Hey there, in this video we're going to look at something called a Gradient Mesh. 1
What that allows us to do is do Gradients... 2
that don't kind of follow the straight line... 3
like a Linear Gradient, or a round Radial Gradient. 4
We're going to do things like this where it kind of loops around... 5
then there's different consistencies, and things going on. 6
Even this kind of weird blurry thing at the top here. 7
Plus we're going to add this Film Grain. 8
It has nothing to do with anything... 9
other than I tried to make it look a little nicer... 10
by adding Film Grain. 11
All right, let's go do that now in Adobe Illustrator. 12
First up, open up 'Gradient Mesh.ai' from your 'Exercise Files'. 13
We're going to look at the easy ways and the hard ways. 14
I'm going to grab my 'Rectangle Tool', just draw a rectangle out here. 15
Dealing with simple shapes like this, ellipses and rectangles is super easy. 16
Gradient Mesh is awesome. 17
What we're going to do is, there's two ways of adding a Mesh. 18
You can go to 'Object', and go down to 'Create Gradient Mesh'. 19
Decide how many rows and columns. 20
I guess the more rows and columns you have the better control you have... 21
but the harder it is to make it look, maybe smooth. 22
So more detail, but lesser smooth. 23
Let's go with that, and we've got our Gradient Mesh. 24
The other way to do it is, I'm going to grab the 'Rectangle Tool'... 25
draw something, something similar. 26
There's a way of doing using the tool over here... 27
there's a specific Gradient Mesh Tool. 28
This way you can just click in specific parts... 29
it's up to you what you want to do. 30
Once you've got your Gradient Mesh though, the technique is the same. 31
You want to work with your White Arrow... 32
and let's say we're going to select all these guys around the outside... 33
so I'm selecting these guys... 34
I'm going to hold 'Shift', and grab the ones at the bottom as well. 35
So I've just got all these top Anchor Points selected... 36
and the bottom ones. 37
I'm going to open up 'Properties', go to 'Fill'... 38
and I'm going to go to 'Swatches'... 39
and if you're using my files I've got some pre-made ones for us. 40
I'm going to click on you guys. 41
You can see what it does, it kind of adds our Gradients. 42
Now, nothing very exciting yet has happened, right?... 43
because you're like, "I could have done that with just a regular Gradient." 44
I'm going to grab all these guys in the middle here, and make them green. 45
Still, you could have done this. 46
Where it gets different is if I click on one of these guys... 47
maybe that one, maybe that one... 48
I'm going to go into here, and say, I want you to be pink. 49
That's where it gets a bit different, right? 50
You can actually map out Gradients. 51
In my case, we'll make them look terrible. 52
Let's have a look at what else you can do, you can move these guys. 53
See this guy here, I can move him maybe down to this corner. 54
You can see, this is really kind of interesting Air Brush Style effects. 55
You can move him around. 56
All these guys have handles, you can see, I can adjust this guy. 57
He doesn't have a color, just give him a color. 58
I'll give him black. 59
You can start kind of bending these things around... 60
and start distorting. 61
Now that's not a very good example, because I'm just randomly doing a shape... 62
but it gives you kind of a look at how easy it is when the shape is simple. 63
Let's look at doing something with our whale. 64
Now the same thing, right? 65
What I'm going to do is, I'm going to duplicate. 66
You're going to go up there, exciting as you are. 67
'Shift O' brings up my Artboard Tool. 68
Holding down the 'Alt' key on a PC, 'Option' key on a Mac... 69
I'm going to have another option here. 70
I'm going to zoom in. 71
Now, if I select the body of this whale, try to do a Gradient Mesh, it's painful. 72
Just happens when you do really complex shapes like this. 73
I say that, just because, like, it's just honest. 74
I try and use the Gradient Tool, I kind of click there. 75
It's kind of following it, right? 76
It's kind of put in this line, and went around the eye... 77
which is not really what I wanted, but it's okay. 78
It's kind of done some stuff around here. 79
Up here, it's gone really weird. 80
Just what happens with a complex shape. 81
I can say I want to have a couple of points following along here... 82
because this is kind of what I want to do. 83
I want to make kind of a Gradient that follows this line. 84
The problem with that though is all that kind of complexity. 85
I'll hold 'Shift' and grab you. 86
Every time you do one of that crossover... 87
it creates another joining path, and gets a little confusing about... 88
where you are actually going. 89
I'm holding 'Shift' with my Direct Selection Tool. 90
Now I'm going to, say that color there, it's kind of working. 91
