676 Creating a “magical checkers” illusion

- Hey gang, this is Deke MccLelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. Now last week, I showed you how to create a classic, cafe wall illusion, in Adobe Illustrator. This week we're still in Illustrator, but we're going to amp things up by creating what I'm calling, for lack of a better term, the magical checkers illusion, like this one right here. Now this piece of art was created by Victoria Sky, and insofar as I know, she's the one who came up with the illusion in the first place. And as you can see, these lines right here, these blue lines, are moving. So basically we have diagonal movement in one direction, then another. And, that's actually not happening, they're just horizontal lines. And so the consensus was that there's so much overwhelming our senses here. We have all these ornaments that are moving in opposition to each other, and then they flip from one row to the next. But I want to draw your attention to these little checkerboard patterns, that appear at the intersections of the black vertical bars, and the blue horizontal ones. If you take those checkers away, then all motion goes away as well, and we have what are obviously parallel, horizontal, lines. So it's really all about the checkers. Now, I did redraw this artwork, just so that I could get a sense of what's going on here. It is a pretty faithful reproduction of Victoria Sky's work. We are not going to create that, however. I don't want to rip her off. So instead, we're going to create something different, even though very much along the same vein, that's celebrating all the devices, that have infiltrated our lives. And even though the devices have a bunch of funky movement and they are moving in opposition to each other as well, it really is all about the checkers. Here, let me show you exactly how those checkers work. Alright, so here we are, looking at the final version of the artwork, which we will be drawing entirely from scratch here inside Illustrator. And as I was saying, the fact that these horizontal lines appear to be slanting, is entirely a function of these checkers, which appear at the intersections of the vertical and horizontal bars. And so notice, if I go over here to the layers panel, and I turn off the checkers layer, then all of the horizontal lines, suddenly appear to be absolutely parallel. But when I turn the checkers layer back on, even though you can clearly see that the lines are not shifting on screen, suddenly, they look as if they're slanted. Now you don't have to use checkers by the way, you just need some sort of alternating bright and dark pattern. So, for example, I could work with circular dots instead. Alright, so I'm going to start things off by going up to the file menu, and choosing the new command. Or, of course, you've got that keyboard shortcut of ctrl + n or cmd + n on the Mac, and just so we're all having the same experience, I'm going to go ahead and click on the more settings button, to bring up what I consider to be, the vastly superior old new dialog box. And now, I'll switch the profile to either basic RGB, in older versions of the software, or nowadays art and illustration. And notice that my units are set to points. That's very important if you want to follow along. And now, I'll go ahead and select the width value, and I'll change it to 72, because we're going to be working, as you'll see, in 72 point increments, bearing in mind, of course, that 72 points is the same thing as an inch, and I'm going to multiply that guy times 14. And remember that. We'll be coming back to that value in just a moment. And then I'll tab to the height value, and change it to 72 times 10. And notice in both cases, Illustrator goes ahead and does the math for me inside the old dialog box. Very important. Alright, now I'll tab down to the bleed values. Make sure that your values are linked together, and then change any one of them to 12 points like so, and then, in my case, I'll click the create document button in order to create this blank document right here. Alright now, over here inside the layers panel, I want my thumbnails to be a little bit bigger. So I'll click in the flyout menu icon, in the top right corner of the panel, and choose panel options, and then I'll select other, and I will change this value right here to 40 pixels like so, and I'll click OK. Alright, now I'm going to rename this layer guides, because this is going to serve as my guides layer. And we're going to create the guides using this tool right here, the rectangular grid tool, which you get from the line tool flyout menu, and now we want to establish some base values by just clicking any old place inside the document window, doesn't matter where, and then tab your way down to the horizontal dividers value. We're looking for one less divider than we applied for our multipliers. So for the heights value, I multiplied 72 times 10. 10 minus one is nine. And then for my width value, I multiplied 72 times 14. 