
| | 03:32 | independently and that's because the
stroke is assigned to the contents of the
| | 03:35 | group, not the overall group itself.
| | 03:38 | To change that, double-click on the
word Contents here inside the Appearance
| | 03:41 | panel. That will show you that stroke.
Go ahead and grab it and drag it to the
| | 03:44 | trashcan to get rid of it. Then double-click on the word
Group to make an active and click on the Add New Stroke
| | 03:51 | icon in the bottom-left corner of the
Appearance panel to create a new stroke.
| | 03:55 | I am going to increase the line weight
to 2 points and then I'll go ahead and
| | 03:59 | assign the gradient as we did before
and now we are getting something more
| | 04:02 | closely resembling what I want.
| | 04:04 | Now, it's currently a linear gradient
and it has an extra color stop in it, so
| | 04:08 | I'll start by getting rid of the first
black color stop, and then I'll change the
| | 04:11 | type from linear to radial so we end
up with this effect here, which is much
| | 04:16 | closer to what I'm looking for.
| | 04:18 | I'll click on a white color stop
to make it active, and I'll change Location value to 35%.
| | 04:23 | Now I want all of the edges of the
whiskers to be black so I need to scoot
| | 04:27 | that black color stop in a little bit.
I'll select it and change its Location
| | 04:30 | value to 88% and then finally, I'll
select the midpoint skew--the diamond
| | 04:35 | above the Gradient bar--and I'll change
its Location value to 70% in order to
| | 04:40 | create this final effect here.
| | 04:42 | And that's it, folks.
That is our final gradient art,
| | 04:46 | that features, among other things,
multiple gradients assigned to single paths.
| | 04:50 | We've got gradients that fade from
opacity to the transparency, gradient text, and
| | 04:55 | finally, new gradient strokes,
here inside Illustrator CS6.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
15. Seamlessly Repeating PatternsThe reinvention of tile patterns| 00:00 | Illustrator was the first
vector-based drawing program to introduce
| | 00:04 | repeating tile patterns.
| | 00:06 | A tile pattern is a pattern that repeats over
and over, like the tiles on the kitchen floor.
| | 00:12 | A tile can be rectangular or hexagonal.
| | 00:15 | And depending on how you create it,
the tiles may repeat seamlessly so that you
| | 00:19 | can barely tell what shape they are,
which is why they're so popular in the
| | 00:24 | fashion and textile industries.
| | 00:26 | If you're familiar with tile patterns
in previous versions of Illustrator, you
| | 00:30 | know they used to be a
pain in the neck to create.
| | 00:33 | But now they are so much improved and
such a pleasure to work with that it's
| | 00:38 | actually difficult to create
something that doesn't look great.
| | 00:41 | So get ready to roll up your sleeves
and have some serious fun, over and over
| | 00:48 | and over again.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drawing a linear spiral with the Polar Grid tool| 00:00 | Over the course of this chapter we are
going to create the seamlessly repeating
| | 00:03 | patterns that you have see onscreen here,
| | 00:05 | and we are going to do so
based on a handful of spirals.
| | 00:09 | But before I show you how to make the
pattern, I need to show you how to make
| | 00:12 | the spirals, because these are not
everyday average spirals that you draw
| | 00:16 | using the Spiral tool.
| | 00:17 | Instead, they are linear spirals that
you create using Poor Grid tool.
| | 00:21 | So we've got this file here.
We'll switch over to the Layers panel. And you
| | 00:25 | can see this is the logarithmic
spiral that you can make using the standard
| | 00:30 | Spiral tool that we saw way back in
chapter 4 of the Fundamentals course.
| | 00:34 | However, as you may recall, the tool is a
little bit difficult to predict, and there
| | 00:38 | is a very strong possibility that this
kind of spiral you want to create is a
| | 00:42 | linear spiral like this one here, in
which each one of these coils here is
| | 00:46 | equidistant from the other.
| | 00:48 | So let me show you how that works.
| | 00:50 | I have got this drawing
layer on top and it's currently bank.
| | 00:53 | I'll go ahead and click and hold on the Line
tool and then select the Poor Grid tool
| | 00:57 | from the flyout menu.
| | 00:58 | Because I want to create this shape
from the center out, I am going to press
| | 01:01 | Ctrl+U or Command+U on a Mac in
order to turn on my Smart Guides.
| | 01:06 | Your Smart Guides might already be on.
| | 01:08 | And I am going to Alt+Click or
Option+Click right there in the center of my
| | 01:12 | artboard to bring up the Polar
Grid tool options dialog box.
| | 01:16 | Now, for the sake of demonstration, I am
going to set the Width and Height values to 500 points apiece.
| | 01:22 | You definitely want them to be the
same value, whatever it's going to be.
| | 01:26 | And I want 9 Concentric
Dividers and then 0 Radial Dividers.
| | 01:32 | Radial Dividers, you may recall,
results in spokes, and those aren't going to
| | 01:36 | contribute anything to our spiral.
| | 01:38 | And I should say, if you want a tighter
spiral with a lot more segments to it,
| | 01:43 | then you would go ahead and increase the
Concentric Dividers number. But this is
| | 01:46 | going to work well for us so I will go ahead and
click OK in order to create that series of concentric circles.
| | 01:52 | The next thing you want to do is go up
to the Object menu and choose the Ungroup
| | 01:56 | command or press Ctrl+Shift+G or
Command+Shift+G on the Mac and then go back up
| | 02:01 | to the Object menu and choose command
again or press a keyboard short again.
| | 02:04 | So you'll have to do it twice in a row
in order to get rid of all the grouping
| | 02:09 | that's going on inside of this object.
| | 02:12 | Then you might just go ahead and
twirl open the layer and confirm that you
| | 02:15 | don't have any groups left. In my case, I don't.
You should also see, by the way, the word Path on the far
| | 02:20 | left side of the Control panel. I am going to
increase my Stroke value to 3 points, like so.
| | 02:27 | Now I am going to press Ctrl+U or
Command+U on the Mac to turn off my Smart
| | 02:30 | Guides, and then I am going to press the
A key to switch to the White Arrow tool,
| | 02:34 | and what you want to do is marquee all of
these bottom points, so just the bottom points.
| | 02:39 | You don't want any of the left- or right-
hand points or the top point, but you do
| | 02:43 | want every single one of the bottom ones.
| | 02:45 | So go ahead and marquee them like so,
and then press Ctrl+X or Command+X on the
| | 02:49 | Mac in order to cut them to the
clipboard and then press Ctrl+F or Command+F in
| | 02:55 | order to paste them in front.
| | 02:57 | Depending on the direction of your
spiral, you want to either move the
| | 03:01 | points inward or outward, but in any
case they need to snap into alignment
| | 03:06 | with the point next door.
| | 03:07 | So you just want to drag from a point
over to the next point so that you end up
| | 03:13 | with this effect here, and you can see now
we already have two interwoven spirals now.
| | 03:18 | Let's merge things together by pressing
Ctrl+A or Command+A on the Mac, and then
| | 03:22 | press Ctrl+J or Command+J on the
Mac in order to join all of our lines.
| | 03:29 | Now, we don't want this central join right there.
| | 03:32 | We don't want that segment.
| | 03:33 | So go ahead and click of the shape to
deselect it, click on that segment with
| | 03:37 | the White Arrow in order to select
it independently of all of the other
| | 03:40 | segments, and press Backspace key or
the Delete key on the Mac in order to
| | 03:44 | separate the two spirals from each other.
| | 03:46 | How do I know that they're two spirals?
| | 03:48 | Well, because if you click off and then
just Alt+Click or Option+Click on one of
| | 03:53 | them--and we can even change the
color of the stroke to something like CMYK
| | 03:56 | red here--and that's pretty obvious
that we've got two spirals to choose from.
| | 04:01 | Notice that this spiral is looping in a
counterclockwise direction from the center out.
| | 04:07 | If you wanted it to loop in the opposite
direction, you just would've moved your
| | 04:10 | points to the left instead of to the right.
| | 04:13 | Now, just to see how well these
spirals match the ones that I created,
| | 04:17 | I am going to press the V key in order
to get my Black Arrow tool and I'll go
| | 04:20 | ahead and click on this red
spiral in order to select it.
| | 04:23 | Then I'll press Ctrl+C or Command+C on the Mac
and we will go back to the Bluish spirals.ai file.
| | 04:29 | I am going to select this guy right here
and just get rid of him for the moment.
| | 04:32 | We are going to re-create him in the next movie.
| | 04:35 | Then I'll press Ctrl+F or Command+F on a
Mac in order to paste that guy into place.
| | 04:40 | Now, obviously he is way too big and
I need to move him so he snaps into
| | 04:44 | alignment with this guy's point right there.
| | 04:47 | So it's the beginning point
of the larger blue spiral. We obviously need a round cap.
| | 04:52 | So I'll click on the word Stroke up here
in the Control panel and change the Cap
| | 04:57 | Setting to Round Cap like so.
| | 04:58 | Next what we want to do is grab the
Scale tool, just so that we can match
| | 05:02 | everything up here, and I'll Alt+Click
or Option+Click on that central point
| | 05:07 | right there to bring up the Scale dialog box.
| | 05:09 | I am going to set the Uniform value
to 25.5%, press the Tab key, click OK.
| | 05:15 | Now, I'll do the same thing for the
Rotate tool: Alt+Click or Option+Click on the
| | 05:21 | same point, set the Angle value to 65
degrees, click OK. And you can see now
| | 05:26 | that we've got an absolute dead match.
| | 05:29 | So just in case you're interested,
that's how you go about creating a linear
| | 05:33 | spiral in which every single one of
these coiling segments is equidistant from
| | 05:39 | its neighbors, using the Polar
Grid tool here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Assembling the raw ingredients for a pattern| 00:00 | Now the most important part of
building a successful seamlessly repeating
| | 00:04 | pattern is setting up your core path
outlines in the first place, because after
| | 00:09 | all, if they are not in good shape,
then your pattern is never going to work.
| | 00:12 | So we're going to start things off by
creating the artwork that you see before you.
| | 00:16 | Now we're not going to create everything.
| | 00:17 | In fact, I'm just going to show you
how to set up this guy right here, because
| | 00:21 | he's really the most crucial piece of
the artwork, and for a couple of reasons.
| | 00:25 | First of all, he is in front of
everybody else, but he's also covering up everybody's defects.
| | 00:30 | So if I switch over to the version of
the graphic I've created without that
| | 00:34 | forward spiral, you can see that we're
seeing the beginning of both the big dark-
| | 00:40 | blu, and the smaller light-blue spirals.
| | 00:43 | You can see the point at which they start.
| | 00:45 | And that central spiral not only
covers up where those spirals begin, but its
| | 00:50 | beginning is covered up as well.
| | 00:53 | So let's see how that works.
| | 00:55 | So I start off just by arranging
the spirals fairly haphazardly.
| | 00:58 | I am just trying to create something
that has a certain random flavor to it.
| | 01:02 | Then I went ahead and grabbed
this guy and I duplicated him by Alt+Dragging or
| | 01:07 | Option+Dragging him into a new location.
| | 01:10 | I went ahead and assigned a different
fill by going up to the fill swatch in the
| | 01:13 | Control panel, and I selected this final
fill in the first color group, which goes
| | 01:18 | by the name saturated sea,
and it's called New blue.
| | 01:22 | That ensures that the forward spiral is
colored differently from all the other ones.
| | 01:27 | Then I scaled them a little bit by
double-clicking on the Scale tool, and I
| | 01:31 | went ahead and set the Uniform value to 78%.
| | 01:34 | It's very important, by the way, that
Scale Strokes and Effects is turned off, as
| | 01:39 | was a case in the previous movie incidentally.
| | 01:41 | Otherwise, you'll end up making your
stroke something other than 3 points thick.
| | 01:44 | Then go ahead and click OK.
| | 01:46 | Now what I want to do is zoom in a
little bit here, and I'll press Ctrl+Y or
| | 01:51 | Command+Y on the Mac so that I can see
the beginning of this spiral over here
| | 01:56 | on the right-hand side, and the
beginning of the selected spiral as well, and
| | 02:00 | I'll press the V key to get my Black Arrow tool.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to drag this guy so that
he begins just a little bit outside of
| | 02:10 | the spiral next to him.
| | 02:11 | So in other words, there is a little
bit of a gap right here, and there is a
| | 02:14 | little bit of a gap right there.
And that's going to accommodate the fact
| | 02:18 | that these things have round caps at
the end of them, so they don't end up
| | 02:22 | jutting into each other. All right, now I'll
press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on the Mac to make sure everything is working.
| | 02:26 | And it is, with one exception. I will go ahead
and scoot this guy over here a little bit, so that I can
| | 02:32 | really make my point. You'll see that
I shouldn't have this flat edge like that.
| | 02:38 | It should be a curving edge to match
this lighter-blue spiral down below.
| | 02:42 | So I'll go ahead and zoom out so that we can
take in both of these shapes at the same time.
| | 02:46 | I might go ahead and move these
guys down a little bit as well.
| | 02:49 | Just make sure that you're not seeing the
cap intruding on this lower spiral as in this.
| | 02:54 | We wouldn't want to see that cap right there.
| | 02:57 | All right, so I'll go ahead and move
him to this position; that should work.
| | 03:00 | What we want to do is go ahead and grab
the Direct Selection tool, which you can
| | 03:04 | get by pressing the A key, and I'll
click on this segment right here, the upper-
| | 03:10 | left segment associated with
a lower lighter-blue spiral.
| | 03:14 | With just that segment selected--
it's very important that you don't click
| | 03:17 | inside the fill and select the entire
shape, what you want is to click right on
| | 03:21 | that segment like so--and then press Ctrl+C
or Command+C on the Mac in order to copy it.
| | 03:26 | Then press the V key to switch back
to the Black Arrow tool, click on this
| | 03:30 | frontmost dark-blue spiral, and then
press Ctrl+F or Command+F on the Mac in
| | 03:36 | order to paste that guy in front.
| | 03:37 | All right, obviously we don't want this fill,
| | 03:39 | so go up to the first swatch in the
Control panel and change it to None.
| | 03:44 | Then, you want to grab the Scissors
tool, which you can get from the Eraser tool
| | 03:49 | flyout menu, and it's got a keyboard
shortcut of C. And click right about there
| | 03:53 | in order to cut away the
top portion of that spiral.
| | 03:57 | If you end up getting this error message,
chances are good that you didn't click
| | 04:01 | on the path properly, which is
undoubtedly the case for me.
| | 04:04 | I will just go ahead and click OK and
try again, and this time I got it good.
| | 04:09 | Now, I'll press the V key in order to
switch to the Black Arrow tool, and I'll
| | 04:12 | click on this top segment right there in
order to select it, and then I'll press
| | 04:16 | the Backspace key or the Delete
key on the Mac to get rid of it.
| | 04:19 | Now notice that we've got a
little bit of a round cap showing.
| | 04:24 | So just go ahead and click on that
segment to select it and click on the word
| | 04:27 | Stroke up here in the Control
panel and switch to a Butt Cap.
| | 04:31 | That will go ahead and shave that guy off;
it's the easiest solution. That's it!
| | 04:35 | I'll go ahead and zoom out, and you can
see that now we've got a nice collection
| | 04:40 | of spirals that are overlapping each
other in such a way that they're covering
| | 04:44 | up every possible defect.
| | 04:47 | In the next movie, I'll show you how
to take these guys and turn them into a
| | 04:51 | seamlessly repeating pattern.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the new Pattern Generator| 00:00 | In this movie, we will turn this
collection of spirals into a seamlessly
| | 00:03 | repeating pattern, using the new
pattern generator inside of Illustrator CS6.
| | 00:08 | I will also introduce you to
the new Pattern Options panel.
| | 00:11 | Now if you're familiar with previous
versions of Illustrator, then you know that
| | 00:15 | patterns used to be something of a
pickle to create, and I'll show you how it
| | 00:19 | worked, because I don't want you to
work that way anymore; it creates problems.
| | 00:23 | We'll go ahead and click on this Spirals layer
here inside the Layers panel to make it active.
| | 00:27 | Then I'll grab the Rectangle tool,
which you can get by pressing the M key and
| | 00:31 | you needed to draw a rectangle in the
old days to determine the size of the
| | 00:34 | pattern tile, that element that was
going to repeat over and over again.
| | 00:39 | So you'd draw inside the spirals
like so, for example, and then you would
| | 00:43 | change both the Fill and the Stroke to None.
| | 00:46 | So I'll change the Stroke to None first
and then I'll change to Fill to None and
| | 00:50 | then finally, you need to send the
rectangle to the back of the stack by
| | 00:54 | pressing Ctrl+Shift+Left Bracket or
Command+Shift+Left Bracket on the Mac.
| | 00:58 | Then you'd press the V key to switch back to
the Black Arrow tool, go ahead and marquee
| | 01:02 | all of those shapes in order to select
them, and then drag them and drop them
| | 01:06 | into the Swatches panel.
| | 01:08 | Problem is, if you worked that way, then
you are going to create a mess for yourself.
| | 01:11 | I will go ahead and click off the
shapes to deselect them and then to modify
| | 01:16 | this pattern I just created. I'll go ahead and
double-click on it. In my it's called New Pattern Swatch 9,
| | 01:22 | I'll double-click on it
here inside the Swatches panel.
| | 01:24 | And I get this alert message and it's
telling me, "A Clipping Mask was created
| | 01:28 | around the pattern tile to
preserve the legacy pattern appearance."
| | 01:32 | So CS6 is already acting like this
is something that was created in a
| | 01:35 | previous version of the software.
| | 01:37 | If I click OK you can see that
everything is entirely messed up, and we do not
| | 01:41 | have a seamless pattern at all.
| | 01:43 | So I'll just go ahead and press the Escape
key in order to leave the Pattern Edit mode.
| | 01:48 | Instead what you do is of course you
grab that swatch right there and you
| | 01:53 | delete it by Alt+Clicking or Option+
Clicking on the Trashcan icon at the bottom
| | 01:57 | of the Swatches panel.
| | 01:59 | And then I'll switch back to the
spirals layer and you know what, simplest
| | 02:02 | thing to do here: because we don't
want that rectangular path, I'll go up to
| | 02:06 | the File menu and I'll choose the
Revert+Command or I could press the F12 key
| | 02:10 | and then click in the Revert button in order
to restore the original version of this graphic.
| | 02:15 | Then you go ahead and marquee all
the shapes once again to select them.
| | 02:19 | You go up to the Object menu--this is
what you should do now in Illustrator CS6--
| | 02:24 | choose the Pattern command, and then
choose Make, and that way you're starting
| | 02:29 | inside the Pattern Generator with a clean slate.
| | 02:32 | Now, you will still see an alert message--
because Illustrator is so fond of them--
| | 02:36 | that says a new pattern has been added
to the swatches panel and there it is.
| | 02:40 | It hasn't been named yet. But any changes you're
about to make will be automatically saved upon Exit.
| | 02:45 | It's a very important point
and we will come back to it.
| | 02:47 | You can turn on the Don't show again
check box if you like, and then click OK.
| | 02:52 | And now we're seeing the Pattern.
Now of course, it's not repeating seamlessly,
| | 02:56 | unless you count the fact that we have
white areas around all of our spirals.
| | 02:59 | So we need to change the size of the tile,
and you can do that using the Pattern
| | 03:04 | tile tool. And now you can drag the
boundaries of this rectangle here in any way
| | 03:09 | you like; you can drag the sides and
the top as well as the corners, until
| | 03:12 | everything sort of smooshes together right here.
| | 03:15 | And you may not have the take it this
tight, but you do want to make sure that you
| | 03:18 | get rid of any of the white areas
between the spirals, and in this case I have a
| | 03:22 | little bit of white. Now it may appear as if the strokes
aren't all of the same colors, like the
| | 03:28 | strokes of the spiral around the
outside of the rectangle here are little bit
| | 03:32 | lighter, and that's because this Dim
Copies to check box is turned on by default.
| | 03:37 | If you want to see everybody the way
they actually look, then you turn that check
| | 03:41 | box off, and now you'll see that all
the strokes match and we don't have any
| | 03:45 | white areas between the spirals.
| | 03:47 | Now, the great thing about this is
that I don't have to do any calculations
| | 03:51 | the way I had to do in the old days.
I don't have to figure out how this guy is
| | 03:55 | going to overlap into the next tile
for example and repeat them down at the
| | 03:59 | bottom, because Illustrator is
automatically doing that work for me.
| | 04:03 | So as long as I size this Rectangle
properly, then everything's going to repeat
| | 04:07 | seamlessly no matter what.
| | 04:09 | And I think I will tuck this guy up
just a little bit, like so, because I do
| | 04:13 | think I had some gaps going.
| | 04:15 | Then once you are done getting
everything the way you want it to look, then
| | 04:17 | you go ahead and give the pattern a name
and I'll call mine, sea spirals for example.
| | 04:22 | And just enter that name into the
Pattern options panel. Now press the
| | 04:25 | Enter key or the Return key on
Mac in order to accept that name.
| | 04:28 | And finally, you want to click on the
Done button or if you prefer. you can just press the Escape key.
| | 04:35 | So Escape doesn't cancel as it does
elsewhere inside the software; instead it
| | 04:39 | goes ahead and accepts your changes.
| | 04:41 | So I'll press the Escape key
right now, and at point we should have a
| | 04:44 | seamlessly repeating pattern.
| | 04:45 | To test things out, I'll go ahead and
zoom out for my artwork, and I'll make
| | 04:50 | sure that my Drawing layer is selected
at the top of the Layers panel, and I'll
| | 04:54 | draw a rectangle. And I want this
rectangle to be the full size of the artboard.
| | 04:58 | So I'll go up to the View menu and
turn on my Smart Guides, which I could also
| | 05:02 | to do by pressing Ctrl+U or Command+U
on a Mac, and I'll drag from one corner to
| | 05:07 | the other corner inside of my artboard.
