Hi there, in this video we're going to make this kind of effect... 1
where it's kind of 3D and Gradients happening. 2
It's very retro, very in. 3
I don't even know what to call it. 4
We'll do a couple of things... 5
we'll look at some of the more advanced usage... 6
and we'll add kind of a cool Grain to it as well to kind of grunge it up. 7
All right, let's go do that now in Adobe Illustrator. 8
Let's get started. 9
I've opened up 'Blending 2' from the 'Exercise Files'. 10
You really don't need to open it because it's just a grayed background. 11
I have added some Gradients, which you might want to do. 12
Regardless, let's start. We need two kind of things. 13
We need our Gradient kind of line... 14
and then, the shape that it's going to follow. 15
So let's draw the Gradient first. We're going to draw an Ellipse. 16
And I'm going to fill it with one of the Gradients I've got in here. 17
Make sure it's got no Stroke; looks a bit weird with Stroke. 18
So a Fill, any kind of Gradient, doesn't have to be this one. 19
I'm going to make a duplicate of it, then I want to blend it. 20
We'll be using different tools in this course. 21
Let's go out for a shortcut time. 22
'Command-Option-B' on my keyboard. 23
If you're on a PC, it is 'Control-Alt-B'. 24
They will do the blending just automatically. 25
Let's double click the 'Blending Tool', and switch out the steps. 26
Don't worry too much about how many steps you do here. 27
We'll go high enough, let's go to '80'. 28
That looks quite nice, you can start to see the banding, it's okay. 29
Don't worry too much about it at this stage because... 30
when we attach the line, we're going to have to adjust it quite a bit afterwards. 31
So don't worry too much about it. 32
And I want a couple of copies. 33
I have a little copy over there, maybe a couple of copies. 34
Now we need the Shape for it to follow. 35
I'm going to use my 'Pencil Tool', it's underneath the Shaper Tool. 36
I've double clicked my 'Pencil Tool', cranked up the Smoothing... 37
and turned 'off' Keep Selected. 38
Let's click 'OK'. Just helps with the flow of it. 39
You could use the Curvature Tool, the Pen Tool, anything you like. 40
I'm going to draw a squiggle. 41
I have no Stroke on. 42
So whatever Strokes you can see, my amazingness. 43
Now I'm going to get this to follow, I've set to select both of them. 44
Go to 'Object', go to 'Blend'. 45
Let's go to 'Replace Spine'. 46
It's kind of cool like that, right? 47
All you need to do is increase the steps. 48
So double click the 'Blend Tool'. 49
And we're going to have to go quite high. 50
We may have to play around... 51
with how much you want, or don't want of these little dots. 52
If you want it to be super smooth you have to go quite high. 53
The only trouble with that though... 54
is that you do run into potentially stressing your poor machine out. 55
How high can I go, and what my machine does? 56
A thousand, it turns out. 57
Let's click 'OK'. 58
So you probably, maybe-- 59
I drew quite a long line. 60
What you might do is draw shorter lines, so those 1000 steps work fine. 61
I've practiced loads on this one... 62
and it always comes up better than that. 63
Felt like we failed there. 64
You can also do hand drawn Type. 65
So let's' quickly do that... 66
and we'll look at some of the extra options like we saw at the beginning. 67
So 'Pencil Tool', 'Stroke', I'm going to pick white. 68
It doesn't have to be one continuous line. 69
I wish I had my Wacom with me today. I'm stuck at home, it's snow day today. 70
So that's why the audio sounds a little different... 71
because I'm stuck inside. 72
Or stuck in my home office. 73
That's as good as this is going to get with a mouse. 74
So there is one, two, three, four different ones. 75
So for this to work we need four of these in total. 76
Come here, fellas. 77
And I'm going to go-- I'll keep a backup. 78
I'm going to pick a different Gradient. 79
At the moment it's really hard to adjust, because they're kind of stuck in a blend. 80
What you can do is you can double click these guys to go inside. 81
Inside this blend, and I'm going to pick the first and last guy. 82
You don't have to have the same things, they can change over time. 83
Let's see what that looks like. So we'll change this first one... 84
to this kind of bluish green one. 85
We'll see what these two different changes do. 86
To come out, double click that arrow a few times. 87
Now I don't want you guys, I want this new fella. 88
So I'm going to duplicate one, use our shortcut. 89
It's 'Command D', or 'Control D' on a PC, to duplicate it. 90
Now you-- doesn't really matter where they are. 91
And you... 92
let's blend them. 93
Go to 'Object', 'Blend', 'Replace Spine'. 94
Now, also what you might do, this guy here is a bit big maybe. 95
So you can change it now, and he can have a-- 96
So this is kind of like your Stroke Weight. 97
Let's go again. 98
'Replace Spine'. 99
Also what we're going to have to do, is with this guy selected... 100
let's go to, double click the 'Blending Tool', and 'Specified Steps'. 101
You can go Specified Distance... 102
and go-- actually I want this to be just 1pt away, click 'Preview'. 103
Freak it out a little bit, and it will just kind of keep them 1pt away... 104
rather than the amount of steps. 105
Do make sure you expand this at the end... 106
because it's an active effect, and kind of stress everything out. 107
It's already. My fan's already come on. 108
A few things that we can do to make this-- 109
Actually I'm going to fast forward now to have the whole Dan thing done. 110
So let's go fast forward it now. 111
All right, you're back. 112
A couple of things I want to show you... 113
to kind of tidy these things up. 114
Is with this selected, often you want to play around with... 115
'Object', 'Blend', and who's at the front, and who's at the back. 116