14 minus one is 13, at which point I'll click OK in order to create this thing right here. Now I don't want that. I just wanted to establish the divider values. And so I'll just press the backspace key, or the delete key on the Mac, to get rid of it. And then you want to go up to the view menu and make sure that your smart guides are turned on. In my case, they're not. So I'll go ahead and choose the command, and I'm going to zoom out just a little bit here. And I'm going to drag from one corner to the other corner of the art board. We're not concerned with the red bleed boundary. So you just want to cover the entire art board by dragging from one corner to the other like so, and assuming that your smart guides are turned on, you should see a heads up display next to your cursor and it should tell you, you have a width value 1008 points and a height of 720, which are the exact dimensions of the art board. Alright now, with this item selected here, you'll want to convert it to a network of guides by going up to the view menu, choosing guides, and then choosing the make guides command, which is going to produce this effect right here. Alright, now we're going to draw the vertical bars, and I'm going to do so on an independent layer, by going over to the layers panel, dropping down to the little page icon down here at the bottom of the panel and alt or option clicking on it to force the display of the layer options dialog box, and I'll call this guide v bars and click OK. Then, I'll switch to the rectangle tool, which you can get from the shape tool flyout menu. And so notice this horizontal guide right here is in the middle of the document, and so it's one, two, three, four, five guides down, and you want to position your cursor at the intersection of that first vertical guide and the middle horizontal guide and then press the alt key or the option key on the Mac and click in order to display the rectangle dialog box. I'm going to change the width to 72 points, same as one inch, and I'm going to change the height value to the height of the document, which is 720 points plus 24, which includes 12 points of bleed up here at the top, and 12 points of bleed down here at the bottom, at which point I'll click OK and because I alt or option click, I'm creating the rectangle from the center outward. Alright, notice that I have no fill and a black stroke. I want the opposite effect, so I'll just press shift + x, in order to swap the fill and stroke like so. Alright now I want to create a few copies of this guy, and so I'll switch to my black arrow tool, which you can get by pressing the v key, and then I'll press the enter key or the return key on the Mac, to bring up the move dialog box and I'll change the horizontal position value to 72 times two which is 144, and I'll turn on the preview check box, and you can see that moves the bar over, so it's centered on this third vertical guideline and then I'll click the copy button, in order to create a copy of that rectangle. And now I'll create a few more copies by pressing crl + d or cmd + d on the Mac. The d being for duplicate. Alright, now let's create a few horizontal bars by once again selecting the rectangle tool, and this time I'm going to move my cursor over the middle vertical guide, which is this one right here and it's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, guidelines over, and then you want to position your cursor over the intersection of that vertical guide as well as the second horizontal guide down. And then, once again alt + click or option + click on the Mac, to bring up the rectangle dialog box. Change the width value to 1008, which is the width of the art board, plus 24, which goes ahead and incorporates 12 points of bleed over here on the left hand side and 12 points on the right. And then tab to the height value and change it to 72 points. Obviously, by the way, the link icon has to be turned off or you won't be able to dial in free form values. Then click OK, in order to create a horizontal bar like so. Now I don't want it to be black. I want it to be actually, a shade of purple, but I'm going to start just by assigning this default pale blue right here, and notice that it's inside this group called cold. I'm going to click on the folder icon I selected and then I'll click on a flyout menu icon, and by the way I'm working in the swatches panel and you can get to the swatches panel by choosing swatches from the window menu if you like. Then I'll click on the flyout menu icon, and I will choose color group options, and I'll go ahead and rename this guy illusion, and then click OK. And I'll double click on this first color swatch right here the one that I've assigned to the horizontal bar, in order to bring up the swatch options dialog box, and I'll call this guy color one, and that way you can change it to a different color later if you like, and then I'll turn on the global check box and that way whatever changes I make to this color will be linked to the shapes. And I'll switch the color mode to HSB, hue, saturation, brightness, and I'll dial in a hue value of 270 degrees, which is purple. I will change the saturation value to 50% and I will take the brightness value up to 100%. And then, notice if you turn on the preview check box, you will see your change applied to the selected shape, after which point I'll click OK to accept that change. Now I'll press the v key, v as in Victor, to switch back to the black arrow tool, and then I'll press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, to once again bring up the move dialog box, and this time I'll change the horizontal position value to zero, and I will take the vertical position value up to 144, which is 72 times 2. And then I'll click the copy button, and now I'll press ctrl + d or cmd + d on the Mac a couple of times, so that we have a total of four horizontal bars. Alright now it's time to create the checkers, and I'm going to do so on an independent layer and actually, I made a little bit of a mistake here. I meant to create a new layer for our horizontal bars, and so with one of those purple bars selected, I'll go up here to the control panel, and by the way, if you're working in the newest version of Illustrator, and you're not seeing the control panel, then go to the window menu and choose the control command in order to bring it up. And then we have this very convenient option right here, select similar objects. Notice it. If you click on it, you'll go ahead and select all the purple bars, and then you can create a new layer by alt or option clicking on the little page icon at the bottom of the layers panel, and I'll call this guy h bars, obviously, and click OK. And then, notice this little red square right there, drag it up to the h bars layer, and now the vertical bars and the horizontal bars are located on independent layers. Alright now I'm going to create yet another layer by alt or option clicking on that little page icon, and I'll call this guy checkers, and I'll click OK. Alright now we want to zoom in on this intersection right here which is to say the intersection of the first horizontal bar and the first vertical bar, and I'll go ahead and grab my rectangle tool once again, and I'll position my cursor at this location here, so the intersection of the left side of this first vertical bar, and the top of the first horizontal bar, and I'll alt or option click to bring up the rectangle dialog box, and I'll change both the width and height values to 24 points which, by the way, is the same as 72 divided by three. Alright now I'll click OK in order to create that little square right there, and I'll click on this first color swatch on the far left side of the control panel, and change the fill color to white. Alright, now we want to add a couple of black squares by dragging from the top left corner of that existing square down to its middle. And so you should see width and height values of 12 points each, and then I'll go ahead and change the fill this time around to black. And then I'll draw another square from the center of the white one to the bottom right corner, so that we once again, have width and height values of 12 points. And it's going to come in black by default. Alright now I'll press the v key to switch back to my black arrow tool, and I'll shift + click on the other black square, as well as the larger white square. And then I'll go up to the object menu and choose the group command, or you could just press ctrl + g or cmd + g on the Mac. Alright, now we want to rotate this guy by switching to the rotate tool which you can get by pressing the r key, and then just got ahead and press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac to bring up the rotate dialog box, and change the angle value to 45 degrees, and assuming that your preview check box is turned on you will see the group rotate like so. And then click OK. Alright now we want to duplicate the checkers by pressing the v key, in order to switch back to the black arrow tool. And then press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to bring up the move dialog box. Set the horizontal position value to 72 points and set the vertical value to zero points like so, and assuming that you have the preview check box turned on, you will see the checkers move to this location right here, at which point, click the copy button, in order to create a copy of that group. Now we need to rotate it, so press the r key to switch back to your rotate tool, and then press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to bring up the rotate dialog box, and let's go ahead and change the angle value this time to 90 degrees in order to produce this effect. So notice in the case of the first group, the white checker is on top. In the case of the second group, the black one is on top. And that's the way things have to work for this optical illusion to take hold. Alright now click OK to accept that change and I'll press ctrl + 0 or cmd + 0 on a Mac to zoom out and I'll press the v key to switch back to my black arrow tool, and I will shift click on that first group and I'll once again press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to bring up the move dialog box, change the horizontal value this time around to 144, leave the vertical value set to zero, notice that we are moving those two checker patterns over to the right, at which point I'll click the copy button in order to create a copy of those shapes, and then I'll press ctrl + d or cmd + d on the Mac a bunch of times to fill out the width of my art work. Alright now we want to duplicate all of these checkers, but I want to do so with the guides turned off. So I'm just going to turn off the guides layer here inside the layers panel, and then I'll click in the top right corner of the checkers layer, once again inside the layers panel, to select all of the checkers, and I'll press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac to bring up the move dialog box. I'll change the horizontal value to zero, this time around, and we want the vertical value to be 72 points, then click copy to apply that change. Alright now we want to flip things around so that the black