- [Voiceover] In this movie I'll show you
how to assign a gradient stroke.
So notice if I press Control + Y or Command + Y on a Mac
in order to switch to the outline mode,
so that we can see the tracing template
that each one of the eyes is surrounded
by this yellow boundary here.
And it's job is to indicate that we have a kind of lip here
around the eye,
but while it's generally a pretty firm stroke
it has a little bit of softness here at the edge
and that is a perfect use for a gradient stroke
here inside Illustrator.
So I'll press Control + Y or Command + Y on the Mac
to switch back to the preview mode.
And I'll go ahead and click on the stroke icon
here inside the gradient panel.
Alright, now for the sake of demonstration
I'll go ahead and select once again
the white, black gradient
and I'll crank up the line weight value
up here in the control panel to 14 points.
And that way we'll be able
to really see this gradient stroke.
So notice by default Illustrator
essentially just fills the stroke with a gradient.
And in our case we're seeing
the gradient go from right to left,
even though that doesn't match the angle
of the annotator at all.
And that's because as indicated by
that little universal no icon next to my cursor
the gradient tool does not work with strokes.
So we might as well switch away from it
to the black arrow tool,
which again you can get by pressing the V key.
Now that's not to say you can't change the angle
of that gradient, you can,
you just have to do so here inside the gradient panel.
And so for example, if I were to change this angle value
to 90 degrees then I would see the gradient go from white
at the bottom of the stroke to black up here at the top.
You also have two other options above the angle value,
including the option to apply the gradient along the stroke,
and so now you can see that it's wrapping around
from black to white,
or you can apply it across the stroke,
in which case you'll get a kind of neon effect.
But we're not really looking for a black to white gradient,
so I'm gonna switch to this guy right here,
white to trans, that is transparent,
in order to produce this effect,
and then I'm gonna grab my default RGB yellow color swatch
and I'm gonna drag it and drop it
onto this final color stop right there to replace it,
and I'm gonna change the opacity value
for this color stop to 100%,
and then I'll take the location value down to 20%,
so that we have a very short gradient.
Then I'll Alt or Option + drag that stop
and I'll drag away the white one,
drag this guy all the way to the end, like so,
so that we have the location of zero,
and I'll take the opacity value down to 0% as well.
Now notice that we still have this gradient style,
this guy right here,
so that the gradient is going across the stroke,
which is exactly what we want,
but it's going in the wrong direction.
So I'll go ahead and click on this reverse gradient icon
in order to swap the direction of the gradient, like so.
Now we need to put the stroke behind the fill
by going up to the window menu
and choosing the appearance command
to bring up the appearance panel
and then just go ahead and drag that stroke
to below the fill, like so,
in order to produce this effect here.
Okay, a couple of other things to note.
I'll go ahead and press Control + Y or Command + Y on a Mac
to switch back to the outline view,
so that we can see the tracing template.
Notice that the stroke is translucent
in that it actually mixes in
with the colors in the background
and that it's thicker down here underneath the shape
than it is at the top
and it's also narrower on the sides.
And so to invoke those modifications
I'll once again press Control + Y or Command + Y on a Mac
and I'll click on the yellow stroke
here inside the appearance panel
and I'll twirl it open as well by clicking on the triangle,
then go ahead and click on the inset opacity
in order to bring up the opacity panel
and change the blend mode from normal to screen,
which is gonna blend the yellow
with all the colors behind it
in order to create a brighter and paler effect.
Alright, now just press the Enter key
or the Return key on a Mac to hide that popup panel,
click on the stroke once again,
then click on FX icon, go up to distort and transform,
and choose the transform command.
Then go ahead and click in the vertical move value
and press the up arrow key
in order to take it up to one point,
which is going to nudge this stroke downward
as soon as I turn on the preview checkbox.
And notice that the stroke dropped down a little bit,
so we have a thicker stroke down here at the bottom
and a thinner stroke up here at the top.
I also want it to be narrower,
so I'll click in the horizontal scale value
and I'll take it down to 98%,
which is gonna make for a skinner stroke
on the left and right hand sides.
Just a small change there,
but it's gonna make a big difference
as soon as I click OK.
Alright, now once again we've put some time
and effort into these gradients,
so let's save them as swatches
by first selecting the fill swatch
here in the gradient panel,
and then I'll click on the little page icon
at the bottom of the swatches panel,
and I'll call this guy shades of brown,
and then I'll click OK.
And next I'll click on the little stroke icon
here in the gradient panel
and click on that page icon again
at the bottom of the swatches panel
and I'll call this guy yellow to trans
and click OK.
Alright, and finally presumably
we need two eyes for our emoji
and I'm gonna create the second eye
by going to the rotate tool, clicking and holding on it,
and choosing the reflect tool from the flyout menu,
or you can press the keyboard shortcut,
which is the letter O,
and then just go ahead and move your cursor
over the vertical guide line
and Alt or Option + click on it
to bring up the reflect dialog box,
turn on the preview checkbox,
so you can see the eye flip to the other side,
and then click on the copy button,
or press Alt + Enter here on a PC
or Option + Return on a Mac
in order to create a duplicate of that eye.
Alright, now press Control + zero or Command + zero on a Mac
to zoom out.
And I'll click off that eye in order to deselect it.
And that my friends is how you assign a gradient stroke
that adds a little softness around the beveled edge
of the eye here inside Illustrator.