And then I'll go ahead and change the
| | 05:11 | Stroke to None, and I'll change the
Fill, up here in the Control panel, to sea
| | 05:17 | spirals, the new pattern swatch that I
just created. And we now have, as you can
| | 05:21 | see here, a seamlessly repeating pattern tile.
| | 05:25 | And you can adjust it
anytime you like, by the way.
| | 05:27 | If you're not happy with the results,
you can adjust your Pattern just by
| | 05:30 | double-clicking on the Swatch inside
the Swatches panel, and this time you will
| | 05:34 | not get any form of alert message.
| | 05:36 | You'll just see the Pattern Options
panel once again up onscreen, you can
| | 05:40 | make the desired changes using the
Pattern tile tool, if you like. So I could
| | 05:45 | drag this guide out just a little bit, in
order to provide a little more horizontal space.
| | 05:49 | And then when I'm done, in order to
update the pattern, all you do is press the
| | 05:53 | Escape key, and not only does that
update things, but it hides the Pattern
| | 05:57 | options panel as well.
| | 05:58 | Now if you look closely at your pattern,
you may see some lines surrounding the
| | 06:03 | tiles, or you may see some bad
intersections and in my case, I can zoom in little
| | 06:08 | bit here and you see this line right there.
| | 06:10 | That might lead you to believe, wait a
second, this is not a seamlessly repeating
| | 06:14 | pattern; we've got some problems.
| | 06:16 | Well that's a function of Illustrator's
screen display, and it should go away when
| | 06:21 | you either print the artwork or export
it to a different file format using for
| | 06:25 | example the Export command. And we'll
be discussing printing and exporting in
| | 06:30 | more detail in future chapters.
| | 06:32 | But for now, if you encounter that
kind of stuff onscreen, go ahead and do a
| | 06:36 | test print to see if everything works out fine.
| | 06:39 | It really should, and you should end up
with something that's entirely seamless.
| | 06:43 | And that is how you create a seamlessly
repeating pattern using the new pattern
| | 06:47 | generator here inside Illustrator CS6.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The new tile types: Brick and Hex| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll introduce you to
the other tile types that are available to
| | 00:04 | you, which include Brick and Hex.
| | 00:06 | Right now we're working with a
rectangular tile, and what that means is that
| | 00:12 | the tiles are sitting right next to each
other and directly below each other as well,
| | 00:16 | so everything is repeated
in a very regular fashion.
| | 00:19 | If you want to be able to offset your
spirals or other pattern elements, then
| | 00:23 | you need to switch to a different tile type.
| | 00:25 | So if you're working along with me,
press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A in the
| | 00:29 | Mac to deselect your artwork.
| | 00:31 | Then go over to the Swatches panel and
double-click on the sea spirals swatch in
| | 00:35 | order to return to the Pattern Edit
mode and display the Pattern Options panel.
| | 00:40 | And notice this Tile Type option right
there. Currently it's set to Grid, but
| | 00:44 | you can see you've got some other options.
| | 00:46 | We'll start with Brick by Row.
| | 00:47 | And the idea of brick is you're
still working with rectangular tiles, but
| | 00:52 | instead of them being set directly beside
each other and below each other, they are offset.
| | 00:58 | So in the case of Brick by Row,
it's the rows that are offset.
| | 01:02 | So in other words the tiles,
below and above are offset.
| | 01:06 | And you can determine the degree of
offset using this Brick Offset option.
| | 01:10 | So right now there are offset halfway.
| | 01:12 | So in other words, this big spiral is
half as far away from the one above it and
| | 01:17 | the other one above it as well.
| | 01:19 | If you switch to something like 2/5ths,
for example, then this guy's offset, the
| | 01:25 | bottom one, is offset 2/5ths of the way
over, and then it's three 3/5ths over to
| | 01:31 | get to the next one up above,
if that makes make any sense.
| | 01:34 | So you're just determining how
far you're scooting those bricks.
| | 01:38 | You also have the option of bricking
by column instead, and that's going to
| | 01:42 | offset the neighbors to the left and
right. And in my case, we're looking at a
| | 01:47 | 2/5th value, but if you want a
traditional brick pattern, then you're going to
| | 01:50 | go 1/2 in order to get this effect here.
| | 01:53 | Where things get the most
interesting, I think, is with the hex options.
| | 01:57 | I am going to go ahead and scoot my
panel over a little bit just by dragging it
| | 02:01 | from its top left corner so I don't
end up dropping it into the stack here.
| | 02:06 | And I'll switch from Brick
by Column to Hex by Column.
| | 02:08 | And you'll see that now we have a hexagonal
shape in the central portion of the window here.
| | 02:14 | And I am going to turn off those
little path highlights by pressing Ctrl+U or
| | 02:18 | Command+U on the Mac, which
turns off the Smart Guides.
| | 02:20 | It's going to make it a little bit
easier to work in just a moment as well.
| | 02:23 | If you want the hexagon to be on its
side, then you switch to Hex by Row.
| | 02:28 | Basically what's happening is every
single one of the pattern tiles is now
| | 02:32 | hexagonal, and that way you get an even
more interesting repetition, because the
| | 02:36 | tiles above are offset, the
tiles below are offset, and so forth.
| | 02:39 | I am going to switch back to Hex by
Column, where this specific pattern is
| | 02:44 | concerned, and then I'll change the
size of my hexagon by switching to the
| | 02:48 | Pattern Tile tool, which you can select
in the upper-left corner of the panel,
| | 02:52 | and now you can drag either the sides
or the corners or what have you, until you
| | 02:56 | get the effect that you're looking for.
| | 02:58 | And I found something along these lines
ends up producing a pretty great effect.
| | 03:03 | Now, something to bear in mind is
Illustrator still thinks of these tiles as
| | 03:08 | being rectangular in the background,
and you can see what those rectangles look
| | 03:12 | like by turning on this final
check box, Show Swatch Bounds.
| | 03:16 | And now I don't know if you can
make it out in the video or not--
| | 03:18 | I'll zoom in a little bit to see if
that makes it easier--and I'll switch to a
| | 03:22 | different color, so that we
can really see what's going on.
| | 03:25 | To do that you go up to the Object menu,
you choose Pattern, and then you choose
| | 03:29 | Tile Edge Color. And light blue doesn't
do us much good when we're working with
| | 03:33 | a bunch of blue shapes like we are here,
| | 03:36 | so I'll switch to light red, let's
say, which should show up better, and
| | 03:40 | then I'll click OK.
| | 03:41 | And now you can see not only the
outline of a hexagon, but the outline of the
| | 03:46 | entire rectangular tile.
| | 03:48 | And you can imagine, if you repeat that
tile, that all of the elements are going
| | 03:52 | to repeat seamlessly.
| | 03:54 | All right, now that I've made these
changes, I'll just press the Escape key
| | 03:57 | in order to escape the Pattern Edit
mode and update my seamlessly repeating
| | 04:01 | pattern in the background.
| | 04:02 | And that's how you take advantage of the
new tile types, including both Brick and
| | 04:07 | Hex, here inside Illustrator CS6.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The Size Tile to Art and Overlap options| 00:00 | In this movie I'll introduce you to
a couple of options that allow you to
| | 00:03 | precisely tweak your pattern art,
specifically the Size Tile to Art check box
| | 00:08 | and the overlap icons.
| | 00:10 | You get to them, as always, by double-
clicking on your Pattern swatch here in
| | 00:14 | the Swatches panel.
| | 00:15 | That will switch you to the
Pattern Edit mode as well as display the
| | 00:18 | Pattern Options panel.
| | 00:19 | I'm going to go ahead and select my
Pattern Tile tool and increase the size of
| | 00:23 | my tile a little bit so that I have
some white space around my spirals.
| | 00:28 | And by the way, if instead of scaling
your hexagon or rectangle or what have
| | 00:33 | you, you want to move it, then you
drag it by its center point, like so.
| | 00:37 | All right, I'm going to go ahead and
zoom out here, so that I can take in all of
| | 00:42 | my variously repeating tiles, and right
now I've got Copies set to 5 x 5, which
| | 00:47 | means I'm seeing a total of 25 tiles, 5
wide and 5 tall. You can change that to
| | 00:53 | a variety of other settings but
5 x 5 tends to work out pretty well.
| | 00:56 | By the way, to hide a pop-up menu,
don't press the Escape key, because that
| | 01:00 | will escape you out of the Pattern
Edit mode like so and it will update your
| | 01:04 | pattern and so forth, and that's
very likely not what you want.
| | 01:08 | Anyway, I'll go back in to the Pattern
Edit mode by double-clicking on that
| | 01:11 | swatch there inside the Swatches panel.
| | 01:13 | Now there's that Size Tile to Art
check box I was telling you about.
| | 01:17 | We're going to start though with the
Move Tile with Art check box, just so
| | 01:21 | you know how it works.
I'll go ahead and turn it on; it's on by default incidentally.
| | 01:25 | And it works a little
differently than you might think.
| | 01:27 | Notice if I select this sort of
bluish-green spiral right there and I drag it to
| | 01:32 | a different location, my tile did not
move with my artwork, and that's because
| | 01:38 | you have to move all of your
artwork for the title to move with it.
| | 01:41 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on a
Mac to undo the movement of that tile and
| | 01:44 | I'll press Ctrl+A or Command+A on a Mac
to select all the spirals. And now, if I
| | 01:49 | drag them to a new location,
the hex tile moves along with me.
| | 01:53 | If you turn that check box off, then
when you move the spirals to a different
| | 01:57 | location, the hex does not move along with you.
| | 02:00 | And notice that I've
dropped away a few of my spirals.
| | 02:03 | I've gone down from seven spirals in
the original artwork to four in the
| | 02:07 | repetition of the tiles, and that's
because just a little bit of those four
| | 02:11 | spirals is still inside of the swatch bounds,
| | 02:15 | the greater rectangle that really
includes all of the tile element.
| | 02:19 | And if you end up moving your
artwork all the way outside of those swatch
| | 02:23 | bounds then you are not going to repeat
anything because there's nothing in there anymore.
| | 02:27 | Now, you might think if you turn Move
Tile with Art back on then everything is
| | 02:32 | going to move the way it needs to, but
that just means now you've established a
| | 02:35 | relative position and if you go
ahead and drag the artwork to a different
| | 02:39 | location, actually that
didn't work at all, did it?
| | 02:41 | The titles should move along with--
I guess it's got to be in there to some
| | 02:45 | degree and then will it
start moving along with me? Yes. Now it will.
| | 02:49 | So that's kind of a quirky little check box.
| | 02:51 | You might just want to be
safe and leave it alone.
| | 02:54 | If things get kind of wonky the way
they are for me here, then go ahead and turn
| | 02:59 | on Size Tile to Art, and that will
recenter things, as you see in this case.
| | 03:03 | I'll now go ahead and zoom back in so we
have a better sense of what's going on here.
| | 03:08 | And now if I were to click off my
spirals to deselect them and I were to drag
| | 03:13 | just this bluish-green
spiral to a different location,
| | 03:15 | now Illustrator will automatically size
that tile to keep up with my movements.
| | 03:19 | Now it may not do it in the way
you like, but it's going to try.
| | 03:23 | All right, we'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z
or Command+Z on a Mac to undo that change.
| | 03:26 | Now another thing to note when Size
Tile to Art is turned on, you gain access
| | 03:32 | to some new options.
| | 03:33 | So if I turn the check box
off, Width and Height active.
| | 03:36 | And you can manipulate
them manually if you want to.
| | 03:38 | For example, I could change the Width
value to 250 points and change the Height
| | 03:42 | value to something like 275 in
order to expand that size of that hex.
| | 03:47 | If you turn the check box on,
it's not only going to snap those Width and Height
| | 03:51 | values back to what it thinks they ought to be,
| | 03:53 | but it's also going to open up
these H Spacing and V Spacing values
| | 03:56 | so now you have relative control over
what's going on, instead of absolute control.
| | 04:01 | And I find this to be very helpful.
| | 04:03 | So in order to get my final pattern,
I selected the V Spacing value and press
| | 04:08 | Shift+Down arrow until I got done to
-40 points, which sealed up all the spirals
| | 04:13 | there. And then I press the up arrow
key until I started to get gaps and I
| | 04:17 | ultimately found that a V
Spacing value of -39 points worked best.
| | 04:22 | All right, now for the Overlap options,
because you are going to have the spirals
| | 04:26 | overlapping with each other.
Any pattern elements are going to do that.
| | 04:30 | And by default Top in Front is selected,
meaning that the tiles that are on top
| | 04:36 | are going to be in front of
the tiles that are below them.
| | 04:39 | If you'd rather the tiles below be on
top then go ahead and turn on Bottom in
| | 04:43 | Front, like so, and that's going to jump
these bottom tiles in front of the tiles
| | 04:49 | above them. That's not the effect I'm
looking for, so I'll go ahead and switch it
| | 04:53 | back to top and front.
| | 04:54 | You also have that same control
were left and right are concerned.
| | 04:57 | So right now left is in front,
but we're going to get some more interesting
| | 05:00 | interaction here, if we switch from
Left in Front to Right in Front, and that
| | 05:06 | means wherever Illustrator perceives an
object as being to the right of the one
| | 05:10 | to the left of it, then
it's going to pop in front.
| | 05:13 | If it doesn't read things that way,
as in the case of this column right here, it
| | 05:17 | will keep those spirals in the back.
| | 05:20 | So that way we sometimes have spirals
in the back, we sometimes have them in
| | 05:23 | front, and in the end we have less
regular repetition of the pattern elements.
| | 05:27 | All right, that's it. These are
the settings I ended up going with.
| | 05:31 | So I'll press the Escape key in
order to update my tile rectangle. And that's
| | 05:35 | how you work with the Size Tile to Art
check box as well, as the overlap icons,
| | 05:40 | here in illustrator CS6.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a new pattern based on an existing one| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
create a new pattern based on an existing
| | 00:04 | one, which is the pretty tricky
maneuver, as you are about to see.
| | 00:08 | If you're working along with me,
find that sea spirals swatch in the Swatches
| | 00:11 | panel and double-click on it in order
to switch over to the Pattern Edit mode.
| | 00:15 | Now what we're going to
do is recolor the artwork.
| | 00:19 | And you can see that I've got a couple
of additional folders full swatches that
| | 00:23 | I have created in advance.
| | 00:25 | So I am going to click on this big blue spiral.
| | 00:27 | My Fill is currently active, so I can just
click on the swatches to change that fill.
| | 00:32 | And I'll start by changing this guy to
this green fill right there, and then
| | 00:36 | I'll click on this bluish-green guy in
the background and I'll switch it to this
| | 00:41 | kind of shade of purple.
| | 00:43 | And I'll click on this guy into the
foreground right there and change it to red it.
| | 00:47 | For now, I'll leave this light-blue
spiral alone, and I'll click on this greenish-
| | 00:51 | blue spiral down left and
I'll change it to this dark blue.
| | 00:55 | And I'll click on this lighter-blue guy
here, and I'll change him to an olive green.
| | 00:59 | And then finally, I'll click on this
little blue guy there--the smallest of the
| | 01:03 | spirals--and I'll change him to orange.
| | 01:06 | Now the strokes don't really work with
my new color scheme, so I'll press Ctrl+A
| | 01:10 | or Command+A on the Mac to
select all of my artwork.
| | 01:13 | Then I'll go up to the Control panel
and click on the second swatch for the
| | 01:15 | stroke and change it to this global
white that I've created in advance.
| | 01:20 | And we end up getting this effect here.
| | 01:22 | All right, now at this point,
you are in a very precarious position.
| | 01:25 | If you click the Done button or don't
even think about pressing the Escape
| | 01:29 | key, then you'll update your original pattern.
| | 01:32 | And it's not just a matter of pressing
Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac to undo
| | 01:36 | the whole thing; you're going to have
the press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z several
| | 01:40 | times in a row to undo your work.
| | 01:42 | What you want to do instead,
assuming that you want to keep your original
| | 01:45 | pattern intact, you should want to click
on the Save a Copy link up here at the
| | 01:49 | top of the screen, and then you can
give your new pattern a name. And I'll call
| | 01:53 | mind circus spirals and then click OK.
| | 01:56 | Now you're going to get an alert
message that you actually want to pay
| | 01:59 | attention to in Illustrator.
| | 02:01 | It's telling that you that a new
pattern has been added to the Swatches
| | 02:04 | panel, and sure enough, there it is,
which leads us to think that the
| | 02:07 | original one is nice and safe. Not true.
| | 02:10 | Any additional changes made while in the
Pattern Editing mode will be applied to
| | 02:14 | the original pattern, not to the copy.
| | 02:17 | So go ahead and click OK.
| | 02:18 | What that means is that if I were to
press the Escape key or click on the
| | 02:22 | Done button, then I would not only create
a new pattern, but I would ruin my old one.
| | 02:26 | So they would both be identical to each other.
| | 02:28 | Instead what you do--strange as it
sounds--after you get done clicking Save a
| | 02:32 | Copy, you click the Cancel button;
don't press Escape, just click the Cancel button.
| | 02:37 | And now you're left with your original
sea spirals, nice and safe, and you've got
| | 02:41 | the new circus spirals pattern as well.
| | 02:43 | To apply it, just go ahead and click on
this rectangle in order to select it and
| | 02:48 | then change its fill to circus
spirals and the deed is done.
| | 02:53 | And that, folks, is how you create a new
pattern based on an existing one here
| | 02:57 | inside Illustrator CS6.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying patterns to strokes and text| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how you can
apply patterns to both strokes and text
| | 00:04 | inside Illustrator, and you can do it
quite easily, and as a result, you'll be able
| | 00:09 | to achieve this final version of the artwork.
| | 00:12 | And in order to do this, we're going to
have to create two more spin-off patterns.
| | 00:16 | So I'll go ahead and switch
over to my art in progress.
| | 00:19 | If you're working along with me,
go ahead and press Ctrl+Shift+A or
| | 00:21 | Command+Shift+A on the Mac to deselect your artwork.
| | 00:24 | Then go over to the Layers panel and
twirl open the Drawing layer, and you'll see
| | 00:28 | that there's a hidden text object called SEA.
| | 00:30 | Go ahead and turn it on and then drag it in
front of the rectangle so that you can see it.
| | 00:36 | Now go up to the Swatches panel and
double-click on sea spirals once again to
| | 00:40 | enter the Pattern Edit mode.
| | 00:41 | And I'm going to zoom in a couple of
clicks, and we're going to change the colors
| | 00:45 | of all of these spirals to make them
murkier. And you can see up here in the
| | 00:48 | Swatches panel that I have a third
folder called salty sea that includes murkier
[00:00:52 .00]
versions of all the color swatches above.
| | 00:54 | So I'll start by selecting
this guy, the big blue spiral.
| | 00:58 | My gill is currently active, so I change
the gills directly from the Swatches panel.
| | 01:02 | All I need to do is drop down from Big
blue to Big blue X and click on them.
| | 01:06 | And I make my change. And then I'll
select this guy in the background and I'll
| | 01:09 | change him to greenish-blue X and then
I'll select this next object down, the
| | 01:14 | light-blue spiral, change him to
Sky blue X, which is directly below.
| | 01:18 | Go ahead and select this greenish spiral.
| | 01:20 | Change him to the darker shade of green.
| | 01:22 | Select this sort of moderate-blue spiral.
Change him to this color right there.
| | 01:27 | We got to select the little spiral and
change him to this almost grayish-purple color.
| | 01:32 | And then finally, I'll select the central
spiral and change him to the final swatch.
| | 01:37 | Now we need to address the stroke, so
I'll press Ctrl+A or Command+A on the Mac to select all the spirals.
| | 01:42 | Then I'll click on the second swatch up
here in the Control panel and change it
| | 01:46 | to murky stroke in order to
achieve this effect right there.
| | 01:49 | And of course I don't want to ruin my
original spiral, so I'm going to click
| | 01:54 | on Save a Copy, and I'm going to change this
to salty spirals this time around and click Ok.
| | 01:59 | And then I'll see the alert message.
I don't recommend you turn on the Don't
| | 02:04 | Show Again check box for this one,
because it is pretty darn critical.
| | 02:07 | It's good to see the warning.
Click OK though and then click Cancel.
| | 02:11 | Don't press Escape.
| | 02:13 | Now that's a pretty precarious way to work.
| | 02:15 | I wanted you to see it again, but if
you want to really be safe then the better
| | 02:20 | thing to do, because I want to go ahead
and create yet another variation on this
| | 02:24 | pattern, is to select your core
pattern there, sea spirals, and then click on the
| | 02:29 | little page icon at the bottom of the
Swatches panel to make a copy of it, and
| | 02:32 | I'll call this one white strokes,
because that's what it's going to be, and then
| | 02:37 | click OK. And for housekeeping
purposes, I'll move this guy to the end.
| | 02:40 | I'll just drag that swatch to the end
of the list and then double-click on it.
| | 02:42 | That way I can't hurt the original.
And I'll press Ctrl+A or Command+A on the
| | 02:47 | Mac to select all the spirals, and then
I'll click on my Stroke Swatch up here in
| | 02:51 | the Control panel and change it to that
Global White. And we end up with this effect here.
| | 02:55 | Now I can just freely press the
Escape key in order to update that independent pattern.
| | 03:00 | All right, I'll go ahead and zoom out
so I can take in the entire illustration.
| | 03:03 | And I'll click on the rectangle in
order to select it, and you are going to have
| | 03:06 | to click the white of the text; otherwise
you will end up selecting the text instead.
| | 03:10 | And I want to change its fill to that
new murkier salty spirals pattern there.
| | 03:15 | And now I'm going to add a really thick stroke.
| | 03:18 | It's going to have a line weight of 200
points. And actually, I don't want this
| | 03:21 | stroke to be white, so I'll click on
that second swatch and I'll change it from
| | 03:25 | white to the original sea
spirals pattern, like so.
| | 03:28 | Now I want it to look like a framing
effect, so I'm going to add a drop shadow
| | 03:32 | and you do that by switching over to
the Appearance panel, which you can also
| | 03:36 | get by choosing Appearance from the Window menu.
[00:03:38.0]
Then click on stroke to make it active,
because we want to apply the drop shadow
| | 03:42 | to the stroke independently of the rest of the path.
Then go up to the Effect menu, choose Stylize, and choose Drop Shadow.
| | 03:49 | And I have dialed in some settings in advance.
The mode is set to Multiply as by default.
| | 03:53 | I have cranked up the Opacity to 100%.
X offset is 10 points, Y offset is 14 points, Blur is 10 points.
| | 04:00 | Go ahead and turn on the Preview check
box so we can see what it looks like, and
| | 04:05 | notice that the color is black.
| | 04:06 | So there we have a nice drop shadow,
I'll click OK and the drop shadow is being
| | 04:11 | cast by the stroke as if
it's a frame around the graphic.
| | 04:13 | Now I decided, I needed a little bit of a beveled edge.
Unfortunately, Illustrator does not provide a Bevel Effect.
| | 04:19 | However, it does offer an Inner Glow and
that's going to work out pretty well.
| | 04:22 | So I'll go up to Effect, choose
Stylize, and then choose Inner Glow.
| | 04:26 | Again, I've dialed in some settings here.
| | 04:28 | The mode is set to Screen and
the color is White, as by default.
| | 04:31 | I have cranked the Opacity up to a 100%.
| | 04:33 | Blur is set to 6 points, and Edge is
selected down below. That's also a default setting.
| | 04:39 | Now when you apply it, if
you preview the way I am,
| | 04:42 | you're going to be perhaps little
mystified by what in the world has happened.
| | 04:46 | Why is this so much smaller, this glow effect?
| | 04:48 | Well, it's because it's being heaped
on top of the drop shadow, which means I
| | 04:52 | will need to reverse the order of the effects.
I can do that after the fact, though.
| | 04:56 | So I'll click OK in order to assign
the Inner Glow, and then here inside the
| | 05:00 | Appearance panel, you want to take the
Inner Glow and drag it on top of the drop
| | 05:04 | shadow. And that's going to put it
where you expected it to be in the first
| | 05:07 | place without disturbing the drop shadow
at all, because after all, Inner Glow is
| | 05:12 | an inside effect and Drop Shadow is
an outside effect, so they're going in different directions.
| | 05:16 | All right, now let's address the text.
| | 05:18 | I'll click on the word SEA to select it.
| | 05:20 | Not sure if my fill is active anymore,
so go to the first swatch up here in
| | 05:24 | the Control panel and I'll change it to white
strokes, that most recent pattern that I created.
| | 05:30 | And now I'm going to have to duplicate
the Inner Glow and Drop Shadow effects.
| | 05:33 | The good news is I can do so pretty quickly.
| | 05:36 | For starters, I'll go up to the Effect
menu and just choose Apply Inner Glow,
| | 05:39 | that first command, because after all,
I know the Inner Glow needs to be applied
| | 05:43 | before the Drop Shadow. I just
learned that lesson a moment ago.
| | 05:46 | And now I'll go up to the Effect menu,
choose Stylize, and choose Drop Shadow.
| | 05:50 | And I'm seeing my last-applied effects,
100, 10, 14, 10, color is black, mode
| | 05:56 | is Multiply, turn on the Preview check box to
see what it looks like. It ends up looking great.
| | 06:00 | So I'll click OK in order to accept that effect.
| | 06:04 | And now I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or
Command+Shift+A on the Mac in order to deselect my artwork.
| | 06:08 | And that, friends, is how you apply
seamless patterns to both strokes and text,
| | 06:13 | here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Moving and transforming patterns| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
transform patterns, both along with their
| | 00:04 | objects and independently of their objects.
| | 00:06 | And the reason I want to do this is
because currently my patterns line up exactly;
| | 00:12 | every single one of the patterns is
aligned, which is great and everything
| | 00:16 | except it doesn't make any sense,
because really the pattern inside the fill
| | 00:20 | should be offset because the fill is
supposed to look like it's set in back of
| | 00:24 | the stroke and the text.
| | 00:26 | And this is more of the effect I'm going for.
| | 00:28 | So we have just a slight bit
of misalignment, as you can see.
| | 00:32 | That means I need to move that fill
independently of the rest of the rectangle.
| | 00:37 | So I will switch back to my
illustration so far and click on the rectangle in
| | 00:42 | order to select it, make sure to
click wide of the text so you don't end up
| | 00:46 | selecting the text instead.
| | 00:47 | Then go to the Appearance panel and
click on Fill to make it active, and then
| | 00:52 | you want to go up to the Effect menu
choose Distort & Transform, and choose
| | 00:56 | the Transform command.
| | 00:58 | And I decided that I wanted
to set both of the move values--
| | 01:00 | Horizontal and Vertical--to 3 points apiece.
| | 01:03 | Now I'll turn on the Preview check box
and I want you to watch very carefully.
| | 01:06 | You're going to see a series of
progress bars come by. Don't be distracted by
| | 01:10 | them; just watch the fill.
It didn't change at all.
| | 01:13 | So I failed to move the fill even
though we've seen this work a bunch of times
| | 01:18 | in previous chapters.
| | 01:19 | Here is the culprit.
| | 01:21 | Down here underneath Transform Objects,
we've got the Transform Patterns check
| | 01:25 | box, and in my case it's turned off.
| | 01:27 | What I want you to do, if you're
working along with me, is turn it on, and then
| | 01:31 | keep an eye out once again. Try to
ignore the progress bars onscreen and
| | 01:35 | you'll see a shift.
| | 01:36 | Did you see it right there? The fill
just shifted down and to the right, and that's
| | 01:40 | exactly what we want.
| | 01:41 | Now click OK, but before you do I
want to tell you, Transform Patterns is a
| | 01:45 | global setting. When you turn it on here
inside the Transform Effect dialog box
| | 01:49 | it not only sticks, but it sticks
elsewhere inside of the program as well,
| | 01:54 | including inside the Move dialog box,
inside the Scale dialog box, the Rotate
| | 01:58 | dialog box, and so forth.
| | 01:59 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and click OK in
order to accept that change, and that takes
| | 02:04 | care of the effect where the artwork
is concerned, but I just want to show you
| | 02:07 | what's going on under the hood here.
| | 02:09 | I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or
Command+Shift+A on the Mac to deselect my artwork
| | 02:12 | and then I'll press Ctrl+K or Command+K on a
Mac to bring up the Preferences dialog box.
| | 02:18 | And there's Transform Pattern Tiles.
It just got turned on because I turned it
| | 02:23 | on inside of the Transform Effect dialog box.
| | 02:26 | And as I say, that is a global check box.
| | 02:28 | So if I turn it off here, then it's
going to turn off inside the Transform
| | 02:33 | Effect dialog box as well.
| | 02:34 | I'll go ahead and click OK, and now
let's say I just decide to move my text to
| | 02:39 | a different location.
| | 02:40 | Like I'll just go ahead and set it
down here. And you can see that I did move
| | 02:44 | the text, but the pattern did not move
because that function has been turned off,
| | 02:49 | and as a result, all of the patterns
still align. At least the patterns inside
| | 02:53 | the text and inside the
stroke align with each other.
| | 02:57 | If I wanted to put that text back,
then I would double-click on the Selection
| | 03:01 | tool here in order to bring up the Move
dialog box, and I would change both the
| | 03:05 | Horizontal and Vertical values to
negative versions of themselves.
| | 03:10 | And by virtue of the fact that
Transform Patterns is turned off, we went ahead
| | 03:13 | and moved the text back into place, but we
didn't move the pattern so it remains aligned.
| | 03:18 | However, if you wanted to move the
pattern, you could turn on the Transform
| | 03:20 | Patterns check box like so, and you
can even, by the way--notice that move the
| | 03:25 | pattern along with the text,
so now it's out of alignment--
| | 03:28 | you can even turn Transform Objects off,
and transform just the patterns without
| | 03:34 | affecting the object at all, and that
goes for scaling and rotating and so forth.
| | 03:39 | In my case, however, I don't want this.
