- [Voiceover] Alright, now I know there's someone out there
who's gotta be thinking, gosh,
you know what would really sell this effect
is if the letters and the squares were casting shadows
as in the case of this final artwork.
And while it's a little bit tricky to pull it off
it's totally possible,
as I'll show you in this very movie.
Alright, so I'll go ahead and switch over
to the final tile arrangement,
and I'll press the A key in order to select
my white arrow tool,
and I will click the colored shape inside of the nine
in order to select it,
and then to select the other purple numbers
click the select similiar objects icon
on the right side of the control panel.
Then you wanna go up to the objects menu
and choose the copy command,
or of course you can press Control + C
or Command + C on the Mac.
Then click off the letters to deselect them
and return to the edit menu and choose paste in front
or press Control + F or Command + F on a Mac.
Now what we wanna do is combine the numbers together,
and because they all share the same fill attributes
the best way to do that is to go to the object menu,
choose compound path, and choose make,
or you can press Control + eight
or Command + eight on the Mac.
Alright, now we just need to repeat those steps
for the other letters,
so I'll click in the orange portion of the letter F,
then I'll click on the select similar objects icon
in order to select all the letters,
I'll press Control + C or Command + C on a Mac,
I'll click off the letters to deselect them,
I'll press Control + F or Command + F on the Mac
in order to paste them in front,
and I'll press Control + eight or Command + eight
in order to combine them into a single compound path.
Now I'll click inside the blue portion of the M
to select that letter,
I'll click on the select similar objects icon,
I'll press Control + C or Command + C on the Mac,
click off the letters, press Control + F
or Command + F on the Mac,
and then combine them into a compound path
by pressing Control + eight or Command + eight on the Mac.
The only ones left are the red letters,
so I'll click inside the red portion of the R,
click on the select similar objects icon
to select all the letters,
press Control + C or Command + C on the Mac
in order to copy them,
click off the letters and press Control + F
or Command + F on the Mac,
and then press Control + eight or Command + eight on a Mac
to combine them all into a compound path.
Alright, now press the V key to switch back
to the black arrow tool
and just go ahead and Shift + click on each set of letters.
So the blue M, the orange F, and the purple nine.
And now I wanna make a new layer below the letters layer
by pressing Control + Alt + L,
or Command + Option + L on a Mac,
and you can see that makes a new layer behind.
And I'll go ahead and call this layer shadows
and I'll change its color to light red let's say,
and I'll click OK.
Alright, now just go ahead and drag that little gold square
down to the shadows layer
in order to move the selection behind the extruded letters.
And then I'll just go ahead and zoom in a little
so I make sure I'm doing this right,
and I'll press Shift + down arrow,
and then Shift + right arrow
in order to move the selected path outlines
so they're aligned to the back of those
sculpted characters of type.
Alright, now we want these guys to be filled with black,
so switch over to the appearance panel,
notice that we're seeing mixed appearances,
because they're all filled differently.
Well to solve that problem
just go up to the first swatch
in the left hand side of the control panel
and change the fill to black
and then you will no longer see mixed appearances
inside the appearance panel.
Alright, now I want you to click on a fill inside the panel,
twirl it open, and then click on the word opacity,
and let's go ahead and take that opacity value
down to 50%.
Alright, now click on the fill again to make it active,
drop down to the FX icon,
choose distort and transform,
and choose the transform command.
And I'm gonna change the horizontal move value
to negative 0.05 point,
so very teeny increment.
1/1440 of an inch.
And then I'll take the vertical value to 0.1,
which is 1/720 of an inch.
And now turn the preview checkbox on,
so you can watch this happen.
Click in the copies value there
and press Shift + up arrow a bunch of times
and notice as you do you'll see the shadows emerging
from the letters.
And I went ahead and took this copies value
up to a total of 160.
So we're just moving these guys on top of each other.
After which point click OK.