If you reverse the front and back-- 117
that's kind of more what I was looking for. 118
I'm going to select all of these guys. 119
Do I like that? I'm not sure. 120
These are all kind of trial and error here. 121
So 'Object', 'Blend', 'Reverse Front to Back'. 122
Bits of what I like, bits of what I don't. 123
Other things you can do is you can edit it. 124
I like to go to 'Command Y', or 'Control Y' on a PC. 125
You can edit a couple of things, the Splines... 126
and the kind of circles we're using for blending. 127
I'm going to grab my White Arrow, my 'Direct Selection Tool'. 128
And let's say that I want this kind of work to be a lot bigger. 129
I want maybe a Pen Tool, I'm getting a little bit-- 130
The curvier, I know, the curvier the better, but... 131
you can spend a bit more time here fixing these up. 132
Also, these guys here. 133
Now I've got a beginning and ending shape, right? 134
So actually let's go 'Command Y'. 135
So we've kind of fixed that one. 136
You can play around with the beginning and ending shape. 137
I'm going to zoom in. 138
I'll grab my 'White Arrow' tool, I click on him. 139
I'm going to try and click on one with my 'Black Arrow'. 140
I'm going to double click on him... 141
till I go inside of him. 142
And that guy can be a lot bigger. 143
Let's have a look. 144
'Command Y'; they don't have to be the same size there. 145
Kind of-- let's say it's clever. 146
Looks like a neon kind of color. 147
What else can we do? 148
Sometimes what I like to do is... 149
see this bad one here, like it's not my favorite... 150
but what I'd like to do with the Gradients-- 151
Let's go inside this one, so I'm going to double click the edge. 152
Double click it, and come back inside the Blend, I can see the Fill here. 153
What I'd like to do is, go to 'Fill', 'Gradient Options'... 154
and maybe just tuck that in a little bit, right?.. 155
and add another one, so just click... 156
Just drag that one, then click somewhere down here, that makes a new Swatch. 157
I want to double click that Swatch... 158
and go to my favorite, Hue, Saturation, Brightness... 159
and just drag down this a little bit. 160
See this happening here, it gets rid of-- I find, sometimes it just... 161
needs a little bit of that, to kind of get the depth right. 162
Is it better? It's not much better... 163
but it's got a bit more 3D shininess to it. 164
You can add a little bit of highlight on one side... 165
just a really slim bit of white. 166
That can look quite cool. 167
When you're finished... 168
double click this arrow here. 169
My machine is struggling. 170
The fans are going. 171
Now, the other thing, I'll just talk about it. 172
Doesn't have to be circles, right? We can use squares, triangles, stars. 173
Better if they have to be the same at both ends... 174
one could be a circle, one could be a star. 175
We get some really cool effects. 176
One last thing I want to do is, I want to show you... 177
some kind of Grain. 178
This one here. 179
Now, if you're finding, like mine is stressing out... 180
and you're happy with it... 181
you're like, "Man, that's the kind of thing I wanted to do"... 182
You can select it all. Can you remember where to go? 183
'Object', 'Blend', and we're going to go to 'Expand'. 184
And is it better? 185
What happens is, it's lots of shapes... 186
but it's going to be less stressful on this computer... 187
than the Blend mode trying to do it. 188
The only trouble is it's not kind of editable like it was before. 189
It's just zillions of little shapes. Cool. 190
So adding a bit of Grain height to some of the bending. 191
This looks kind of cool, it's the Film Grain type of thing. 192
And we do it this way. 193
So I'm going to grab the 'Rectangle Tool'... 194
and we're going to draw a rectangle over the whole thing... 195
because I wanted it to go across the gray as well. 196
I'm going to fill it with white. 197
I'm going to have no Stroke. 198
And it's an effect up here called 'Effect'... 199
down to 'Texture', then go to 'Grain'. 200
Mine is kind of set from when I was practicing before. 201
Mine's 40 x 50, it really depends on the size of the box. 202
You can use like, what kind of Grain you want... 203
intensity, I'll crank it up. 204
You can see, kind of gets a bit more grainy. 205
Depends on the kind of look you're looking for. 206
You can play around, what kind of Grain, there's all sorts of stuff you can do. 207
Let's click 'OK'. 208
Doesn't quite work, right? You've got just this big white box... 209
but remember, our Color Blending modes. 210
Remember, pop quiz Where is it? 211
Click on 'Opacity'. 212
Or if you're on an older version, go to 'Window', 'Appearance'. 213
Click on 'Opacity', and here, 'Normal'. 214
Probably we'll do Multiply; everything works on Multiply, right? 215
Play around with this for once, but this just gives-- 216
I've overcooked it, I totally have... 217
but you get the idea there. 218
I really want to go back and change this. 219
The cool thing about it... 220
it's in Active effect, so I can click on 'Grain'... 221
and go back and say-- 222
Actually Dan, what if it was kind of cool, so I'm messing it up. 223
Let's have a look. 224
I feel like that's kind of a happy medium. 225
Maybe you're still a bit much... 226
but adds a little bit of texture to your really strong vector. 227
So it is class exercise time. 228
It's going to be a pretty easy one to understand. 229
I want you to make your own name... 230
and add all the shapes. 231
I want to just see some 3D blobby goodness. 232
Maybe some caterpillars. 233
I'd like you to share it on this website here as a project... 234
but I'd love to see it on Twitter and Instagram. 235
Instagram is bringyourownlaptop, and Twitter is danlovesadobe. 236
You've probably got this burned into your heads now. 237
All right, I will see you in the next video. 238
Bye now.