- Alright, in this movie, we're going to
finish off the artwork.
First by reshaping a few lumpy path outlines
using some conventional white arrow techniques,
and then, by assigning some colorful fills.
Alright, so one of the paths that bugs me
is this spot right here.
Even though I said we don't have to worry too much about it,
it's just a big lump, it's looking a little bit
too lumpy to me.
So I'll go ahead and press the A key to
switch to my White Arrow Tool,
and then I'll click right there, and the culprit,
is this little bit of straight segment.
I don't want that.
So having selected the segment by clicking on it,
I'll press the Backspace key, or the Delete key
on the Mac, to get rid of it.
And then I'll select this anchor point
and drag it until it snaps into alignment
with the other one, and then I'll marquee
both of these guys, and what I want to do
is join them into a smooth point.
And the best way to make that happen,
is to press that top secret keyboard shortcut.
I'm afraid there is no command for this.
And it's basically, "mash your fist J."
So it's Control, Shift, Alt on the PC,
or Command, Shift, Option on the Mac,
along with the J key, and that forces the
display of the joint dialogue box
so that you can turn this new point into a smooth point.
Which is very important because otherwise,
if you just hit Control J or Command J on the Mac,
or choose the Join Command or whatever,
you'll end up with a corner point.
Which is not what we want.
So now I'll click Ok, and now you can see
that I've got a smooth point
which allows me to flex the point
by dragging on either control handle.
Now take a look at this guy right here.
This transition to me doesn't look that smooth either.
But, whenever you run out of curvature like this,
you end up with two coincident anchor points.
That is to say one anchor point is directly
on top of another.
And you can see that's the case just by
dragging one of these guys to a different location.
So, I want you to see this, because this is
the downside of drawing with round corners.
It's really fun, it's really easy, but you can
end up with coincident anchor points.
In which case, just go ahead and marquee
that segment between them, and press the
Backspace key or the Delete key the Mac,
in order to create a hole, and then
select one of the anchor points, drag it back
onto the other so it snaps into alignment.
Marquee both of them, and press Control, Shift, Alt J,
or Command, Shift, Option J on the Mac
in order to display the joint dialogue box.
Select smooth, and click Ok.
Now some of you at this point might be thinking
"Well why don't you just delete the extra point,
"by clicking on it with the Pen Tool?"
Which is an option, but if you do that,
then you're going to lose that extra control handle.
Because what we've got here, is cusp points
on either side.
So this point right there, has a control handle
on the right, and this guy down here has
a control handle on the left.
If you want to keep those control handles,
then you've got to get rid of the straight segment
in between them by marqueeing it,
pressing the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac,
and then selecting that endpoint, dragging it back until
it snaps into alignment with the other one,
marqueeing those two points,
and pressing Control, Shift, Alt J or
Command, Shift, Option j on the Mac,
and selecting Smooth.
So this is a very old school technique by the way.
It goes back to the first version of Illustrator,
but it is often times the best way to work.
Alright, another spot is down here in the mouth.
This is not what I'm looking for.
But the good news is because we've got
a straight segment right here,
I can move this point to a different location,
or even nudge it from the keyboard
by pressing an arrow key,
and I'm not revealing a second point.
So those second points only happen
at maximum curvature.
That's when you get those overlapping anchor points,
just like we have right here, for example.
So I'll go ahead and marquee this segment,
press the Backspace key, or the Delete key on the Mac
to get rid of it, go ahead and click on this endpoint,
and drag it, 'til it snaps into alignment
with the other one, marquee those two points,
and press Control, Shift, Alt J or
Command, Shift, Option j on the Mac,
select Smooth, and then click Ok.
Alright we probably have another one right here.
Yes we do.
And so I'll drag them apart, this one's really important.
And then I'll marquee that segment,
press the Backspace key, Delete key on the Mac,
drag those guys back, whoops!
So I got to click on it in order to select it
independently of the other one,
then drag it, then marquee those two,
then press Control, Shift, Alt J,
Command, Shift, Option j on the Mac,
select Smooth, and press Enter or Return.
And now that gives me the flexibility to drag
this control handle down and to the left a little bit,
in order to increase the curvature of the mouth,
while keeping this transition right here
moderately smooth.
And if I want an even smoother transition,
I'll drag that point up a bit,
and then drag this control handle down.
And that way, we have more control handle action.
Alright, now we need to fix the tongue,
and so notice if I try to drag this guy up,
because he doesn't quite touch the top of the mouth anymore,
then I've got this extra anchor point right there.
So I'll just go ahead and click on that guy
and press the Backspace key, or the Delete key on a Mac.
We kind of have an extra right there too
so I'll select it, and press Backspace or Delete
to get rid of it, and then, I'll go ahead and drag
this guy down until he snaps into alignment.
