- [Voiceover] In a previous movie,
I rather carelessly suggested
that I came up with this gradient,
that includes a total of five color stops,
through trial and error,
which makes it sound somehow accidental.
But as you can see,
by the fact that the gradient fits perfectly
inside of this horizontal orange stretch of ribbon,
that I spent a fair amount of time finessing the gradient
to get the best results.
Which is why, in this movie, I'm going to give you a sense
for how that process works.
Because, after all, that same gradient does not work well
in this blue shape, up here at the top.
So what we want to do is,
to tailor our custom gradients and our colors,
in order to exactly suit the artwork.
The first thing I'm going to do,
just to enhance the cool factor,
is fill the background with black,
by making sure the "not-Mobius" layer is selected.
And then I'll press a keyboard shortcut,
that creates a new layer below the existing one,
which is "Control + Alt + L",
or "Command + Option + L" on the Mac.
And I'll call this guy "black back",
because we will be creating a black background.
And I'll change the color, as if it matters, to gold.
And then click Ok.
Now, you want to make sure
that your smart guides are turned on.
Mine are turned off.
So I'll choose the command to turn them on.
And then I'll select the rectangle tool,
which you can get by pressing the M key,
and I'll drag from one corner of that red boundary,
that represents the bleed, to the other.
Actually, even though this gradient works well
for some things, it does not work well for this purpose.
So, I'll click on the first color swatch,
up here in the control panel, and I'll change it to black.
My stroke is already set to none,
so I don't need to worry about it.
So, all I'm going to do at this point is
lock down that "black back" layer,
so that I don't accidentally mess it up.
Now I'll zoom in on my artwork.
Notice this stretch of gradient right here
and how it has a highlight at 120 degrees.
That highlight should continue
from the orange piece of ribbon, into the blue piece,
but it doesn't.
It ends up jagging over to the right.
So what I'm going to do is,
create a custom guide for myself,
by scrolling down the Layers panel.
And I'm going to turn on the Guides layer,
and click on it to make it active.
And then I'll grab my line segment tool
and I'll drag along this highlight, like so.
I want the angle to be 120 degrees.
But I can't be confident, based on the heads-up display.
So I'll just press the Backspace key,
or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of that line.
And then I'll click, right here
at the base of this highlight.
I'll make sure the angle's 120 degrees.
Notice how it's slightly off.
And then I'll accept this length value,
maybe round it down to 365, and then click Ok.
And that will create the exact line I'm looking for.
You may need to use the arrow keys
in order to nudge this line back and forth.
But after you get it in the right place,
then just right-click somewhere in the document window,
and choose Make Guides,
in order to turn that line into a custom guide.
Now let's scroll up the Layers panel
and unlock the gradients layer,
and then press the V key, to switch to the black arrow tool.
And click on this top gradient right there,
and I'm going to press "Control + 0",
or "Command + 0" on the Mac, to center my zoom.
And then I'll Shift-click on this one,
and Shift-click on this guy as well.
You want to select all of the gradients
in front of the blue regions.
And then, here inside the Gradient panel,
let's get rid of this extra highlight and shadow.
They serve a purpose down here,
where one orange stretch is being covered up by another.
You can see that we have a shadow on one side,
and a highlight bounce off of the other one,
as if light is being reflected
off the inside of this stretch.
But we don't have anything like that going on up here.
So let's just grab this color stop,
and yank it down to get rid of it,
and we'll grab this one as well, and yank it down.
Now, what I want to do is, take this highlight
and move it over to the left, until it matches the angle
of that custom guide.
And I notice that happens at a location value of 62 percent.
We end up getting a nice match, as you're seeing right here.
Now I'm done with the Gradient panel, so I'll collapse it,
so I have a little more room in my Layers panel,
and I'll turn off the Guides layer as well.
And then I'll press "Control + Shift + A",
or "Command + Shift + A" on the Mac,
in order to deselect my artwork.
The gradients are looking great,
but to my way of thinking, the colors are too extreme.
I want to create a metallic effect.
So I'll go over to the Swatches panel,
and double-click on the Vice swatch,
the blue one right there.
Because it's a global swatch,
any modifications I make to it
will be reflected in the artwork.
I'll change the color mode to HSB,
and turn on the Preview checkbox.
I'm going to leave the hue value set to 210 degrees,
but I'll take the saturation value down to just 33 percent,
which reduces the saturation,
but it also increases the brightness.
So I'll take the brightness value down to 50 percent,
to produce this effect here, and then I'll click Ok.
Now let's double-click on the Versa swatch,
in order to bring up the the Swatch Options dialog box.
Global is turned on, my color mode is set to HSB.
I'll turn on the Preview check box,
and then I'll click inside the hue value
and take it up to 40 degrees,
which makes the color a little more yellow.
Then I'll take the saturation value down to just 5 percent,
which makes things almost white,
so I'll take the brightness value down to 50 percent,
in order to create this very low-saturation effect here.
At which point, I'll click Ok to accept that change.
Then again,
you might just want to go with a monochrome effect,
in which both the front and the back of the ribbon
are the same color, in which case,
I'll double-click on that Versa swatch once again,
and I'll dial in those same values,
that is, a hue value of 210 degrees,
a saturation of 33 percent,
and a brightness of 50 percent.
Turn on the Preview check box,
and the result is a homogeneous color scheme,
at which point, I'll click Ok to accept that change.
And that, friends, is how you create a non-Mobius
but awesome-looking, deftly-shaded,
interwoven ribbon effect, here inside Illustrator.