- In this movie we're going to add
a sculptural beveled edge to our letter G.
I'll go ahead and switch over to my document so far.
And I'll click inside the G, inside of its fill,
to select the entire shape.
And then I'm going to drag it down
until it looks like it's more or less in the right location,
which I think happens about there, let's say.
It's not an exact match, but it's close enough.
And then I'll press the alt key,
or the option key on the Mac,
in order to create a copy of this shape like so.
As I work on it I don't want it to have a fill,
so I'll go up to the first option in the control panel
and I'll select None, or because the fill is active
I can just press the slash key.
Now I'm going to zoom in a little bit
and I'm going to click on this point right there
in order to select it, and I'll press control-X
or command-X on the Mac to cut it to the clipboard.
And then I'll press control-F, or command-F on the Mac,
to paste it in front.
Now I'm going to drag it by its anchor point until it
snaps into alignment with the identical smooth point
in the original G,
and I'll know I have a snap when I see my arrow head
turn from black to white like so.
Now I want to join this path with the transparent one.
As you know, you can add to a selection in Illustrator
by shift-clicking on something.
But if I were to shift-click on part of this path with
the white arrow tool, I wouldn't select the entire thing,
and I need to for this operation to work.
So you have two options.
One is to switch to the black arrow tool
and shift click on the path.
The other is to select the entire path outline
with the white arrow tool, which you do by
pressing the alt key, or the option key on the Mac.
Notice when you press alt or option
you'll see the little plus sign next to the white arrow.
So just go ahead and alt-click or option-click
on that path outline to select the entire thing.
The problem is I deselected that open path
up here at the top, so I need to shift-alt
or shift-option click on it like so to select it as well.
Now you can join these paths with straight segments
by going up to the Object menu, choosing Path,
and then choosing the Join command.
Or you can press control-J or command-J on the Mac.
And that will join one side of the other of your paths
with a straight segment like so.
To join the other side just press control-J
or command-J again, and you'll get this effect here.
I feel like this is a pretty rough transition.
So I'm going to click on this anchor point right there
and I'm just going to move it down.
It doesn't matter if it's not aligned at the top.
What counts is that it's aligned down here.
And then I'll go ahead and click on this anchor point
to make it active, and I'll drag its control handle
so that it's more properly aligned.
Now let's check out the other side and see how it's fairing.
This anchor point needs to move up to about here,
and then I need to take this control handle down
just to hide it from view.
And I'll click on this anchor point
and take its control handle outward
so that it's in a perfect line.
See that? We want a straight line between the control handle
and the straight segment that it's leading into.
Now we need to do the same at the top of the letter.
And this is all gonna work out.
I know it looks terrible right now,
but it will work out brilliantly.
We need to put a point right about there.
And we can do that by pressing the P key
to switch back to the pen tool,
and then clicking at that location.
And that we we have something to align with.
Now I'll press the A key
to switch back to the white arrow tool,
and I'll click and shift-click on these anchor points
along the top of the G, and that's going to do it.
So now I'll press control-X or command-X on a Mac
in order to cut those points and segments to the clipboard.
And now I'll press control-F or command-F on a Mac
to paste everything back into place.
And then I'll go ahead and drag the path by this top point
until it snaps into alignment with its identical point
in the original letter G.
And now I'll shift-alt-click or shift-option-click
on the bottom open path outline,
and I'll press control-J, control-J,
to join everything with straight segments.
And now I've got to move some things over here.
So I'll click on this anchor point
and drag it down to right about here, let's say.
And I'll take this one down and out as well,
and move its control handle so that it's aligned
with that straight segment that it's leading into.
And now let's go ahead and check out
the other half of the G.
I'll move over to this location.
And this time I'm just going to take this guy to the right,
because he shouldn't extend past the edge
of that block that's containing the letter.
And I might drag it down just a little bit as well.
Now let's go ahead and zoom out
by control-alt-spacebar clicking.
That's a command-option-spacebar click on the Mac.
And I'm going to change the fill
to this shade of gray right here,
the one where all the RGB values are 77.
And obviously we don't want the dark G to be in front.
So I'll click inside of its fill
to select the entire letter.
And then I'll right-click, choose a range,
and choose Send to Back
to send that edge in back of the letter itself.
And then I'll click off the path outlines to deselect them.
And I'll go ahead and preview the other layers once again,
which you can do by either control-clicking
or command-clicking
on the hollow eyeballs inside the Layers panel.
Or you can just go up to the View menu
and choose GPU Preview,
or press control-Y or command-Y on the Mac
to preview the entire illustration once more.
And now I'll go ahead and zoom out by pressing control zero
or command zero on the Mac.
And that is how you give your letter
a sculptural beveled edge
by duplicating and reshaping its original path outline
here inside Illustrator.