The more you add, the harder it becomes. 92
So what I tend to do-- you can mess around with that, it's fine. 93
Use a Gradient Tool. 94
What I tend to do is, I'm going to duplicate this first Artboard. 95
So 'Shift O' on my keyboard. 96
Holding down the 'Alt' key on a PC, 'Option' key on a Mac to make a duplicate. 97
What I want to do is... 98
instead of trying to turn this into a Mesh, I'm just going to use a simple shape. 99
I'll use Ellipse, just because. 100
It has, I guess, quite an elliptical shape. 101
Use that, or a rectangle... 102
something super simple that matches what you're doing. 103
Make sure it covers the whole thing. 104
Actually what I'll do - I'll delete that. 105
- is I want it on its own layer, because I want to use this guy on top. 106
This is going to be my whale. 107
I'm going to have another layer that I want just underneath it. 108
And you are going to be my Gradient. 109
A little trick is... 110
let's actually grab my Ellipse Tool... 111
on a Gradient layer, I'm going to draw that big guy. 112
So he's just underneath. 113
Now what I'd like to do is be able to see through this whale. 114
I could go to my Outline Mode... 115
which is 'Command Y' on a Mac, or 'Control Y' on a PC. 116
Actually what I want to do is, there's a little trick with the whale. 117
I'm going to lock him so he doesn't move... 118
but also, if I hold 'Command', and click him... 119
just turns into Outlines. 120
You can turn it off by 'Command' clicking as well. 121
So I'm working on a Gradient layer... 122
and I can kind of see the outlines of these. 123
Why do I do this? It's because when I start using the Gradient Tool - 124
Just grab him here. 125
When I say Gradient Tool, I mean Gradient Mesh Tool. 126
- is when I start kind of clicking, say in here... 127
more consistent lines appear. 128
Let's say I've got this one... 129
and I grab my Direct Selection Tool, and I can start bending this around... 130
to kind of fit the forms and the shapes of what I need. 131
And what I might do is, bring him around. 132
My Ellipse is maybe a bit big for what I need... 133
but you're getting the idea, right? 134
And if you need more points, I'm going to surely but slowly... 135
remember, the least amount of points becomes a lot easier. 136
I'm going to follow that line along, add another one. 137
'White Arrow', and I'm going to start bending this around. 138
I don't even know what I'm doing, just kind of following some curves. 139
I'm going to cross my fingers... 140
this thing's going to look half decent when I'm finished. 141
I'm going to add another one there. 142
'White Arrow', just the 'A' key. 143
And this guy here had to be made... 144
to kind of make this thing consistent... 145
but what you can do is, grab him, and drag him up there. 146
Make sure these guys don't overlap. 147
I could spend ages, I should spend ages to make it look really cool. 148
I'm kind of happy with what we're doing. 149
This guy here, what's he doing? 150
If this guy's in the way, you can drag him off... 151
so he doesn't kind of influences him much. 152
He's going to be up here. 153
You are going to come up. 154
This Anchor Point's going to come up here. 155
Get on with it, Dan. 156
I'm getting on with it, I promise. 157
What I'm going to do now is click on, maybe this guy. 158
And maybe, holding 'Shift', grab this guy as well... 159
and this guy, so I've got three of them selected... 160
I'm going to go to my 'Properties Panel'. 161
I'm going to go to 'Fill', I'm going to use some of that Gradient. 162
That's the way to kind of do a Gradient Mesh. 163
Yes, I could have just done that with... 164
just a, maybe a Linear Gradient. 165
Let's go further. 166
Couldn't have done that with a Radial, or a Linear, maybe you could. 167
So when it gets down to things like this... 168
this guy, let's force him in here... 169
I'm going to start doing some cool kind of... 170
pushing around of these things. 171
So, it's that kind of really tricky Gradient. 172
You can see, it's kind of really sharp over here... 173
it starts getting quite furry over here. 174
Just because the distances between these Anchor Points are quite big. 175
So go through, or what we do now is-- 176
You spend a bit longer doing it than I did. 177
Man, it's bad. 178
So I'm going to grab this guy. 179
And we're going to go to our 'Layers panel'... 180
and hold the 'Command' key to turn that back on. 181
And what we want to do, they need to be on the same layer now... 182
because we want to turn them into a Clipping Mask. 183
Do they need to be on the same layer? That's a good point. 184
As long as the whale is in front... 185
I'm pretty sure I might be able to 'Shift' click this guy... 186
and hit 'Command 7'; it did work. 187
So 'Command 7' is the shortcut for Clipping Mask. 188
If you want it the long way... 189
there's 'Make a Clipping Mask', it's not very long as a button. 190
