- [Man] Alright, our big letter z is
looking pretty awesome.
The only problem, potentially
is that we don't have any caps.
Either here at the beginning of the letter,
or here at the end.
It might be nice if we did.
In which case we could create
this effect right here.
Where the lines wrap around.
And this is a function of start and end tiles.
That you can associate with any pattern brush.
Problem is Illustrator doesn't help
you with this one.
You have to do it manually.
And in our case it's going to be a fair amount of work.
So, let's roll up our sleeves here.
I'm going to turn off the Z and I'm going to
turn on the expanded layer.
I'm going to turn off the pattern layer as well
just so we can focus in on what we're doing here.
And I'm going to move these ...
And I'm going to go ahead and grab this guy
lets say, down here.
So that he exists on a different row.
And that'll just give us a little more control.
Alright, now I'm going to click off
the shapes to deselect them.
Click on one of these black paths right there
in order to select it.
And I'm going to zoom in a little farther here
and I'm going to grab this guy, this anchor point right here
and drag it over until it snaps into alignment
with its equivalent on the left side of the shape.
And then I'll press and hold the shift and alt keys
or shift and option on the Mac.
In order to make a copy of those shapes, like so.
And now, I'm going to rotate a copy by switching
to the rotate tool.
Then I'll just press the enter key
or the return key on the Mac.
I want the angle value to be 90 degrees
and I'm going to click copy, like so.
Alright, things are getting a little bit complicated here.
I don't know why we have a group.
Where did that come from?
I'm going to press control, shift, G.
Or command, shift, G on the Mac to ungroup these paths.
And then I'll go to the object menu
choose Compound Path and choose Make
and that's going to make things better
as we'll see in a moment.
And also change the color of these paths
to lets say, a shade of blue.
Alright, now I've got to press the V key to
switch back to the black arrow tool
and select these guys, they're a group too.
I have no idea where this came from.
I'm going to press control, shift, G.
Or command, shift, G on the Mac to ungroup
and then I'll drop down to Compound Path and choose Make
or I could press Control 8 in order to
turn these guys into a single compound path.
Now, this very important because now what we're going to do
is shift click on the blue paths.
Go to the window menu and choose Pathfinder
to bring up the Pathfinder panel and click
the first icon in the second row, Divide.
Which is going to divide all these guys apart
so that we can assemble them into that wrap around thing.
Alright I'm going to hide the Pathfinder panel.
We've got a group again.
I'm going to press control, shift, G or
command, shift, G on the Mac to ungroup these paths
because we need them all to be independent.
Alright, now what you want to do is very carefully
marquee down this line of paths right here.
Just get those anchor points, those far left anchor points.
In order to select them independently of everything else
and get rid of them and then do the
same thing up top here and get rid of those and do
the same thing down here at the bottom and get rid of those.
Alright, here's where things get very tedious.
Click here, shift click, shift click
shift click, shift click, shift click
because we can't just kind of drag through these
things because they're all at weird angles.
You have to shift click on the stuff that you don't want
and then press the backspace key
or the delete key on the Mac to get rid of them.
And then we're going to do the same thing up here and
so you just need to make sure you select everything
you don't want and then press the backspace key
or the delete key on the Mac to get rid of it.
And we're going to do the same thing over here I'm afraid
and then we need to backspace those.
And so it's really just a matter of
imagining what it is you don't want.
Which can be confusing but I'm going to make quick
work of it I hope here by selecting these guys here
and I don't want to go all the way to the end.
I want to select this guy but not this guy
and then I'll press the backspace key
or the delete key on the Mac to get rid of them.
And I'll go ahead and select these guys like so
and I'll backspace them away and I'll get these guys.
Me and these guys, I'm going to be saying those words a lot
because I really have to select a lot of
different shapes to get rid of them.
And the you go almost as far as that guy there and
then you kind of retract back so you see
how I'm whittling my way inward.
And I'm going to select these guys all the way to the end.
Right there, and then I'll press backspace
or delete to get rid of them.
