Hi there, in this video we're going to make lots and lots of lines. 1
We'll make them join up... 2
and do cool Geometry and Sign Graph looking things. 3
Also lots of Gradients. 4
All right, let's get started. 5
To get started, open up 'blending.ai'. 6
You don't really need to, all I got... 7
is a happy little whale along the corner there. 8
You can do it with anything. 9
So first up we need to understand how blending works. 10
There's a couple of little principles to understand, and then... 11
we go off and make some really fun stuff. 12
The first thing is... 13
I'm just going to grab the 'Ellipse Tool', and give it a Fill of 'none'. 14
And a Stroke of 'white'... 15
just so I can see it against my dark background here. 16
I'll draw a circle, holding 'Shift'. 17
And I want another one, I'm going to copy it, and paste it... 18
and drag it out, so I got two of them. 19
Now what Blending does, it says... 20
you select all of them, and you say, I want to join these two. 21
The way you do it, there's a Blending Tool over here, so click on this guy. 22
And you click on, it's best to click on Anchors... 23
you can click on anywhere... 24
but I want to blend that side to that side. 25
I'll just click once, click twice, and it blends it. 26
In our case, it's just done one step. 27
To change how many steps are in between these blends... 28
all you need to do is double click the 'Blend Tool'. 29
You got a couple of options. 30
Smooth Color will kind of work... 31
when you got different colors between the two circles. 32
Now the two, both of them are white. 33
I can never seem to guess which color will work for me. 34
The one that you'll use the most is Specified Steps. 35
Specified Distance, you can say... 36
I want it to be exactly 4pts apart, so you might decide that-- 37
we're going to use this one mostly in this course, Specified Steps. 38
Let's turn it up to, say '8'. 39
I'll turn my Preview on, and you can see, it kind of joins them up. 40
You'll see, because the width of my Stroke are little different... 41
it kind of blends them as it goes out. 42
Now this is an active effect. 43
Like it's kind of applied the whole time, so you can turn it on and off... 44
by going up to 'Object', 'Blend'... 45
and you can say, you do 'Expand'... 46
to kind of stop it doing it, and give you all those circles... 47
or you can 'Release' and say, go back to how it was. 48
The other thing you might look at is-- 49
I'm going to undo that. 50
Is that there are still editable shapes. 51
So I'm going to grab the 'White Arrow', and click on this outside shape here. 52
Couple of things I can do, I can change the width. 53
You can see, it's kind of updating as we work. 54
You can also start dragging it around, and grab this side as well, and... 55
I don't know what I'm doing, but you get the idea, right? 56
Both inner and outer shapes are editable. 57
You might want to jump to... 58
'Command Y' on a Mac, or 'Control Y' on a PC... 59
which is Outline Mode. 60
Just to see. 61
So long as it's easy, just to see it in here. 62
And sometimes if you type in, we've typed in 8. 63
If you're like, "Oh, we're typing in what looks like a thousand"... 64
prepare for your computer to roll over and die. 65
It will handle small numbers fine, but really high numbers, it will struggle. 66
So let's have a look at a couple of other fundamentals. 67
Let's put this thing we've made. 68
You're going over there, buddy. 69
Never to be seen again. 70
Let's grab this. 71
Why is he white with the Stroke? I had it selected before by accident. 72
So I'm going to give him a Fill color of one of these lovely Gradients. 73
And I'm going to get rid of the white Stroke. 74
And we'll bring him in. 75
We're going to blend two fellows. 76
So I'm going to have one guy, drag it... 77
hold down 'Alt' key on my PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac. 78
We're going to have two copies. 79
Let's look at changing the Fill on the second one as well. 80
Pick any of these ones in here. 81
The cool thing about Blending is that... 82
when you got different colors, it will do them for you as well. 83
So 'Blending Tool', click a point, click the other point. 84
Blends them not very excitingly. 85
But if you double click the tool, specify the steps... 86
so let's go to something like 10. 87
Turn Preview on. 88
It will blend the colors. 89
There's two things we'll look at now. 90
Is that there's actually a spine that is being created. 91
You can kind of see it there, it's just kind of a light red line. 92
Red line that runs through the middle. 93
I can click on that and adjust it, that's the-- 94
Actually let's click off. 95
So this guy is a little group, if I want to adjust them... 96
I got to double click them to go into Isolation mode. 97
So I'm inside this blend, I can click on this guy once, just drag him down... 98
and when I'm ready to come back out, click this arrow until it goes away. 99
Now we're out again. 100
This gives me kind of a clear understanding of that spine. 101
If I grab the White Arrow, and click on the spine, say this end here... 102
you can kind of see that they're easier. 103
You can adjust this guy now. 104
A little bit easier than going inside. 105
Other thing you can do is you can edit it. 106
