- In this movie, we'll finish off the smoke
by connecting that first arc to the spiral.
We'll do so once again using the Arc Tool
but this time we'll modify the curvature of that arc
using the White Arrow.
The first thing I want you to do is click on that arc
in order to lift its fill and stroke attributes
so that the line weight appears as 30 points
up here in the Control Panel.
Now, go ahead and select the Arc Tool,
either from your floating toolbar
or by clicking and holding on what is now the Spiral Tool
and selecting the Arc Tool from the flyout menu.
Now, go ahead and drag from this point right there
and notice that I'm seeing the arc at the wrong angle.
So you don't press "r" for reflect
because that's what the fancy Spiral Tool does.
The Arc Tool is just a plain Joe so you press the "f" key
in order to flip the line
and then go ahead and drag down
until you snap into alignment
with the beginning of the spiral, like so.
All right, now, we need to adjust
the curvature of this path.
What I want you to do is turn on the guides layer
in order to bring back the guides
so you can once again select them.
Then I want you to press the "v" key
to switch back to the Black Arrow Tool
and click in the factory to select it.
All right, now, I want to find the center
of this path outline
and the best way to do that is to go up to the Window menu
and choose Attributes
to bring up the tiny Attributes Panel right here.
Then if you're not seeing all the options,
if you're just seeing these two overprint check boxes,
go ahead and click on the double arrow icon
next to the word Attributes
to reveal the rest of the panel.
And this is the guy you want, Show Center.
Go ahead and click on that icon right there
to find the center of the path outline.
All right, having done that, you can go ahead
and hide the Attributes Panel.
Now, we want to add another guide
so click on the guides layer to make it active
and then press ctrl + r
or cmd + r on the Mac to bring up the rulers.
And go ahead and drag a new guide from the vertical ruler
until it snaps into alignment
with that center point that you just created.
All right, now, you can press ctrl + r
or cmd + r again to hide the rulers
and then go ahead and once again click on the lines layer
here inside the Layers Panel to make it active.
All right, now, we're going to zoom in
on this arc right here
so that we can see it a little more clearly.
What I want you to do is switch to the White Arrow Tool,
again, you can get it by pressing the "a' key,
and I want you to take care to click on the path outline,
right here, the one that goes through the center
of this stroke.
You're going to see it highlighted in red,
assuming that you're Smart Guides are turned on.
At which point, you're going to see these guys right here,
these levers that are ending in circular control handles.
Now, we'll be seeing a lot of these guys in future chapters
but for now, I just want you to see
that they control the curvature of the path.
See this vertical one right there?
If you drag it down, like so,
you're going to compress that path outline,
you're going to move its curvature down into the right.
What I want you to do is move it all the way down to here,
press the shift key to constrain the angle of that lever
to exactly horizontal
and then go ahead and snap into alignment
with that vertical guide that you just got done creating
and then release.
You'll end up with this curving segment right here
that first curves down into the right
and then curves up into the left, like so.
All right, now, if that's the first time
you've ever seen control handles,
it may seem awfully strange
but rest assure that we will see much, much more of them
in future chapters.
All right, now, what we need to do
is join these path outlines together.
The best to do that is to go ahead and marquee
this intersection right there with the White Arrow Tool
in order to select these two anchor points.
These are said to be coincident anchor points, by the way,
because there's one anchor point directly on top of another,
they're occupying the same space.
Now, to join them,
you can go up to the Object menu,
choose Path and then choose Join.
But if you do that, you're going to join them in such a way
that these two control handles right here,
this long one on the left-hand side
and the short one on the right-hand side,
are not locked into alignment with each other.
The better way to work is to just escape out of that menu
and then press the top-secret shortcut.
This is the only way to make this happen, I'm afraid.
And that is what I call mash your fist
which is all of the modifier keys down,
ctrl + shift and alt here on a PC
and cmd + shift and opt on the Mac,
along with "j".
What that's going to do is bring up
the Join dialogue box right there.
Again, that's mash your fist + j,
gets you the Join dialogue box
with just two options, Corner and Smooth.
You want Smooth, just trust me on this,
we're going to see lots more of this later,
click OK.
What that does, watch now,
if I drag one of these control handles,
the opposite one moves as well
which ensures that we have a smooth transition
through this anchor point.
All right, I don't want to move
that control handle, however,
so I'll just go ahead and press ctrl + z
or cmd + z on the Mac to put it back where it was.
Now, I'll marquee these two coincident anchor points.
Again, coincident means one anchor point
is directly on top of another,
they occupy the exact same horizontal and vertical space.
And then press that keyboard shortcut again,
ctrl + shift + alt + j
or cmd + shift + otp + j on the Mac,
brings up the Join dialogue box
at which point you select Smooth,
click OK and you're good to go.
All right, now, just go ahead and click off the path outline
to deselect it
and I'll press ctrl + 0
or cmd + 0 on the Mac to center my zoom.
I'm also going to turn off my guides layer
so that I can focus on the artwork without any distraction.
At which point, you'll notice a big difference
with what we have so far and the final piece of artwork.
That is that our artwork
is not properly centered in the art board
which is a problem that we will address
in the next movie.