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

809 Shading your star pattern in Illustrator

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

809 Shading your star pattern in Illustrator

- [Instructor] In this movie, we're going to take that seamlessly repeating hex pattern with its 24-sided stars, complete with its solid colored fills, and we're going to add some shading so that it looks spiffier. All right, so the first thing I'm going to do is turn off this pattern layer so that I'm revealing my drawing layer in the background there, and then I'm going to select this guy, the shape up here at the top, and I'm going to fill it with a gradient by going up to the Window menu and choosing the Gradient command to bring up the gradient panel right here. And you want to make sure that it's expanded, so you may have to click on that double arrow head in the gradient tab. And then make sure your fill is active and that your swatches panel is available, and go ahead and drag that shade of orange that begins R equals 251. Drag it and drop it onto the beginning of the gradient, like so, and then grab this shade of yellow that begins with R equals 252 and drag it onto the final color stop. Now you may end up still having your white color stop, by the way, in which case just move your orange one over a little bit and then drag that guy down to get rid of it, and then put this guy back at a location of 0%. And then all you need to do is change the angle value right there to 90 degrees. All right, now I want the other shapes to be similarly colored so that their gradients go at different angles, and the easiest way to make that happen is to just go ahead and select these five guys right here by clicking and Shift + clicking with the black arrow tool, and then press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of 'em, and then select this guy and switch to the rotate tool, which you can get by pressing the R key. And assuming your smart guides are turned on, then you should be able to figure out the exact center of the star. while also pressing the Shift key. So I have the Shift and Alt keys down here on the PC. On the Mac, you would have the Shift and Option keys down. Notice that I'm getting a heads up display. I want it to read width and height 250 points, like so, at which point I'll go ahead and release. Now, I have no desire for this shape to have a stroke, so I'll click on the stroke swatch up here in the control panel and change it to none, and then let's go ahead and modify the gradient And so I'll grab the white swatch and drag it and drop it onto the orange one. This time we don't have a problem So I'm just going to click Done, and that goes ahead and adds that swatch to the swatches panel, and then I'll turn on that bottom layer, and then I'll turn on that bottom layer, the guides layer, the guides layer, and I'm going to switch back to the stroke panel and I'm going to switch back to the stroke panel so I have a little more room here. so I have a little more room here. And that goes ahead and reveals my width and height values. And that goes ahead and reveals my width and height values. I'll go ahead and select that layer to make it active, I'll go ahead and select that layer to make it active, and then I'll switch to the type tool, and then I'll switch to the type tool, which you can get by pressing the T key, which you can get by pressing the T key, and I'll go ahead and select that height value right there and I'll go ahead and select that height value right there and I'll copy it by pressing Control + C and I'll copy it by pressing Control + C or Command + C on the Mac, or Command + C on the Mac, and now I'll press the Escape key and now I'll press the Escape key in order to escape out of the text editing mode, in order to escape out of the text editing mode, and I'll click off the text to deselect it, and I'll click off the text to deselect it, and then I'll go ahead and double click and then I'll go ahead and double click on this shaded star swatch right here on this shaded star swatch right here in order to return to the pattern editing mode. in order to return to the pattern editing mode. I'll select that height value I'll select that height value and I'll press Control + V and I'll press Control + V or Command + V on the Mac or Command + V on the Mac in order to paste it in. in order to paste it in. And then I will once again click Done. And then I will once again click Done. And now I'm going to turn off both those layers And now I'm going to turn off both those layers and I'm going to turn on the pattern layer up there at the top. and I'm going to turn on the pattern layer up there at the top. I'll select that big rectangle I'll select that big rectangle and I'll change its fill, and I'll change its fill, this first swatch up here this first swatch up here on the left side of the control panel, on the left side of the control panel, to shaded star, like so. to shaded star, like so. And because over here in the appearance panel, And because over here in the appearance panel, my transform effect is still at work. my transform effect is still at work. Notice if I click on it, Notice if I click on it, I'll bring up the dialog box. I'll bring up the dialog box. My horizontal and vertical scale values My horizontal and vertical scale values are still set to 50%. are still set to 50%. I went ahead and got rid of the rotate value I went ahead and got rid of the rotate value because it doesn't look good on screen. because it doesn't look good on screen. And you can see that Transform Patterns is turned on And you can see that Transform Patterns is turned on and Transform Objects is not. and Transform Objects is not. All right, I'm just going to cancel that. All right, I'm just going to cancel that. Thing is, here's what I want you to notice. Thing is, here's what I want you to notice. I'm going to zoom in here. Remember this shape right here, this guy, had a 90 degree gradient. That means it was going from orange at the bottom to yellow at the top. So what gives? Why does it look different now? And the answer is that it's covered up by one of these other shapes. If you don't like that, if you want to see a vertical gradient in this spot here, then what you need to do is go ahead and deselect the shape, by the way. You don't need it selected for this. And then double click on that swatch inside the swatches panel in order to return to the pattern editing mode, and go ahead and switch from top in front to bottom in front, and that will go ahead and put this guy in front of the others, and put this guy in front of the others, so we at least have a vertical gradient at this spot. so we at least have a vertical gradient at this spot. Some of the other shapes are going to get covered differently, Some of the other shapes are going to get covered differently, but that's just the way it goes. but that's just the way it goes. All right, now I'll go ahead All right, now I'll go ahead and click Done in order to accept that change, and click Done in order to accept that change, and you can see that we now have a vertical gradient and you can see that we now have a vertical gradient at that location. at that location. All right, I'm going to go up to the View menu All right, I'm going to go up to the View menu here in the most recent version of Illustrator CC here in the most recent version of Illustrator CC and choose Presentation Mode in order to hide the interface, and then I'll go ahead and zoom on in. And that is how you shade your perfectly seamlessly repeating hex pattern, complete with its 24-sided stars, here inside Illustrator.

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