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

958 Illustrator on the iPad: Gradients and repeats

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

958 Illustrator on the iPad: Gradients and repeats

- Hey gang. This is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques! Today marks another day inside Illustrator on the iPad. Yes, this makes three weeks devoted to an app specifically designed for a narrow audience, but the same could be said for the original 1987 Illustrator 1.0 for the Mac. And like Illustrator on the Mac, Illustrator on the iPad warrants our attention. Today, we'll look at two remarkable features. One that only recently appeared in Illustrator desktop on the Mac and the PC, that is, and one that, as I record this, Illustrator desktop doesn't yet support. The first, freeform gradients let you position spots of color anywhere you like and watch them blend magically and sometimes mysteriously into their neighbors. The second, the repeat options allow you to mirror and rotate objects entirely dynamically. They behave somewhat like Illustrator desktop's dynamic transform effect, except that instead of dialing in numbers, you drag intuitive controls. Oh, and you can also arrange objects into a dynamic pattern grid. I won't be talking about that in this movie. It's already long enough, but here's a preview. Here, let me show you exactly how these myriad features work. All right, so here I am looking at a drawing that I've created in advance. If you want to work on the same file, then open the exercise file inside Illustrator for the desktop, and then save it as a cloud document. All right, so I'm looking at a big rectangle filled with a radial gradient that is locked, as you can see, indicated by the lock icon up here in the top left corner. I also have a path outline that I've drawn with a Pencil tool. So I'm going to zoom in by changing the Zoom value up here at the top of the screen to 100%, and notice that we have some alignment problems here. I'm going to switch to the Direct Selection tool, and I'll tap on this point, this end point right here, and then I'll tap on the opposite end point. I want them to be aligned with each other. So I'll tap on the Align icon over here on the right side of the screen. I happen to think this panel is easier to use when it's collapsed. And so I'm going to tap on this right pointing arrowhead, so I'm seeing a column of these very familiar options. And I'll tap this first icon in order to exactly align these two anchor points in a vertical formation. All right, now I'll switch back to the Black Arrow tool, and I'll drag this guy around until it snaps. Notice it's snapping to the vertical center, and now move it up a little bit until it's snapping to the horizontal center. All right, I'll just go ahead and scroll around, once again by two-finger pinching, and notice that I already have a white stroke. I want to add a gradient fill by tapping on the Fill icon, which is currently set to None. And notice, if I switch over to gradient up here at the top of the color picker, you can see that we have three styles of gradients just as we do in Illustrator for the Mac or PC. We've got Linear. We have Radial, and we have Freeform. I'm going to go ahead and switch to Freeform. And I'm going to drag this top color stop down a little bit, and then I'll change its color here inside the color picker to a vivid shade of blue. And so I'll go ahead and drag around the hue ring, and then I'll tap and drag inside of the square here in order to increase the saturation and brightness to their absolute maximum. All right, now I'm going to grab this gray guy here. Definitely don't want it to be gray. It's kind of a grayish yellow. And so I'll go ahead and switch it to this vivid shade of purple. So I'll drag around the hue ring, then I'll tap and hold inside the square and drag upward like so. I think I want it to be a little more of a deep purple. Now I'm going to add some additional color, let's say right about there, and I'll change this to green. So I'm not going for a subtle effect. I think that's pretty obvious, but I will drag the circle inside of the square down a little bit in order to darken up that green. I'm going to add another color stop right about here, that's going to be a bright shade of orange, like so, and then I'll tap down here at the bottom to add another color stop. And I'll go ahead and change it to a dark shade of red. And so you can totally go your own way, by the way. I just want you to appreciate how to work with freeform gradients here inside Illustrator for the iPad. All right, now I'll go ahead and hide that color picker just by tapping off of it. And let's assign some repeats by tapping on this bottom icon over here in a right-hand column, and notice that we have three styles of repeat, starting with Radial. Then we have Grid and Mirror. Now we're going to be focusing our attention on Mirror and Radial. Grid allows you to create a pattern of objects, and you can play with that on your own. In any event, I'm going to tap the butterfly in order to apply a Dynamic Mirror effect. And now I'm just going to drag it inward so that we no longer have a gap. And right about here should work out nicely. All right, now I want to repeat what I have so far in a radial formation. However, notice if I tap on that bottom icon. all of the options are dimmed, and that's because what you have to do is tap off of the object