I just want to put the darn thing back.
| | 03:43 | So I'll go ahead and turn Transform
Objects back on, and I'll turn Transform
| | 03:47 | Patterns off, and then I'll click
OK in order to move the text without
| | 03:52 | moving the patterns.
| | 03:53 | All right, I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A,
Command+Shift+A on the Mac to deselect the
| | 03:56 | artwork, and that, folks, is how you
transform patterns independently or along
| | 04:01 | with text and path
outlines here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fixing problem legacy patterns| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to fix
problems associated with archival patterns,
| | 00:04 | in other words patterns that
you've created in previous versions of
| | 00:07 | Illustrator. And in my experience,
you're going to have to pretty much fix all
| | 00:11 | of your old patterns.
| | 00:13 | And let me show you what can go wrong here.
| | 00:15 | I am looking at a pattern in that I
showed how to create in my Illustrator CS5
| | 00:20 | One-on-One Advanced course.
| | 00:22 | And from this distance, everything
looks A-okay, but if I go ahead and zoom in on
| | 00:28 | this yellow guy right here--so I'll
zoom in on his hand and his face right
| | 00:32 | there--you can see that
the hand is out of alignment.
| | 00:35 | And if I zoom in further on the face,
you can see that it's out of alignment as well.
| | 00:39 | And this is happening over the course of
this pattern, and it is printing wrong as well.
| | 00:45 | So initially, when I ran into this
problem I was thinking, what did I do wrong?
| | 00:49 | I must have missed some big mistake.
| | 00:51 | And that wasn't it.
| | 00:52 | Everything was fine back in
Illustrator CS5; the problem just manifested
| | 00:57 | in Illustrator CS6.
| | 00:59 | And here's how to take care of it.
| | 01:00 | First of all, make sure nothing is
selected inside of your artwork, and then go
| | 01:03 | to the pattern inside the
Swatches panel and double-click on it.
| | 01:07 | And you'll get this warning, telling you
that a clipping mask was created around
| | 01:10 | the pattern to preserve its appearance.
| | 01:12 | Well, actually that
clipping mask is the problem.
| | 01:15 | That's what's messing things up.
| | 01:17 | So go ahead and click OK in
response to the alert message.
| | 01:20 | And you can close the Pattern
Options panel, because we don't need it.
| | 01:23 | Everything we need to do is
found inside the Layers panel.
| | 01:25 | So go ahead and twirl open the
Troglodytes item right there, and you're looking
| | 01:30 | for something that says Clipping Mask.
| | 01:33 | And this is just truncated right now,
but that's it, the object at the very top.
| | 01:37 | Everything else is a standard group,
as you can see going down the list.
| | 01:42 | So what you want to do is target
that clipping mask item right there.
| | 01:46 | And what it is--I'll go and twirl it open--
is a rectangular clipping mask with a
| | 01:51 | bunch of objects inside of it.
| | 01:53 | So you want to target the clipping
group itself and then go up to the Object
| | 01:58 | menu, choose Clipping Mask, and choose Release;
| | 02:02 | or you can press Ctrl+Alt+7 or
Command+Option+7 on the Mac, and that should take
| | 02:06 | care of the problem. You're not going to see any
shift here inside the Pattern Edit mode, because
| | 02:09 | we're not looking at the
right portion of the artwork.
| | 02:12 | Then you want to press
Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A on the Mac to deselect everything.
| | 02:17 | Then return to Layers panel and
you'll now see a transparent path.
| | 02:20 | It's going to be a rectangle.
It should be the top item there.
| | 02:23 | Go head and meatball it to select it
and press the backspace key or the Delete
| | 02:27 | key on the Mac to get rid of it and that's it.
| | 02:29 | Now if you press the Escape key,
you're going to update the pattern and you
| | 02:33 | may see a little bit of the seam
right there, but you won't see any
| | 02:36 | misalignment, and that seam
is just a screen-display issue.
| | 02:41 | If you print the artwork, it
should end up looking fine.
| | 02:44 | So that's how you fix problems with
archival patterns that you've created in
| | 02:48 | previous versions of Illustrator and
open wrong here inside of Illustrator CS6.
| | 02:53 | The culprit is the clipping mask.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
16. Align and DistributeHow alignment and distribution work| 00:00 | In this chapter, we'll look at
how to align and distribute objects.
| | 00:05 | To align objects is to arrange
them into even rows or columns;
| | 00:09 | to distribute objects is to space
them apart equidistant from each other.
| | 00:14 | Illustrator handles both operations in
very much the same way as other graphics
| | 00:18 | and design programs, with
two important exceptions.
| | 00:21 | One, if you want to align one object
to some others without the first object
| | 00:26 | moving, you need to make it a key
object by clicking on it a second time.
| | 00:31 | And two, you can distribute objects by a
specified amount of space, which changes
| | 00:36 | the positions of all selected objects.
| | 00:39 | Over the course of these movies, we'll
take this wildly disorganized collection
| | 00:43 | of objects and turn them
into this structured file.
| | 00:47 | And in the end, we'll add these
extruded edges to the boxes, as well as these
| | 00:51 | credible cast shadows.
| | 00:53 | Who would think Align and
Distribute could to be so cool?
| | 00:56 | You would, by the end of this chapter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Snapping one anchor point to another| 00:00 | Over the course of this chapter, we're
going to take these 16 squares, as well as
| | 00:05 | this text on the second artboard that
doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and
| | 00:08 | we're going to exploit
Illustrator's prodigious number of alignment and
| | 00:13 | distribution functions in order to
create this final organized piece of artwork.
| | 00:17 | And we're going to take it one step at a time,
because there's an awful lot going on here.
| | 00:22 | So I'll switch back to my starter art
and press Shift+Page Up in order to return
| | 00:26 | to the first artboard.
| | 00:28 | And the first thing that we're going to
in this movie is snap these four squares
| | 00:32 | right here in the center
into alignment with each other.
| | 00:35 | And the idea is that by default when
you drag one anchor point it will snap
| | 00:40 | into alignment with any stationary
anchor point in your illustration.
| | 00:44 | So I'll go head and click on
this beige square to select it.
| | 00:47 | And what I would like to do is drag
the shape by its corner point, because
| | 00:50 | after all, squares contain just four anchor
points and they are all located in the corners.
| | 00:54 | Problem is I've got the bounding box turned on.
| | 00:57 | And so, if I were to drag one of the
corners here, then I would end up scaling
| | 01:01 | the shape, which is not what I want to do.
| | 01:03 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on
the Mac, and then I'll go up to the View
| | 01:07 | menu and choose Hide Bounding Box or
press Ctrl+Shift+B or Command+Shift+B. And
| | 01:12 | that we will go ahead and
turn those bounding boxes off.
| | 01:15 | Now I can go ahead and drag
this shape by its corner point.
| | 01:19 | Now, if you want to take advantage of
snapping, there's a couple things to bear in mind.
| | 01:23 | Go up to the View menu, and
notice that I have Smart Guides off.
| | 01:26 | You can have them on, but I am going to
leave them off so we don't have a bunch of text flashing on screen.
| | 01:31 | But you definitely need to have the
Snap to point command turned on, down here
| | 01:35 | at the bottom of the menu. It's turned on by default and
there's really not any reason to turn it off inside Illustrator.
| | 01:42 | All right, so I'll go head and
Escape out, and notice what that does for me.
| | 01:46 | Now, I can drag this anchor point right
here and move the shape, and then as soon
| | 01:51 | as I encounter a stationary anchor
point in the illustration, such as the upper-
| | 01:54 | right corner point in this reddish
square, then I will snap into precise
| | 01:58 | alignment with an anchor point.
| | 02:00 | And you can see that you're snapping because
your arrowhead changes from black to white.
| | 02:04 | All right, now I'll do the
same thing with the other square.
| | 02:06 | So I'll go head and click on this
guy and then drag his lower-left corner
| | 02:11 | point until it snaps into alignment
with that same intersection, and now I will
| | 02:16 | grab this beige square and drag its
lower-right corner point until it snaps into alignment.
| | 02:21 | And because I saw that white arrowhead,
I know that these shapes are absolutely
| | 02:26 | adjacent to each other.
| | 02:27 | And that's how you take advantage of
the most basic form of alignment inside of
| | 02:31 | Illustrator: snapping to anchor points.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Aligning a group to the artboard| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
align a group of objects to the artboard.
| | 00:04 | So the idea is I want to take these
four squares that I have aligned to each
| | 00:07 | other and I want to set them at
the exact center of the artboard.
| | 00:12 | And that's something that you can do
automatically inside of Illustrator, and here's how.
| | 00:16 | I'll start by selecting all four squares.
| | 00:19 | Then I'll go up to the Align option up here
in the Control panel and I'll click on it.
| | 00:22 | And then I'll change this Align To
setting from Align to Selection, which is the
| | 00:27 | default, to Align to Artboard.
| | 00:30 | And that way we can align these objects
to the artboard, and then I can take
| | 00:34 | advantage of these Align Object
settings up here at the top of the panel.
| | 00:37 | So for example, if I can
click on Horizontal Align Center.
| | 00:41 | The problem is, that goes ahead aligns each one
of the squares to the center of the artboard.
| | 00:46 | And then if I click on Vertical Align
Center, then basically I make all of the
| | 00:52 | squares coincident, so they
are sitting right on top of each other.
| | 00:55 | Obviously, that's not what I want.
| | 00:57 | So I'll go head and press Ctrl+Z or
Command+Z on a Mac a couple times in order
| | 01:00 | to reinstate the squares'
original positions. Here is the deal:
| | 01:04 | anytime you want to retain the
relative positioning of a bunch of selected
| | 01:08 | objects, you have to first group them.
| | 01:10 | So I'll go out to the Object menu and
choose the Group command, or I can press Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac.
| | 01:17 | And now you'll see that there is no
word Align up here in the Control panel and
| | 01:20 | that's because this thing has
been set to Align to Artboard.
| | 01:24 | And as a result, I have direct access to
my Alignment options, so I can click on
| | 01:28 | Horizontal Align Center in order to
very slightly nudge those squares over to
| | 01:32 | the left in my case.
| | 01:33 | And then I'll click on Vertical Align
Center in order to drop the squares down.
| | 01:38 | And now the point at which all four
squares intersect with each other is aligned
| | 01:43 | to the very center of the artboard.
| | 01:46 | And that's how you group objects to
maintain their relative positions, as well as
| | 01:50 | align the group to the
artboard, here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Distributing objects across the artboard| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
distribute objects across the artwork.
| | 00:04 | Specifically, we will be distributing
the corner squares so that they exactly
| | 00:09 | align to the four squares in the center.
| | 00:11 | Now, I've set things up in advance
where this file is concerned, so that each
| | 00:15 | square mesh is exactly 160
points wide and 160 points tall.
| | 00:20 | Meanwhile, the artboard measures
640 points wide by 640 points tall.
| | 00:25 | And if you do the math, that means that
exactly 4 squares fit across the artboard.
| | 00:30 | So I am going to distribute these
corner squares by selecting the upper-left
| | 00:34 | square and then
Shift+Clicking on the lower-right square,
| | 00:38 | and finally, Shift+Clicking on the
central group of squares here with the Black
| | 00:42 | Arrow tool to select all three.
| | 00:44 | Then I'll go up to the Align option.
| | 00:46 | You want to confirm that Align To is
set to Align to Artboard, which we did
| | 00:51 | in the previous movie.
| | 00:52 | And then you want to click the
Vertical Distribute Center option, and next,
| | 00:57 | click on the Horizontal
Distributes Center option, and you'll end up
| | 01:00 | getting this effect here.
| | 01:02 | So it happens pretty darn easily.
| | 01:04 | Now I'll press the Escape key to
hide that panel, and I'll click on this
| | 01:07 | upper-right square to select it,
Shift+Click on lower-lift square, and then
| | 01:11 | Shift+Click on the group of
squares to select them as well.
| | 01:14 | And then I'll go back up to the Align
option, click on it, and click on those
| | 01:18 | exact same two options again--
Vertical Distributes Center and Horizontal
| | 01:23 | Distributes Center--in order
to achieve this final effect.
| | 01:27 | And again, this works out so beautifully,
because this artboard is designed to
| | 01:31 | specifically accommodate four squares.
| | 01:34 | But what if it's not?
| | 01:35 | What if I press Shift+O to switch to
the Artboard tool, down here near the
| | 01:39 | bottom of the toolbox,
| | 01:40 | and then I change the size of my
artboard, first by selecting the center
| | 01:44 | reference point right there, and then
I'll go ahead and change the Width and
| | 01:49 | Height values so that they're a hundred larger?
| | 01:51 | So instead of 640 points, I'll change
them each to 740 points, like so, and then
| | 01:57 | I'll press the Escape key in order
to exit the Artboard mode and return to
| | 02:00 | the Black Arrow key.
| | 02:02 | In this case, with these three objects
selected--two independent squares and the
| | 02:06 | group of squares in the center--if I
go up to Align--still set to Align to
| | 02:11 | Artboard of course--and I go ahead and
click on Vertical Distribute Center and
| | 02:15 | then Horizontal Distribute Center,
all end up achieving this effect here in
| | 02:20 | which the corner squares are shoved out
to the absolute corners of the artboard,
| | 02:25 | which is clearly not what I want.
| | 02:27 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z a
couple of times here in the PC, Command+Z on
| | 02:30 | the Mac in order to
reinstate the proper positions.
| | 02:34 | But what do I do if I am working
inside this kind of environment where the
| | 02:38 | artboard is just whatever size it
is and I still need to get all these
| | 02:42 | squares into place?
| | 02:43 | In that case, I align to a key
object, and I'll show you how to do that in
| | 02:47 | the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Aligning to a fixed "key" object| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
align and distribute selected objects
| | 00:04 | based on the relative position of
those objects, as well as the absolute
| | 00:08 | position of a key object.
| | 00:10 | And this is the kind of thing
you'll be doing a lot inside Illustrator.
| | 00:14 | And it works a lot different
than it does inside other programs.
| | 00:17 | So I'm going to start by pressing Ctrl+0 or
Command+0 on the Mac to zoom out a little bit.
| | 00:22 | Obviously, I need to get all of these
side squares as well as the squares along
| | 00:26 | the top and the bottom into position.
| | 00:28 | So I'm going to start by marqueeing
this right-hand column of squares using
| | 00:32 | the Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:34 | And I'm going to bring up my Align
panel by going up to the Window menu and
| | 00:38 | choosing the Align Command.
| | 00:40 | It also has a keyboard shortcut of
Shift+F7, and that brings the panel up on the
| | 00:44 | right-hand side of the screen, at least for me.
| | 00:46 | And the first thing I'll do is I'll
distribute these objects, and I want to
| | 00:51 | distribute them vertically, but I also
want to make sure that I'm distributing
| | 00:55 | those objects with reference to each
other, because if I leave Align to Artboard
| | 00:59 | turned on, then I'll end up getting this
effect here, which is not what I want.
| | 01:03 | So I'll go and press Ctrl+Z or
Command+Z on the Mac to undo that change, and
| | 01:07 | I'll change Align To, to Align to
Selection. Then I'll click on Vertical
| | 01:12 | Distribute Center again, and I'll
end up getting the right effect.
| | 01:15 | Now in this case I've got two squares
over here on the left-hand side that are
| | 01:19 | in their proper positions and then two
squares over on the right that are not in
| | 01:23 | their proper positions.
| | 01:24 | So I can go ahead and click Horizontal
Align Left in order to arrange them all
| | 01:29 | into alignment with the squares that
are farthest to the left, so this ends out
| | 01:34 | working out beautifully.
| | 01:35 | Now I'll select this left-hand column
of squares by marqueeing with the Black
| | 01:39 | Arrow tool, and I'll go ahead and
click on Vertical Distribute Centers once
| | 01:42 | again, and then I'll click on
Horizontal Align Right, and I'll end up
| | 01:48 | achieving this effect here.
| | 01:49 | All right, now let's try out the
bottom row of squares, I'll go ahead and
| | 01:52 | marquee across them.
| | 01:53 | The two squares up at the
top are properly aligned.
| | 01:56 | The squares that are farther
down aren't aligned properly.
| | 01:59 | So I'll start off by clicking on
Horizontal Distribute Center in order to
| | 02:04 | distribute the squares the way they
need to be, and then I'll click on Vertical
| | 02:07 | Align Top in order to snap
all the squares into alignment.
| | 02:11 | So, so far, I've been able to get away
with aligning and distributing with
| | 02:15 | respect to the relative position of
the squares, but that's not going to pan
| | 02:20 | out for this top row.
| | 02:21 | I'll go ahead and select
them, and I'll show you why.
| | 02:24 | I can go ahead and click on
Horizontal Distribute Center in order to
| | 02:28 | distribute the objects; that's no problem.
| | 02:30 | But the bottommost square is out of
alignment, and the topmost square is out of
| | 02:34 | alignment as well, so I can't take
advantage of either Vertical Align Top--
| | 02:38 | that's going to make a mess of things--
| | 02:40 | or if I click on Vertical Align Bottom,
that's also going to mess things up.
| | 02:44 | And who knows what's going to happen
with Vertical Align Center because that's
| | 02:48 | going to average to the
position of these squares.
| | 02:51 | Instead, what I need to do is identify
a key object so that I can align to an
| | 02:57 | object that's already properly aligned.
| | 02:59 | You do that by clicking on that
object that's already selected, so when you
| | 03:04 | click a second time on a selected
object, you don't Shift+Click because that
| | 03:08 | will deselect the object.
| | 03:09 | You don't press any keys at
all; you just click on it.
| | 03:11 | Then you'll get a heavy outline around
that key object, and you'll also see that
| | 03:16 | Align To automatically switches to show
a little key in its icon, and it's also
| | 03:21 | telling me that I'm going to align to
that key object. And now I can click on
| | 03:25 | any of these vertical align options,
any one of them will do, and I'll end up
| | 03:30 | achieving the proper effect.
| | 03:32 | So just remember, anytime you click on
a selected object, that's going to give
| | 03:36 | it a heavy outline and it's going to
become the key object for alignment and
| | 03:40 | distribution purposes.
| | 03:42 | If you don't want it to have the heavy
outline and you no longer want it to be
| | 03:45 | the key object, you just click on that
object again and the heavy outline goes away.
| | 03:50 | And that's how you align and
distribute selected objects according to their
| | 03:54 | relative positions, as well as the
absolute position of a key object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Distributing by a specified amount of space| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to
distribute objects so that there's a
| | 00:03 | specified amount of space
between each selected object.
| | 00:07 | For example, I want my
squares spaced the way that you see them here,
| | 00:10 | so that we have an even amount of
space around all the squares--above, below,
| | 00:15 | and on either side of the artboard--as
well as between the columns of squares,
| | 00:20 | and between the rows of squares as well.
| | 00:23 | So if you count things up, just by row
for example, we've got one space up at
| | 00:27 | the top, three more spaces in between
the rows of squares, and then a fifth
| | 00:32 | space down here at the bottom.
| | 00:33 | Now I've taken my artboard and made it
100 points wider than it was before, as
| | 00:38 | well as 100 points taller, and if you
divide 100 by 5, you end up getting 20.
| | 00:43 | So I need to space these guys
20 points apart from each other.
| | 00:46 | So I'll start things off by selecting
all the squares, and I can do that by
| | 00:50 | going up to the Select menu > All on
Active Artwork, or pressing Ctrl+Alt+A or
| | 00:55 | Command+Option+A on a Mac.
| | 00:57 | Now I am going to zoom out a little bit
here, and I'll press Ctrl+U or Command+U
| | 01:02 | on the Mac in order to turn on my
Smart Guides. And then I'll drag this top
| | 01:06 | square here by its upper-left point
until its snaps into alignment with the
| | 01:10 | upper-left corner of artboard.
| | 01:12 | Then, assuming that you haven't changed
your keyboard increments, and if you want
| | 01:16 | to check that, press
Ctrl+K or Command+K on the Mac.
| | 01:19 | Keyboard Increment value should be set
to 1 point; if it is, go ahead and click
| | 01:23 | Cancel in order to Escape out.
| | 01:25 | And then press Shift+Down arrow twice
and Shift+Right arrow twice as well in
| | 01:30 | order to space all the squares
20 points down and 20 points to the left of the
| | 01:35 | far edge of that artboard.
| | 01:36 | All right, now I am going to press
Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on a Mac to zoom back in.
| | 01:39 | Now what I want to do at this point
is bring up my Align panel, which is
| | 01:43 | located over here, and you can also
choose the Align Command from the Window menu.
| | 01:47 | And I want to take advantage of
this Distribute Spacing option right here,
| | 01:51 | but in order for these options to be
available, you have to have selected a key object.
| | 01:55 | So I'll go ahead and click a second
time here on the one square that's in a
| | 01:59 | proper position, which that upper-
left square and then Distribute Spacing
| | 02:02 | becomes available to me. And notice that
a set the value to 20 points in advance.
| | 02:08 | If you're working along with
me, you should do that as well.
| | 02:10 | Now I want to go ahead and
horizontally distribute my squares,
| | 02:12 | so I'll click on this Horizontal Distribute
Space icon and I end up getting an absolute mess.
| | 02:18 | And the problem is--I'll zoom out so
that you can see more of the squares here--
| | 02:23 | Illustrator is trying to distribute
every single one of squares independently
| | 02:26 | with the exception of the four
squares that are grouped together.
| | 02:29 | So we need to group these objects
into rows and columns in order to
| | 02:33 | properly distribute them.
| | 02:34 | So I'll once again press Ctrl+O or
Command+O on a Mac and I'll press Ctrl+Z or
| | 02:39 | Command+Z on the Mac to undo that horribleness.
| | 02:41 | I need to ungroup these guys in the center here,
| | 02:43 | so I'll just go up to the Object
menu with everything selected and choose
| | 02:46 | Ungroup, or I could press Ctrl+Shift+G.
And you can choose that command even when
| | 02:51 | some of the objects that are
selected are not grouped together.
| | 02:54 | So Illustrator will just ignore
the ungrouped objects and then it will go
| | 02:58 | ahead and ungroup the grouped objects.
| | 03:00 | All right, now let's start off by
grouping the columns, so I will marquee
| | 03:03 | partially round the left column of
squares, and I'll press Ctrl+G or Command+G on
| | 03:07 | the Mac to group them.
| | 03:09 | Then I will marquee to next column
press Ctrl+G or Command+G to group them,
| | 03:12 | select that third column and press
Ctrl+G or Command+G to group them, and
| | 03:16 | then finally, select for column and press
Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac to group those guys.
| | 03:21 | Then I'll press Ctrl+Alt+A or
Command+Option+A on the Mac to select all the
| | 03:25 | squares on this artboard, and I'll go
ahead and click on this left-hand column of
| | 03:30 | squares in order to identify
this first group as the key object.
| | 03:34 | Then when I click on Horizontal
Distribute Space, I get the exact effect I was
| | 03:39 | hoping for and we now have 20,points at
the left side, 20,points over here on the
| | 03:44 | right-hand side and 20 points
between each column of squares.
| | 03:47 | All right, now I'll press
Ctrl+Shift+G or Command+Shift+G on a Mac to
| | 03:52 | ungroup all the squares.
| | 03:53 | Notice that gets rid of my key object.