And I'll select these four guys right there.
Actually these five guys, these six guys, him too.
And get rid of them, and then these guys want to go away.
But just four of them and I'll press backspace or
delete to get rid of those guys and I'll get rid
of these two, so I'm clicking and I'm shift clicking.
Oops! I moved them and I don't
care because they're going away.
And now I'll go ahead and grab these guys up to here
and get rid of those and right through the center
we need these guys to be well disposed of, goodbye.
And it looks like I went too far, I'll undo that.
I want to keep that guy, I love him.
And I'll press the backspace key or the delete key
on the Mac to get rid of those and I'll select
these two guys and press backspace for delete.
Ha, see isn't that fun? Drawing is fun!
Art's great, anyway I'm going to select all these
paths right there like so and then I'm going to bring
up the Pathfinder panel again and I'll click Unite
in order to fuse them together and they'll all turn blue.
And by the way, you may find that you have some
transparent paths in there that you need to get rid of.
I don't, I should have told you this in advance
because I clicked on the fly out menu
icon, chose pathfinder options
and I turned on both of these check boxes.
Remove Redundant Points and Divide
and Outline Will Remove Unpainted Artwork.
If you didn't do that, you're going to have some transparent
stuff that'll you'll need to delete but all you need
to do is select one of the transparent paths
come up to this guy, Select Similar Objects.
Click on it and then press backspace key or
the delete key on the Mac to get rid of them.
Alright, now this is still a group.
What is going on, I don't want it to be a group.
I'm going to press control, shift, G or
command, shift, G on the Mac to ungroup.
Oh, that's because I clicked on Unite.
And then I'll change the color to black.
And I really want these guys to be a Compound Path.
Compound Paths are so much easier to work with when they
all have the same fill and stroke attributes.
And now we need to turn this guy into a pattern by
going up to the Object menu, choosing
Pattern and then choosing Make.
Or is you loaded D keys you have that keyboard
shortcut of control M or command M on the Mac.
And even though this looks terrible
this is exactly what we want.
Just go ahead and call this start denim and then
press the escape key in order to create a new swatch.
And now lets go ahead and add it to the sea by pressing
control 0 or command 0 on the Mac.
I'll turn off the expanded layer, turn on the
Z layer as well as the denim layer.
And I'll bring up the brushes panel, scroll all the way to
the bottom, double click on this guy
and I will change my start tile.
As you can see right here, we get a tool tip.
I'll change it to start denim right there, and that'll
add that little bit of denim to the
beginning of the path outlined.
Now the arrow indicated the end.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if start denim
worked at the end as well?
Yeah but it doesn't, so anyway I'm going to go ahead
and click okay to accept that change.
Yes, I want to apply it to the strokes.
And now notice that looks great at the beginning of the path
and it looks completely wrong here at the end of the path.
Go figure, and that's because we need
to create a separate end tile.
And I'm afraid it's the same thing.
If you're looking forward to that, join me.
I'm going to go ahead and turn on off the Z
and the pattern and turn on the expanded item right there
and I'm going to go ahead and grab these guys
which are a group, darn it!
Command, shift, G or control, shift, G on the Mac.
Go to the Object menu, choose Compound Path and choose Make.
And then, let's go ahead and zoom in here and we
want to drag on of these guys by its anchor point.
And drag it over here until it snaps into alignment.
Press the shift and alt keys, shift and option on the Mac.
In order to constrain the angle as well as create a copy.
Go ahead and switch to the rotate tool.
Press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to bring
up that Rotate dialog box, the
angle should still be 90 degrees, click copy.
Let's go ahead and fill these guys, this time with green.
Just so that we're having some fun.
And then I'll press the V key to
switch back to my black arrow tool.
I'll shift click on the black lines.
Bring up Pathfinder panel, definitely if you didn't do it
before, click on the fly out menu icon
and choose Pathfinder Options and at least turn on
this second check box so that you don't have
a bunch of transparent paths.
And then click on Divide, the Divide icon right there.
