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Over the course of this chapter we're
going to take this base graphic and we're
going
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to transform it into
this final piece of artwork.
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And everything that you're
seeing pretty much is a blend.
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The background is a blend, the gradient
foreground is a blend, the starburst traveling
across
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the sky is a blend, these lines inside the
sarcophagus and the wings and the eyebrows
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of the bat here, those are blends, and even
these posts are a blend between two extreme
posts.
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So this is a very, very powerful feature
inside of Illustrator--old school but powerful.
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I'm going to switch back to my base graphic
here, and currently this background art--I'll
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press Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on the Mac--this
background art is a function of a gradient.
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So if I click inside the gradient, I'm not
going to select it because of my recommendation
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in the previous chapter, where I suggested,
by the way, just to make sure we're all on
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the same page--I'll press Ctrl+K or Command+K
on the Mac, switch to Selection & Anchor Display--
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I suggested you turn on Object
Selection by Path Only.
And that way we're going to
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have a lot more control over our
experience inside of Illustrator here.
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So I'm going to Cancel out
because I want that checkbox on.
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I'll go ahead and click on the outside of
this rectangle, and that takes me to the sky
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layer here inside the Layers panel.
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I'll go ahead and twirl it open, and that
selects this path inside this sky layer.
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And it's currently filled with a six-color
gradient, as you can see here inside the Gradient
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panel, which is a lot of colors, but I could
gain even more control if I were to express
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this gradient as a blend; because that way
I can create a kind of wavy pattern, instead
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of a linear pattern like I have now, where
basically I've got a straight vertical gradient
here.
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And so each band of color is like a very
skinny horizontally-oriented rectangle.
But with
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a blend I can create all kinds
of patterns inside the gradient.
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So I'm gong to start things off by
changing this path to a Solid Color.
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So I'll press the comma key in order to
switch to the Solid Color option--and notice
I've
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gone ahead and switched back to my CMYK
values here inside the Color panel, because
this
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is a CMYK document, as I can
see up here in the title tab.
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And I'll just go ahead and click on a shade
of green here inside this CMYK spectrum bar
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that's available to me at the bottom of the
Color
panel, just so I can see the rectangle.
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Now I'm going to turn on this group that's
also included in the sky layer down here at
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the bottom of the stack, and the name of
the group is bands, and I'm going to meatball
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that bands group in order to select it.
Then I'm going to ungroup it by going up to
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the Object menu and choosing the Ungroup
command, or I could press Ctrl+Shift+G, and
that way
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I can go ahead and blend
between these colors.
All right!
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Now I'll press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift+
A on the Mac in order to deselect all those
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paths, and I'm going to
zoom out a little bit too.
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Now, notice by the way that we have a total
of six different shapes here; there is this
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light blue shape, this red shape, then we
have a brown one, a purple one, a blue one,
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and a kind of rich black one here at the
top of this stack, as you can see indicated
by
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these values inside the Color panel.
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And the reason I'm mentioning all these
colors and these path outlines is because
there are
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six of them, just as there were previously
six colors inside my gradient.
All right!
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There's two ways to create a blend.
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One is to go ahead and select a couple of
paths,
like so, and then you switch to the Blend
tool.
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This is not my preferred technique; I
just want you to know that it's an option.
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You switch to the Blend tool, which you
can get by pressing the W key; it's down here
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near the bottom of the toolbox.
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This is a really strange
tool, very, very old school.
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You click on an anchor point in one of the
paths and then you click on the corresponding
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anchor point in the other path outline, and
then Illustrator goes ahead and draws a blend
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between those two paths.
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Now, the reason you would use this tool, I
don't use it very often at all, the only real
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reason to use it is when things go wrong.
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If Illustrator ends up blending your path
completely incorrectly and it blends between
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two opposing anchor points and you end up
with a weird pattern and you want to fix things.
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So if that happens, you press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z
to
undo, and then you turn your attention to
the Blend tool.
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What you generally do, in case you're curious,
is you go ahead and grab your Black Arrow
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tool--this is the preferred method of
creating a blend--and I'll go ahead and marquee
all
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six of these paths.
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I'm just marqueeing the left hand edge here
of all six of these paths in order to select
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them, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 are all selected now,
and nothing else inside the document is selected.
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And then I'll go up to the Object menu, you
choose Blend, and then you choose the Make
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command, or you've got a keyboard shortcut
of Ctrl+Alt+B or Command+Option+B on the Mac.
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And bang--just like that, even though two
of the paths were already blended before,
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now we're blending between all six paths in
one fell swoop.
And we end up getting this
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very interesting effect.
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I'm going to press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+Shift
+A on the Mac, as well as Ctrl+0 or Command+0,
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and that deselects the paths
and then centers my artwork.
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And notice now that we have this rippling
gradient effect that we could not have achieved
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using a standard gradient.
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And check this out, I'll go ahead and
switch to my White Arrow tool--which of course
I
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can get by pressing the A key--and then I'll
go ahead and hover.
Notice I'm kind of moving
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my cursor around and searching for path edges.
Whenever you see that square next to the arrow
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cursor, whether it's a Black Arrow or the
White Arrow, that means there is a path outline
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right underneath the cursor.
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Go ahead and click in order to select that
segment
in this case, so I'm selecting with precision
here.
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And now I'll go ahead and drag up on one of
the
control handles on this side, then I'll click
on this
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segment and drag up on the control handle
on this side; and you can see that I'm making
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changes to my gradient on-the-fly, which is
the amazing thing about blends is that they
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are just staggeringly powerful
and a lot of fun as well I think.
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Anyway, I'm going to drag this guy up.
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Notice now I'm creating a very sharp transition.
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If I press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the Mac
in order to hide my selection for a moment,
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you can see that I'm creating a
sharp transition at this point.
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So you've got that kind
of control as well, right?
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Not only do you have control over the
placement and the shape--physical shape of
the colors--
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but you also have control over how fast
the colors blend into each other.
All right!
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I'm going to press Ctrl+H or Command+H on
the Mac to bring back my selection edges.
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Oops, dragged the wrong thing.
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Oh well, I'll click on this segment again
in order to select it and then I'll drag this
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control handle down in order to soften the
transition little bit at that point.
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I'm going to press Ctrl+Shift+A or Command+
Shift+A on the Mac in order to deselect my
image.
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It looks like we still have some
awfully sharp transitions actually.
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I'm going to click on that path again in order
to
select it and drag these control handles down
a little bit.
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All right, that looks better to me.
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So there you have it, that's how you
create a multicolor blend inside of Illustrator.
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In the next exercise I'll show you how to
take
this blend and place it inside of a clipping
mask.
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