And now I've got to group all the squares by row.
| | 03:57 | So I'll go ahead and marquee across the
top row press Ctrl+G, Command+G on the
| | 04:01 | Mac to group them; second row, go ahead
and group those; third row, group them;
| | 04:05 | and fourth row, go ahead
and group those guys as well.
| | 04:08 | So obviously I am pressing Ctrl+G or
Command+G on the Mac over and over again there.
| | 04:13 | Now I'll press Ctrl+Alt+A or
Command+Option+A on the Mac to select all the rows
| | 04:17 | of squares, and I'll go ahead and
identify the top row by clicking on it, but I
| | 04:22 | do want you to see something here.
| | 04:24 | You can just go ahead and select,
from this little Align to pop up menu, you
| | 04:28 | can select Align to Key Object, and that
tells Illustrator to go ahead and select
| | 04:33 | any old key object for you.
| | 04:35 | So it just makes one up.
| | 04:36 | In my case it decided the
bottom row would work great.
| | 04:38 | That's not what I want at all so I'll
click on the top row instead and notice
| | 04:42 | that does two things:
| | 04:43 | it identifies the top row as the key
object and it turns off the bottom row.
| | 04:48 | Now with my spacing value still set to
20 points, I'll click on this first icon,
| | 04:52 | Vertical Distribute Space, and I
end up achieving this effect here.
| | 04:56 | All right, I'll go ahead and hide the
Align panel and press Ctrl+Shift+A or
| | 05:00 | Command+Shift+A on a Mac in
order to deselect everything.
| | 05:03 | And that is how you distribute objects
according to a specified amount of space,
| | 05:08 | here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Align options to move objects| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
use the alignment functions as precise
| | 00:04 | positioning options.
| | 00:06 | So the idea is this.
| | 00:07 | I am going to press Shift+Tab to hide
the right-side panels, and then I'll press
| | 00:10 | Ctrl+Alt+0 or Command+Option+0
on the Mac to center my artboards.
| | 00:13 | What we're going to do is we are
going to move every single one of the 16
| | 00:17 | letters into position and we are going to
do so exclusively using the Align panel.
| | 00:23 | We are not going to drag a single one of them.
| | 00:25 | Now, the thing you should know about these
letters is they're all grouped together.
| | 00:29 | So they're actually a color path on the
inside of the letter and then the black
| | 00:33 | path around the letter,
and they're all grouped together.
| | 00:36 | And they were created, by the way, using
a font called Rosewood, but I've gone
| | 00:39 | ahead and converted all
the letters to path outlines.
| | 00:42 | So the first thing we need to do
is select the upper-left square.
| | 00:45 | Unfortunately, it's part of a group of
squares here, so I need to ungroup them
| | 00:49 | by pressing Ctrl+Alt+A or
Command+Option+A on the Mac to select all the
| | 00:53 | squares, and then I'll press
Ctrl+Shift+G or Command+Shift+G on the Mac in
| | 00:57 | order to ungroup them.
| | 00:58 | I'll click off the paths and then click
on the upper-left square to make it active.
| | 01:02 | The purple 3 there belongs in that
square, so I'll Shift+Click on it to select
| | 01:06 | it as well, and then I'll click on that
square again to make it the key object.
| | 01:09 | Now I want to keep my Align panel up onscreen,
| | 01:12 | so I'll go up to the Window menu and
choose the Align command, and then I'll
| | 01:16 | bring it back over here in the right-
hand side of the screen, and then I'll go
| | 01:18 | ahead and click Horizontal Align Center
and Vertical Align Center in order to put that 3 into place.
| | 01:24 | All right, now let's position the red
E, which is the final letter, inside the last of the squares.
| | 01:30 | So I'll Shift+Click on that bottom-left
square, and then I'll click on it again
| | 01:34 | to make it the key object and click
on each one of the Horizontal Alignment
| | 01:37 | icons to put that E in place.
| | 01:39 | Now, in order to work as efficiently as
possible here, we need to get letters
| | 01:43 | into the other rows and columns.
| | 01:45 | This brownish E right there
belongs inside this square.
| | 01:49 | And then either one of the blue Bs--your
choice--belongs inside this square right here.
| | 01:54 | And here's how I am going to make it happen.
| | 01:56 | I'll select the 3 and then go ahead and
select the brown E and one of the blue Bs.
| | 02:01 | I'll click on the 3 again
to make it the key object.
| | 02:04 | Then I'll click on Horizontal Align
Left in order to scoot those letters over.
| | 02:08 | Now I click on the 3 in order to
turn it off as a key object, and I'll
| | 02:13 | Shift+Click on the red E in
order to select it as well.
| | 02:16 | So we have all the letters in this left-
hand artboard selected, but none of them
| | 02:19 | are a key object, and that's because we want to
distribute their relative positions by clicking on Vertical Distribute Center.
| | 02:26 | Very important, by the way, that
Align the Selection is turned on here.
| | 02:29 | Then, you want to click on Horizontal
Distribute centers in order to put those
| | 02:33 | letters in the proper place.
| | 02:35 | All right, now we are going to arrange
the letters into rows, and I'll do that
| | 02:40 | by selecting all the
letters that have the same colors.
| | 02:43 | Now, unfortunately, when you click on
one of these letters, because it's a
| | 02:46 | group and it has different attributes,
you're not going to be able to take
| | 02:49 | advantage of Select Similar Objects,
because Illustrator can't identify any
| | 02:54 | that are exactly the same.
| | 02:55 | So instead, I'll go ahead and
Shift+Marquee these numbers like so.
| | 02:59 | So all the numbers are selected.
| | 03:00 | I'll click on the 3 to make it the
active object, and then I'll click on
| | 03:04 | Vertical Align Center in order
to move those letters upward.
| | 03:07 | I know this seems like a random, weird
approach, but it's going to work beautifully.
| | 03:11 | Now I will select all the brown letters,
including the E, the T, and the S, and the W here.
| | 03:16 | I'll click on the E to make it the key
object, and then I'll click on Vertical
| | 03:19 | Align Center to align those guys, like so.
| | 03:22 | I'll select the blue B inside of the
square, and then I will go ahead and select
| | 03:27 | the other blue letters, click on the
blue B again in order to make it the key
| | 03:31 | object, click on that exact
same icon, Vertical Align Center.
| | 03:34 | Then finally, I've got to hide the
Align panel for a moment because the N
| | 03:38 | is hidden behind it.
| | 03:39 | So I'll select the N, as well as the L
and the A and the red E, and then I'll
| | 03:44 | click on the red E again in
order to make it the key object.
| | 03:47 | I'll bring back my Align panel and
I'll click on Vertical Align Center.
| | 03:51 | All right, now we've got everybody
organized into the proper rows. Let's put
| | 03:55 | them in columns. And this part I
think is going to blow you away,
| | 03:58 | at least this first step.
| | 04:00 | I'll go ahead and select the brownish W,
as well as the purple 3 up here in the
| | 04:05 | upper left-hand corner, and the blue A,
which is sitting on top of the blue B in
| | 04:09 | my case, as well as the red L.
| | 04:12 | So the red L, the blue A, the brown W,
and the purple 3 should all be selected.
| | 04:18 | Then click on the purple 3 to make it
the key object and click on Horizontal
| | 04:22 | Align Center in order to
align everybody into a column.
| | 04:25 | So you can see how amazingly
powerful these key objects can be.
| | 04:30 | All right, next I'll go ahead and grab
the 1, and I'll select the brownish E as
| | 04:35 | well as the other blue B over here
in the second artboard, and the red A.
| | 04:40 | Then I'll click on the brown E to
make it the key object, and I'll click on
| | 04:44 | Horizontal Align Center to
create that second column.
| | 04:47 | Then I'll select the other blue B, the
one in the third column, as well as the
| | 04:50 | brown S, the purple 0, and the red N.
And then I'll click on that blue B again
| | 04:56 | to make it the key object, and I'll
click on Horizontal Align Center of course,
| | 05:01 | in order to create the third column.
| | 05:03 | And now for the fourth column,
I'll select the red E and then I'll just
| | 05:06 | Shift+Marquee around the other letters
in the second artboard, and I'll click on
| | 05:09 | that red E again to make it the key
object, and then I'll click on Horizontal
| | 05:13 | Align Center in order to create that final call.
| | 05:17 | All right, I am going to go ahead and
hide the Align panel and press Shift+O in
| | 05:21 | order to switch to the Artboard tool,
and then I'll click on the second artboard
| | 05:24 | to make it active, and I will press the
Backspace key or the Delete key on the
| | 05:27 | Mac to get rid of it. We don't need it anymore.
| | 05:29 | Then I'll press Shift+Tab to bring back
my right-side panels and I'll press the
| | 05:33 | Escape key in order to exit the Artboard mode.
There you have it, folks!
| | 05:38 | That is how you can use key
objects, along with the Alignment and
| | 05:42 | Distribution functions, in order to
precisely position entire groups of
| | 05:46 | objects here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding an extruded edge effect| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
make the squares match the text so that
| | 00:04 | they have both strokes, as you see
here, as well as these extruded edges.
| | 00:09 | While this technique doesn't
specifically have anything to do with alignment,
| | 00:13 | it is really cool. I think you are
going to like it. And it is going to throw
| | 00:16 | off the alignment of our artwork in a way
that we'll have to remedy in the next movie.
| | 00:20 | So I'll go ahead and switch over to my
artwork in progress here, and I'll select
| | 00:24 | one of the reddish squares. Then I'll go up to the Select
Similar Objects icon and click on it, and
| | 00:29 | assuming that the attribute is set to
All, as it is by default, then you'll end
| | 00:34 | up selecting all the reddish squares.
| | 00:36 | Now switch over to the Appearance
panel, which you can get to by choosing
| | 00:40 | Appearance from the Window menu.
| | 00:42 | I'm going to change the Stroke from None to
this rich black that I've created in advance.
| | 00:47 | I'll also increase the Line Weight
value to 3 points, and I'll click on the word
| | 00:51 | Stroke and move the stroke to the
inside, by clicking on Align Stroke to Inside,
| | 00:57 | here inside the Stroke panel.
| | 00:58 | All right, now click on the fill to
make it active, and I'm going to add a new
| | 01:01 | fill by clicking on the second icon
down here in the bottom-left corner of the Appearance panel.
| | 01:07 | I'll select that rear fill and I'll
change it from Terra cotta to Rich black.
| | 01:13 | Now we're not seeing it because
it's hidden by the Terra cotta fill.
| | 01:16 | But we are going to see it in just a
moment when we apply the Transform effect.
| | 01:20 | So make sure the Black fill is active.
| | 01:22 | Then go up to the Effect menu,
choose Distort & Transform, and choose the
| | 01:25 | Transform command, and then change
the Move values--both Horizontal and
| | 01:31 | Vertical--to 0.1 points, so, very small movement here.
| | 01:36 | And I'm going to change
the number of copies to 80.
| | 01:38 | If you do the math, 80 copies moving 0.1
points at a time makes up for a total of 8 points.
| | 01:45 | I'll turn on the Preview check box.
| | 01:47 | You'll see those extruded edges appear.
| | 01:49 | Now I'll go ahead and click OK
in order to accept that effect.
| | 01:53 | Now the thing to note is
this isn't a true extrusion.
| | 01:55 | After all, if I go ahead and press the
Ctrl and Spacebar keys--that would be
| | 02:00 | Command and Spacebar on a Mac--and
marquee around this little area here, you can
| | 02:04 | see that we've got a ton of little sort
of jagged edges going on, because there's
| | 02:08 | 80 black squares being drawn
in back of the selected shapes.
| | 02:12 | However, you have to bear in mind that
each one of these little jagged edges
| | 02:17 | is 1/720th of an inch, so, very, very tiny.
| | 02:22 | In other words, it's doubtful that any
printer is going to be able to render it out.
| | 02:26 | So it should end up looking really great,
and certainly the prints I did came out very nicely.
| | 02:30 | All right, now let's go ahead and
copy those settings to the beige squares.
| | 02:33 | So I'll click on one of the beige
squares to select it, and then I'll press the
| | 02:37 | I key to get the Eyedropper tool.
| | 02:39 | If you've been working along with me
throughout the other chapters, then you've
| | 02:42 | got the eyedropper set to
lift appearance attributes.
| | 02:45 | But if you want to check just to make
sure, then double-click on the Eyedropper
| | 02:49 | tool icon there in the toolbox and
make sure that Appearance is checked.
| | 02:53 | In my case, Character Style and
Paragraph Style are deselected.
| | 02:56 | That doesn't really matter.
| | 02:57 | So I'll just go ahead and cancel out here.
| | 03:00 | Then I'll click on any one of those Terra
cotta squares in order to lift its attributes.
| | 03:05 | I don't want the Terra cotta color,
| | 03:06 | so I'll go ahead and click on this
first fill on the Appearance panel and I'll
| | 03:10 | change it from Terra cotta to Burlywood,
which is the name of my beige. All right!
| | 03:15 | Now we want to copy those
attributes to all the other beige squares,
| | 03:20 | so I'll press and hold the Ctrl key or
the Command key on the Mac in order to
| | 03:23 | temporarily get my Black Arrow tool,
and then I'll go ahead and select one of
| | 03:27 | those squares like so.
| | 03:28 | Then I'll go back to Select Similar
Objects up here in the Control panel and
| | 03:32 | click on it, and that's going to
select all the beige squares except for the
| | 03:34 | one behind the T, and now I'll go ahead
and click on that T square in order to
| | 03:39 | lift its attributes.
| | 03:41 | All right, now I'll press the V key to
switch back to the Black Arrow tool and
| | 03:44 | click off the objects to deselect them.
| | 03:46 | Now the thing about these extruded
edges is that they've thrown off the symmetry of my artwork.
| | 03:51 | So where I have 20 points over on the
left-hand side of the artwork, I only have
| | 03:55 | 20 minus 8 points, so 12 points' worth
of room over here on the right-hand side.
| | 04:00 | So if we're interested in keeping things
symmetrical, we need to expand the artboard.
| | 04:04 | So I'll press Shift+O to switch to the
Artboard tool and then I'll select the
| | 04:08 | upper-left reference point this time
around because I don't want that to move,
| | 04:11 | and I'll add 8 to each of these values.
| | 04:14 | So I'll change the Width value to 748 and
I'll change the height value to 748 as well.
| | 04:19 | Then I'll press Ctrl+0 or Command+0
on the Mac just to back out slightly, so
| | 04:22 | I can see the entire artboard, and I'll
press the Escape key to exit the Artboard mode.
| | 04:28 | All right, now I want to fill in
this area that's currently white with a little bit of color.
| | 04:31 | So I'll switch to my Rectangle tool,
which I can get by pressing the M key.
| | 04:35 | My Smart Guides are still turned on.
| | 04:37 | So I'm going to click at the absolute
upper-left corner of the artboard in order
| | 04:42 | to bring up the Rectangle dialog box.
| | 04:44 | Then I'll change both of
these values to 748 points.
| | 04:46 | I just happen to know that's how big
the artboard is because I just saw those
| | 04:50 | values a moment ago and now click OK.
| | 04:53 | Now I don't want to have a stroke, so
I'll change the Stroke setting up here in
| | 04:57 | the Control panel to None, and then
I'll change the Fill as well to this final
| | 05:01 | guy, Whetstone, in order to add just a
little bit of gray, as you can see there.
| | 05:04 | I'll press Ctrl+Shift+Left bracket or
Command+Shift+Left bracket on the Mac in
| | 05:09 | order to send that shape to the
back, and I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or
| | 05:13 | Command+Shift+A on the Mac to deselect it.
| | 05:15 | Now, everything is looking
pretty darn good, with one exception.
| | 05:19 | The letters, if you take a close look, they no
longer appear centered inside of their squares.
| | 05:25 | They need to be nudged into
different positions, as you see in this final
| | 05:29 | version of the artwork.
| | 05:31 | But I need to figure out
exactly what that position is.
| | 05:34 | Where is the center of the back of these
letters, so I can align it to the center
| | 05:39 | of the faces of the squares?
| | 05:41 | And I'll show you how to
calculate that exactly in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Optically aligning objects| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
optically align objects in the Illustrator,
| | 00:04 | both automatically--with the help
of the Align panel--and subjectively.
| | 00:08 | So the thing is, ever since we've added
these extruded edges to the squares, the
| | 00:12 | letters no longer appear centered.
| | 00:14 | They need to be scooted up and
to the left, as in the case of this
| | 00:17 | final arrangement here.
| | 00:19 | So what we need to do is find out the
size of the back of one of these letters.
| | 00:24 | So I'll switch over to my illustration
in progress, and then I am going to zoom
| | 00:28 | in on the lower-right E, because it
probably does the best job of describing
| | 00:34 | where the letters need to be.
| | 00:35 | And it's got a simple back.
| | 00:37 | We can actually define it using
a rectangle. And here is how.
| | 00:40 | I'll go ahead and switch to the
Rectangle tool, which I can get by pressing the
| | 00:44 | M key. Then I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on
the Mac in order to switch to the Outline mode.
| | 00:49 | You want to make sure that your Smart
Guides are turned on, as they are in my
| | 00:52 | case, and then drag from the top-right
anchor point of the E down to the lower-
| | 00:58 | left anchor point--that
is, at the back of the E.
| | 01:01 | So this is the size of the back of the letter.
| | 01:04 | All right, now what we want to do is align
this rectangle to the square in back of it.
| | 01:09 | So I'll press the V key to switch to my Black
Arrow tool and I'll Shift+Click on the rectangle.
| | 01:14 | Then I'll go ahead and click on it
again to make it the key object.
| | 01:18 | Now I'll go up to the Align panel
and select both Vertical Align Center
| | 01:22 | and Horizontal Align Center in order to
move that rectangle into the better position.
| | 01:27 | And you know, I am going to do one more thing.
| | 01:28 | I am going to switch to the Layers
panel, and I am going to drag to selected
| | 01:32 | rectangle, as indicated by the little
red square, down onto the checkers layer
| | 01:37 | just so that it's in back of the type.
| | 01:39 | Now I'll press Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on
the Mac to zoom out and I'll press Ctrl+Y
| | 01:44 | or Command+Y on the Mac to
switch back to the Preview mode.
| | 01:47 | Now click off the shapes to deselect
them, and I'll click in the upper-right
| | 01:50 | corner of the letters layer in
order to select all the letters.
| | 01:54 | And now I need to move them so that they
snap into alignment with that rectangle.
| | 01:58 | And I am actually going to zoom in,
just so I am making sure I am doing a good job.
| | 02:01 | And I'll go head and drag this point
until it snaps into alignment right there.
| | 02:08 | And so now the E is sitting directly on that
white rectangle I created just a moment go.
| | 02:12 | I don't need the rectangle anymore, so
I'll go and click on it to select it and
| | 02:16 | then press Backspace key or the Delete
key on the Mac in order to get rid of it.
| | 02:19 | All right, now press Ctrl+0 or
Command+0 on the Mac in order to zoom out.
| | 02:23 | Now technically, the letters are centered.
At least the back of the letters are centered on the squares.
| | 02:29 | But they look to me to be a little bit
too high, and you can make these sorts of
| | 02:34 | subjective decisions anytime you like.
| | 02:35 | I am just going to scoot them down
here by selecting over letters. Once again,
| | 02:39 | you do that by clicking in the
upper-right corner of that letters layer, there
| | 02:43 | inside the Layers panel, and then I'll
press the down arrow key just twice in
| | 02:48 | order to nudge shows letters down so
that we have a little bit of headroom
| | 02:51 | between the letters and the top of the squares.
| | 02:54 | And that's how you optically align
objects, both precisely--with the help of the
| | 02:58 | Align panel--and
subjectively, here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a credible 3D cast shadow| 00:00 | Now I just know there's somebody out
there who's thinking, "You know what would
| | 00:04 | really make this artwork great is if
the letters were casting shadows, as in the
| | 00:08 | case of this artwork here."
| | 00:10 | And so I am going to show
you how to make this effect.
| | 00:12 | It's pretty tough actually;
it takes a little bit of work.
| | 00:16 | But in the end I think it's worth it.
So here is the tough part:
[00:00:18.9/2]
we need to select the
interiors of all these darn letters.
| | 00:22 | So I am going to grab the White Arrow
tool, which I can get by pressing the A
| | 00:25 | key, and I'll click inside the number 3 there.
| | 00:28 | I want to make sure I am selecting
just a purple 3 and nothing more,
| | 00:31 | and then go up to Select Similar
Objects and click on it in order to select all the purple numbers.
| | 00:38 | And now press Ctrl+C or Command+C on the
Mac to copy them, click off the numbers
| | 00:42 | to deselect them and press Ctrl+F, or
Command+F on the Mac, in order to paste them
| | 00:47 | into place. And just so that we can
easily select them later, press Ctrl+G or
| | 00:51 | Command+G on the Mac in
order to group them together.
| | 00:54 | Now we're going to do that same thing
for each one of the other colored letters.
| | 00:58 | So click inside the W to select it,
click on Select Similar Objects, press Ctrl+C
| | 01:04 | or Command+C on a Mac in order to
copy the paths, click off from them to
| | 01:08 | deselect them, press Ctrl+F or
Command+F on the Mac in order to paste them in
| | 01:12 | front, and then press Ctrl+G.
Then click inside the blue A to select it.
| | 01:16 | Click on the Select Similar Objects icon,
press Ctrl+C or Command+C on the Mac
| | 01:20 | to copy, click off the letters, press
Ctrl+F or Command+F, and then press Ctrl+G
| | 01:25 | or Command+G. Finally, click inside
the red L, go ahead and click on Select
| | 01:30 | Similar Objects to grab all the red letters,
press Ctrl+C, Command+C on the Mac in order to copy.
| | 01:35 | Click off the paths in order to
deselect them, press Ctrl+F or Command+F on the
| | 01:40 | Mac, and then Ctrl+G or Command+G on the Mac.
| | 01:43 | All right, now let's select all
these guys by Shift+Clicking on the other
| | 01:48 | three sets of groups
| | 01:50 | so you have all the colored letters
selected, and then press Ctrl+Shift+G or
| | 01:55 | Command+Shift+G to ungroup everything.
| | 01:57 | Now at this point, you want to be
very careful that you don't click off the
| | 01:59 | letters, because it's a pain
in the neck to reselect them.
| | 02:03 | Then go up to the Control panel
here and change the Stroke to None.
| | 02:07 | We don't need those strokes and then
change the Fill Color to Rich black.
| | 02:11 | Now what I suggest you do at this point
is go ahead and save out your selection,
| | 02:14 | just in case you accidentally deselect
it later or whatever, by going up to the
| | 02:20 | Select menu and choosing
the Save Selection command.
| | 02:23 | And I am going to call this selection
originals, because in just a moment we're
| | 02:28 | going to create copies of them and we're
going to get rid of the originals. So click OK.
| | 02:33 | Now, the weird thing about this font,
Rosewood, is that of course it was designed
| | 02:38 | aesthetically and subjectively as well,
to make it look like the letters are
| | 02:41 | kind of rounding off as they expand.
| | 02:44 | So they actually get bigger toward their backs.
| | 02:46 | So we need to make these faces bigger
here by going up to the Object menu,
| | 02:51 | choosing Path, and choosing Offset Path.
| | 02:54 | And the value I came up with, where
this type is concerned, is an Offset of 2
| | 02:59 | points, and that's it.
| | 03:00 | You can turn on the Preview check box,
and you'll see that the paths get slightly
| | 03:03 | bigger, as if you're adding
strokes to them. Then click OK.
| | 03:07 | Now then, we have new paths selected
here. I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on
| | 03:13 | the Mac to show you that in addition to our
new paths, we've got the old paths left over.
| | 03:19 | So let's go ahead and save out what
we've created so far by going up to the
| | 03:23 | Select menu and choosing
Save Selection once again.
| | 03:26 | And I'll call this guy type
shadows and then click OK.
| | 03:30 | And then I'll go back to the Select
menu and choose originals at the bottom of
| | 03:35 | the menu, in order to select those
original paths, and now let's just get rid of
| | 03:39 | them by pressing the Backspace
key or the Delete key on the Mac.
| | 03:43 | And finally, what you want to do is go
back up to the Select menu and choose
| | 03:47 | type shadows again in order to select
those new offset paths you've created.
| | 03:52 | Now you may be kind of scratching your
head this whole time wondering why I am
| | 03:56 | making these things. Here is the deal.
| | 03:58 | If you were to try to use the big path
outline to cast a shadow, it would be way too big.
| | 04:04 | You would be casting the shadow not
just from the back of the letter but from
| | 04:08 | the top face of the letter too,
which wouldn't make any sense.
| | 04:11 | We just want to cast it from the back,
and this thing is going to serve as the back.
| | 04:16 | What we want to do is go to the 1--it's
the most representative number for this--
| | 04:21 | and drag the lower-right anchor point
down and to the right until it snaps into
| | 04:26 | alignment with the bottom-right
corner of that letter, like so.
| | 04:30 | And then press Ctrl+0 or
Command+0 on a Mac to zoom out and press
| | 04:34 | Ctrl+Shift+left bracket or
Command+Shift+left bracket on the Mac in order to
| | 04:39 | send those shadows to the back.
| | 04:41 | All right, now I am going to press
Ctrl+Y or Command+Y in a Mac, so that I am
| | 04:45 | back in the preview mode.
And I am going to switch over to the Appearance panel.
| | 04:49 | You want to click on the fill to make it
active, then click on the Opacity below the fill.
| | 04:54 | So it should be twirled open, if it's
not go ahead and do so, and then click on
| | 04:57 | Opacity and change the opacity value to 50%.
| | 05:00 | All right, now click on the
fill again to make it active.
| | 05:03 | Go up to the Effect menu, choose Distort &
Transform, and choose the Transform command.
| | 05:07 | And I ended up setting the
Horizontal value to -0.05, and then I set the
| | 05:14 | Vertical value to 0.1.
| | 05:16 | Next, I set the Copies value to 160.
