From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

677 Swapping magical checkers for dots

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

677 Swapping magical checkers for dots

- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how to swap out our magical checkers for these magical dots that continue to impart the illusion that our absolutely parallel purple bars are somehow out of kilter with each-other. Here I am once again, inside Illustrator, and I'll go ahead and switch over to the document that I created in the previous movie, and now I'll press the control and spacebar keys, that's going to be command and spacebar on the Mac, to access my zoom tool, and then I'll just drag to the right in order to zoom in to the checker pattern in the top-left corner of the artboard. Now you want to click on the checkers layer, here inside the layers panel, to make it active, and then drop down to the little page icon at the bottom of the panel and alt or option click on it to force a display of the layer options dialogue box. Now just go ahead and call this layer dots, and I'll change its color to, let's say, orange, and I'll click OK. Alright, now I'll go ahead and select the ellipse tool from the shape tool flyout menu, and you want to position your cursor at the center of that checker pattern, and notice that my smart guides are turned on. At which point, press the alt key, or the option key on the Mac, and click to bring up the ellipse dialogue box, then dial in width and height values of 12 points apiece and click OK, and because you have the alt or option key down, you're going to create the circle from the center outward. Alright, now notice over here in the far left side of the control panel that the fill is white, I want it to be black, and we also have a black stroke, I'm going to set it to none to get rid of it. Now we want to duplicate this circle, and you're going to have the most success if you turn your bounding box off. And so, go up to the view menu and check this command right there. If it reads show bounding box, then just go ahead and press the escape key, that means the bounding box is already hidden, but if it reads hide bounding box, go ahead and choose the command in order to turn the bounding box off. Now press the V key to switch to your black arrow tool, and you're going to be able to make better sense of this in the outline mode, so go up to the view menu and choose the outline command, or you have that long-time keyboard shortcut of control Y here on the PC, or command Y on the Mac. Now notice that we can see the center of this square, right there, and so what you want to do is drag the circle by its center until it snaps into alignment with the center of that square right there, and then press the alt key, or the option key on the Mac, so that you see a double arrowhead cursor, and then release to create a copy of that circle. And now, drag it by its center again over to this location so it snaps into alignment with this square and press the alt key or the option key on the Mac and drop it into place. Alright, now you can press control Y or command Y on the Mac to switch back to the preview mode. You can also turn off the checkers layer, we just needed it for alignment purposes. And then shift click on the right-hand circle, so both the left and right circles are now selected, and then you want to switch to the rotate tool, which you can get by pressing the R key, and press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, to bring up the rotate dialogue box. Change the angle value to 90 degrees. If the preview checkbox is on, you'll be able to see what you're doing inside the document window, and then click the copy button in order to create a copy of those circles, and then, click on that first color swatch, up there in the control panel, and change the color to white. Now, if you're working along with me, it's going to look a little bit purplish, and that's because this film layer right here, at the top of the stack, is multiplied into the other layers. And so, if I were to turn that layer off, you can see that these new circles are, indeed, white. But I'm going to turn the layer back on, and then I'll press control zero, or command zero on the Mac, to zoom all the way out, and I'll go ahead and grab my black arrow tool there, which you can get by pressing the V key. I'll just marquee these shapes like so, and because all the other layers are either locked or hidden, that just goes ahead and selects my five circles. Alright, now I'll go the object menu and choose the group command in order to group these circles together. And now, with the black arrow tool selected once again, I'll press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, to bring up the move dialogue box. I'll change the horizontal value to 72 points, which is an inch, I'll set the vertical value to zero points, and then I'll click the copy button in order to make a copy of those shapes. Alright, now I need to zoom in again, and I'm just going to press control plus or command plus a bunch of times to zoom in on the shapes. Or, if you're using an older version of the software, you may have to use the zoom tool in order to make sure that you're zooming in to the right location. And then, go ahead and select the rotate tool once again and press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, to bring up the rotate dialogue box. Make sure the angle is set to 90 degrees and click OK. One more change we need to make. I'll go ahead and switch back to the black arrow tool by pressing the V key, and I'll double-click on any of these selected shapes in order to enter the group isolation mode and I'll click on the center circle right there and I'll change its fill to white. So, end up with this effect here, and then I'll press the escape key in order to escape out of the isolation mode, and I'll press control zero, or command zero on the Mac, to once again fit the document onscreen. Alright, now I'm just going to marquee both of these guys right here, and notice that they're opposites of each-other. I'll just click off of 'em for a moment, so you can see that. Alright, I'll go ahead and marquee 'em, and then I'll press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, to bring up the move dialogue box, because after all, my black arrow tool is active, and I'll change the horizontal value to 144, which is, by the way, 72 times two, and I'll leave the vertical value set to zero and I'll click the copy button in order to make a copy of those shapes, and I'll press control D, or command D on the Mac, a few times, in order to fill the width of the artboard. Now we want to alternate these shapes, and so I'll go ahead and marquee all but the first group, like that, and then, with my black arrow tool still selected, I'll press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, to bring up the move dialogue box. I'll change the horizontal position value to negative 72, which is going to move the shapes to the left, and I'll change the vertical value to positive 72, like so, and then I'll click the copy button in order to make a copy of those shapes, and notice, if I click off the shapes to deselect them, that this guy is an alternate version of the one above it. We are, however, missing dots over here on the right-hand side of the artboard, so I'll select these guys, and I'll press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, to bring up the move dialogue box, and I'll change the horizontal value to 144, and I'll set the vertical value to zero, so that we're moving the shapes exclusively to the right, and then I'll click the copy button, so that we have a copy of these alternating circles. Alright, now we want to duplicate that second row right there, so go ahead and marquee it and press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, to bring up the move dialogue box. Change the horizontal value to zero and the vertical value to 72 to move the shapes down and click on the copy button in order to create a copy of 'em. And then, marquee these guys in the first row, and we're going to duplicate them down here. So it's important that you repeat the dots in this rhythm, by the way, if you want to achieve the proper effect. With that top row selected, I'll press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, leave the horizontal value set to zero, set the vertical value to 72 times three, so asterisk three, and then, if you press the tab key, Illustrator will do the math for you, and show you that the vertical value is now 216, at which point, click the copy button in order to make a copy of those paths. And notice, if I click off the paths that I do have a successful illusion, where these first two purple bars are concerned, whereas the second pair of bars are absolutely parallel. And so, now what we want to do is just select all these dots by clicking in the top-right corner of the dots layer, here inside the layers panel, and then press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac once again, to bring up the move dialogue box. Leave the horizontal value set to zero, and set the vertical value to 72 asterisk four, so, 72 times four, which is 288, and then click the copy button in order to make a copy of those paths, and then you can click off the paths in order to deselect them. And now, if I could zoom in, you can see that we do indeed have that illusion where the horizontal bars appear to be out of kilter while the vertical black bars are still straight up and down. Why that is is anybody's guess, but it does happen to work out beautifully, and that's how you switch your magical checkers for magical circular dots, here inside Illustrator.

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