to de-select it, and then tap on it once again in order to select the entire thing. And notice, you may see a little bit of a line down the center of the object, which disappears and reappears, depending on your level of zoom. That is just a function of the screen redraw. It's generally speaking, not actually there. All right, so I'm going to do a quick two-finger pinch, and then I'll tap on that repeat icon over there on the right-hand side of the screen. And I'll tap the first icon in the flyout menu, which is Radial. And we end up getting an effect like this. I'm going to zoom out even farther so that I can see all of the controls. And notice we've got this guy over here on the right-hand side, which allows you to change the number of repeated objects. So I can take that as low as one by way, which wouldn't serve any purpose, but what I'd like to do is take this value way up to, let's say, 21. It's kind of hard to see because I had that thing in a way, but you may have seen it just for a moment. I've got 21 size. Now, down here at the bottom, we have this control that I doubt you're getting use very much, but if you drag it around, you will have fewer repetitions that are just smashed together, depending on how many repetitions you asked for in the first place. I am not interested in that at all. So I'll go ahead and drag this guy back. And now here's where things get interesting. Notice that circle at the top of the ring. You can drag it in order to rotate these shapes around and determine how tightly they interact with each other. So notice you can move them in very tight if you want to, but I want you to notice that there's always some shape in front. So notice this guide down here in the bottom right region. That repeated shape is at the front of the stack, and all the other shapes radiate behind it. So now at this point, I could make the shapes sort of spin around each other if I like, which is pretty interesting. However, it makes it even more obvious that that one shape is in front. So I'm going to move back until I'm getting some interaction between those spikes, like so, so that we have a kind of sun in the background. Now I want you to see that you can still dig into the shapes if you want to. And so if I double tap anywhere inside the artwork, then I'm going to see that mirrored shape, and the shape that's actually represented is going to depend on where you double tap. And so if I tap off the object to de-select it, then tap again to select it and double tap right about here, watch this, then it will be this shape that becomes selected and directs the behavior of all of the others. And so what I could do at this point, I should be able to do anyway, is double tap again. So now I've selected just one half, and I could drag it inward if I wanted to in order to move those mirrored shapes together I could also, if I like, modify my Freeform Gradient and so I could create another color stop up here at the top, for example, and change it to a deeper shade of violet still. And I think I'll darken that up just a little bit, like so. And then once you finish, you can just tap off the shapes in order to de-select them. Now at this point, notice that the radial gradient is offset inside of that sun pattern. And so what I need to do is align this artwork to the artboard. And so I'll just tap on it to once again select it. Then I'll bring up my alignment options once again. I want them to be collapsed, like so, and then I'll tap the second icon in order to center the objects horizontally. And I'll tap the fifth icon right there in order to center them vertically on the artboard. So anytime you only have one object selected, your going to align it to the artboard. I'll go ahead and tap off the object to de-select it. I'll do a quick two-finger pinch in order to center the artwork. And then we'll tap on that Zoom value and change it to 100%, like so. All right, now the thing to bear in mind is that repeats as things stand now are not compatible with Illustrator for the desktop. And so here I am inside Illustrator running on the PC. Notice that I'm looking at the home screen, and that I've switched to Cloud documents. At which point, I'll go ahead and click on the artwork I just created, and notice that I'm seeing this alert message. It's telling me two things, Repeat objects are not yet supported, and Repeats are coming soon to the desktop, which means that if you're watching this in the future, this issue may be resolved. But for now, I'll just go ahead and click OK in order to open the artwork. I'll press Control + 0 or Command + 0 on the Mac to center my zoom, and notice, if I click on this object with a Black Arrow tool, we can see here in the Properties panel that we have a radial repeat. Now, if you do anything to this object, such as double-click on it, then you're going to end up expanding it, which will ruin the repeat function in this specific piece of artwork when you go to open it on the iPad. In any event that's how you take advantage of freeform gradients, along with mirror and radial style repeats when working with Illustrator on the iPad. Seriously, how often does the sweet nectar of learning flow like brilliantly colored sugar from a hippy trippy vine? Next week, we'll take a look at the new color grading options found inside Camera Raw and Lightroom. Deke's Techniques each and every week. Keep watching!

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