And then you can see what you're doing by
| | 05:22 | turning on the Preview check box and
that goes ahead and creates those shadows
| | 05:26 | strictly from the backs of the letters,
which is why I went through all of this work.
| | 05:30 | Now click OK in order to accept that
effect, and you can press Ctr+Shift+A or
| | 05:34 | Command+Shift+A on the Mac to
deselect the shadows as well.
| | 05:37 | All right, now we need to cast those
shadows behind the squares, which is,
| | 05:41 | fortunately, a lot easier.
| | 05:43 | So switch over to Layers panel, click in
the upper-right corner of this checkers
| | 05:47 | layer in order to select all the
squares, and then press Ctrl+C, Command+C on
| | 05:52 | the Mac to copy them, and for now press
Ctrl+F or Command+F on the Mac in order
| | 05:57 | to paste them in front.
| | 05:59 | So now, we've got a bunch of
additional squares in front here.
| | 06:01 | They've all got different
things associated with them, that is,
| | 06:05 | different attributes,
| | 06:06 | so you want to go over to the
Appearance panel. And to get rid of this
| | 06:09 | mixed appearances thing,
| | 06:10 | go ahead and click on the flyout
menu icon and choose Clear Appearance,
| | 06:14 | and that way we no longer have any fills
or strokes associated with these squares.
| | 06:18 | Now you want to change to fill to Rich
black. And it looks like I selected one more
| | 06:24 | thing than I wanted to here.
| | 06:25 | So I am going to have to Shift+Click
on this big square in the background, and
| | 06:31 | that'll deselect it, and I'll go up
to the Select menu and choose Save
| | 06:35 | Selection, and I'll call this guy
square shadows and then click OK in order to
| | 06:41 | save off that selection.
| | 06:42 | Now I can click on that rear-most
black square and press the Backspace key or
| | 06:46 | the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of it.
| | 06:48 | Now I'll go back to the Select menu and
choose square shadows, so I can reselect
| | 06:52 | the guys that I was working on there.
| | 06:54 | And I am going to zoom in a little
bit here, and we know the extrusion is 8
| | 06:58 | points to the right and 8 points down.
| | 07:00 | So I'll press Shift+down arrow and Shift+right arrow
and then I'll press the up
| | 07:05 | arrow twice and the left arrow twice in
order to move those squares into place.
| | 07:10 | All right, now I'll press Ctrl+Shift+
left bracket or Command+Shift+left bracket
| | 07:14 | on the Mac to move them
to the back of the stack.
| | 07:17 | And that's actually a little bit too far back,
because it puts them in back of the gray square.
| | 07:22 | So I'll go to the Object menu, choose
Arrange, and then choose Bring Forward to
| | 07:26 | move them all one object forward.
| | 07:28 | All right, that should do it.
| | 07:30 | Now, I'll click on the word Opacity
below the Fill, change that Opacity value to
| | 07:34 | 50%, select the Fill to make it active,
go up to the Effect menu, and choose the
| | 07:39 | second command, Transform. That has a
keyboard shortcut mash-your-fist+E and that
| | 07:45 | will bring up your last applied settings.
| | 07:46 | The only change you want to make here is
to change the number of copies from 160
| | 07:50 | to 120 because the squares are a little
less deep than the letters are, and then
| | 07:54 | turn on the Preview check box and you
should end up with this effect here.
| | 07:58 | Click OK in order to accept that effect and
now click off the text in order to deselect it.
| | 08:03 | And now all I'll press the F key a
couple of times here in order to switch to
| | 08:08 | the full screen mode and I'll press
Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on the Mac in order to
| | 08:12 | fit my artwork on screen.
| | 08:13 | Now I do want you to take a moment to
notice that almost all those shadows look
| | 08:18 | great, but not quite all of them, and
you will need to go through and inspect
| | 08:22 | shadows by hand to make sure
that they're aligned properly.
| | 08:26 | If you notice here, the shadow for
the W is a little off and to the right.
| | 08:29 | So I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on
the Mac in order to switch to the Outline
| | 08:34 | mode and I am going to drag that shadow over
just a little bit so that it snaps into alignment.
| | 08:39 | Another issue is this Y here.
| | 08:42 | And I'll go ahead and
zoom in even farther into it.
| | 08:44 | We need to take this bottom-right
corner of the top serif for the Y and drag it
| | 08:48 | up until it snaps into alignment right
there, which may be a little tricky with
| | 08:53 | Smart Guides turned on.
| | 08:54 | And if so, you can press Ctr+U or
Command+U on a Mac to turn them off.
| | 08:58 | This area right here shouldn't
really come out of the letter like it does.
| | 09:02 | So if we thought that was a problem,
we would have to handcraft this letter in order to fix it.
| | 09:08 | But because of the angle of the shadow,
it ends up working up pretty well.
| | 09:11 | So I'll press Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on
the Mac in order to zoom back out and then
| | 09:14 | I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on
the Mac to switch to the Outline mode.
| | 09:18 | And that, folks, is how you add three-
dimensional cast shadows to both letters and tiles,
| | 09:25 | and of course make sure everything is
aligned properly here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
17. Pathfinder OperationsCombining simple shapes to make complex ones| 00:00 | If you look up at the sky some night,
you'll notice that the moon and the stars
| | 00:04 | move over time, and that's because,
just as Galileo taught us, we live in an
| | 00:09 | Earth-centered universe and
the cosmos spins around us.
| | 00:13 | In much the same way, Illustrator is
a pen-centered universe, by which I
| | 00:18 | mean, no it isn't. The Pen tool is very
important, because it allows you to draw anything.
| | 00:23 | But just about everything else in
Illustrator is devoted to the task of
| | 00:27 | illuminating your reliance on the pen.
| | 00:29 | Take the Pathfinder operations for example.
| | 00:33 | Located in the Pathfinder panel,
this collection of relatively simple
| | 00:37 | but incredibly powerful options lets you
combine simple shapes to create more complex ones.
| | 00:43 | A crescent moon, for example, is not a
celestial body that hangs by a string
| | 00:48 | from the cosmic ether, nor is it
something you have to draw with the Pen tool.
| | 00:52 | It's a circle subtracted from
another circle, which is to say, a
| | 00:57 | Pathfinder operation.
| | 00:59 | In this chapter, you'll draw this
full-on realistic tree silhouette without so
| | 01:04 | much as touching a control handle.
| | 01:06 | It's all a combination of the Line tool,
some variable-weight strokes, the Blob
| | 01:11 | Brush and Eraser, and Pathfinder operations.
| | 01:15 | This is your chance to get with the
21st century and draw like a star.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding all ten Pathfinder options| 00:00 | In this movie, we're going to run
through every single one of the ten Pathfinder
| | 00:04 | operations, both the really great
ones that will come back to you in future
| | 00:08 | movies, and the really weird ones that
we will never talk about again. But I
| | 00:12 | just want you to know how they all work.
| | 00:14 | So I'll start off by
selecting the upper-left shapes here.
| | 00:18 | And then I'll go to the Window menu and
choose the Pathfinder command to bring
| | 00:21 | up the Pathfinder panel.
| | 00:23 | Now, we're going to be visiting this panel
an awful lot over the course of this chapter,
| | 00:27 | so I am going to move it over into the
big panel group by dragging inside this
| | 00:31 | empty gray area right next to word
Pathfinder and dropping the whole group of
| | 00:36 | panels above the Layers panel, like so.
| | 00:39 | Now, the ten Pathfinder operations are
organized into four shape modes--all of
| | 00:44 | which are really great, very useful--
| | 00:46 | and six pathfinders down here, a couple
of which are pretty darn useful, and the
| | 00:51 | rest of which I never use, I have to admit.
| | 00:54 | All right, so we'll start things off
with Unite, which goes ahead and merges
| | 00:58 | the shapes together.
| | 01:00 | You can see that it's resulted in a
compound path up here in the Control panel.
| | 01:04 | It has one group of fills and
strokes and it lifts those fill and stroke
| | 01:08 | attributes from the farthest-forward shape.
| | 01:10 | All right, next I'll select
this second group of shapes.
| | 01:13 | You can see that it includes an
additional shape, in the form of this smaller
| | 01:17 | yellow square, and that's because our
next operation, Minus Front, subtracts
| | 01:23 | all of the forward shapes from a single rear
shape in order to produce this effect here.
| | 01:28 | So we're subtracting both the yellow
ring and the yellow square from the red
| | 01:33 | square in the background, and we
end up with this group of shapes.
| | 01:36 | And Pathfinder operations will produce
groups when the paths are separated from
| | 01:41 | each other, as they are in this case.
| | 01:42 | So I'll just go ahead and press
Ctrl+Shift+G or Command+Shift+G on the Mac to
| | 01:45 | ungroup them, and you can see that
we've got this lever, this one here, and the
| | 01:49 | larger piece of this square in the
background, all of which took their fill and
| | 01:53 | stroke attributes from the rear-most shape.
| | 01:56 | All right, next I'll select the third group of shapes
and I'll go to the third mode, which is Intersect, and click on it.
| | 02:01 | And you can see that we end up just keeping
the area of the two shapes that intersect it.
| | 02:06 | I'll select the fourth
group and switch to Exclude.
| | 02:10 | Exclude is exactly the opposite of Intersect.
| | 02:13 | So the intersecting area goes
away and just the areas that did not
| | 02:17 | intersect remain intact.
| | 02:18 | Now even though Exclude has assigned
the yellow fill and the black stroke from
| | 02:23 | the forward ring, all three of these
shapes are separate from each other.
| | 02:27 | So we've got a group, as we
can see in the Control panel.
| | 02:29 | If you press Ctrl+Shift+G or
Command+Shift+G on the Mac and then click off
| | 02:33 | the shapes, then you can drag them
separately of each other because they are all independent shapes.
| | 02:39 | So in other words, it has produced a
static collection of fragmented shapes.
| | 02:43 | All right, next, we're moving to
the pathfinders--that is, the group of
| | 02:47 | operations on the bottom row.
| | 02:49 | I'll go ahead and select this first
group of shapes in the second row and then
| | 02:53 | I'll click on Divide, which is probably
the best of the second row of options.
| | 02:58 | When you click on it, you go ahead and
keep the fill and stroke attributes that
| | 03:01 | were originally assigned to those shapes,
but you divide them up according to how
| | 03:05 | the shapes are intersecting.
| | 03:07 | Now I once again have a group,
| | 03:08 | so I'll press Ctrl+Shift+G or
Command+Shift+G on the Mac in order to ungroup the shapes.
| | 03:13 | Then I'll separate them apart a
little bit so you can see what's going on.
| | 03:16 | And not only do we have all the
independent paths that you see here, we have
| | 03:19 | one invisible one that's right about
there, that looks kind of like a Pac-Man
| | 03:25 | that is rolled backward.
| | 03:26 | I'll go ahead and press the D key in
order to assign it the default colors, and
| | 03:30 | just so you can better see it,
I'll send these couple of shapes to the back of
| | 03:33 | the stack there, by pressing Ctrl+
Shift+Left bracket or Command+Shift+Left bracket on the Mac.
| | 03:38 | All right, now I'll select this next
group of shapes and I'll click on the next
| | 03:42 | Pathfinder, which is Trim.
| | 03:44 | Trim, and some other of the Pathfinder
operations here, for some reason go ahead
| | 03:48 | and throw away the strokes
that are assigned to the shapes.
| | 03:51 | And it uses a forward shape in order
to trim a hole in the shape below it.
| | 03:56 | So I'll press Ctrl+Shift+G or
Command+Shift+G on the Mac to once again ungroup
| | 04:01 | these shapes so that I
can move them apart like so.
| | 04:04 | And we've got a full circle, and you can
see the only thing that survived intact
| | 04:08 | is a ring, but we also have a little
Pac-Man once again, that I'll go ahead and
| | 04:13 | bring to top of the
stacks so that we can see it.
| | 04:15 | All right, next we've got Merge.
| | 04:18 | I'll select this group of shapes here.
| | 04:20 | And the reason I've got this square inset
inside the yellow ring is because I want you to see,
| | 04:25 | Merge is a lot like Unite, except that
it merges the shapes based on their fills.
| | 04:31 | So as soon as I click on Merge,
you can see it's gone ahead and merged the
| | 04:34 | yellow square along with the yellow ring,
and we've got quite a few shapes this time around.
| | 04:39 | I'll press Ctrl+Shift+G or Command+Shift+G
on the Mac to ungroup these guys and
| | 04:44 | I'll go ahead and click on this guy
and send him to the back of the stack so
| | 04:47 | that you can see that--let's see.
How do I about best selecting these guys?
| | 04:52 | I'll drag around them like so and then
Shift+Click on that guy to deselect him
| | 04:57 | and these two guys as well, and then
I'll press the D key so that you can see
| | 05:02 | that we've got all these
little shapes to work with.
| | 05:04 | All right, next, I'll select this
group of shapes here, and we've got Crop.
| | 05:09 | Crop uses a forward shape to crop
the shapes in back of it and ends up
| | 05:13 | producing this effect here.
| | 05:15 | So I'll press Ctrl+Shift+G or
Command+Shift+G on the Mac in order to ungroup these guys.
| | 05:19 | I'll deselect this one, the red shape,
by Shift+Clicking on it, and then I'll
| | 05:23 | press the D key so that we can see
that we've got two shapes right here.
| | 05:29 | So we've got this kind of C shape
that's been cut away and we have the circle
| | 05:34 | that describes its interior.
| | 05:35 | I don't know why that is, but that's
the way it ends up working, so we get these
| | 05:39 | kind of weird path artifacts in
addition to the cropped intersection shape.
| | 05:44 | All right, now I'll go ahead and
select these shapes down here in the lower-
| | 05:48 | left corner and I'll click on Outline.
Outline really does a number to things.
| | 05:52 | First of all, it gets rid of the fills,
and it turns the fills into strokes and
| | 05:57 | it sets the line weight to 0
points, which is of no value,
| | 06:01 | so I'll go ahead and increase that line
weight value to, let's say, 6 points here.
| | 06:05 | Then I'll press Ctrl+Shift+G or
Command+Shift+G on the Mac in order to ungroup
| | 06:09 | the shapes and I'll show them to you.
Notice that they're all open path outlines.
| | 06:12 | This is the only Pathfinder operation that
results in open path outlines, by the way.
| | 06:18 | So it's a kind of further deterioration
of the paths from what we saw with Divide.
| | 06:24 | All right, now, I'll select
this final group down here.
| | 06:26 | And notice that we've got the inset
square again, and that's because I am going
| | 06:30 | to show you Minus Back.
| | 06:31 | Now this is the opposite of that
pathfinder we saw earlier, Minus Front.
| | 06:36 | Instead of subtracting the forward
shapes, it subtracts the rear shapes from a
| | 06:40 | single forward shape, which means that
we're going to subtract everything from
| | 06:45 | that inset yellow square in
order to create this effect here.
| | 06:48 | All right, these next two examples are
just designed to show you what Pathfinder
| | 06:53 | operations do with a couple
of different path variations.
| | 06:58 | Pathfinder operations tend to
really like closed filled paths.
| | 07:02 | So in this case, we've got closed paths,
but they're stroked with no fills, and
| | 07:07 | you'll see that that makes Trim not work at all.
| | 07:11 | So you'll just get a warning telling you
it's not going to do anything. Same with Merge:
| | 07:14 | Merge is not going to play ball with this at all.
And then Crop just ends up completely malfunctioning.
| | 07:20 | So you can see here, we end up with the
ring, but the fill and stroke went away,
| | 07:25 | and it's as if Crop couldn't even
see the square in the background.
| | 07:28 | There was nothing for it to crop,
so it just kept these pieces here.
| | 07:31 | Things get worse when you start
working with open path outlines.
| | 07:35 | So in this case, both Trim and Merge are
going to complain; they are going to play ball.
| | 07:40 | Also, Minus Back is not going to like it.
| | 07:43 | It's just going to tell you it
refuses to work. End of story.
| | 07:46 | And Divide in this case is
going to totally malfunction.
| | 07:49 | As soon as I click on it, you can see that
we end up with--what in the world is this?
| | 07:53 | We didn't even divide away the
pieces of the ring that were outside the
| | 07:56 | square. We didn't keep the corner of
the square, because those were the areas where the openings were.
| | 08:01 | I'll undo the application of Divide by
pressing Ctrl+Z or Command+Z a couple of
| | 08:06 | times and then I'll apply something
that will work, Exclude, but even then,
| | 08:10 | anything that does work on these paths,
with the exception of Outline, is going to
| | 08:14 | generate closed path outlines when it's done.
| | 08:17 | So that's your big overarching introduction
to the Pathfinder operations in Illustrator.
| | 08:23 | In future movies, I'll show
you some practical applications.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Unite closed paths, join open ones| 00:00 | In this movie, I hope to give you a
sense for how Pathfinder operations work, by
| | 00:04 | comparing what is possibly the most
common operation--Unite--to its open path
| | 00:09 | equivalent, which is the Join command.
| | 00:12 | So I've got this collection of
shapes here that's based on the animated
| | 00:15 | movie Yellow Submarine.
| | 00:17 | And you can see that I've got a bunch
of pipes at top here, all of which are
| | 00:21 | filled differently, but they
all based on this orange shape.
| | 00:24 | So I drew it first and then I scaled
it to create the yellow shape and then I
| | 00:28 | made some further
manipulations for the other two.
| | 00:30 | I'll go and press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
a few times in order to put those guys
| | 00:34 | back where they belong. I want to fuse these
shapes together with the submarine shape.
| | 00:39 | And this is a perfect use for the Unite
operation, because it can accommodate as
| | 00:45 | many path outlines as you throw at it,
especially if they're closed paths that
| | 00:50 | overlap each other, like these here.
| | 00:52 | So I'll go ahead and marquee
these paths with the Black Arrow tool.
| | 00:55 | I did not select water in the
background, because it's on a locked layer.
| | 00:59 | And now I'll fuse them together by
clicking on the Unite icon, here inside on
| | 01:03 | the Pathfinder panel.
| | 01:04 | And as you can see, Illustrator has
gone ahead and assigned the yellow fill and
| | 01:08 | black stroke from the pipe shape that
was at the top of the stack. And the
| | 01:12 | result is a perfectly shaped silhouette.
| | 01:15 | And notice that it's a single path outline as
well, as you can see up here in the Control panel.
| | 01:20 | Compare that to building Ringo's silhouette.
| | 01:23 | He's only partially built so far.
| | 01:25 | So I've got a select as purple shape by
clicking on it, and then I'll switch to
| | 01:30 | the Reflect tool, which you can
also get by pressing the O key, and I'll
| | 01:34 | Alt+Click or Option+Click at the top
of his leg in order to bring up the
| | 01:38 | Reflect dialog box.
| | 01:39 | I'll set the Axis to Vertical and then
I'll click on the Copy button in order to
| | 01:43 | create a copy of the path outline.
| | 01:45 | And now we have all we
need in order to build Ringo.
| | 01:48 | So I'll go ahead and grab my Black Arrow tool.
| | 01:51 | I'll partially marquee these shapes like
so, so that all three are selected, and
| | 01:55 | then I'll click on Unite in order to
fuse them together--at least that's what I
| | 02:00 | am hoping, but that isn't what's happened.
| | 02:03 | Now it may look as if he is now a
closed path outline, because we've got the
| | 02:07 | stroke triangle in the center here.
| | 02:10 | And possibly the triangle is
cutting a hole out of the otherwise fused-
| | 02:14 | together silhouette.
| | 02:15 | But what we've really got is a group,
as we can see up here in the Control panel.
| | 02:20 | And anytime a Pathfinder operation
generates a group that means you've got
| | 02:24 | multiple independent path outlines.
| | 02:26 | So I'll press Ctrl+Shift+G or
Command+Shift+G on the Mac to ungroup the paths,
| | 02:30 | click off them, and now you can see
that they are not fused together at all.
| | 02:35 | In fact, all Unite did was close the
path outlines and group them together;
| | 02:40 | otherwise, it didn't do anything useful.
| | 02:42 | So I'll go head and press Ctrl+Z or
Command+Z on the Mac a few times in order
| | 02:47 | to reinstate the original path
outlines so that we don't have that stroke
| | 02:52 | triangle in the center.
| | 02:53 | And instead, if you want to join
these paths together, because they're open
| | 02:57 | paths and you want to join them by
there end points, you go up to the Object
| | 03:01 | menu, you choose Path, and you choose
Join, or you can press Ctrl+J or Command+J
| | 03:07 | on the Mac, and you end up uniting those
paths together just as you had hoped.
| | 03:12 | So remember that Unite, or any other
Pathfinder operations for that matter, are
| | 03:16 | designed for use with closed path outlines.
| | 03:19 | If you want to work with open path
outlines, you will have to take advantage of
| | 03:23 | a command, like Join.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a dynamic compound shape| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how you can use
four shape modes to create a dynamic compound shape.
| | 00:06 | So let's say what I want to do here
is merge Ringo along with the submarine.
| | 00:10 | I'll press the V key in order to switch to my
Black Arrow tool, and then I'll select Ringo like so.
| | 00:16 | I want to put him in back of the sub,
so when the two shapes are united
| | 00:20 | together, we end up with the yellow fill.
And I'll do that from the Layers panel.
| | 00:24 | So I'll go ahead and twirl open the up
above layer here, and I'll drag Ringo
| | 00:28 | behind this shape that's called Path.
| | 00:31 | And I think I'll go ahead and rename
path submarine so that I know what it is.
| | 00:35 | And now I want to go ahead and
merge the two shapes together.
| | 00:38 | So I'll Shift-click on the yellow
submarine, and I'll click on Unite, and that
| | 00:44 | goes ahead and generates, this
time around, a Compound Path.
| | 00:49 | So when me united the pipes with the
submarine, we created a straightforward
| | 00:53 | path, but when we throw Ringo in
the mix, we get a compound path.
| | 00:56 | Well, the reason is we've got this
interior area inside of his pant legs and
| | 01:01 | we have this little hole under his shoe as well.
| | 01:05 | And so that forces Illustrator to
generate a compound path instead.
| | 01:09 | But it's not very flexible.
| | 01:11 | For one thing, you can't twirl it
open here inside the Layers panel.
| | 01:15 | So if you want to select the interior
of this pants leg, for example, you got
| | 01:18 | this White Arrow tool, or you can double-click
on the shape in order to enter
| | 01:22 | the Isolation mode, specifically for this compound
path as you can see up here at the top of screen.
| | 01:28 | I'll go ahead and press the Escape key,
however, to leave the Isolation mode.
| | 01:32 | And furthermore, we can't
really move Ringo around.
| | 01:35 | What if I want to move on to
the other side of the submarine?
| | 01:38 | I can't at this point because he is
permanently fused at this location.
| | 01:41 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac in order to undo that Unite.
| | 01:46 | When you hover over any one at the
shape modes, this is strictly true for
| | 01:50 | the four shape modes, it is not true for divide in
the other Pathfinders, you'll see they you have the
| | 01:56 | option to Alt-click or on a Mac Option-click
to create a compound shape, and
| | 02:01 | that's what I am going to do now.
| | 02:03 | So if you are working along with me, Alt-click
or Option-click on the Unite icon
| | 02:07 | and you'll now see that you have a
Compound Shape listed here inside the Layers
| | 02:11 | panel, and you can actually twirl it open
if you like to gain access to submarine
| | 02:16 | and Ringo, which still have
their exact same old names.
| | 02:19 | And if you want to select one of the shapes
independently, you can do so using the White Arrow tool.
| | 02:24 | So I'll go ahead and press the A key to
get the White Arrow, click off the path
| | 02:28 | outlines, and then I'll click on
Ringo in order to select the entire shape.
| | 02:33 | Or you could just go ahead and target Ringo by
clicking on this meatball here inside the layer panel.
| | 02:38 | And now notice, I can go ahead and
drag Ringo to a different location and he
| | 02:43 | remains united along with the submarine,
but he is also an independent dynamic shape.
| | 02:50 | Furthermore, you can change your
mind about which shape mode is applied.
| | 02:55 | So for example, if you don't want to
add Ringo, you want to subtract him, you
| | 02:59 | can switch to a different one.
| | 03:01 | Now at this point, Ringo is in back,
which means that we can't really apply a
| | 03:05 | shape mode to him and make any difference.
| | 03:07 | The shape modes are really
being applied to the forward shape.
| | 03:10 | So I'll go ahead and grab Ringo and
move him above the submarine like so.
| | 03:15 | And now I can switch to
for example Minus Front mode.
| | 03:18 | But Illustrator is going to make me
ought to be a liar, because as soon as I
| | 03:22 | click on that icon, I see that
the filter produced no results.
| | 03:25 | Please select two intersecting paths.