So Pen Tool, Curvature Tool, whatever tool you're good at... 107
you can start bending that spine. 108
Then you kind of run into, not problems... 109
you might run into a Style, or something you want to do... 110
where you're like... 111
"Actually I want that guy to be at the front, and that guy at the back." 112
It's working probably the way I want it, but let's test that. 113
With it selected, go to 'Object', and down to 'Blend'. 114
And this is kind of all hard core stuff gets done. 115
We want to go to the one that says 'Reverse Front to Back'. 116
You can see, now this guy's at the front, and that guy's at the back. 117
Click off, there you go. 118
Last thing before we get into drawing cool shapes... 119
is with it selected, if we go to 'Object', and go to 'Blend'... 120
we go to 'Blend Options'... 121
actually probably it's easy just double clicking the tool. 122
It's this one here that didn't do anything... 123
it doesn't do anything when there's a straight line... 124
but when there's a curved line... 125
turn Preview 'on', you can see... 126
it orients itself to the line, and kind of moves across. 127
I like that... 128
and I'm going to change this one back... 129
to 'Reverse Front to Back'. 130
Totally wrecking it. 131
So let's leave our whale friend... 132
over here... 133
and let's start building some of those... 134
kind of nice fancy lines we saw at the beginning there. 135
We're going to only introduce one more kind of idea from that. 136
What you see lot on it, that kind of Sign Graph, kind of... 137
the front cover of an album. 138
Ah, I can't think of it... 139
but let's do that. 140
We're going to start with squiggly shapes. 141
You can draw your squiggly shapes any way you like. 142
I'm going to use the Pencil Tool. 143
So the Pencil Tool, underneath the Shaper Tool. 144
You could use the Pen Tool, or Curvature Tool. 145
If we double click the 'Pencil Tool', and yank up the Smoothing... 146
and turn 'off' Keep Selected, and Fill-- 147
make yours look like mine. 148
It just helps your drawing. 149
Now what we want is, I'm going to-- 150
Nothing selected, 'Drawing Tool'. 151
I'm going to have a Stroke, no Fill. 152
My Stroke is-- 153
I've got Gradients in this file. 154
If you're not using my file, you'll have to make your own Gradients. 155
I'm going to start with this one, looks kind of cool. 156
I'm just going to draw a top shape and a bottom shape... 157
and it's just a squiggly line. 158
You notice, when I let go, can you see, it did a nice kind of-- 159
it smooths my lines up... 160
I don't want that curve for no reason other than... 161
it works with curves. 162
Just I like it without it. 163
And this bottom one is going to be more of a zig zaggy kind of one. 164
Got some zig zags, Dan. 165
More curvy. 166
Let's just see where that point happens. 167
So I've got these two parts now. 168
Now all I need to do, same as before... 169
like our two whales, let's select them both... 170
and grab my Blender Tool. 171
Click '2pts'. 172
I'm clicking the ones that match, and they join this way. 173
You can even undo and click this one, and the one over here. 174
It does something different, it's trying to flip itself around... 175
and it looks kind of cool, we'll experiment with that afterwards. 176
I'm going to go for the sure-fire looks great way 177
And again, we don't have enough. 178
So we're going to double click this. 179
Go to 'Specified Steps', crank it up. 180
And hey, now we're talking. 181
I love it. Done. 182
What we can do... 183
first of all, I'm just going to select this one... 184
down the bottom here with my White Arrow... 185
and open up my 'Stroke'... 186
so I want the Gradient panel... 187
because what I'd like to do is... 188
you my friend, I would like to kind of flip it over... 189
to kind of get that sort of effect. 190
The kind of next thing will be... 191
extra addition that we're going to learn here is..... 192
the spine is kind of a nice straight line... 193
but what we're going to do is actually create our own spine... 194
so I'm going to move this guy over... 195
and you can create anything, you can choose a circle, a square... 196
I'm going to use my Pencil Tool and draw a thing. 197
And now when I select these two, you can override that spine. 198
You can say... 199
under 'Object', you can go to 'Blend'... 200
and you can say, actually, 'Replace the Spine'. 201
The one that you've made with the one I've drawn. 202
You end up with bananas craziness... 203
but this is where it gets kind of cool, right? 204
It's kind of 3 Dimensional Sign Graphy stuff. 205
One thing I might do is go and increase the spines. 206
I'm going to go do that now, play around. 207
Now you understand the kind of fundamentals... 208
what I really like you to do is experiment. 209
Experiment with colors, experiment with shapes. 210
I'd love to see your experiments. 211
So this is going to be set as a Class Project. 212
Come up with as many as you like. 213
At least one, to twenty, but I want to see them. 214
Put them up here on the website, so everyone else can see. 215
Also share them with me on Instagram and on Twitter. 216
Remember, Instagram it's bringyourownlaptop... 217
and on Twitter, it's danlovesadobe. 218
All right my friends... 219
go off and make awesome lines that blend together.