You're going to get a group cause
Illustrator is so fond of them.
So I'm going to go to the Object menu and choose
Ungroup so I'm seeing just a bunch of paths.
And now same thing, I'm going to marquee these guys
in order to select them and get rid of them.
Marquee just the tops of these guys, get rid of them.
Marquee just the bottom of these guys and get rid of them.
And now we want to do a bunch of clicking and shift clicking.
So I'm going to grab these guys right here, and remember
if you select too much you just
shift click again to turn it off.
And then we start one column in, so we want to
go all the way to the end with these green guys.
And the I skip another column to go in
like so and I'll go ahead and select them.
And then we skip in another column right here, I believe.
Yes, I believe, yes this looks right to me.
And I'll go ahead and select not him
I want to leave him there.
Select him and him and him
and then do I keep going inward?
I'm not sure at this point but I'll do it anyway.
Can't harm anything.
And I'll press the backspace key or
the delete key on the Mac to get rid of all those guys.
And now I'll select some of the black paths.
Working my way vertically, I accidentally select that guy
so I shift click to deselect him.
And I want to work my way in once
again but on both sides this time.
And I don't want to make any mistakes so you know what
I'm going to deselect him, I'm not sure about him.
And I'll get rid of these guys like so.
Why don't we work our way through the greens again
cause they're a little easier to navigate.
So I'll just shift click on all of these.
I'll work through this way as well.
Almost all the way to the end, like I'll go
ahead and select that guy but no further.
And then I'll select these guys, working my way inward.
And I'll start over here and I'll select these guys
by shift clicking on them in case you forgot, because
it's really obvious by now what
it is I'm trying to accomplish.
And I'll shift click on these guys as well
and I'll press the backspace key or the
delete key on the Mac to get rid of them.
Then I'll select these four guys and these two guys
and I'll get rid of them and that looks beautiful.
Alright, so now I'll zoom out a little bit.
I'll go ahead and marquee all these shapes.
Hopefully they're not groups for some reason.
And then I'll bring up the Pathfinder panel
and I'll click Unite, that will turn them into a group.
So I'm going to press control, shift, G or command, shift, G
on the Mac in order to ungroup them.
Then I'll press control 8 or command 8 on the Mac
to turn them all into a compound path
and I'll fill them with black, like so.
And now I'll go up to the Object menu
choose Pattern and choose Make.
In order to choose to the pattern editor
I'll change the name to end denim.
And then I'll press the escape key
in order to create that new swatch.
Alright, now you can turn off expanded
turn on the Z and patterned layers.
Press control 0 or command 0 on
the Mac in order to zoom out.
Bring up the brushes panel, make it not so tall so that we
can see that end right there.
And I'll go ahead and scroll to the bottom and double click
in order to bring up the brush pattern options dialog box.
And I'll click on this very last guy, End Tile.
And I'll change it to end denim so things
are listed in alphabetical order right here.
So I'll select end denim and that's
looking better in the preview.
Now to click okay and I'll say Apply to Strokes.
And you can see that everything works out nicely.
And so I want you to notice this preview here inside
the brushes panel is now completely full up.
It has a little room at the end just to
indicate that this is an end tile.
But otherwise we're looking at the outer corner tile
two slots of the side tile, the inner corner tile
then we have the start tile followed by the end tile.
And now, just to finish things off, I'm going to click on
the word Opacity up here in the control panel and I'm
going to change the blend mode to hard light.
And that doesn't do anything because as we can see over
here on the left side of the control
panel nothing is selected.
So I need to click on the Z in order to select it, then
click on the word Opacity and change it to hard light.
For some reason it already thought it was but if you still
had your Z set to normal, you want to change it
to hard light as well, assuming that you want to get
the same effect as I'm getting.
And that is how you create custom start and end tiles.
Just imagine if you had to do that for the corners as well.
That's the kind of stuff you used
to have to do on a regular basis.
But again that is how you create custom start and end tiles.
To all together finish off your
pattern brush here inside Illustrator.