- In this movie, we'll draw this long shadow
that's being cast by the blocks,
while the letters are mysteriously
casting no shadows at all,
for the obvious reason that I don't feel like drawing them.
So, I'll go ahead and switch over
to my document of progress here.
And I'm going to zoom out by pressing control minus,
or command minus on the Mac,
and I'm going to create a new layer for my shadow
by clicking on a template layer,
and then alt or option clicking on a little page icon
at the bottom of the layers panel.
And I'll just go ahead and call this layer table.
Let's say, and click okay.
And now I'm going to draw a big rectangle.
So this is the one thing I'm not going to draw
with the pen tool.
I'll go ahead and grab the rectangle tool,
which, of course, you can get by pressing the M key,
and then I'm going to trace around the red boundary
that represents the bleed, in order to draw
a very large rectangle, indeed.
Now, for you it might come up some other color,
but I'm going to go ahead and change it's color
by clicking on the second swatch up here
in the control panel, and I'll change it to none.
And then I'll click on the first swatch
and change it to this medium brown, let's say.
The problem is, once again, if we take a look
at the original image inside photo shop,
you can see that the table is a lot warmer.
Meaning that it's a little redder
and it's more saturated as well.
So notice, if you hover over that first swatch
in the control panel, you get a message that tells you
to hold the shift key to bring up an alternate color UI.
And so let's go ahead and do that
by shift clicking on that color swatch,
and that's going to most likely bring up your RGB values
or your CMYK values, we want the HSB values.
And so I'm going to change the hue value
to 25 degrees, which is a little redder than what we have.
And then I'll take the saturation value up to 77 percent.
And I'll change the brightness value to 60 percent.
And these values are going to waiver a little bit
because Illustrator is trying to find
the nearest RGB equivalent,
but what we're seeing here is just fine.
So I'll press the escape key to hide that panel.
Alright, now we need to draw a shadow
that emanates from this block right here,
emanates from the front of it,
as well as the right side, the hidden right side
of this block over here on the right.
And that means I kind of need to figure out
where that right side is.
So I'm going to press the V key
to switch to my black arrow tool,
and I'm going to go ahead and click
on this shape to select it.
And I'm going to alt or option drag it
until it snaps into alignment with this bottom corner.
And what that's going to tell me
is where the back of the right edge is located,
which would be, at this point, approximately right here.
It would actually be a little farther down
because of perspective, but this is good enough
to get the job done.
Alright, I'm going to go and zoom out once again
by pressing control minus, command minus on the Mac.
And I'll go ahead and switch to the pen tool,
which I can get by pressing the P key,
and I'll click right about here.
Now notice my problem.
I don't know if you're seeing it,
but my pen tool cursor is lighting up an anchor point,
and I'm seeing a little slash next to the cursor,
which tells me I'm going to resume drawing this line.
And so if I click here, and then start clicking around
to create this shadow,
I'm going to get a very strange effect, indeed.
And that's because I'm extending my blend,
which is not what I want.
And so I'll press control Z, or command Z on the Mac
a couple of times in order to undo those segments.
And then, you can see I still have an active pen cursor,
so I'll press the escape key
in order to deactivate the line.
And I'll just go ahead and click near it, like so,
in order to start a new path outline,
and then I'll click right about here,
below the right edge of the D,
in order to set another corner point.
I'll click here in the bottom right corner at the bleed,
and then I'll click down toward the bottom
of the N, I think is going to work.
And I'll go ahead and click on that anchor point,
now that's safe to click on
because it's a closed path outline.
So you can't extend it.
And then I'll go back to my first point
and click on it, in order to close the path.
Alright, now I'm going to press the A key
in order to switch to the wide arrow tool.
And I'll go ahead and drag that point up
until it snaps into alignment with that one point
that I did not want to extend.
And I want to change both the fill and the stroke
of this path, so I'll press the V key to switch back
to my black arrow tool.
I'll click on the path outline to select the entire thing.
I'll go up to the second swatch
up here in the control panel, and change it to none.
And then I'll click on the first color swatch,
and I'll change the fill to the second darkest brown,
which is R96 G56 B19, in order to create
this shadow shape here.
So I'm on the wrong layer, and that's because
I accidentally activated that line in the blend,
and so I'll press the escape key to hide that panel.
And I'll drag that little red square
down to the table layer so that it turns green,
and then I'll move the path outline as well.
And now, I'll go ahead and click off the path
in order to evaluate it.
Now notice that the angle of this segment
is much sharper than the angle of the right hand one,
and that's not actually accurate because visually
things grow larger as they come toward us.
So I'm going to press the A key
to switch to the white arrow tool,
and I'm going to grab this anchor point
and shift drag it to here, let's say,
and now shift drag this one upward
so that the shadow is growing slightly larger
as it comes toward us.
Alright, now I'm going to press the V key
to switch back to my black arrow tool,
and i'll click on this path outline.
Technically, I don't need it anymore,
but i kind of don't want to lose it,
because it's been a valuable friend.
It helped me create this shadow,
so I'm just going to drag this red square here
inside the layer's panel,
that represents the selection down
to the table layer, once again,
in order to move that shape
and back of all the other blocks,
and then I'll click off the shape to deselect it,
and I'll press control zero, or command zero on the Mac
to center my zoom.
And I'm also going to lock the table layer,
because I don't want to mess it up,
by clicking in this second column,
right next to the layer,
and then it'll give me a little lock icon,
then I'll click on the blocks layer
to, once again, make it active.
And that's how you create a long shadow
in perspective, using the pen tool, of course,
here inside Illustrator.