checker's on top over here on the left hand side and the white one's on top on the right hand side, and the easiest way to do that is to press the r key to switch back to the rotate tool, and then press the enter or return key to bring up the rotate dialog box and change the angle value to 180 degrees and click OK. And that will give you this effect here. Right now we want to duplicate these guys once again so press the v key to switch back to the black arrow tool and press the enter key, in order to bring up the move dialog box. These last values are fine so we want a horizontal value of zero, a vertical value of 72, then click copy, in order to duplicate those shapes, and now I'm going to go ahead and lock down both the h bars and v bars layers by clicking in the second column next to the eye balls and that way I can just go ahead and marquis these top checkers like so. Just want to grab the top row and nothing more and press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to bring up the move dialog box. We want the horizontal value to be zero, because we're just moving these shapes down, and I'm going to change the vertical value to 72 times 3 so asterisk three, and that will return a vertical value of 216 points, at which time click the copy button in order to create a copy of those shapes and notice if I deselect the shapes, we're already starting to see the illusion form where these top two horizontal bars are concerned, whereas the second two bars are obviously parallel. Let's mess that up by once again selecting everything on this layer, which you can do by clicking in the top right corner of that checkers layer here inside the layers panel and then again press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to bring up the move dialog box, leave the horizontal value set to zero, then set the vertical value to 72 asterisk four, so 72 times four, which is 288 points, and then click the copy button in order to make a copy of those checkers. And now if you click off of them to deselect them you'll see that all of the purple bars, now appear to be out of whack. Finally I decided I wanted to add a little bit of extra color to my artwork by creating a new layer. So I'll go ahead and alt or option click on that little page icon at the bottom of the layers panel and I'll call this guy film, and just 'cause I don't want to run out of colors, I'll set it to something boring like light gray and then I'll click OK. And now you want to select the rectangle tool once again and then drag from one corner of the red bleed boundary to the opposite corner, and if you're doing things properly, I'll just go ahead and undo that change and zoom out a little bit so we can see the heads up display, notice in that heads up display, next to my cursor I'm seeing a width value of 1032 points and a height of 744 points because I'm surrounding the entire bleed, at which point I'll release to create that rectangle. I'll make sure my fill is active here in the swatches panel, and I'll go ahead and select this final swatch inside of what is now my illusion group, and I'll double click on it to bring up the swatch options dialog box. I'll call this guy color three, even though we haven't yet made color two but we will, and then I'll turn on the global check box, make sure that your color mode is set to HSB and dial in a hue value of 240 degrees which is blue. Then you want to take the saturation value down to 33% and take the brightness value up to 100%, and then click the preview check box to see that color on screen and then click OK in order to accept that change. And now I want to multiply this entire layer into the layers below, and so I'll go ahead and target that layer by clicking on its circular so-called meatball on the far right side of the layers panel and then you want to click on the word opacity up here in the control panel, and change the blend mode from normal to multiply to produce this effect here. Now I'll just go ahead and switch back to the black arrow tool and I'll zoom into my artwork and I'm also going to lock down this layer by clicking in the lock column here inside the layers panel. And now notice if I turn off the checkers layer, then we have absolutely parallel looking, horizontal lines. But as soon as I turn that checkers layer back on the horizontal lines appear to be angled. Even though the vertical lines still appear to be absolutely straight up and down. And that's how you create a fairly sophisticated optical illusion, using what I'm calling magical checker patterns here inside Illustrator. Alright now if you're a member of Lynda.com slash linknedinlearning, I have a follow up movie in which I show you how to replace the checkers. They don't have to be checkers. They can be round dots for example, as we're seeing right here. Now next week, I'm going to show you how to flip the effect. So currently the lines are moving in the directions indicated by those little arrows. But if I were to rotate the artwork, then I flip the direction in which everything's moving. Now, you might figure well of course, that makes sense because you're going to change things if you rotate the artwork. That's not actually what it's about. It's about how the dots are configured. And I'll show you what's going on as I say next week. And then we'll go ahead and add our device ornaments. Deke's Techniques! Each and every week. Keep watching.