- [Voiceover] In this movie, I'll introduce you to
the live paint feature and just to keep things
simple upfront, we'll start with a basic venn diagram
which is outlining by the way our vacation options.
So we've got one circle representing the land,
another representing the sky, and then this third circle
which is colored in coral for the sea
and so where the land intersects the sea we're
in California.
We're gonna fly and then drive around in Ireland
and then we're gonna fly and get in a dive boat
in Wakatobi and of course right here in the intersection
of all three circles is where we're wondering
how we're going to afford all this.
Now currently, in addition to these awesome silhouette
drawings right here, we have just three circles
that are interacting with each other
and so notice if I start moving these circles away
from each other, we get less in the way of interaction.
Now currently, that interaction is a function of
a blend mode, and we can see that mode by clicking
on the word opacity up here in the control panel
and notice this guy right here is set to overlay.
Now the purpose of blend modes is to blend the colors
of overlapping objects in stark contrast, that is,
to the object blends that we saw in the previous chapter.
Now, I'm a big fan of blend modes, which is why I devote
an entire chapter to them in a mastery course,
but overlay isn't really the effect we want
for this diagram here and the reason is
because they don't have enough control over
the color interactions.
Notice, for example, that Ireland and Wakatobi
are very similar in color to each other.
I want this center area to be white,
and I don't want these strokes to turn different colors
I also want them to be thinner.
Also notice that things go even more haywire if
I turn on this back layer here at which point
all the objects start to interact with each other
in a very noisy fashion.
What I'm looking for, is this effect here,
where the entire diagram is opaque, I have
absolute control over the colors of
the interacting areas, including the center,
and all my strokes are black and thinner,
and so let me show you how that works.
I'll go ahead and switch over to my starter file here
and I'll select all three circles by clicking in the
top right corner of the diagram layer here inside
the layers panel and before I go any further
I'm going to twirl the diagram layer open
so you can see that we have just three circles
named earth, coral, and azure.
Alright, so, to turn these guys into what's known as
a live paint object, go over here to the shape builder tool,
click and hold on it, and then select the live paint bucket
from the fly out menu or you can press the letter k
which is the central consonant in the word bucket.
Alright, now notice these little swatches above my cursor,
they represent the swatches that you've established here
inside the swatches panel and for example let's say I click
in the very first swatch on the far left side of
the control panel and I select RGB yellow.
At that point, if I now press the escape key to
hide the panel, I will see yellow directly above my cursor
and then I'll see red to the left and green to the right
because that's how those colors are arranged here inside
the swatches panel.
I also want you to notice that I can click on
any swatch I want while the fill is active incidentally
and yet I'm not changing the color of any
of the selected objects here inside the document
and that's because, even though the objects are selected,
they are protected by the live paint bucket.
You don't actually apply a color until you click.
Now just bear in mind, you're gonna kinda mess things up
if you dial in a custom color.
So for example let's say I shift click on this fill swatch
on the far left side of the control panel and I go ahead
and change the color to this shade of green let's say
and then I once again press the escape key.
Notice, now I see just one swatch above my cursor
and nothing more and so if you want to be able to
cycle through colors, and I'm about to show you
how that works, then you need to set up the colors
you want to use in advance inside the swatches panel
and so let's say I, once again, switch to yellow
by clicking on it here inside the panel
then notice that I can cycle through the colors
by pressing either the left arrow key in order to
advance through those colors, and notice
you see me advancing as I press that key
in the swatches panel, or you can go backwards by
pressing the left arrow key
and if you go all the way backwards from white
then to transparent, you're going to cycle back around
to jive and so forth and notice by the way,
that I'm skipping the swatches in a diagram colors group
and that's another handy thing about working with this tool.
You can set up just those colors you wanna use
inside of a group here in the swatches panel.
So if I click on the coral swatch, and then I press
the left arrow key, I'll go from this swatch
and then around to this one.
So I'm just going to cycle around in this one group.
Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and advance back to coral here
and then I'll click inside this shape region,
at which point, illustrator is going to produce
an alert message, and all it's telling me is that
the live paint feature isn't necessarily compatible
with other dynamic features inside illustrator,
namely, in our case, blend modes.
That's not a big deal, just go ahead and click Ok
at which point, illustrator will go ahead
and throw away the blend mode, and instead of
those three circles we had a moment ago,
we now have a single live paint object
that contains those three circles.
Which I can see if I go ahead and twirl that item open.
Alright, now let's go ahead and color in
those intersecting areas by pressing
the right arrow key a couple of times to advance
to that reddish brown, and then I'll click
in this area to fill it.
Alright, now I'll move over to the Ireland area,
press the right arrow key once again to advance to green
and click, then I'll go down here to Wakatobi,
press the right arrow key to advance to purple and click
and then, I'll move my cursor into the central area,
this time I want white, but I don't have any white
inside of this particular group, which is why
I now need to click on white here inside the swatches panel
in order to make it active, and make sure
you're assigning it to the fill incidentally
and then, go ahead and click inside that central area
to color it.
Alright now let's say I want to move this sea circle
independently of the others.
Then I would go ahead and target this coral item
by clicking on its circular meatball
and notice that it does go ahead and
select the item even though
it doesn't get an extra circle around it,
and you can see that its selected out here
inside the document window.
Now I'll go ahead and switch back to my black arrow tool
which of course I can get by pressing the v key
and I'll just drag this circle to a different location
and you can see that the intersecting areas update
on the fly just as they would if I were using a blend mode
only this way, I have absolute control over the colors
of the intersecting areas.
Alright now I'll just go ahead and click control z
or command z on the mac to undo that move
because after all, I want these guys right where they are.
And that my friends is my introduction
to the live paint feature, which allows you to paint
intersecting areas, entirely dynamically,
here inside illustrator.