- [Voiceover] In this movie, I'll introduce you
to a Command known as reverse front to back
which is designed specifically to work with blends.
And the idea is this,
blends don't run from left to right or top to bottom,
instead they work from the back forward
and so the blend begins at the rear most selected shape
and ends at the front most shape
and to see what that looks like, I'm going to go ahead
and turn off a few layers here.
I'm going to click and drag from the face layer
down to the back layer.
So that pretty much all the layers are turned off
and then, I'll turn on the Blobs Layer right there,
which contains these four ellipses.
Then, I'll go ahead and select them all
by clicking the top right right corner of the blobs layer,
here inside the Layers Panel,
and then I'll go up to the object Menu, choose Blend
and then choose Make, or I have that keyboard shortcut
of Control Alt B, or Command Option B on the Mac,
and that isn't what I want at all.
The problem is because all four ellipses were selected
all four ellipses are now caught up in a single blend.
That begins by the way right here,
and you can tell that's the case because that dark green
ellipses being covered up by a bunch of intervals here
and then it goes to the right
and then ends over here on the left hand side of the screen.
Now, you could bust things up by modifying the spine
right there and so for example, I could press the A key
in order to switch to the Wide Arrow Tool.
I could click off the Blend to deselect it,
and I could marquee, ever so carefully, on the inside
of these intervals here so I've selected just the straight
segment in the middle and now if I press the Backspace key
or the Delete key on the Mac,
I'll bust up that single blend into two independent blends.
But, it also messes things up as you can see.
I end up with this dark green shape over here
on the right hand side
and it's not actually properly engaged in the blend.
So, the better solution is to press Control Z,
or Command Z on the Mac, to restore the original shapes.
Then press the V key to switch back to the Black Arrow Tool.
Partially marquee these two guys to select them
independently and then either go to the Object Menu,
choose Blend and then choose Make,
or you can take advantage of that keyboard
shortcut Control Alt B or Command Option B on the Mac,
and now, I'll just repeat the process
for the left hand ellipses.
I'll select them and then I'll press Control Alt B
or Command option B in order to blend them as well.
Alright now the problem with these blends
is that they are beginning with the dark green shapes
and they're ending with the light green shapes,
which means that the darkness is getting under emphasized
and meanwhile, that doesn't really work
with the bird very well.
Notice that these edges are running in the wrong direction.
Instead of contours going out
over here on the right hand side for example
they're going inward, which is not what I want.
So one option is to press the A key
to switch to the Wide Arrow Tool
and click on this big ellipse, for example,
to select it independently of the other one
and you can right click inside the document window,
choose Arrange, and then choose Bring to Front,
or you have that keyboard shortcut
of Control Shift Right Bracket,
that's Command Shift Right Bracket on the Mac,
which gives us this much better effect right here.
But, because this is such a common mistake,
Illustrator gives you a dedicated command
and to see how that works, I'll just go ahead
and press Control Z, or Command Z on the Mac,
to undo that change, then I'll press the V key
to switch back to my Black Arrow Tool.
I'll click on the Right Hand Blend and Shift click
on the Left Hand one, so that I can modify them both
at once, by now going up to the Object Menu, choosing Blend
and choosing this final command in the Submenu,
Reverse Front to Back,
which ends up generating this effect right here.
Which is exactly what I'm looking for.
Alright, now I just want to move the big ellipses
tighter to the bird
and I'm going to do that by first turning on the Back Layer,
just so I can tell what I'm doing
in the context of the larger illustration,
and then I'll press the A key to switch
to my Wide Arrow Tool,
and I'll press Control Shift A or Command Shift A on the Mac
to deselect the blends,
then I'll click inside this dark ellipse here
and move it tight to the birds body
so that we get just a little bit of that edge.
In other words, if I were to press Control Z,
or Command Z on the Mac, to undo that maneuver,
we'd have this big huge flat area of dark green right there,
which is not what I want.
I want to tuck it underneath the bird,
so I'm going to move it pretty tight to that purple body.
I'll do the the same thing for this big dark green ellipse.
I'll go ahead and click inside it to select it
and then I'll drag it over tight to the bird
and I'll press Control Shift A, or Command Shift A on a Mac,
in order to deselect the artwork.
And by the way, on the off chance that you're not seeing
smooth transitions, then just go ahead and press the V key
to switch back to your Black Arrow Tool.
Click on one Blend, Shift click on the other.
Go up to the Object Menu.
Choose Blend and then choose Blend Options
and change Spacing to Smooth Color
because depending on the order you're working in,
it's very possible you might see your specified steps value
set to five as a result of what you did to the grass.
In which case, once again, just change Spacing
to Smooth Color and everything should be hunky dory.
At which point, I'll just go ahead and click okay
to accept that change
and I'll press Control Shift A, or Command Shift A on a Mac,
to deselect my artwork.
And that's how you adjust the stacking order
of the path outlines inside of a blend
in order to modify the color bias, as well as,
the contouring of a custom gradient here inside Illustrator.