- In this movie I'll show you how to
offset one or more strokes in order to
simulate the effect of depth.
So we're going to start off by creating these deep letters.
Notice that each one of the strokes
is slightly offset from the other.
Then we'll add these edges, along with
a drop shadow, to the gear.
I'll go ahead and start off inside this document here.
I'll go up to the Select menu and choose the Letters command
in order to select all the letters, like so.
I'll click on the top stroke,
here inside the appearance panel,
and I'll turn off the Dashed Line checkbox
so that we have a 10 point solid stroke.
Alright, now to offset it.
You want to make sure that the stroke is active
here inside the appearance panel,
then you want to go up to the Effect menu.
Choose Distort & Transform and choose one of my
favorite commands in all of Illustrator,
which goes by the very simple name, Transform.
What it allows you to do is scale, or move, or rotate
an attribute on the fly.
So for example, if I turn on the Preview checkbox so I can
see what I'm doing, and I click in the Horizontal value,
I want you to watch the stroke move when I press
the down-arrow key a couple of times.
Do you see how it moves to the left?
Then I'll click in the Vertical value
and I'll press the down-arrow key a couple of times as well,
in order to nudge that stroke upward.
Then, I'll click OK in order to accept that change.
Alright now I'm going to zoom in a little bit
so that we can see the effect in more detail.
And I'm going to add another stroke by clicking
on the top stroke right there, and instead of clicking on
Add New Stroke down here in the bottom left corner
of the panel, I'm going to click on the little page icon
to make a copy of that top stroke.
That way, if I click on this triangle
next to the word stroke in order to expand it,
I have not only my stroke attribute,
but I have my Transform effect as well.
Alright, I'm going to go ahead and click on a color swatch
right there and change it to white.
Then, I'll reduce the line weight to four points, like so.
Then finally, I'll click on the word Transform.
So anytime you want to modify a dynamic effect,
you click on it here inside the appearance panel,
then you want to turn on the Preview checkbox,
and you have to do that every single time.
And then go ahead and click in the Horizontal move value,
and press the down-arrow key in order to nudge
that white stroke farther to the left.
Then I'll tab to the Vertical value
and I'll press the down arrow key to nudge the white stroke
one additional point upward.
Now click OK in order to accept that change.
Alright now I want to duplicate all these strokes
onto the purple infinity sign,
but if I shift-click on it to add it to the selection,
notice that we're seeing mixed objects
with mixed appearances here inside the appearance panel.
That's because the infinity symbol just has the one stroke.
So I'll go ahead and click off the letters to deselect them,
and then I'll click in the purple infinity
to select it independently.
Now, go ahead and select the eyedropper tool
near the bottom of the tool box,
or you can press the "i" key.
Press the enter key or the return key on the Mac,
just to confirm that the Appearance checkbox is turned on
over here on the left side of the dialogue box,
in which case you can just go ahead and cancel out.
Then, click on any of the letters in order to lift
all of its appearance attributes like so.
Just like that, your duplicating those extra offset strokes.
Alright, now press the "v" key to switch back
to my black arrow tool, and click off that infinity sign.
Now let's take a look at how to add some depth to this gear.
I'll start things off by selecting this black gear
in the background, and then pressing the backspace key
or the delete key on the Mac to get rid of it.
Then I'll click on the gear in order to select it.
Notice here in the appearance panel,
we can see that this is a compound path.
We can also see that the stroke is in front of the fill.
We want the stroke to be in back of the fill.
So go ahead and grab that stroke,
and drag it and drop it below the fill, like so.
Then, I'll go ahead and click on this stroke
in order to make it active, and I will change
the line weight to 20 points.
I'm also going to change the Corner,
here inside the stroke panel, to a round corner like so.
Alright, now let's go ahead and offset that stroke
using an application of the Transform effect
by going up to the Effect menu
and choosing this second command, Transform...
What that tells you is it's going to bring up
a dialogue box complete with the last settings
that you first applied, meaning that both
of the move values are set to negative two.
Go ahead and turn on the Preview checkbox
so you can see what that looks like.
I really want the effect to move downward.
I'm going to click in the Vertical move value there,
and I'm going to press the up-arrow key,
which as you can see, raises the Vertical value
in one point increments, which lowers the stroke
here inside the document window.
In the end I'm going to go ahead and take that value
up to five points.
Then I'm going to press shift-tab in order to highlight
the Horizontal move value.
Then I'll press the down-arrow key in order to
reduce that value and move the stroke farther to the left.
In the end, I came up with a value of negative five.
So we've got negative five for the Horizontal value
and positive 5 for the Vertical value,
at which point I'll go ahead and click OK
in order to accept that effect.
Then finally, what depth effect can't benefit
from a drop shadow?
But before I choose that effect,
I want to make sure that I'm applying it to the entire path,
so go ahead and click on Compound Path
at the top of the appearance panel.
Then go up to the Effect menu, choose Stylize,
and choose Drop Shadow.
I came up with these settings right here.
The first two are the defaults, so Mode is set to Multiply,
Opacity is 75%, the color is black.
And then, I went ahead and set
the X Offset value to negative five,
and the Y Offset and Blur values both to five.
You can see what that looks like
by turning on the Preview checkbox.
If you like what you see, then just go ahead
and click OK in order to apply that effect.
Then, I'll go ahead and click off the path outline
to deselect it.
And that's how you simulate depth,
by offsetting your strokes using an application
of the Transform effect here inside Illustrator.