- [Voiceover] In this movie, I'll introduce you
to Illustrator's Gap Detection options
which automatically close up tiny little gaps
between path outlines,
thus allowing the Live Paint Bucket
to fill them in.
And so the first thing I'm going to do
is zoom in on the bottom of this artwork here
so that we're seeing it very close
and then I'll click on any one
of the path outlines to select
the entire Live Paint group.
And I'm just going to go ahead
and press Control + H, or Command + H on the Mac,
to hide those anchor points
so that we can see just the gaps in our artwork.
And to make that possible, go up to the object menu
choose Live Paint and then choose Gap Options.
And that will bring up the Gap Options dialogue box.
Now assuming that the preview checkbox is on,
you will see all of the gaps indicated by these
little red areas inside the artwork.
To make them more obvious,
I'm going to change the Gap Preview Color to green.
And as you can see, they now change to green
inside the document window.
Now notice that we have a little bit of green
around this polyp right here,
but we don't have one on the right hand side
and we don't have any green on
this right hand polyp either.
And so what you want to do is make sure
that the Gap Detection checkbox is on,
we definitely want that,
and then change the Paint Stops at
from Small Gaps to something larger
such as Medium Gaps which is then going to
produce areas of green on the right side
of this guy and on both sides of the one next door,
which exactly is what we want.
So go ahead and click OK to accept that change.
And then go ahead and once again grab
your Live Paint Bucket,
which you can get by pressing the K key.
Make sure that your fill is set to
that light shade of orange and then go ahead
and then go ahead and click on these areas
in order to fill them in.
Alright, now I'll go ahead and press
Control + 0, or Command + 0 on the Mac, to zoom out.
And I'll zoom in on the sun instead
and I'll try filling him in once again.
And that still grabs one of the teeth.
So I'll press Control + Z, or Command + Z on the Mac,
to undo that change and I will return to the Object menu,
once again choose Live Paint,
and then choose Gap Options,
at which point I will see that this tooth
does not have a sufficient number
of little gap barriers around it
and so what I'm going to do is switch
from Medium Gaps to Custom Gaps
and then watch what happens right there.
Nothing actually happens and that's because
my Gaps value is set too high.
And so basically this is an absolute value.
Illustrator is looking for gaps that are six points.
It's not six points or less,
it's something in the range of six points.
There a little bit of black magic concern though
because there are some very tiny gaps at work here,
but notice if I reduce this value to three points,
then all of a sudden I'm closing in this region
around the teeth.
And so having done that,
like I say there's a little bit of black magic,
so there's a fair amount of trail and error
that goes on with this option
but in my case the value of three points
happens to work great.
And so I'll click OK to accept that change
and then I will click inside of the sun's face
in order to finish things off.
Alright now I'm going to zoom back out again
by pressing Control + 0, or Command+ 0 on the Mac.
Looks like I missed a little spot
right there on his hand so I'll just go ahead
and drag around in there
and then, I will scroll down by space bar dragging
until I get to this region, right there.
That is still a mess.
Actually, look at that.
I can now fill it in.
I was going to show you how you can drag
the anchor points around manually using the white arrow tool
but it looks like I don't have to.
So anyway, you can just imagine that.
Alright now, I'm going to try to see
if I can fill in this guy's shirt
by zooming out just a little more.
And I'm going to select this medium shade
of blue here that begins R, zero,
G, 113,
B, 188.
And then, I'll click inside the shirt
and it fills in beautifully.
We have this little tiny area here
that I need to fill in independently
and this area inside the pen
and I'm going to drag across the pocket
in order to fill it.
And I'll go ahead and click inside of his sleeve
to fill it as well.
Alright, now I want to advance to purple
by pressing the right arrow key a few times
total of three times, I think
until I see a purple swatch above my cursor
and then I'll click here as well as
right there and there in order to fill in
those regions.
Oh, looks like I missed an area of blue back here.
I'll come back to it in a moment
after I press the right arrow key to advance
to this shade of purple,
right there and I'll drag over those two regions.
And notice that I can lift a color
by pressing and holding the ALT key,
or the Option key on a Mac,
and clicking.
And that will lift that shade of blue, once again.
And then I'll just go ahead and drag across this region
in order to fill it.
And I want to fill in the center
of this flag right there with that same shade of blue,
and I'll press the ALT key,
or the Option key on a Mac,
to once again get my Eye Dropper tool on the fly,
in case I didn't make that evident.
Then I'll click to lift that shade of dark violet there
and I'll click inside the flag on both sides
to fill it like so.
And I forgot I need to fill in this
little skirt down here at the bottom.
And then, I'll go ahead and select
this lighter shade of blue,
the guy that begins R equals 41,
G equals 171,
B equals 226,
and I will click on his elbow right there.
I'll click and drag on the end of his sleeve.
I'll click over here and over here as well
to fill in those areas.
And it looks like I missed this area right there.
Alright, so I'm going to select this light shade
of whatever it is that begins R equals 199,
G equals 178,
B equals 153,
and I'll click and drag around
the base of this flagpole and I also
want to fill in his pen,
which is going to take a couple of clicks
and drags and so forth in order to get that exactly right.
And this area right here wants to be filled with
the same color so I'll click and drag around it
and into that area right there.
I went too far, that's not a problem
I'll just go ahead and select
this shade of yellow that begins
R equals 252 and I'll drag around these shapes
to fill them in and I'll drag around here.
So if you feel something wrong, in other words,
you can always go back and click or drag on it again
to fill it with the correct color.
Now, I'll click and drag around the sun to get him.
I actually want to bring back that one shade of brown
so I'll press the ALT key,
or the Option key on a Mac,
and click down here inside the circle
with the eye-dropper tool and then
as soon as I release ALT or Option key,
I return to my Live Paint Bucket
at which point I'll drag inside the moon.
And now let's see what happens
if I zoom in on the flagpole and I select
this medium shade of brown that begins
R equals 140,
G equals 98,
B equals 57,
and I click right there
and I'm filling in that rope
on the other side of the flagpole.
Can you see that?
And then I'll click on the top of the flagpole
and I'll go ahead and zoom in
and when you run into problems like this,
that's when you press the A key to switch back to
the white arrow tool and you grab a point
such as this one right here
and I'm going to press Control + H,
or Command + H on the Mac,
to bring back my anchor points
so that I could see them,
and I'll just drag this guy up
and notice that unfills this region
and contains the fill inside the flagpole
and I need to do something similar over here.
And I think what I'll do is
I'll just drag this guy upward
and see if that fixes the problem.
And maybe I'll select this point and just delete it,
in order to open up that region.
And that does take care of things very nicely.
After which point I'll zoom out
by pressing Control zero and I'll click off of
my artwork to deselect it.
And that's how you take advantage of
Illustrator's Gap Detection options
which close up very tiny gaps
between path outlines so that
the Live Paint Bucket can fill them.