- [Voiceover] In this movie I'll show you how to build up
the base path outlines required to create
this continuously overlapping ribbon
using a combination of a hexagon,
an object blend, and the rotate tool.
So I'm gonna start things off by going up to the file menu
and choosing new from template,
or you can press that keyboard shortcut
of Control + Shift + N or Command + Shift + N on the Mac,
and then go ahead and locate that center guides template
that we created way at the outset of chapter five
of the fundamentals course,
and then go ahead and double-click on it
in order to load up that file.
Alright, now go up to the view menu
and turn on the smart guides command,
which has a keyboard shortcut once again
of Control + U or Command + U on the Mac.
Now select the polygon tool from the shape tool flyout menu
and then go ahead and click at the intersection
of the two center guides
in order to bring up the polygon dialog box.
We're gonna be starting with a hexagon,
so we need six sides.
And I'm gonna take the radius value up to 350 points
and then click OK in order to create this ginormous shape.
Now assuming you're working with the most recent version
of Illustrator CC,
the one that supports live shapes,
then go up to the window menu
and choose the transform command
to bring up the transform panel,
and then go ahead and change this polygon angle value
to zero degrees and press the Tab key
to advance to the round corner value
and change it to 12 points,
and then press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac.
Alright, now I wanna thicken up the outline
by changing the line weight value to three points
and I'll also set the fill to none.
Alright, now I'll press the Escape key to hide that panel
and I'll press the A key to switch to my white arrow tool,
because I need to select a couple of anchor points,
which are these top two points right here.
So click on the top left point to select it
and then Shift + click on the top right point
to select it as well.
And what that does is it selects the horizontal segment
in between as well as the two tiny curved segments
on either side of the selection.
At which point go ahead and press Control + C
or Command + C on the Mac
to copy that partially selected path to the clipboard,
and then press Control + F or Command + F on a Mac
to paste it in front.
And just to give you a sense for what that looks like
I'll drag it out here.
We just have this three segment open path.
Alright, I'll go ahead and press Control + Z
or Command + Z on a Mac in order to undo that move
and I will press Control + F or Command + F on a Mac
a second time to paste another copy of that path.
Alright, now for the best results
you wanna return to the view menu
and turn off your smart guides,
or press Control + U or Command + U on the Mac.
And that's because they sometimes
get in the way of snapping,
especially when you're trying
to snap one anchor point to another.
And so what we wanna do is take
this selected path right here
and go ahead and drag it down
till it snaps into alignment
with this anchor point down here.
And to see what that looks like
I'll just go ahead and zoom way in here,
notice now if I were to marquee this area
we have two coincident anchor points,
that is one is sitting directly on top of the other.
And if you wanna confirm that
then you can Alt + click or Option + click
on this open path outline to select the entire thing
and then you can drag it away, like so,
and make sure to drag it by its end point
and drag it until it snaps into alignment
with the stationary anchor point.
And you'll know that you have a snap,
because your cursor will change to a white arrow head.
At which point go ahead and release.
Alright, now press Control + zero or Command + zero on a Mac
to zoom out.
And then just go ahead and marquee
these two anchor points right there
and drag this end point, the left hand end point,
while pressing the Shift key, very important,
so that you don't end up dragging these guys willy nilly,
you wanna make sure to constrain the angle of your drag
to absolutely horizontal.
And so keep that Shift key down as you snap this point
into alignment with the anchor point over on the left side
of the shape.
And again, you'll know you have a snap
when your arrow head cursor turns white.
At which point go ahead and release
in order to modify that path outline.
Alright, now press the V key in order to switch
to the black arrow tool
and go ahead and click on this top open path
in order to select it,
and then Shift + click on the bottom open path,
so that you have both of these paths selected,
but as you can see the polygon is deselected.
Then I want you to go up to the object menu,
choose blend, and choose make,
or you have that keyboard shortcut of Control + Alt + B
or Command + Option + B on the Mac
in order to create an object blend
between those two selected path outlines.
Alright, that's way too many intervals
and so to reduce the number
return to the object menu,
choose blend, and then choose blend options.
And change the spacing value here to specified steps
and then take the number of steps down to six.
And if you wanna see what that looks like
turn on the preview checkbox
and you'll end up with this effect here.
Now go ahead and click OK to accept that change.
Alright, now we don't need quite this many ribbon overlaps.
If you take a look at the final effect
we have just two overlapping ribbons.
The one at the top
and the one down here at the bottom
with a thin gap in between them.
And to achieve that effect
I'll return back to my illustration in progress
and I'll go up to the object menu
and choose expand.
And that'll bring up this dialog box.
All you wanna do is click OK
in order to convert your dynamic blend
to static path outlines.
Alright, now we have a group
as indicated by the word group
on the far left side of the control panel.
And so to break things up
go back to the object menu
and choose the ungroup command
or you can press Control + Shift + G
or Command + Shift + G on the Mac.
Now what I want you to do is just
click off the paths to deselect them,
and then go ahead and marquee these two paths right there,
so the two directly above the middle one,
and press the Backspace key or the Delete key on a Mac
to get rid of them.
And then marquee these two guys
directly below the top path outline
and press the Backspace key or the Delete key on a Mac
to get rid of them.
Alright, now you wanna select all the open paths,
so just go ahead and press Control + A
or Command + A on a Mac to select everything
and then Shift + click on the big polygon to deselect it.
Now switch to the rotate tool,
which you can get by pressing the R key,
and then I'm gonna bring back my smart guides
by pressing Control + U or Command + U on the Mac,
and I'm gonna position my cursor
at the intersection of those two guide lines
and press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac
and click in order to set a transformation origin
at that location.
Alright, now we wanna set the angle value to 360,
which is an entire circle, divided by three.
So 360 slash three.
And then when you press the Tab key
Illustrator does the math for you,
120 degrees.
At which point you can turn on the preview checkbox
just to confirm that is what you want,
and then click the copy button,
or of course you can press Alt + Enter here on a PC
or Option + Return on a Mac.
Now we wanna duplicate that transformation
by pressing Control + D or Command + D on a Mac
in order to produce this effect here.
And now I'll press the V key in order
to switch to my black arrow tool
and I'll click off the path outlines to deselect them.
And just to reduce the amount of visual noise here
I'll go ahead and turn off the guides layer.
And now you can see that the result
is the base path outlines that we need
in order to achieve this final overlapping
ribbon effect right here.
And that friends is how you create the base path outlines
for our overlapping ribbon
using a combination of a hexagon,
an object blend, and the rotate tool
here inside Illustrator.