If you're on an older version of Illustrator... 191
'Object', 'Clipping Mask', 'Make'. 192
Either way, that's what I'm trying to do. 193
It's easier to do this Gradient Mesh inside a simple circle... 194
but it is to try and do on top of the actual shape. 195
How good is this? This is pretty bad. 196
My color... 197
Seemed like a good idea... 198
get caught out live and direct,you guys watching me. 199
Now one more thing we might do before we go is... 200
often people want to do kind of a Gradient Mesh... 201
that looks kind of like... 202
they want to do-- they think they need a Gradient Mesh when they don't. 203
Let me show you another way that I often do things. 204
I'm going to grab my 'Pen Tool'... 205
and draw-- 206
I'm going to turn the Smart Guides off, 'Command U'... 207
because what I want to do is create kind of a shape up here. 208
Kind of does this kind of thing. 209
I got it in my head, let's make it reality. 210
So you want kind of a jelly button kind of thing. 211
So instead of trying to do that with a Gradient Map... 212
it's easier often just to give it the right color. 213
I'm going to click down here, and I'm going to say... 214
I want you to be white. 215
Then just use a 'Blur'. 216
So I'm going to go 'Effect', go down to 'Blur'... 217
and use 'Gaussian Blur'; cheap trick, turn Preview 'on'. 218
You can kind of see what it's going to do. 219
Same kind of thing that we maybe would have been able to do down there. 220
Getting the Blur right. 221
I'll lower the Opacity a little bit. 222
I wanted this kind of... 223
yes, that kind of effect. 224
I'm going to do one last little shape. 225
What I'll do is, I'll duplicate him. 226
And you my friend, I'm going to trim off with a circle... 227
to get kind of a better layer thing going. 228
I select 'Outline Mode'... 229
just so I can grab you, select both of them. 230
And I'm going to go, not to Outline mode because it's kind of confusing. 231
I'm going to use my Shape Builder Tool, 'Shift M'. 232
I'm going to delete these bits, I just wanted this kind of chunk. 233
What I might do is turn down the Blur of this. 234
So where you've got some sort of an effect applied... 235
you need to go to either the Appearance panel... 236
which is under 'Window', or in my case I can see here. 237
I'm going to turn this way down. 238
Now I've got this kind of, like dual effect here... 239
where the top part has converted different Blur levels. 240
You get what I mean? 241
Man, I was hoping that was going to look better. 242
Hopefully you understand it in technique. 243
Gradient Meshes can be tricky, sometimes it is easier just to... 244
make things like that, and just blur them out. 245
One last thing before we go is... 246
often Gradients, especially Gradient Meshes and stuff in Illustrator... 247
it has a really kind of vector look that... 248
maybe isn't as popular at the moment. 249
Cool trick is, you can select all of this stuff... 250
and add a cool effect in here, under 'Effect'-- 251
I'm sure I'm going to redeem myself. 252
Somewhat better. 253
'Effect', and go to 'Artistic'. 254
It's not under Artistic... 255
Down to 'Texture', go to 'Grain'. 256
I had kind of one part of it selected... 257
I wanted the part that I have-- did I have it all selected? 258
It's actually just picked whatever the top piece was. 259
You can kind of see what it's doing, right? 260
Assumed a little bit, it's adding this kind of... 261
like Film Grain texture stuff to it. 262
You can decide on the intensity and texture. 263
It does something weird with the edges though. 264
I'll show you how to get around that. 265
It only picked one piece even though it has done it to all of them. 266
I find-- forget the edges... 267
but it kind of adds a nicer effect to these guys. 268
So to get around the pixelation of the edges... 269
I'm going to undo that, and it's easier to do this. 270
Grab our 'Rectangle' Tool'. 271
Draw this over the top, and you apply it to this... 272
basically into a Layer Mode, so I'll do you... 273
and apply the exact same one, 'Apply Grain'. 274
This I wanted to be here for you... 275
if you haven't done it before, it's like repeat that thing I just did. 276
Apply it to this, then under here, under 'Opacity', switch this to 'Multiply'. 277
Does a same kind of effect. 278
Does something to the background as well, which maybe is not what you want... 279
but it definitely fixes up these edges. 280
And what I might do is adjust it a bit more. 281
Under 'Appearance' panel here, click on 'Grain'... 282
and 'Contrast', I need to go up, maybe. 283
'Intensity', let's go up, click 'OK'. 284
Is it better? Have I redeemed myself? 285
Probably not... 286
but you, my creative friend... 287
I got to make it look he's better than me. 288
You got the techniques. 289
All right, that is going to be it. 290
I'll see you in the very next video... 291
where I will do something that looks nicer, I promise.