- All right, in a previous chapter,
I promised to show you how to create that denim pattern,
and we're going to use it not only to create this background,
but also to create this ambitious pattern brush
that's applied to a hand-drawn letter Z.
All right, I'll go ahead and switch over
to this blank document here,
and the first thing I'm going to do
is grab my rectangle tool, and then I'll just go ahead
and click any old place inside the document window,
and I'm looking for a rectangle with a width of four points,
and a height of 104 should us nicely,
at which point, I'll click OK.
Now, I really don't want any stroke,
so I'll just go ahead and change it to none,
and I want the fill to be black.
Now we want to create a bunch of copies of this guy,
so I'll press the V key to switch back
to the black arrow tool,
and I'll press the Enter key to bring up
the Move dialog box, and I'm looking for
a horizontal move of eight points,
vertical should be set to zero,
after which point, I'll click the Copy button
in order to make a copy of that path.
Now we want 10 more copies,
so you want to press Control D, or Command D on a Mac,
for duplicate, a total of one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, 10 times.
Now I'm going to go ahead and marquee these shapes,
and we want to give them a little bit
of a random wiggle, and the best way to do that
is to go up to the Effect menu,
choose Distort & Transform, and choose the Roughen command.
I'll go ahead and turn on the Preview checkbox
so we can get a sense for what it's going to do.
Now, that's ridiculous, so I'm going to
back things off a little bit by switching
from Relative to Absolute, and then I'll take
that size value down to three points,
which determines how much leeway the paths have
when they're wiggling back and forth.
Detail determines how many different segments are added,
and I'm going to go ahead and take that guy
up to 14 per inch, after which point,
I'll click OK in order to accept that change.
Now we want to create another rectangle
behind the other ones, and we're going to do that
using the rectangle tool, of course.
Just go ahead and click, once again,
and this time, I'm looking for a shape
that's 100 points wide by 100 points tall,
at which point, I'll click OK.
Now, it's pretty hard to tell what's going on
when all the shapes are the same color,
so I'll go ahead and change this guy to bright red.
We don't want to miss it.
Then I'll right click in the document window,
choose Arrange, and choose Send to Back,
or you have that keyboard shortcut
of Control Shift Left Bracket.
That's, of course, Command Shift Left Bracket on a Mac.
All right, I'm going to zoom in a little bit,
and I'm going to nudge this guy up
so that it is entirely covering up
the width of the black lines,
and every single one of the black lines
is exceeding the top and bottom of the shape.
All right, I'll go ahead and call this layer Live Fx,
because that's what it is,
and now we're going to create a copy of the layer
by clicking on the flyout menu icon,
and choosing Duplicate "Live Fx."
I'll go ahead and hide the original one
so I don't mess it up,
and I'll call this guy Expanded, let's say,
and actually, I want to change its color as well.
I'll double click in an empty portion,
and I'll go with Grass Green
down here at the bottom, and click OK.
Now, what you want to do is
find the intersection of all these paths outlines
along with the square, and so go ahead and click
on one of the black shapes,
and then see this guy right here?
Select Similar Objects, click on it
to select all the roughened rectangles.
Now you want to go up to the Object menu,
and choose Expand Appearance
so that we have static path outlines.
Then, finally, you want to return to the Object menu,
choose Compound Path, and choose Make,
and that way, Illustrator regards them
as a single path outline.
Now Shift click on a red rectangle,
go up to the Window menu, and choose the Pathfinder command,
and then I want to click on
this third icon in the first row,
but if I do that, I'm going to lose my red rectangle,
so I'm going to click out for a second,
click on this guy again, and press Control C
or Command C on a Mac in order to copy it,
just so that we can bring it back if need be.
Now Shift click on those black shapes,
and I will definitely this time click
on the third icon in the first row, Intersect,
in order to keep the portion of that compound path
that intersects the rectangle.
Now, what I'm going to show you here is,
if I drag this point, let's say, all the way up here
so that things are more or less in alignment,
and I drop this into place, you can see that
the shapes have a seam, they are not continuous.
So what we need to do is the following.
I'm going to go ahead and back out,
and then I will paste that rectangle in back once again
just so we can see what we're doing.
Again, I want to zoom in, I want to be
as close as possible here,
and I'll press the A key to switch to the white arrow tool,
and I'll click on this shape right there,
and I want this anchor point,
and I'm going to drag it over until it snaps
into alignment with the corner of the rectangle,
and I'm going to do the same down here, by the way,
so it snaps into alignment,
and then I want you to Shift click on this guy up here
so they're both selected, and press Control K,
or Command K on a Mac, and make sure
your Keyboard Increment is set to one point,
by the way, and click OK.
Now I'm going to press the left arrow key twice,
one, two, in order to nudge
those anchor points two points in.
Now I want to do the same thing over on the left hand side,
so I'll grab this anchor point
and drag it until it snaps into alignment
with the top left corner of the square,
and I'll grab this guy until it snaps into alignment
with the bottom left corner.
Then I'll Shift click on this one,
and I'll press the right arrow key twice in a row
in order to nudge those points inward like so.
Now, what we're going to do, and this is going to be
a little bit of a precarious operation,
you should be able to pull it off,
you want to marquee all these top points right here,
but don't go any deeper, just the top points,
and make sure that you get the first and last ones.
Now, we don't want the red rectangle,
so go ahead and Shift click on it, maybe a couple of times,
in order to turn it off.
With all these top points selected,
you want to go up here to these alignment icons
up here in the Control Panel,
and click on Horizontal Distribute Center.
Obviously, that's not the effect I'm looking for,
so I'll undo, and I'll click on this guy right here,
Align to Key Anchor, that is not what we want.
We want to Align to Selection.
Now, go ahead and try clicking on
Horizontal Distribute Center,
and things should work out much better.
Now we've distributed all of those points
so that they are an identical distance away from each other.
Theoretically, if we do the same thing down here,
so go ahead and marquee all the bottom points,
and then Shift click a couple of times
on the red square to turn it off,
and click on Horizontal Distribute Center once again,
and that's going to go ahead and move all the points
with the exception of the extremes,
the extreme left and right point.
Now, if I press the V key to switch to my black arrow tool,
I should be able to just go ahead
and select these black shapes right here,
and now we can turn them into a pattern
by going up to the Object menu,
choosing Pattern, and choosing Make.
If you loaded D Keys, you've got a keyboard shortcut
of Control M here on a PC, or Command M on a Mac,
which is going to go ahead and switch us
to the Pattern editor, as well as bring up
the Pattern Options panel.
Now, notice these width and height values.
The height value's fine.
I want the width value, however, to be 100
so that these guys are spaced a little bit
away from each other, like so.
Then notice that these guys are lining up brilliantly
up here at the top and the bottom
thanks to our distribution.
All right, now all you need to do is name this pattern.
I'm just going to call it Vertical Denim
because we have these vertical lines right here,
and then I'll press the Enter key to accept the name,
and I'll press the Escape key in order to
create that new pattern.
Now I'll go ahead and turn this expanded layer off,
I'll hide the Pathfinder panel.
That's just been sitting there this whole time.
And I'll press Control zero, or Command zero on a Mac,
in order to zoom out.
Now I'll turn on the pattern layer,
which contain a big white rectangle.
Now, what you want to do is click on that first color swatch
up here in the Control Panel,
and select Vertical Denim,
and that gives you an idea of what we have so far.
Now, to my eyes, that looks like we've got some problems,
not because of the seams so much,
these vertical seems right here,
but because we have this big gaps,
which is why we're going to adjust this pattern
to make it look way better in the very next movie.