It's not actually the problem here.
| | 03:29 | I'll go and click the OK button.
| | 03:31 | The problem is that in order to apply a
dynamic shape mode to a compound shape,
| | 03:36 | I need to go ahead and press the Alt
key or the Option key when clicking the
| | 03:40 | icon and then that goes
ahead and does the trick.
| | 03:43 | And now I can move Ringo
to a different location.
| | 03:46 | For example, I can reveal things in the
background here, such as those walrus, who knew?
| | 03:52 | And for some reason that walrus ends up
making the silhouette look like Luke Skywalker.
| | 03:58 | Anyway, now I can change any of
the other shape modes as well.
| | 04:01 | I could Alt-click on Intersect, for
example, or Option-click on the Mac in order
| | 04:05 | to keep just that intersecting area
in case the walrus is feeling shy,
| | 04:09 | or I can go ahead and move Ringo out
of the way in order to intersect with a
| | 04:14 | different portion of the submarine.
| | 04:15 | And if I want to create an exclusion
effect, then I would press the Alt key
| | 04:19 | or the Option key on the Mac and click on
Exclude in order to create this effect here.
| | 04:23 | And I think I'll go ahead and
move Ringo over little bit as well.
| | 04:27 | So the point is you have all the
flexibility in the world when working with
| | 04:31 | compound shapes, which you get by Alt-clicking
or Option-clicking on any one of
| | 04:36 | the shape mode icons here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding to a compound shape| 00:00 | In this movie, I'll show you how to
add a path to an existing compound shape,
| | 00:04 | specifically, I want to add this fin shape so
that it's cutting a hole into the submarine.
| | 00:09 | And there's a couple ways to go.
| | 00:11 | I'll go and twirl the up above layer
open here inside the Layers panel and
| | 00:15 | then I'll grab the fin and move it above
the submarine, so we can see what's going on.
| | 00:20 | Now one option is to go ahead and
select the fin and then Shift-click on the
| | 00:24 | submarine to select it as well, and
then press the Alt key or the Option key on
| | 00:28 | the Mac and click on Minus Front in
order to add it to the compound shape.
| | 00:33 | So it seems like it's a very easy thing to do;
however, here is the problem.
| | 00:38 | Now if I twirl open this Compound Shape, I
can see that I've got this path fin, and
| | 00:43 | then I have another compound shape
below it that contains Ringo and Submarine,
| | 00:48 | and that's not really be
elegant solution I am looking for.
| | 00:52 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on
the Mac in order to undo that change.
| | 00:56 | One way to work is to twirl up in the
compound shape like so and then just go
| | 01:01 | ahead and drag fin into it.
| | 01:04 | And so I'll drag the fin path
directly above the Ringo path, and it is now
| | 01:08 | automatically added to
the existing compound shape.
| | 01:11 | It's not set to this right Pathfinder operation.
| | 01:14 | So I'll go ahead and meatball the fin
here inside the Layers panel and then
| | 01:18 | I'll switch over to Minus Front.
| | 01:20 | And you can see, by the way, the
Pathfinder panel tells you which of the shape
| | 01:24 | modes is currently active.
| | 01:25 | In our case, it's Unite,
because that's the default mode.
| | 01:29 | I'll go ahead and press the Alt key or
the Option key on the Mac and click on
| | 01:33 | Minus Front in order to
achieve this effect here.
| | 01:36 | Now as I said, that's one way to work, and
it's obviously a very convenient method
| | 01:40 | when you don't have very many path
outlines inside of your illustration.
| | 01:44 | What if you've got an awful lot going
on, and you don't want to have to search
| | 01:48 | through the Layers panel
in order to find an item?
| | 01:50 | Well, then you do the following.
| | 01:51 | I'll go and press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on the Mac a couple of times in order to
| | 01:55 | restore the original red fin shape there.
| | 01:58 | I'll click off the path
outlines to deselect them.
| | 02:01 | Then I'll click on the red fin in
order to select it, and I'll press Ctrl+X or
| | 02:06 | Command+X on the Mac in order to
cut the shape to the clipboard.
| | 02:09 | Then I'll press the A key in order to
switch to my White Arrow tool, and I'll
| | 02:13 | click inside the submarine to select the
entire shape, and then I'll press Ctrl+F
| | 02:17 | or Command+F on the Mac in order to
paste the fin into the compound shape.
| | 02:22 | By virtue of the fact that I am
asking Illustrator to paste the fin
| | 02:26 | shape between the submarine and
Ringo, it has no choice but to put it
| | 02:30 | into that compound shape.
| | 02:32 | And then in order to change the mode,
I would Alt-click or Option-click on the
| | 02:36 | Minus Front icon here
inside the Pathfinder panel.
| | 02:40 | The result is a compound shape and
actually has multiple Pathfinder
| | 02:44 | operations working on it at the same time.
| | 02:47 | So we've got Minus Front assigned to
the fin shape here, and if I were to
| | 02:52 | Alt-click or Option-click and Ringo
path out line here, he is still set to
| | 02:56 | Exclude, which is
absolutely no problem whatsoever.
| | 03:00 | And they're both working on the
submarine shape in the background, which has
| | 03:04 | no shape mode assigned to it, because it's the
rear-most path inside of this compound shape.
| | 03:10 | And that, friends, is how you go about
adding multiple path outlines as many as
| | 03:15 | you want to an existing
compound shape here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Variable width, Outline Stroke, and Unite| 00:00 | Over the course of this next project,
we are going to draw of silhouette of a
| | 00:04 | tree, very much like what you see here.
| | 00:06 | And if you're not an artist, you may
find this to be a little intimidating, but
| | 00:11 | I can assure you with the right approach,
it's completely doable, as you're about to see.
| | 00:16 | And the right approach is going to be a
combination of Pathfinder operations of
| | 00:20 | course along with the Blob brush and the
Eraser tool, and we'll also go ahead and
| | 00:25 | create this moon up here as a compound shape.
| | 00:28 | Now we're going of in this movie by
taking a bunch of lines that I have drawn in
| | 00:33 | advance, and we are going to turn them
into a kind of leaf-less tree using a
| | 00:38 | combination of the outlines stroke
command along with the Unite operation.
| | 00:42 | So let me explain how I created the tree
limbs in advance here. I start with this
| | 00:47 | just cruddy photograph that I shot
from the balcony of Holiday Express.
| | 00:51 | Because those really interested in
drawing mystery as a great shape to it, even
| | 00:56 | though of course the background is terrible.
| | 00:58 | So I went ahead and created a bunch of
lines like so using the Line tool, so I
| | 01:04 | didn't even use the Pen tool.
| | 01:06 | If I press the A key to switch to
the White arrow tool, then Alt-click or
| | 01:10 | Option-click on one of these lines, you can see that
every single one of the lines is an independent line.
| | 01:16 | So I just drew probably a couple
hundred lines here, not sure, but I did do an
| | 01:21 | accurate job of tracing
the branches and the tree.
| | 01:24 | Next, I went ahead and assigned a
series of strokes to the tree you see here.
| | 01:28 | So the trunk is 20-points thick and then
these first branches are 10-points thick,
| | 01:33 | followed by 8 points and 6 points
and 4 points, 3 points and 2 points.
| | 01:38 | The roots are much thinner.
They are either 4 points or 2 points.
| | 01:41 | Now of course, the roots themselves, the
real roots are just as big as the branches.
| | 01:46 | The thing is that they're mostly covered
by dirt so we only see the tops of them.
| | 01:51 | Next, I filled in these little gaps
around the elbows of the branches using round
| | 01:56 | caps, and then I use the Width tool to
create these variable width strokes
| | 02:01 | so that one line is tapering into another.
| | 02:03 | And I'll just give you a
quick sense of what I did there.
| | 02:06 | Notice that this branch right here is
set to an 8-point stroke and then the
| | 02:12 | branch above it is 6 points.
| | 02:14 | So I went ahead and twirled open this
tree-lines layer, and I locked down the
| | 02:19 | limbs 6pt group just so it
doesn't get in the way there.
| | 02:23 | Then I'll press Shift+W in order to
switch to the Width tool, which is located
| | 02:27 | right here inside the toolbox, and I
double-clicked on that top Anchor Point in
| | 02:32 | order to bring up the Width point
Edit dialog box, and I changed that Total
| | 02:36 | Width value to 6 points, so it's going to
match the stroke above it, and I clicked OK.
| | 02:40 | That's really all it did. I just sat
there and did that over and over again and
| | 02:45 | it took me about probably 20 minutes
from beginning to end on this thing.
| | 02:49 | All right, now I am going to press the
V key to switch to the Black arrow tool,
| | 02:54 | I will unlock that limbs 6pt group right
there, and I'll twirl the tree-lines layer closed.
| | 02:59 | All right, now let's convert these two
Close Path Outlines, which will make them
| | 03:04 | easier to edit in the future.
| | 03:06 | Now I don't want to get rid of my
original stroked lines, so with this
| | 03:09 | tree-lines layer selected, I will click on
the fly-out menu icon for the Layers panel,
| | 03:14 | and I'll choose duplicate tree lines, which
will make a copy of that layer, and I'll
| | 03:18 | call this layer branches, let's say.
| | 03:21 | Then I'll turn off the original tree-
lines layer, and I'll go ahead and select
| | 03:25 | everything in the Branches layers by clicking
in the upper right-hand corner of that layer.
| | 03:30 | Another way you can work, by the way,
if you want is to just Alt-click or
| | 03:34 | Option-click anywhere inside the layer
here inside the Layers panel.
| | 03:39 | That also goes ahead and selects
all the objects on that layer.
| | 03:42 | All right, now I'll go up to the
Object menu > Path > Outline Stroke, and that's
| | 03:48 | going to convert every single one of
the Stroke Path to filled path that are in
| | 03:53 | the same shape, so we end up
getting this effect right here.
| | 03:56 | Now we need to merge everything together.
| | 03:59 | You might figure we want a compound
shape, in which case you would Alt-click or
| | 04:04 | Option-click on the Unite icon,
| | 04:06 | but I'm here to tell you that is
going to make for one unwieldy tree.
| | 04:11 | We are much better off just
applying unite as a static effect.
| | 04:14 | So I'll just go ahead and click on the Unite
icon in order to create this tree shape right here.
| | 04:19 | And what we end up having if you go
ahead and twirl open this Branches layer is
| | 04:24 | very complicated Compound Path, and you
can just imagine if you had tried to draw
| | 04:29 | this thing with a pen tool,
it would have taken forever,
| | 04:33 | whereas by setting it up with the
Align tool, adding a few variables-width
| | 04:37 | strokes, and then converting it to a
shape outline, we are able to get the work
| | 04:42 | done a lot more quickly.
| | 04:43 | Now I'll double-click on the branches
layer to bring up the layer options dialog
| | 04:47 | box, and I'll change the color to let's
say, peach, we would probably set this
| | 04:51 | off pretty well, and then I'll click OK.
| | 04:54 | And of course, I am still seeing orange for Compound
Path. That's because Illustrator hasn't updated things.
| | 04:59 | I have to twirl the layer close and twirl it
back open, so we can end up seeing the proper color.
| | 05:04 | And now I'll click off a path in order
to deselect it, and we now have something
| | 05:08 | that we can modify using the
Blob brush and the Eraser tool.
| | 05:13 | But first, we're going to get to painting in
the leaves starting in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting rough leaves with the Blob Brush| 00:00 | In this movie, we're going to roughly
paint in the leaves using the Blob brush.
| | 00:04 | I'm here to tell you they're not going
to look anything like leaves by the time we
| | 00:08 | finish this movie, but we'll make
them look like leaves in the next movie.
| | 00:12 | Right now we just need to get something down
so that we have some base leaves to work with.
| | 00:17 | So I'm going to start things off by
switching over to the final version of my
| | 00:22 | tree, and clicking on it in order to
select it with the Black Arrow tool,
| | 00:26 | I want to turn it into a guideline just so that
we are roughly familiar with what we're doing here.
| | 00:31 | So I'll press Ctrl+C or Command+C
on the Mac in order to copy the tree.
| | 00:36 | Then I'll switch over to
my illustration in progress.
| | 00:39 | I'll click on this tree layer down
here at the bottom of the stack, and I'll
| | 00:43 | Alt-click or Option-click on the
little Page icon at the bottom of the Layers
| | 00:47 | panel, and I'll call these new layer
guides, and I'll change its color to yellow,
| | 00:52 | and then I'll click OK.
| | 00:53 | Now you want to go to the Layers panel
flyout menu, and you want to make sure
| | 00:57 | that Paste Remembers layers is
turned off, as it is in my case.
| | 01:01 | If it is, then go ahead and press Ctrl+F
or Command+F on the Mac in order to
| | 01:05 | paste that tree into place.
| | 01:07 | Then go up to the View menu, choose
the Guides command, and choose Make Guides
| | 01:13 | in order to turn this tree into a guideline.
| | 01:16 | Now I want to change the color of
the guides so I can see it better.
| | 01:20 | And Guide Colors are a global
setting inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:22 | You get to them by pressing Ctrl+K or Command+K
on the Mac in order to bring up the Preferences dialog box.
| | 01:28 | Then click on Guides and Grid and
change the color, the Top Color option to
| | 01:33 | I'm suggesting Yellow.
Now click OK, and you've got yellow guides.
| | 01:37 | All right, next, go ahead and switch to the
Foliage layer, and that's where we'll paint the leaves.
| | 01:42 | Now I'm going to be painting with the
Blob brush--and by the way, if you were with
| | 01:47 | us for chapter 8 of the fundamentals
course, then you probably changed your
| | 01:50 | keyboard shortcuts to B for the
Blob brush and E for the Eraser tool.
| | 01:54 | If you didn't, I recommend you do because
that's going to make things a lot easier.
| | 01:58 | Anyway, I'll go ahead and select the Blob brush.
| | 02:00 | And as you may recall, the Blob brush
goes ahead and fuses these shapes together.
| | 02:05 | It's like an automatic unite
function if they have the same fill.
| | 02:09 | So I want to make sure to set my color
to something other than Black, and I've
| | 02:13 | got this one swatch called Sky blue,
so I'll go ahead and use it.
| | 02:17 | Then I'll set in painting
inside of my artwork here.
| | 02:21 | What you want to do is just kind of
roughly surround the tree at first.
| | 02:26 | I'm just kind of painting along the
guideline here, because after all, we don't
| | 02:30 | need to do an exceptional job. We just need to roughly
get this stuff laid down, and I do mean roughly.
| | 02:36 | It's not going to end up looking like
leaves by time you get done painting.
| | 02:40 | In fact, how could it?
| | 02:42 | Because we're painting with this big
brush, in my case, it's 10 points thick.
| | 02:46 | If you want to change the size of your
brush, you can use the square bracket
| | 02:49 | keys to make it bigger or smaller.
| | 02:51 | I'm just going to trace around here
roughly like I said, and then I'll
| | 02:55 | start work on the inside.
| | 02:56 | Now, you want your work on the inside to
be pretty rough so that you have a lot
| | 03:01 | of holes in your leaves, and that way
you can let the branches show through,
| | 03:05 | which is going to increase
the credibility of your tree.
| | 03:09 | And even though you're going to get a
little impatient with your progress at a
| | 03:12 | point probably, because this is going
to take a few minutes in order to even do
| | 03:16 | a horrible job, I don't recommend that
you go with a really super large brush
| | 03:20 | because then you're going to have to
go back and paint in the holes using the
| | 03:24 | Eraser tool, which is inconvenient if
nothing else, and it kind of makes more
| | 03:28 | work for you than if you just go ahead
and simply paint in the tree for now.
| | 03:32 | All right, as you can see, I am
leaving copious holes here and there.
| | 03:37 | They don't have to be of any specific shape.
| | 03:39 | You don't want them to be too big.
You don't want a hole like that because
| | 03:43 | that's going to look ridiculous,
like some part of the tree went bald.
| | 03:46 | But there are places where we are
going to leave big openings down below.
| | 03:49 | So my thinking, though, up in here, you
can see that things are pretty filled in
| | 03:53 | where the background tree is concerned.
| | 03:55 | I'm not necessarily interested
in exactly matching that tree.
| | 03:59 | You can see that I'm
really going my own way here.
| | 04:02 | Now, notice that I'm coming down into
some independent areas of leaves that are
| | 04:08 | being supported by these
first limbs down at the bottom.
| | 04:11 | There is not a ton of leaf action going
on in this area, but I do want to fill
| | 04:16 | things out a little bit just so that
we're not relying entirely on tree limbs
| | 04:21 | down at that location in order to
convey the fact that we have a tree.
| | 04:26 | All right, so I think I've finished
painting in my leaves for now, and now
| | 04:31 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Semicolon or Command+Semicolon
on the Mac in order to hide those guidelines.
| | 04:36 | We have what can only be described
as a tree with some beautiful leaves.
| | 04:42 | That's not actually true.
These leaves look terrible.
| | 04:45 | They look like some sort of
blue marshmallow frosting.
| | 04:48 | But I assure you, we are going to turn
them into credible, absolutely believable
| | 04:53 | leaves in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating credible leaves with dynamic effects| 00:00 | In this movie we're going to combine a
trio of dynamic effects that are going to
| | 00:04 | make this blobby stuff on top of
the tree look like genuine leaves.
| | 00:09 | Now, the first thing that we want to
do is take everything on this layer and
| | 00:13 | combine it together into a single
compound path, and the reason we're doing that
| | 00:17 | is that we need to put these various
disparate objects into some kind of
| | 00:22 | container, and when applying
dynamic effects like we're about to do,
| | 00:25 | a compound path is going to
work a lot better than a group.
| | 00:29 | I'm going to twirl open my foliage
layer here, and I can see that I've got a
| | 00:33 | total of, what is it five paths, I think?
| | 00:37 | So the big compound path that makes up
the top portion of the tree and then a
| | 00:41 | few others that make up
these regions right here.
| | 00:43 | What you don't want to see, by the way, is group.
| | 00:46 | So if you see any groups, you'll
need to ungroup them in advance.
| | 00:49 | Then I'll go ahead and Alt-click or
Option-click on the foliage layer to select
| | 00:53 | all of those objects, and I'll go up to
the Object menu, choose Compound Path,
| | 00:58 | and choose Make, or you can press
Ctrl+8 or Command+8 on the Mac.
| | 01:03 | Now I'm going to press Ctrl+H or Command+H
on the Mac just so we can better see
| | 01:07 | what we're doing when we
apply the dynamic effects.
| | 01:10 | The first one under the Effect menu, you go
to Distort & Transform and you choose Roughen.
| | 01:15 | Now the default settings are way too
much. If you turn on the Preview check box,
| | 01:20 | you're going to see that you're turning
this blobby stuff into some sort of
| | 01:24 | glass shattering, and that's not what we want.
| | 01:27 | So I'm going to reduce the Size value
to 1%, which is its lowest setting, and I'm
| | 01:32 | going to increase the
Details setting to 30, like so.
| | 01:36 | Leave Relative turned on, and you also
want the points to be set to Corner Points.
| | 01:40 | Now click OK, and I'm going
to zoom in here a little bit.
| | 01:45 | That gives us too spiky of an effect.
| | 01:47 | It certainly gives us all of the random variation,
which is what we're looking for, but it's too sharp.
| | 01:54 | So I'll go up to the Effect menu and
I'll choose Stylize, and I'll choose Round
| | 01:59 | Corners, and I ended up coming up with
the Radius value to 2 points, which ends
| | 02:03 | up creating this effect right here.
| | 02:05 | Now I will click OK in
order to apply that effect.
| | 02:08 | I'm going to zoom back out here,
because I'm worried that there are just too
| | 02:13 | many holes in leaves, and I can see that
better, actually, if I change the color of
| | 02:18 | my leaves from blue to rich black.
It seems to me that that's too many holes.
| | 02:25 | The tree should be a little
more filled out than that.
| | 02:28 | I can solve that problem not by painting any more,
but rather by applying yet another dynamic effect.
| | 02:33 | So I'll go up to the Effect menu,
choose Path, and then choose Offset Path.
| | 02:39 | I ultimately decided I wanted an offset
value of 1 point, and then I'll turn on
| | 02:44 | the Preview check box, but you can see that,
that ends up making the leaves look blobbier.
| | 02:49 | That's because I've got the dynamic effects
set up in the wrong order. So I'll click OK.
| | 02:54 | I'll go ahead and switch over to my
Appearance panel, which I can get by
| | 02:57 | choosing the Appearance
command from the Window menu.
| | 02:59 | Right now Roughen is applied first,
then Round Corners, then Offset Path, but
| | 03:03 | we need the Offset Path effect to be applied
first so it doesn't mess up the Roughen effect.
| | 03:08 | So I'll go ahead and drag it up the stack.
| | 03:11 | When you're looking at dynamic effects,
the top one is the first one applied, and
| | 03:15 | the bottom one is the last one applied.
| | 03:17 | Anyway, that goes ahead and takes care
of our problem, and we end up with these
| | 03:22 | believably leafy shapes right here.
| | 03:25 | It's not like we can see individual leaf
outlines, but I think it's in an effect
| | 03:29 | that I can work with.
| | 03:30 | Now I'm kind of thinking I might have
gone too far with one of the settings.
| | 03:34 | So I'm going to click on Roughen in
order to bring back the Roughen dialog
| | 03:38 | box, and I'm going to see what things
look like if I take that Detail value
| | 03:43 | down to 25 per inch, and I'll turn on
the Preview check box, and that might be
| | 03:48 | a little more to my liking.
I'll go ahead and click OK.
| | 03:51 | That is how you combine offset paths in
order to fill in some of the holes, the
| | 03:56 | Roughen filter in order to add some
random edge variation, and finally round
| | 04:01 | corners in order to soften the effect
off just a little bit so it looks more
| | 04:06 | organic in order to turn what began as
a big blobby shape into something that
| | 04:11 | resembles leaves on a
tree here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Contouring with the Blob Brush and Eraser| 00:00 | All right, so the leaves at this point
I think look really great, especially
| | 00:04 | again, given how much work we've put into them.
| | 00:07 | But the branches of the tree look
awfully darn synthetic, and then of course,
| | 00:11 | the roots just look like pipe cleaners
at this point, especially if we turn off
| | 00:15 | that background template layer by
clicking on the little template icon to the
| | 00:19 | left of the tree layer down here at the
bottom of the stack. You can see that,
| | 00:23 | that is one synthetic-looking tree.
| | 00:25 | So what we're going to do is we're
going to try to make it look a lot better.
| | 00:30 | Using a combination of the
Eraser tool along with the Blob brush.
| | 00:35 | And as you may recall, the Blob brush
is like painting with a brush that's
| | 00:39 | always set to the Merge mode,
because it merges based on colors.
| | 00:43 | And then the Eraser tool is like painting
with a brush that's always set to Minus Front.
| | 00:47 | And so they are really those two tools
that are automatically taking advantage
| | 00:52 | of Pathfinder operations on the fly.
| | 00:55 | So I am going to go ahead and grab my
Eraser tool, which I have set to be E key.
| | 01:00 | And you may recall that I've got
the Blob brush set to the B key.
| | 01:03 | And if you don't, and you want to make
that happen, you go to the Edit menu and
| | 01:06 | you choose a Keyboard Shortcuts command.
| | 01:08 | Anyway, I am going to go ahead and
select the Eraser, and I am also going to
| | 01:12 | double-click on it in
order to bring up its options.
| | 01:15 | And notice, by the way, that the
Eraser tool, even though it very closely
| | 01:18 | resembles the Blob brush,
does not have a Fidelity option.
| | 01:21 | And so, it's always set to this kind
of constant fidelity setting that's
| | 01:25 | not always that great.
| | 01:27 | So you're going to get slightly
different effects from it than you might expect,
| | 01:31 | and we'll come to that in just a moment.
| | 01:33 | But for now I want to set the
Roundness value down to 35% so that we have
| | 01:37 | an oval brush, and it looks just like this, and
you might want to take the Size value down too.
| | 01:43 | I'll take it down to 5, although you
can always adjust that using the square
| | 01:46 | bracket keys on the fly.
| | 01:48 | All right, now, I am going to zoom
in on this bottom portion of the tree
| | 01:52 | right there, and I want to erase this lump
here, because that doesn't look right at all.
| | 01:56 | So I'll just brush over it.
And I end up getting what?
| | 02:00 | Well, here's what's happening.
Notice the guides layer.
| | 02:03 | A moment ago, if I press Ctrl+Z or
Command+Z on the Mac the thumbnail for the
| | 02:07 | guides layer was blank, because that's a guide.
After all if I press Ctrl+Semicolon or Command+Semicolon
| | 02:12 | on the Mac I've got what is for me a
yellow guide in the background, but as soon
| | 02:17 | as I paint into it, whether it's visible or
not, Illustrator goes ahead and converts
| | 02:22 | the guide to an actual object.
| | 02:24 | This is very strange behavior that
really only occurs with the Eraser tool.
| | 02:28 | So what you want to do is press Ctr+Z,
Command+Z on the Mac of course, in order
| | 02:32 | to undo that change. I am going to
press Ctrl+Semicolon or Command+Semicolon
| | 02:35 | on the Mac to hide the guide, and then I'm
also going to turn off the guides layer.
| | 02:39 | So I'll click on its eye to make that
guides layer go away, and now we can focus
| | 02:43 | all of our attention on the tree
itself, because it's really the only thing
| | 02:47 | that's visible down here in
this portion of the illustrations.
| | 02:50 | So I'll just go ahead and paint
that area away, and I'll paint in here.
| | 02:53 | And notice how lumpy this
brushstroke is, watch I'll do this number here.
| | 02:57 | I was telling about the fidelity of the eraser.
| | 02:59 | As soon as I released, it
gets awfully darn smooth out.
| | 03:03 | So that's just something to bear in mind.
| | 03:04 | But you can always come back and fill in
the details as needed using the Blob brush.
| | 03:09 | So I am going to paint this guy in like so,
and I'll paint this root in a little bit as well.
| | 03:16 | And this isn't necessarily making for a
more realistic root at this point, I am
| | 03:20 | just trying to sort of prep the soil as it were.
| | 03:23 | All right, I'm going to switch to the
Blob brush right there, and I'm also going
| | 03:27 | to double-click on it and change its
Roundness value to 35% as well, and we want
| | 03:31 | to take the size value down really
small, to something like 3 points.
| | 03:34 | And then I'll go ahead and press the
Enter key or the Return key on a Mac and
| | 03:39 | I'll paint back in some root, and as you
paint in with the Blob brush, you should
| | 03:43 | notice that you end up getting results
that are a lot more closely related to
| | 03:48 | the brushstrokes that you
applied in the first place.
| | 03:50 | All right, I am going to go ahead
and paint this guy up into the tree.
| | 03:54 | And it's not essential that you do just
the most brilliant job on earth, by the
| | 03:58 | way, because it kind of end up--we've
got so much detail in this illustration,
| | 04:02 | it's going to end up looking really darn good.
| | 04:04 | All right, I'll go ahead and
paint this root up as well.
| | 04:07 | I want to kind of give it some uneven
humps, because not only do the roots
| | 04:11 | taper in much the same way that the
branches taper, but you've got to account
| | 04:15 | for the ground as well.
| | 04:16 | And the ground is going to be swelling
up into the roots at different points.
| | 04:20 | So you might even want to try out
this kind of number where you add just a
| | 04:24 | little bit of root at some location
totally up to you how you decide to go.
| | 04:28 | We just want sort of a random feeling, we
want some knottiness associated with these roots.
| | 04:35 | When I say knottiness, I mean with a K.
| | 04:37 | I don't mean the tree has
done anything bad. All right.
| | 04:40 | I'll go ahead and paint in some areas
here and paint down into this toe as well,
| | 04:46 | the toe of the root that is.
| | 04:48 | And if you end up just sort of making
a mistake or you want to basically make
| | 04:53 | the end of the root look a little more
realistic, then just press the E in order
| | 04:58 | to follow up with the Eraser tool.
| | 05:00 | If you did not change your keyboard
shortcut that would be Shift+E and go ahead
| | 05:04 | and paint away some of the root.
| | 05:05 | I don't like that, however, so I'll go
ahead and undo that change and try again.
| | 05:09 | That ends up looking better to me.
| | 05:11 | And I want to shave off some of this guy,
shave off some of him as well, press
| | 05:16 | the B key to switch back to the Blob
brush and paint in some more details.
| | 05:20 | And so, it's never going to look exactly like the
roots of a silhouette, and I shouldn't say never.
| | 05:24 | If you're working with a Wacom tablet
or something like that, you might end up
| | 05:28 | end getting some
absolutely extraordinary results.
| | 05:30 | But again, because of the copious
detail that we have assigned to this tree, I
| | 05:35 | think you are going to have a pretty good looking
silhouette once you start zooming out like so.
| | 05:40 | All right, I also want to paint in
some knots where the trunk is concerned.
| | 05:45 | So I'll increase the size of my brush
by pressing the right bracket key a few
| | 05:49 | times, and then I'll just
kind of do this number here.
| | 05:51 | Now you always have the option, by
the way, of painting independently.
| | 05:56 | Well, that looks just terrible.
| | 05:57 | So I'll go ahead and
demonstrate what I am talking about.
| | 06:00 | I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the
Mac to undo that change, and I'll change my
| | 06:04 | stroke color from this black that I've been working
with, which automatically is merging into the tree.
| | 06:09 | I'll change it to sky blue instead and
I'll go ahead and click on the branches
| | 06:14 | layer to make it active
here inside the Layers panel.
| | 06:16 | And now, if I paint with blue you can
see that I am not merging with the tree,
| | 06:22 | because it's a separate color.
| | 06:24 | So it's not strictly speaking a Unite
operation, it's more of a Merge operation.
| | 06:28 | And then once you've done that, once
you painted in some stuff you like, then
| | 06:31 | you press V key to switch to the Black
Arrow tool, click on the blue patterns,
| | 06:35 | Shift-click on the other one,
press Ctrl+Shift+Left Bracket or
| | 06:39 | Command+Shift+Left bracket on the Mac
to send them to the back of the stack.
| | 06:42 | Shift-click on the tree and then go
over to the Pathfinder panel and click on
| | 06:47 | Unite in order to apply it, and click
off and see if you end up liking what you
| | 06:51 | came up with a little better.