I've got Smart Guides turned on, bear in mind,
'til he snaps into alignment with this path,
and then I'll drag this control handle up and outward,
and I'll drag this one up and outward a little bit as well,
so that we have a rounder tongue.
Alright now let's start assigning some colors here
by pressing the V key to switch to the
Black Arrow Tool.
And I'm going to start by partially marqueeing the eye
and the spot.
And then, let's go ahead and fill them with white
by clicking on the first color swatch
and then selecting white from that swatch's panel.
Alright, next, marquee the top of the body and the fin,
in order to select both those shapes,
and change them to black this time around.
And we'll end up with this effect here.
Alright, now for the mouth.
The easiest way to fill the mouth,
since both of these path outlines are open,
is to first fill them, and then use the Shape Builder Tool.
So I'll go and select both of these shapes
by clicking on one and shift clicking on the other,
and then I'll click on the fill swatch
up here in the Control Panel, and I'll select
this shade of pink, R212-G-20-B-90
in order to produce this effect, and then,
I'll click off the path outline to de-select them
and I'll re-select the mouth, because I want it
to be a paler shade of pink, and so
this time I'm going to Shift click
on that first color swatch up here in the Control Panel.
And that will bring up your color sliders.
At which point, go ahead and switch to
HSB if you're working along with me,
and I'm going to take the saturation value
down to 77, and I'm going to take the brightness
value up to 100, in order to get this more fleshy color.
Alright, now I'm going to Shift click on the tongue
once again, and now, we're going to build
these guys out by switching to the Shape Builder Tool,
which now has a keyboard shortcut of "L"
assuming that you changed your shortcuts along with me,
and now, you want to just drag across this sliver
into this shape right there
in order to create this collection of what is now
three independent shapes.
Because we have this weird sliver right there.
And to see what it look like, press Control Y,
or Command Y on the Mac to switch to
the outline mode, and now press the V Key to
switch back to the Black Arrow Tool.
Click off the paths to de-select them,
and click on this guy right there to select it.
And the reason we switched to the
outline mode by the way, was because otherwise
it would have been nigh on impossible to find this thing.
And this shape is in front of it as well.
And so now I'm going to press the Backspace key
or the Delete key to get rid of that weird triangle.
And I'm going to zoom in here,
and notice that we have some points
that aren't exactly where they should be.
So I'll go ahead and switch to the white arrow tool.
And I'll click right there and drag up
just a little bit in order to extend that
straight segment so that it's tucking behind
the big black shape.
And then I'll select this corner point
in the mouth shape, and I'll drag it up
a little bit as well.
And I might just go ahead and nudge it
over to the left a bit.
Alright, now I'll go ahead and press Control 0,
or Command 0 on the Mac to zoom out,
and I'll press Control Y, or Command Y on the Mac
to switch back to the preview mode.
Now the final step is to make this guy
look like he's swimming in water.
And so I'm going to bring back that blue-green
rectangle, by double clicking on an empty
portion of the template layer,
turning off the template check box.
Then I might as well rename this layer "water" as well.
And then I'll click Ok.
And now, I'll press the V key to switch to
the Black Arrow Tool, and I'll click in
this rectangle to select it.
And you can tell it's selected 'cause we
can see its center point.
And now click on the word "opacity"
up here in the Control Panel, and switch
the blend mode from Screen back to Normal,
so that we can see the shape.
Now the obvious problem, of course,
is that the bottom of the orca is not filled in.
So I'll go ahead and press the Escape key
in order to hide that panel, and I'm going to
lock the water layer by clicking in the second column.
And I'm going to rename this corner points layer
"roundness" let's say,
'cause there are a lot of smooth and cusp points now.
And now I'm going to go ahead and select this shape,
and I want to extend it using the Pen Tool,
but there's another point in front of this end point,
so I'll press the A key to switch my White Arrow Tool.
I'll go ahead and select that point and
drag it over just a little bit like so.
And now, I can switch to the Pen Tool,
which I can get by pressing the P key,
and I can just click, like so, around this
region in order to close the path outline.
That's all that's important, because after all,
it is in back.
And now I'll press the V key to switch back to the
Black Arrow Tool, and I'll click on the path outline
to select the entire shape, and then I'll
change it's fill to white up here in the Control Panel.
And finally, I'll right click on the shape,
choose Arrange, and choose Send to Back
in order to send that shape to the back of the stack.
And then finally, I'll press Control, Shift A,
or Command, Shift A on the Mac
in order to de-select my artwork.
And that's how we finish off the orca
that began as nothing more than a series
of free-form corner points, using the
many skills of the White Arrow Tool
here inside Illustrator.