And now just go ahead and zoom way, way, way in there
and you'll see that what you really have is a ton
of little paths on top of each other.
So we have this kind of jagged edge.
But it's so tiny,
it has at the very least a resolution
of 720 jags per inch,
and so there's no way it's gonna show up in print.
Alright, now let's just go ahead and zoom out.
We also need to add shadows behind the squares of course,
so go ahead and switch back to the layers panel
and click in the upper right corner of that checkers layer
to select it.
We wanna select all the squares,
but we don't wanna select this beveled edge,
so go ahead and Shift + click on that edge,
which is located exclusively in the top left corner
of the document,
because after all, the others are a result
of a couple of dynamic effects.
And now we wanna copy these guys
by pressing Control + C or Command + C on the Mac,
and then just press Control + F or Command + F on the Mac
in order to paste them in front.
Alright, we don't need a stroke,
so go ahead and change the stroke to none,
and let's set the fill to black, like so.
And we need to move these guys eight points to the right
and eight points down
by pressing the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac,
which when the black arrow tool is selected
brings up the move dialog box.
And I'm gonna change both the horizontal
and vertical values to eight points
and click OK.
Alright, now once again I wanna switch over
to the appearance panel
and should've mentioned you can get to it
by going up to the window menu
and choosing the appearance command.
But I think you probably know that by now.
And I'll twirl open the black fill,
click on the word opacity, change that opacity value to 50%,
and go ahead and click on the fill again.
And this time rather than dropping down to the FX icon
I'm gonna go up to the effect menu
and choose transform dot dot dot,
which will repeat those last settings.
So now if I turn on the preview checkbox
you can see we've got big shadows here as well.
I decided the squares weren't quite as deep however,
so I reduced the copies value to 120,
so that we're casting slightly smaller shadows.
At which point I'll click OK.
And then of course we need to move the shadows behind
the things that are casting them,
so I'll switch back to the layers panel
and I'll drag this little blue square
down to the back layer like so.
Alright, now I'll click in the pasteboard
in order to deselect everything.
And I want you to see that the shadows
aren't quite as accurate behind the letters
as they could be.
And if that bothers you
then what I recommend you do
is lock down the letters layer,
so that you can more easily select things,
and then press the A key in order to switch
to the white arrow tool,
and click on this guy right there
in order to select him,
because he's sticking out in a way he shouldn't,
we have some problems right here
on the edge of the F as well,
so I'll Shift + click on those two points,
and then I'm gonna scroll over to the V,
we gotta problem right there,
so go ahead and Shift + click on it.
In each case I'm Shift + clicking
to add more points to the selection.
And after having selected all of these points,
these are really the ones that are most problematic,
you wanna press the left arrow key
a total of three times, one, two, three,
to move those guys out of the way.
Now we also have a problem with the one,
so I'll just go ahead and select its point,
the purple one that is to say,
up here at the top of the document.
And if we move down to the blue line
you can see that we've got a problem with the I,
so I'll Shift + click right there.
I think the M might have an issue,
it does, so I'll Shift + click on its anchor point.
And then let's Shift + click on the L's
top right anchor point.
How about the E?
Yep, he's got some issues right there,
so I'll Shift + click on each one of those anchor points.
And I think that's it.
I don't think any of the bottom letters,
beacuse they're rounded, really have much of a problem.
Even the A looks to be in pretty good shape.
Alright, so let's just take a look at the M here.
Might as well do the same thing we did before,
which is to say you wanna press the left arrow key
a total of one, two, three times
in order to tuck in those points.
And then press Control + Shift + A
or Command + Shift + A on a Mac
in order to deselect your artwork.
And you know, I'm gonna press the F key
a couple of times to fill the screen with my art
and I'll press Control + zero or Command + zero on the Mac
to zoom in.
And that, folks, is how you use the align
and distribute options to create precise rows
and columns of objects,
as well as how you create nifty drop shadows
using the transform effect here inside Illustrator.