And I guess I kind of do.
| | 06:54 | I am going to press the key E to switch
to the Eraser tool, and I am going to try
| | 06:59 | to raise some of the base here, because
that's just a little bit too much, and I
| | 07:03 | don't want all these big knots
coming out of here like that.
| | 07:06 | I do want some knotty action, again
K-N-O-T-T-Y, because I want it to look like
| | 07:12 | there's knots coming out of the tree.
I guess there is no better way to put it.
| | 07:17 | I'll go ahead and paint this guy up as
well, but I don't want just weird lumps
| | 07:21 | coming out of this tree, because I
think that doesn't really look that good.
| | 07:25 | All right, now I've switched back to
the Blob brush by pressing the B key, and I
| | 07:29 | am painting up again, and the
Illustrator has gone ahead and automatically
| | 07:32 | changed my foreground color back to
black, so I am once again paining directly
| | 07:35 | into the tree as you see me doing here.
| | 07:38 | All right, we need to do the same
thing with some of the lower branches.
| | 07:42 | You don't have to go nuts on all the
branches, but some of these initial branches
| | 07:46 | should get a little thicker I think or a
little less regular anyway so that they
| | 07:50 | don't have these super straight sides,
which really doesn't make any sense,
| | 07:54 | because tress aren't built that way.
| | 07:56 | And you want to go ahead and paint up this limb
I should think as well in order to add to this.
| | 08:02 | Now you should be able to paint into
leaves without them merging together,
| | 08:06 | because after all the leaves by this
point are filled with the rich black.
| | 08:09 | But if you're at all concerned about that, just
go ahead and lock down that top foliage layer.
| | 08:13 | And that way, there will be no
chance that you accidentally harm it.
| | 08:17 | All right, I'm going to go ahead and
paint into this guy as well, paint up this
| | 08:21 | limb just a little bit,
not that much, I don't think.
| | 08:24 | Actually, I'll try that again by pressing Ctr+Z
or Command+Z on the Mac and painting once again.
| | 08:29 | And I am going to switch to a smaller
brush by pressing the Left Bracket key.
| | 08:33 | And perhaps this guy
ought to be a little thicker.
| | 08:36 | It's up to you how much work
you decide to put into this.
| | 08:39 | You don't have to go crazy, but I do
want to, as long as I am here, make some
| | 08:44 | changes that look a little better.
So I'll go ahead and paint this guy in as well.
| | 08:48 | All right, so if you ask me, that's
looking pretty darn good, and we were able
| | 08:52 | to achieve this effect by brushing
over the stuff we already had using the
| | 08:56 | Blob brush, which acts like a brush set
to the Merge pathfinder operation, and
| | 09:01 | the Eraser tool, which acts like a brush
set to the Minus Front pathfinder operation.
| | 09:07 | In the next movie we'll paint in some additional
branches, and we will merge the entire tree together.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Filling in branches with the Blob Brush| 00:00 | In this movie we're going paint in some
additional branches using the Blob brush,
| | 00:04 | just because it's the easiest way to work.
| | 00:07 | Essentially, the more branches you have, the
more credible your tree effect is going to be.
| | 00:12 | So I'll start by switching to the branches layer,
because after all, my foliage layer is locked.
| | 00:17 | I want to be able to paint these branches in
initially independently of the existing tree.
| | 00:22 | That way I can erase into
the branches if I need to.
| | 00:25 | So I'll go up to the Stroke swatch up here in
the Control panel, and I'll change it to blue.
| | 00:30 | Now I can paint in the brushes as I like.
Now that's way too skinny.
| | 00:34 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or the Command+Z on the
Mac to undo that change. And you know what?
| | 00:39 | I don't want calligraphic limbs like this.
That would look totally ridiculous.
| | 00:42 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or the Command+Z
on the Mac to undo that brush stroke.
| | 00:46 | Then I'll pressure double-click in the
Blob brush tool, and I'll all reinstate
| | 00:49 | the roundness value of 100% and click OK.
| | 00:51 | Now I'll press the Right Bracket key a
few times in order to increase the size
| | 00:55 | of my brush, and then I'll
go ahead and paint in a limb.
| | 00:59 | Now I'll reduce the size of my brush
and I'll paint in another limb like that.
| | 01:04 | Now if you want an elbow in the limb as
you're seeing here, you don't want it to
| | 01:09 | round off as it ultimately will when you
just go ahead and paint an entire brush
| | 01:13 | stroke like that with a Blob brush.
| | 01:15 | Instead, to get a nice sharp transition
there. What you want to do is you want to
| | 01:19 | paint the first part of the brush
stroke like that, and then I'll reduce the
| | 01:22 | size of my cursor a little bit,
and I'll paint the second part.
| | 01:26 | That gives you a nice sharp acute
angle, which is what we're looking for.
| | 01:30 | Also, by the way, if you want the brush
stroke to get thinner as you go, then you
| | 01:34 | can start thick like that,
although not that thick.
| | 01:36 | I'm going to press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
on a Mac and go with something in between.
| | 01:41 | You can paint part of the brush stroke
like so, or part of the limb that is, and
| | 01:45 | then you can reduce the size of your cursor a little
bit and paint the rest of the limb into place.
| | 01:50 | Now, bear in mind as you're painting
these limbs that the tree is a kind of
| | 01:55 | capillary system for the leaves,
and it's also a support structure.
| | 02:00 | So it's not only providing nutrients
to leaves, but it's going to hold them
| | 02:04 | in place, and the big branches at the base
need to support the smaller branches at top.
| | 02:09 | So we need the branches to be connected.
| | 02:11 | They're constantly forming the sort of
forks in the road, if you will, as you
| | 02:16 | paint your way up, and I want this
limb just strictly to be thicker.
| | 02:20 | Then I'm going to make another limb,
come off of it to about here, let's say, and
| | 02:25 | then I'll reduce the size of my cursor
and have another limb go up this way.
| | 02:29 | So again, just as long as you can sort
of think in terms of metaphor of either
| | 02:34 | veins or forks in a road or what have
you, you're going to have an easier time
| | 02:39 | of painting these limbs into
place and having them make sense.
| | 02:42 | That's ultimately what we need, because
anybody who's viewing this is going to
| | 02:47 | know what a tree looks like, and if it
makes sense once everything is said and
| | 02:52 | done here, then it's going
to look a lot better as well.
| | 02:55 | I want to fill out these areas, too,
because there should be more branches at
| | 02:59 | this location, and they should
probably be kind of skinny branches.
| | 03:03 | Now you're going to see all of the
defects associated with your branches when
| | 03:06 | you're painting them in a
different color like this.
| | 03:08 | As soon as we merge them into the tree
and make them black, as we will before we're
| | 03:14 | done here, they're going to
look a heck of a lot better.
| | 03:17 | So you also want limbs up here, by the
way, into the holes in leaves, and that's
| | 03:23 | going to help make for a
more credible tree as well.
| | 03:26 | Now it's up to you how many limbs
you decide to paint in the place.
| | 03:30 | You don't have to go totally nuts, but
it really is going to be true, the more
| | 03:34 | you add, the better it's going to look.
| | 03:36 | Now notice here, I'm going
all the way across the tree.
| | 03:39 | What you don't want is a limb that does
this kind of number here, because what
| | 03:43 | is the purpose of that limb? Did it die?
It doesn't have any leaves on it.
| | 03:47 | That doesn't really make any sense.
| | 03:49 | The limb, no matter how thin it is,
it's going to go all the way up into the
| | 03:53 | leaves, assuming of course that this is a nice,
healthy tree, and the bugs haven't gotten to it.
| | 03:58 | This looks pretty darn good, I think.
Now I'm going to join things together.
| | 04:02 | And I'm going to do that by switching
to my Black Arrow tool, which you can get
| | 04:07 | by pressing the V key, of course.
| | 04:08 | I'll click on one of these guys to
select it, and I did mention, by the way, that
| | 04:13 | you could go ahead and erase one of these limbs.
| | 04:15 | If you make a mistake, the great thing about
having them separated is you can erase into them.
| | 04:20 | If you find you want to do that, then let's make
a mistake just so we can have something to demonstrate here.
| | 04:25 | I'll go ahead and make this guy
thicker like that, and now it's too thick.
| | 04:29 | What you want to do is press the Ctrl
key or the Command key on the Mac to get
| | 04:34 | the black arrow on the fly, go ahead
and select the bad limb by clicking on it.
| | 04:38 | Then press, in my case, the E key to get
to the Eraser tool and erase into that
| | 04:43 | limb like so, and it's going to look
like you're erasing the entire tree, but
| | 04:46 | by virtue of the fact that you have a selection
active, you're only going to affect the selection.
| | 04:51 | Now that I do have the selection, I'm
going to press the V key to switch back to
| | 04:55 | my Black Arrow tool, and I'll go up to
the right side of the Control panel and
| | 05:00 | click on Select Similar Objects in order
to select all the objects that are blue,
| | 05:03 | assuming by the way, that the pop-up menu here's set
to all, and then we want to send these guys to back.
| | 05:09 | Then Shift-click on the tree in order
to select it as well and go over to the
| | 05:13 | Unite icon here inside the Pathfinder
panel and click on it, and that will go
| | 05:18 | ahead and unite your tree together.
| | 05:20 | Now we're going to end up with a group,
because we have disparate paths, that is
| | 05:24 | there are multiple
independent paths going on here.
| | 05:26 | You're going to be better off.
| | 05:28 | Things are going to work better
for you if you press Ctrl+Shift+G or
| | 05:31 | Command+Shift+G on the Mac in order to
ungroup all the limbs, and if you twirl
| | 05:35 | open the branches layer, you may find
that you've got a awful lot of different
| | 05:39 | paths going on, including
this compound path at top.
| | 05:41 | Next, you want to combine them all
into a compound path by going up to the
| | 05:44 | Object menu, choosing Compound Path,
and then choosing Make, and that fuses
| | 05:49 | everything together into a single compound path,
which is a heck of lot easier to work with.
| | 05:54 | Now if I click off the path to deselect it, you can
see that we've got an awfully nice-looking tree.
| | 06:00 | In the next movie, we'll go ahead and merge the
branches along with the leaves on a new independent layer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Merging layers and uniting paths| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll combine the
branches along with the leaves on an
| | 00:03 | independent layer in two different ways.
| | 00:06 | The first method will result in static path outlines,
and the second will result in a dynamic compound shape.
| | 00:13 | And I think you'll find the difference
between the two to be extremely illuminating.
| | 00:18 | So let's imagine that I want to keep my original
branches and my leaves, I don't want to lose those.
| | 00:22 | So what I want to do is take these two layers,
duplicate them, and then merge them together.
| | 00:27 | And here's how that works.
| | 00:28 | I'll go ahead and click on the branches
layer, Shift-click on the foliage layer
| | 00:32 | here inside the Layers panel, and I'll
duplicate them--and this works even with
| | 00:35 | the locked layer--by going up to the
flyout menu icon and choosing Duplicate
| | 00:40 | Selection, and then we'll end up with
two new layers that end in the word Copy.
| | 00:44 | I just want one new layer, so I'll
click on one, Shift-click on the other, then
| | 00:48 | go back to the flyout menu
and choose Merge Selected.
| | 00:51 | That merges the layers, by the
way, not the contents of the layer.
| | 00:55 | So if I choose that command, I've got
this one layer now called branches copy,
| | 01:00 | but if I twirl it open, I still have two compound
paths, one for the leaves and one for the branches.
| | 01:05 | I am going to turn off the original
foliage and branches layer, and then I'll
| | 01:09 | double-click on the new layer in
order to bring up the layer dialog box.
| | 01:14 | I'll call this guy static outlines, and
I'll change the color of this layer to
| | 01:18 | something fairly bright, like let's
say lavender, close to the bottom of the
| | 01:22 | list here, and then I'll click OK.
And I'll twirl that guy closed for now.
| | 01:27 | I want to create another copy of
this layer for the dynamic effect.
| | 01:30 | So I'll return to the flyout menu
for the third time and choose Duplicate
| | 01:34 | static outlines, and then I'll go
ahead and double-click on an empty portion
| | 01:38 | of this layer, and I'll call this one
dynamic effect, and I'll change the color
| | 01:43 | to the very bright green near the
top of the list, and I'll click OK.
| | 01:48 | If you're working along with me, for
the moment, go ahead and turn Dynamic
| | 01:51 | Effect off and then Alt-click or Option-click
on the static outlines layer in
| | 01:56 | order to select both the
branches and the leaves.
| | 01:59 | Now we want to combine them.
| | 02:00 | So click on the Unite icon, the very
first icon there in the Pathfinder panel,
| | 02:05 | and we'll end up with an absolute mess.
| | 02:06 | I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the Mac
just to hide the selection outlines for a moment.
| | 02:11 | You may recall, if I switch back to the
Appearance panel, that we applied a total
| | 02:15 | of three dynamic effects, Offset Path,
Roughen, and Round Corners to the leaves.
| | 02:19 | And because the leaves are in front,
as soon as we combine these two objects
| | 02:24 | into a new compound path, that means
those same dynamic effects are applied
| | 02:29 | to the roots, the trunk, and the branches as
well, which is not even sort of what we want.
| | 02:34 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on
the Mac in order to undo that change,
| | 02:38 | and I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the
Mac in order to bring back the selection edges.
| | 02:43 | I'll click off to deselect, and I'll click
on the leaves to once again select them.
| | 02:47 | Now, the very definition of a dynamic
effect is that it is being applied on the fly
| | 02:52 | to what are otherwise static path outlines.
| | 02:55 | And if you want to see those
original path outlines, you press Ctrl+Y or
| | 02:58 | Command+Y on a Mac in order to switch
to the outline mode. That goes ahead and
| | 03:03 | hides the dynamic effects, and we see
those blobular path outlines that I painted
| | 03:09 | so hastily a few movies ago.
| | 03:11 | Well, what if you want to convert the dynamic
effects to static anchor points and control handles?
| | 03:17 | In that case, what you do is
you look for the word Expand.
| | 03:20 | Now you'll see it here inside the
Pathfinder panel, but it's dimmed, and that's
| | 03:24 | because the purpose of this button is to
expand compound shapes and convert them
| | 03:29 | into static path outlines.
| | 03:31 | What we want is an expand that's
available to us from the Object menu.
| | 03:35 | So you go up to the Object menu, and
there's two appearances of the word Expand.
| | 03:40 | One has a dot-dot-dot after it, and the
other just reads the Expand Appearance.
| | 03:44 | They're never both available.
At least one of them is always dimmed.
| | 03:48 | Really, I've got to tell you that I've
been using this program forever, and I
| | 03:52 | never know which one is going to pop up,
but it doesn't really matter.
| | 03:55 | Just go ahead and choose the one that's available.
| | 03:57 | In our case, Expand Appearance, and you'll go
ahead and render out those dynamic effects.
| | 04:02 | Notice they've disappeared from the
Appearance panel, and you will convert
| | 04:05 | them to static anchor points and
control handles, lots and lots and lots of
| | 04:11 | them, as you can see here.
| | 04:12 | All right, now I'll press Ctrl+0 or
Command+0 on the Mac in order to zoom out,
| | 04:17 | and I'll press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on
the Mac to switch back to the Preview
| | 04:21 | mode, Shift-click on the branches, and
then go ahead and click on Unite again,
| | 04:25 | or you can repeat the last Pathfinder
operation you applied even if you undid
| | 04:29 | it by pressing the keyboard
shortcut Ctrl+4 or Command+4 on the Mac.
| | 04:35 | So I'll go ahead and do that right now, and
we end up with one big static path outline.
| | 04:40 | It just so happens to be a group.
| | 04:43 | Groups are pretty unwieldy
for these kind of things.
| | 04:45 | So we're better off switching back to the Layers
panel, twirl open static outlines, twirl open groups.
| | 04:51 | You'll see that you have a bunch of
little tiny micro paths. They look big, but
| | 04:55 | they're really dinky out there,
along with a larger compound path that
| | 04:59 | represents most of the tree.
| | 05:01 | If you were to drag the compound path
out of the group like so and then Shift-
| | 05:06 | meatball to turn it off, you are
going to see all these dinky little path
| | 05:10 | outlines throughout your tree
at different random points.
| | 05:12 | You probably want to keep them, however.
| | 05:14 | So Shift-click on a compound
path to select it as well.
| | 05:17 | So both the big compound path that
represents the branches and leaves and the
| | 05:21 | group are selected and then combine
them together by going up to the Object
| | 05:24 | menu, choosing Compound Path, and choosing Make,
or you can press Ctrl+8 or Command+8 on the Mac.
| | 05:30 | Now you might for a moment go, okay,
how am I supposed to remember these
| | 05:34 | keyboard shortcuts? Ctrl+4 or Command+4,
that's great, because there's going
| | 05:38 | to be a lot of times where you want to repeat
the same Pathfinder operation over and over again.
| | 05:42 | The problem is that is not
a memorable shortcut at all.
| | 05:45 | Well, just to put things in context,
I've created this chart here, and it shows
| | 05:49 | every single one of the shortcuts that
involve numbers from 1-0 and the function
| | 05:54 | that the shortcut applies.
| | 05:55 | So you know Ctrl+1 or Command+1 zooms
to actual size, Ctrl+2 or Command+2 locks
| | 05:59 | the selected object, Ctrl+3 or
Command+3 hides the selected object.
| | 06:03 | There is Ctrl+4 or Command+4, which
repeats the last Pathfinder operation.
| | 06:07 | So it's just one of those keyboard
shortcuts that happen to be open and Adobe
| | 06:10 | went ahead and assigned to
this particular function.
| | 06:12 | Ctrl+5 or Command+5 converts the
selection to a guide, we've seen that.
| | 06:16 | Ctrl+6 or Command+6 I haven't
really highlighted, it's reselect.
| | 06:20 | The idea is if you deselect something and
then you think, oh, it took me several
| | 06:24 | seconds to select all those different
objects, I want to reselect them, then
| | 06:28 | you can press that keyboard shortcut or
choose the Reselect command from the Select menu.
| | 06:32 | The problem is this is a sporadic function.
| | 06:34 | Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's very
haphazard, and that's why I kind of don't want you
| | 06:41 | to worry about it too much, because as often as
not, it will disappoint you, but it is there.
| | 06:46 | Ctrl+7 or Command+7 converts a
selected paths to a clipping mask.
| | 06:49 | Ctr+8 or Command+8, we just saw that, it
converts a selection to a compound path.
| | 06:54 | Ctrl+9 or Command+9 is the only one
that's not assigned by default and then
| | 06:58 | Ctl+0 or Command+0 fits
the artboard to the window.
| | 07:01 | So if that helps, great,
if it doesn't, well, I did my best.
| | 07:04 | Anyway, I am going to switch
back to our artwork in progress.
| | 07:07 | Now we've seen the static approach.
| | 07:09 | And by the way, the great thing about
the static approach is that I could apply
| | 07:12 | further modifications using both the
Blob brush and the Eraser tool, and I would
| | 07:17 | achieve predictable results.
But what if I'm done?
| | 07:20 | This is absolutely baked. I
don't want to do any more to my tree.
| | 07:23 | Well, then you might prefer to work dynamically.
| | 07:25 | So I'll go ahead and turn off the
static outlines layer, turn on dynamic
| | 07:28 | effects, Alt-click or Option-click on it
in order to select all of the objects here.
| | 07:34 | Bear in mind we've still
got dynamic effects, right?
| | 07:36 | So the leaves have those three
dynamic effects applied to them.
| | 07:39 | The branches don't have
any dynamic effects assigned.
| | 07:43 | I can keep all of that exactly the
way it is by pressing the Alt key or
| | 07:47 | the Option key on the Mac and clicking on the
Unite icon in order to create a compound shape.
| | 07:52 | I can see I have a compound
shape up here in the Control panel.
| | 07:55 | If I twirl open dynamic effect and then
twirl up at my compound shape, I'll see
| | 08:00 | that I've got one compound path.
| | 08:02 | I'll go ahead and rename it leaves, and
another one which I'll also rename branches.
| | 08:07 | And notice that the leaves object right
there has gray meatball, indicating that
| | 08:12 | there is something going on, either there is some
transparency or dynamic effects or what have you.
| | 08:17 | And branches has a hollow icon,
meaning that there's nothing going on.
| | 08:21 | So if I go ahead and meatball the
leaves here and then switch over to the
| | 08:25 | Appearance panel, I've got all my
dynamic effects, whereas if I press the A key
| | 08:30 | in order to switch to my White Arrow
tool, and I click inside the branches to
| | 08:33 | select them, no dynamic effects.
| | 08:36 | So one object inside of a compound
path can have dynamic effects and another
| | 08:40 | can either have no dynamic effects, as
in this case, or a completely different
| | 08:44 | set of dynamic effects.
| | 08:45 | Meanwhile, they have to share common
fill and stroke attributes, which is why
| | 08:49 | Illustrator has gone ahead and made both
the leaves and the branches rich black.
| | 08:54 | And that's how you merge layers as well
as combine objects, both as static path
| | 08:59 | outlines, and as dynamic compound
shapes here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Divide and Minus Back| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you how to
create the sleepy moon using a combination of
| | 00:04 | static pathfinder operations,
including but not limited to the first and the
| | 00:09 | last in the second row here,
Divide, and then Minus Back.
| | 00:14 | I'll go ahead and switch to my
illustration in progress, and I'll turn on this
| | 00:17 | layer here inside the
Layers panel called base objects.
| | 00:20 | I'll go ahead and zoom into this
collection of six path outlines that we'll
| | 00:25 | use to create the moon.
| | 00:27 | Starting with these two circles--
and this is classic stuff here--
| | 00:30 | you can create a crescent by just
subtracting one circle from another.
| | 00:34 | Now if you click on any one of these
objects, you will select all of them,
| | 00:38 | because they are grouped--as you can see--
on the far left side of the Control panel.
| | 00:42 | The easiest way to modify them is
to enter the Group Isolation mode by
| | 00:46 | double-clicking on any one of the objects,
| | 00:48 | then go ahead and click on the violet
circle to select it and Shift-click on the
| | 00:52 | red circle to select it as well.
| | 00:55 | Now we want to subtract the
violet circle from the red circle.
| | 00:58 | Because the violet circle's in back, we need
to take advantage of the Minus Back operation.
| | 01:03 | So go ahead and click on that final icon in
the second row there inside the Pathfinder panel.
| | 01:08 | Now I want to add the face, and
this is the most complicated object.
| | 01:12 | I do it manually using the Pen tool.
| | 01:14 | I will go ahead and Shift-click on it
to select it in addition to the moon, and
| | 01:18 | I'll click on the Unite icon
in order to fuse them together.
| | 01:22 | Now to create that sleepy eye.
| | 01:24 | Now I made the eye using a combination
of three circles, the green, yellow, and
| | 01:28 | the orange one that you see on screen.
| | 01:30 | We're only interested in keeping
this little sliver right here, however.
| | 01:34 | So I'll select each one of the circles
using the Black Arrow tool by clicking on
| | 01:38 | one and then Shift-clicking on the other two.
| | 01:40 | Now you might figure that the best mode is Intersect,
because after all, this is some kind of intersection.
| | 01:47 | But if you click on the Intersect mode,
then you'll end up keeping the sort of
| | 01:51 | eyelid shape, which is not what I want.
| | 01:54 | So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z, Command+Z
on a Mac in order to undo that change.
| | 01:58 | If you're sitting there, and you just
know that somehow this is the shape you
| | 02:02 | want right there and you
want to be able to get to it,
| | 02:06 | the easiest way to pull it off without
even thinking about which operation to
| | 02:10 | apply is to click on Divide, because that's
just going to go ahead and break up everything.
| | 02:15 | So go ahead and click on that first
icon in the second row in order to
| | 02:19 | divide the shapes apart.
| | 02:20 | Now at this point, it doesn't look
like you've done anything, but you have
| | 02:24 | created another group, a nested group.
| | 02:27 | Again, you can see that over here in
the far left side of the Control panel.
| | 02:29 | So I'll go ahead and double-click on
this group in order to enter its Group
| | 02:33 | Isolation mode, and I know this shape
here is the one I want to keep, and I
| | 02:38 | could even drag it off to the side
in order to make sure that's the one.
| | 02:41 | Now I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on a
Mac in order to undo that move, and I'll
| | 02:46 | go up to the Select menu, and I'll
choose the Inverse command to select
| | 02:50 | everything but the shape I want to
keep, and then I'll press the Backspace key
| | 02:54 | or the Delete key on the Mac
in order to get rid of them.
| | 02:57 | Now I want to back up just one group here.
| | 03:00 | So notice the path that's listed
up here at the top of the screen.
| | 03:03 | We're seeing that we're working on the
base objects layer inside the Moon Stuff
| | 03:07 | group, and then inside of an unnamed group,
I want to switch back to the Moon Stuff group.
| | 03:13 | So I will just go ahead and click on it, like so.
| | 03:16 | That is as opposed to pressing the
Escape key, which will take you all the way up.
| | 03:20 | Now go ahead and click on that group
to select it, Shift-click on the face to
| | 03:24 | select it as well, and
this time we want Minus Front.
| | 03:27 | So I'll just go ahead and click on
that icon in order to apply it, and notice
| | 03:31 | even though we started just a moment
ago--I'll press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the
| | 03:35 | Mac in order to show you--we have this moon stuff
group that contained a group and a path outline.
| | 03:40 | As soon as I apply Minus Front, I'm
left with the single compound path.
| | 03:44 | So in other words the groups are wiped out.
| | 03:46 | Now I press the Escape key in
order to escape the Isolation mode.
| | 03:49 | I'll go up to the very first swatch
up here in the Control panel, and I will
| | 03:54 | change it from Black to White in order
to fill the moon with the proper color.
| | 03:58 | Now I'll press Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on
the Mac in order to zoom out, and I'll
| | 04:02 | press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+A in
the Mac in order to deselect that moon.
| | 04:07 | That's how you create a basic illustration
like the moon shape there, using a
| | 04:11 | combination of static pathfinder operations,
including of course Divide and Minus Back.
| | 04:17 | In the next movie I'll show you how
to make this exact same shape using a
| | 04:22 | slightly more complicated approach,
but we'll end up with a dynamic compound shape.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Nesting one compound shape inside another| 00:00 | In this movie, I will show you an
alternate method for creating the sleepy
| | 00:03 | moon as a dynamic compound shape, which will
allow us to edit the component paths after the fact.
| | 00:10 | So I've gone ahead and reverted to the original
version of this Final tree paths.ai file.
| | 00:16 | I will go ahead and turn on the base
objects layer and zoom in on those same
| | 00:20 | six moon shapes right there and then double-click
on them in order to enter the Group Isolation mode.
| | 00:26 | Now I can't apply Minus Back as a dynamic effect
because it's in the second row of pathfinders.
| | 00:32 | You can only apply the shape
modes in the top row dynamically.
| | 00:36 | So what I've got to do is
move the violet shape forward.
| | 00:39 | So I will select it to make it active,
and then I will right-click on it, choose
| | 00:44 | Arrange, and choose Bring Forward,
or I could press Ctrl+Right Bracket or
| | 00:48 | Command+Right Bracket on the Mac.
That brings it in front of the red circle.
| | 00:52 | Then I will Shift-click in the red
circle to select it as well, and I will
| | 00:56 | press the Alt key or the Option key
on the Mac and click on Minus Front in
| | 01:00 | order to create our first compound shape.
| | 01:02 | Now to see that compound shape, you
will have to go ahead and twirl open
| | 01:06 | moon stuff here inside the Layers panel, and it
should be the bottom-most object in the stack.
| | 01:10 | Now we want to add the face to the
compound shape, but we don't want it to
| | 01:14 | become a nested compound shape.
| | 01:16 | So I'll just go ahead and grab the
face and drag it and drop it into my new
| | 01:21 | compound shape just as I did in
the Ringo example several movies ago.
| | 01:26 | That will automatically assign the Unite mode.
| | 01:29 | So I'll go ahead and twirl Compound
Shape open, and you can now see if I
| | 01:33 | meatball moon, which is the rear-most
circle, it has no shape mode applied to it.
| | 01:38 | If I meatball dark side, which of
course indicates the dark side of the moon,
| | 01:42 | then you can see that the Minus
Front mode is assigned to it, and if I
| | 01:46 | meatball face, then you can see up here in the
Pathfinder panel that the Unite mode is applied.
| | 01:52 | That's exactly what I want.
So I am fine with that.
| | 01:55 | Now we need to combine the
elements of the eye here.
| | 01:57 | And we are going to start off by
clicking on the yellow circle and then
| | 02:01 | Shift-clicking on the green circle to
select both of those, and then I will go
| | 02:05 | over here to the Pathfinder panel and
Alt-click or Option-click on Minus Front,
| | 02:09 | which creates yet another compound shape.
| | 02:12 | Then I will grab the orange path here
inside the Layers panel, and I will drag
| | 02:17 | it and drop it onto Compound Shape in
order to move it in, and again, it's
| | 02:21 | automatically set to Unite.
That's not what I want.
| | 02:25 | So I will go ahead and
twirl open my Compound Shape.
| | 02:27 | I am actually not sure which of
these guys I am interested in changing,
| | 02:31 | so I'll just go ahead and double-click
on the big circle in order to enter the
| | 02:35 | Isolation mode for this specific
compound shape, and I'll go ahead and click on
| | 02:39 | larger circle in order to select it.
| | 02:41 | And it appears to be the top circle
inside of the compound shape, and as you can
| | 02:46 | see, it's set to the Unite mode.
| | 02:47 | We want to set it to the Intersect mode,
but if you just click on Intersect, you
| | 02:52 | will end up getting this alert message
that tells you that the operation failed.
| | 02:55 | Just go ahead and click OK.
| | 02:57 | The solution, as you may well know by
now, is to press the Alt key or the Option
| | 03:01 | key on the Mac and then click on
Intersect, and now we will go ahead and keep
| | 03:06 | the intersection of this
shape as well as the other two.
| | 03:09 | So now where these paths are concerned,
if you meatball the bottom one, no shape
| | 03:13 | mode has been assigned to it.
| | 03:15 | If you meatball the next one up, then
you can see that it's set to Minus Front,
| | 03:19 | and then meatball the final one, the
top one in the stack, and it's set to the
| | 03:23 | Intersect mode, which ends up
producing the exact effect we are looking for.
| | 03:28 | Now let's escape out of this Compound
Shape, but not all the way out of the
| | 03:32 | Group Isolation mode by clicking on moon stuff
in the top-left corner of the document window.
| | 03:37 | Now what we need to do is take this yellow
compound shape, which is really the sleepy eye--
| | 03:43 | so I'll go ahead and rename it sleepy eye--
| | 03:45 | and you should always go ahead and
rename your objects if you want to, if that's
| | 03:49 | going to help you make better sense of
your illustration, because anytime you go
| | 03:53 | ahead and select that sleepy eye,
Illustrator will tell you on the far-left side
| | 03:58 | of the Control panel that it
is indeed a compound shape,
| | 04:01 | so you'll never lose that information.
| | 04:03 | All right, now I am going to drag
sleepy eye and drop it between the face, and
| | 04:08 | dark side layers, like so.
It's set to the wrong mode.
| | 04:11 | So I will meatball it to
just make sure it's selected.
| | 04:14 | It comes in, in the Unite mode.
That's not what we want.
| | 04:16 | We want to subtract it.
| | 04:18 | So I will press the Alt key or the Option key on
the Mac and click on the second icon in, Minus Front.
| | 04:24 | Now that ended up not doing the trick for me,
even though clearly Minus Front is selected.
| | 04:29 | And the reason is my
stacking order is messed up.
| | 04:31 | Face is sitting there on top of sleepy eye, and
because it's set to Unite, it's covering everything up.
| | 04:37 | So I will go ahead and grab the face
and drag it below sleepy eye, and we end up
| | 04:42 | getting precisely the effect we are looking for.
| | 04:45 | All right, now that I've got this
Compound Shape which I just twirl closed, I
| | 04:48 | don't need it to be nested inside of a group.
| | 04:51 | So I will just drag it and drop it out
like so, and then I will press the Escape
| | 04:56 | key in order to exit the Isolation mode.
| | 04:58 | I'll now go ahead and click on any one
of the shapes with the Black Arrow tool
| | 05:02 | in order to select the entire compound path.
I've got a problem here.
| | 05:05 | If you look up here at the Control panel,
you'll see that it's set to Mixed Objects,
| | 05:09 | which means that if I switch over to
the Appearance panel, I can't even
| | 05:13 | see a fill to modify.
That's a bad thing.
| | 05:15 | So what I need to do is press Ctrl+Shift+A,
or Command+Shift+A on a Mac to
| | 05:19 | deselect the object, then click on it again.
I know that doesn't make a lot of sense,
| | 05:24 | but sometimes that helps
Illustrator to figure out what's going on.
| | 05:27 | Now it's telling me Compound Shape.
| | 05:29 | When you have a Compound Shape
selected, you don't see the Fill and Stroke
| | 05:32 | swatches up here in the Control panel,
but you will see them in the Appearance
| | 05:35 | panel, and now I'll change my
fill from red to white like so.
| | 05:41 | I end up getting the effect I am
looking for, except for one thing.
| | 05:44 | I am now noticing that this face shape
sort of cuts into the crescent, and as a
| | 05:50 | result, we have a couple of problems.
| | 05:52 | I really want to be able to see this
point inside of the mouth here where the
| | 05:57 | red lips intersect, and I want to see this little bit
of a dip here between the lower lip and the chin.
| | 06:03 | And because I'm working with a Compound
Shape, I can still modify these paths.
| | 06:07 | So I will press the A key in order
to switch to the White Arrow tool.
| | 06:11 | Then I will press Ctrl+Shift+A or
Command+Shift+A on the Mac in order to
| | 06:15 | deselect everything, and I will click
very carefully on the path outline for the
| | 06:19 | lips here, and I can tell that I'm
hovering over the path outline because I see a
| | 06:23 | little square next to my cursor.
So I will go ahead and click.
| | 06:26 | That will select that segment, but I
really want these two neighboring anchor points.
| | 06:30 | So I will click on this one and
then I will Shift-click on that guy.
| | 06:34 | And assuming that your keyboard
increment is set to 1 point, you can confirm
| | 06:37 | that by pressing Ctrl+K, Command+K on
a Mac, sure enough it is, as by default.
| | 06:41 | And I just ask you to check that
because it's easy to change, and it's
| | 06:45 | oftentimes very useful to change that setting.
| | 06:47 | Now press the up arrow key in order to
move those points outward just far enough.
| | 06:52 | I will press Ctrl+Y or Command+Y on a
Mac to switch to the Outline mode so that
| | 06:57 | we escape this area right here
which is the inside of the crescent.
| | 07:01 | Now I'll press Ctrl+Y again, Command+Y on a
Mac in order to return to the Preview mode.
| | 07:06 | I will press Ctrl+Shift+A, or
Command+Shift+A on the Mac in order to deselect
| | 07:11 | my artwork, and I will press Ctrl+0 or Command+0
on the Mac to go ahead and center my zoom.
| | 07:16 | And that, friends, is how you create the
most flexible path intersection possible.
| | 07:20 | In our case, a six-path compound
shape here inside Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
18. Live Paint and Interlocking PathsFilling and stroking overlapping areas| 00:00 | Okay, let's say that you want to draw
a path that loops in and out of another
| | 00:05 | path, or even itself, like this celtic
knot in which the orange circle must
| | 00:10 | appear in front of the green path and
then slide behind it and the green path
| | 00:15 | must wind in and out of
itself to create this final effect.
| | 00:20 | Problem is that's not possible in Illustrator.
| | 00:23 | As you well know by now, a path can appear in
front or in back of another path, but not both.
| | 00:29 | Which is why this graphic is impossible
unless of course you use Live Paint.
| | 00:35 | Live paint gives Illustrator the ability
to detect intersecting areas and color them.
| | 00:41 | So where you want this circle to
overlap the knot, you paint it orange.
| | 00:44 | Where the not should overlap the circle,
you paint it green, and in this chapter
| | 00:49 | I show you how it works.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Introducing Live Paint| 00:00 | In this movie I'll introduce
you to the Live Paint feature.
| | 00:04 | So the idea here--we are going to keep
it simple at first--is that we want to
| | 00:08 | create a Venn diagram. For example,
the intersection of Illustrator, and
| | 00:11 | Photoshop is graphic art.
| | 00:13 | And so far, inside of this Illustration,
I have created the interaction between
| | 00:18 | these circles using a blend mode.
| | 00:20 | So if I grab the Cyan circle, for
example, with my Black Arrow tool and drag it
| | 00:25 | away, then I drag the Magenta circle away,
| | 00:27 | you can see that I've got just
three circles in all on this layer.
| | 00:32 | However, thanks to the fact that the
circles are set to the Multiply blend mode,
| | 00:36 | they end up interacting with each
other when set on top of each other.
| | 00:40 | So I'll go ahead and press
Ctrl+Z a couple of times.
| | 00:43 | That would be Command+Z a couple of
times on the Mac, in order to put those
| | 00:46 | circles back in place.
| | 00:48 | Now blend modes are awesome which is
why I devote an entire chapter to them
| | 00:52 | in my advanced course.
But this isn't really the effect I want.
| | 00:57 | I want a better looking green, I want a
darker blue, I want a red that has more
| | 01:01 | contrast, and I want the
central area to be white, not gray.
| | 01:06 | And there's no blend mode
that's going to give me that effect.
| | 01:09 | I also want the strokes inside of the
intersecting areas to be thinner, as in
| | 01:15 | the case of this final
version of the Illustration here.
| | 01:18 | And you can only achieve that degree of
precision when you're working with Live Paint.
| | 01:23 | So let's see how it works.
| | 01:24 | I'll go ahead and switch back to the
document called Venn diagram.ai, and I am
| | 01:29 | going to turn off the Multiply
layer and turn on the Normal layer.
| | 01:32 | So there are those exact same three
circles set to the Normal blend mode.
| | 01:36 | And as a result, there's
no interaction between them.
| | 01:39 | Now we want to select the
three circles on a Normal layer.
| | 01:42 | You can do that by Alt-clicking, or on
the Mac Option-clicking, on the Normal
| | 01:46 | layer here inside the Layers panel.
| | 01:49 | Now to establish a Live Paint object,
you use the Live Paint Bucket, and
| | 01:53 | it's located down here.
| | 01:54 | Go to the Shape Builder tool in the
second half of the toolbox, click and hold
| | 01:58 | on it, and select the Live
Paint Bucket from the flyout menu.
| | 02:02 | You also have a keyboard
shortcut notice that of K.
| | 02:04 | Now at this point, you may or may not
see a trio of swatches above your Live
| | 02:10 | Paint Bucket cursor.
If so, that's a good thing.
| | 02:12 | But let me show you a
situation in which that won't happen.
| | 02:15 | If you're working with a color
that is not defined by a swatch,
| | 02:18 | for example, if I switch over to the Color
panel, and I change any one of these values.
| | 02:23 | I'll go ahead and increase the Y value,
for example, to 100%, then I am just going
| | 02:28 | to see one swatch above my cursor, not three.
| | 02:31 | You really want to be able to see
those three swatches, because they're going
| | 02:34 | to allow you to switch between the colors that
you want to use in order to color your artwork.
| | 02:39 | So the first thing I recommend you do
is go ahead and establish a series of
| | 02:43 | swatches up here in the Swatches panel.
| | 02:45 | So define all the colors
that you are going to work with.
| | 02:49 | Even if later you're going to
change your mind, that's okay.
| | 02:52 | then go ahead and click on any
one of those colors to make it active.
| | 02:56 | This assumes, by the way, that the Fill
is active, as it is for me, if your Fill
| | 03:01 | is not active, then you'd go to the
first swatch up here in the Control panel,
| | 03:05 | and select again any one of
these swatches in this first row.
| | 03:08 | All right, now I'll press the Escape
key, and you can see I am now poised to go
| | 03:13 | ahead and fill some portion of this artwork with
orange, because that's the last color I selected.
| | 03:18 | You'll also notice that even though I
changed the Fill to Orange, that did
| | 03:21 | not affect the selected shapes, and that's
because I'm working with my Live Paint Bucket.
| | 03:26 | When this tool is selected, you don't actually
assign a color until you click with the tool.
| | 03:30 | All right, I'm going to
advance to another swatch.
| | 03:33 | You do this by pressing the right-arrow key.
| | 03:36 | So the right-arrow key is going to
take you forward through the swatches, the
| | 03:40 | left-arrow key is going to take
you backward through the swatches.
| | 03:42 | The central swatch is the one that's active.
| | 03:45 | I want this dark shade of red to be
active, and then I'll click inside this
| | 03:49 | intersecting area right here in
order to fill it with that red.
| | 03:53 | Now I'll go over to this design area,
and press the right-arrow key in order to
| | 03:58 | advance to green, and I'll click right there.
| | 04:00 | And then I'll go up to the Graphic
Art area, press the right-arrow key to
| | 04:04 | advance to the dark blue,
and click at that location.
| | 04:07 | And finally, I'll move my cursor into
the my brain area, and I'll press the
| | 04:12 | left-arrow key several times until I
go back to white, and I'll click in that
| | 04:16 | region in order to fill it.
| | 04:18 | Now I want you to notice
something that's going on here.
| | 04:21 | Now of course, that still leaves the
strokes up for grabs, but we'll take care of
| | 04:25 | that in the next movie.
| | 04:26 | In the meantime, I want you
to see what's going on here.
| | 04:29 | I'll twirl open the Normal layer, and you
can see I've now got a Live Paint object.
| | 04:33 | I had that Live Paint object the second I
clicked with the Live Paint Bucket tool.
| | 04:38 | If you twirl open that Live Paint object,
then you'll see those original circles
| | 04:42 | which I named in advance,
Cyan, Magenta, and Orange.
| | 04:45 | Now they're still independent shapes.
| | 04:47 | For example, I could go ahead and
meatball the Cyan Shape in order to select it.
| | 04:52 | You won't get that little double
circle target icon, you will see the target
| | 04:56 | around Live Paint object.
| | 04:58 | Not sure why that is, but only the
Cyan Circle is now selected as you can see
| | 05:02 | out here in the document window.
| | 05:04 | So if I press the V key in order to
switch back to my Black Arrow tool and
| | 05:08 | I drag this circle around, notice
that Illustrator goes ahead and updates
| | 05:12 | the object on the fly.
| | 05:14 | So you go ahead and keep those
dynamic color interactions, which is
| | 05:18 | absolutely an amazing thing.
| | 05:19 | All right, I am going to go ahead and
press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac in
| | 05:24 | order to undo that move, and then I'll
click off the object to deselect it.
| | 05:28 | Hopefully, that gives you a sense of
how the Live Paint feature works and how
| | 05:31 | you fill intersecting areas
using the Live Paint Bucket tool.
| | 05:34 | In the next movie I'll show you how
to modify the intersecting strokes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Stroking with the Live Paint Bucket| 00:00 | In this movie I'll show you a couple
of different ways to modify strokes using
| | 00:04 | the Live Paint Bucket tool.
| | 00:06 | So what I want to do is add
strokes around these intersecting areas.
| | 00:11 | And so, I'll go ahead and grab my Live
Paint Bucket, which as you may recall, you
| | 00:15 | can get by pressing the K key.
| | 00:17 | Now when I hover inside of a shape,
obviously I'm going to change its Fill.
| | 00:21 | And just for the sake of demonstration,
I'll press the Left Arrow key a couple
| | 00:24 | of times to go back to my yellow swatch,
and click inside this area, and very
| | 00:29 | predictably, it changes to a different color.
| | 00:31 | All right, I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+Z,
or Command+Z on the Mac, to undo that change.
| | 00:35 | When I hover over this area, I see that red
tracing around the intersecting design area.
| | 00:41 | But for some reason, I can't
get to this stroke right there.
| | 00:46 | And if I click, even directly on that
spot, at which the stroke should be, then
| | 00:52 | I'll end up filling
whichever area was highlighted.
| | 00:54 | Obviously, I don't want to do that, so
I'll press Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 00:59 | There are a couple of different solutions here,
| | 01:01 | one is a keyboard trick.
You can press the Shift key.
| | 01:04 | Notice that your cursor changes from a
bucket to a little paintbrush, and you'll
| | 01:07 | probably also get a different
series of swatches above your brush.
| | 01:11 | Notice instead of yellow, for
example, with Blue next door and then None,
| | 01:16 | we've got black with white on one side and
then a very dark shade of gray on the other.
| | 01:21 | We'll come back to that in a moment.
| | 01:23 | But in the meantime, I'll
just go ahead and Shift-click.
| | 01:25 | Now notice that I have the Stroke
active, and I'll go ahead and Shift-click on
| | 01:30 | that stroke in order to add a
very thin weak black stroke.
| | 01:35 | That's not what I want.
| | 01:36 | So I'll go up to the Control panel, and
I'll click on the second swatch, and I'll
| | 01:40 | change it from this Black here inside
the Grays group, that's my problem, is
| | 01:45 | Illustrator has got the
wrong group of swatches selected.
| | 01:48 | I'll go ahead and switch to
this Rich Black in the top row.
| | 01:51 | I'll also change my Stroke,
let's say, to 12 points thick.
| | 01:56 | And that way, I can assign
thicker strokes to my shapes.
| | 01:59 | Now you might look at this and say, hey,
nothing changed inside the illustration.
| | 02:02 | Well, there are two reasons.
| | 02:04 | Again, you are not going to make changes
even if the object is selected with the
| | 02:08 | Black Arrow tool when you're working
with the Paint Bucket because you have to
| | 02:11 | click with the bucket in order to apply colors.
| | 02:14 | And secondly, in our case,
the object isn't even selected.
| | 02:17 | I don't have anything selected inside this
artwork, and yet, I can still use the tool.
| | 02:22 | You only have to have the Path selected for that
first click when you establish the Live Paint Object.
| | 02:28 | Anyway, at this point, I can now press
the Shift key, and click on that stroke
| | 02:32 | in order to make it thicker and darker as well.
However, I don't really want to work that way.
| | 02:37 | I'm all for keyboard tricks, but in
this case, it's completely unnecessary.
| | 02:41 | In order to make the Live Paint Bucket
tool so you can modify strokes without
| | 02:46 | pressing the Shift key, go ahead and
double-click on the tools icon here inside
| | 02:49 | the toolbox, and that will bring up
the Live Paint Bucket Options dialog box.
| | 02:53 | And notice right there, we've got a
Paint Strokes check box, and it's turned off.
| | 02:57 | Go ahead and turn it on.
| | 02:58 | You can, by the way, adjust
other features of this tool.
| | 03:01 | You can turn off the
Swatch Preview above the cursor.
| | 03:04 | I don't know why you'd
want to do that, but you can.
| | 03:07 | And you can also change that highlight color.
| | 03:09 | I'm going to switch it to a color that I'm not
using in this artwork, which is this Bright Green.
| | 03:13 | And I'm also going to reduce the Width
value to 2 points so that I can still see
| | 03:17 | what's up without blocking my artwork.
You've got this Tips button.
| | 03:21 | You can click on it in order to
read about how to use this tool.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to go ahead and just click OK.
| | 03:26 | Now notice if I hover inside of an
intersecting area, I see the Paint Bucket
| | 03:30 | cursor, and if I hover over a stroke between the
intersections, then I see my little brush cursor.
| | 03:36 | All right, I am going to change it to
a different color here by pressing the
| | 03:40 | Left Arrow key a few times until I get to my
yellow swatch, and I'll go ahead and click--and oh,
| | 03:45 | I lost my Line Weight--so I need to
reestablish that up here inside the Control panel.
| | 03:50 | So I'll change it to 12 points once again,
and then I'll click on that stroke in
| | 03:54 | order to apply a 12 point yellow line.
| | 03:57 | I'll go ahead and click on
this area, and this one here.
| | 04:00 | As you work, just make sure that you
see the brush cursor, because if you see
| | 04:04 | the bucket cursor, no matter how close
you are to that line, you're going to
| | 04:08 | fill a shape instead of stroking.
| | 04:10 | So I'll press Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on
the Mac, to undo that change, and I'll go
| | 04:14 | ahead and click on these other strokes
around the intersecting areas inside the circles.
| | 04:19 | So the ones along the outside,
I am going to leave alone.
| | 04:23 | And it looks like I have one
more right there above my brain.
| | 04:26 | All right, so again,
everything is a live dynamic effect.
| | 04:30 | So if I press the V key to switch back
to my Black Arrow tool, and I go ahead
| | 04:34 | and twirl open the Normal layer as well
as the Live Paint Object here inside the
| | 04:38 | Layers panel, and this time just for
the sake of variety, I'll meatball the
| | 04:42 | magenta circle in order to
select it independently of the others.
| | 04:45 | Now I'll go ahead and drag the circle
down to a new location, and you can see
| | 04:49 | that everything is updating on the fly.
| | 04:51 | Now the only thing to bear in mind is
that you don't want to lose a filled area,
| | 04:56 | or a stroked area for that matter either.
| | 04:58 | So if I drag this circle far enough down,
that it goes outside of the dark blue,
| | 05:03 | so I lost |
|
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