- [Instructor] In this movie,
we are going to take on the body of the car,
which is currently expressed as a compound shape.
And the reason it's a compound shape
is because I had to cut a hole through the window
so that we could see through it to the interior of the car,
and I also had to cut holes for both of the wheels.
Now, I've gone ahead and made a diagram
of what this gradient mesh is going to look like.
It's not going to be quite this scary,
although there is a fair amount of stuff going on.
Anytime where you see an arrow,
that means, for example,
white spans the entire row.
And then we've got a few rows
that are spanned entirely by blue one.
Now, the most important thing to note at this point
is that we have a total of 11 row lines
if you count the top and the bottom.
And so notice here we've got one, two,
three, four right together,
five, six, seven right together,
eight, nine, 10 right together,
and then 11 down here at the bottom.
And we're going to make use of that information
in this very movie.
All right, so I'll switch back to my illustration so far.
We already know that you can't turn a compound shape
into a gradient mesh,
and so at the very least,
we need to expand it to create a compound path.
So, and I'll do that by going to the Window menu
and choosing the Pathfinder menu.
And then you want to click on the Expand button.
If it's dimmed,
just click off the path and click on it again,
and then click on Expand,
and that is going to convert the compound shape
into a compound path.
So in other words,
we got rid of the wheel paths,
we just cut them away,
and the window's now just serving
as your everyday average hole.
Problem is,
if I return to the Object menu,
you can see Create Graded Mesh is still dimmed,
and that's because meshes are not compatible
with compound paths
any more than they are compound shapes.
And so what do we do?
Well, the answer is to fill the shape
with a very precise gradient
and then convert that gradient into a mesh.
All right, so I'm going to switch back to Photoshop
where I have open yet another diagram here
which shows the gradient that we're about to create.
And notice, if you will,
that there are as many color stops
as there are rows in that final artwork.
So in other words,
we're looking at a total of 11 color stops in all,
and as you might imagine,
I did a lot of measuring
in order to figure out these values.
I'll switch back to Illustrator.
Here we go.
I'm going to bring up the gradient panel,
which is already expanded,
and I'm going to drag it out here
just so I have a little more room to work.
And you can see that I've made it nice and wide.
Make sure that the fill is active
here inside the gradient panel,
and then what you want to do is grab blue one
from the swatches panel
and drag it and drop it all the way over
to the left-hand side of this gradient,
and then grab white
and drag it and drop it
over on the right-hand side of the gradient,
so we have this kind of washed-out blue to white artwork.
And I just want you to see it over here on the screen.
We obviously need more color stops in this,
and so I'll go ahead and bring this guide back
so that we can see both it
and the swatches panel,
and then I'm going to make a copy of this blue one swatch
by Alt or Option + dragging it,
and I ultimately want it to appear
at a location of 8%,
and then I'll Alt or Option + drag another copy,
and this time I'll set the location value to exactly 15%.
Now we want to create a color stop in between those two,
and so I'll grab the blue two swatch
and I'll drag it and drop it in between,
and I'm looking for this guy to be set to 11%,
like so.
All right, now I'll make another copy of blue one
and I'll Alt or Option + drag it
until I get a location value of 30%,
which you may have to enter manually.
And then I'll grab blue three this time around
and I'll drag it and drop it
to pretty close to the other color stop.
I really want the location to be 33%.
All right, now I'll Alt or Option + drag this guy.
And this is the blue one stop, by the way.
And I'll set its location to 43%.
And then I'll Alt or Option + drag another one of it
and I'll set its location to 53%.
And then I'll Alt or Option + drag
this blue one stop right there
until I reach a location of 48% is what I'm looking for.
We've only got one more,
and so I'll just go ahead and make a copy of this guy,
so I'm Alt or Option + dragging the blue three color stop,
and I'm going to change the location
to exactly 80% this time around.
And you should end up with one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 color stops.
All right, I'll go ahead
and put the gradient panel back where it goes
just to tidy up the screen a little bit.
Now, I really don't want the gradient
just going from left to right,
as we're seeing right now.
I want it to go up and to the right.
And so one way to work
would be to get the gradient tool
and then just drag
from this bottom corner of the wheel well right there
up and to the right, like so,
at which point you'll see these bands of color
tracing the artwork more or less the way we'd like it to be.
However, I want things
to be a little more precise than that,
so I'm going to press Control + Z
or Command + Z on the Mac to undo that change,
and I'm just going to change the angle value
here inside the gradient panel
to 73 degrees is what I came up with.
And that way, as you can see,
these bands of color are tracing the car
more or less the way they are
in the final version of the artwork.
So we've already done a ton of work upfront.
That's going to save us a lot of effort in the long run.
All right, now I'll go ahead
and switch back to the black arrow tool,
which you can get by pressing the B key.
Now, I put a lot of effort into that gradient,
and so I don't want to lose it,
which is why I'm going to create a copy of it
by pressing Control + C, Control + F.
That's Command + C, Command + F on the Mac.
In order to copy the shape
and paste it in front.
And then I'll go ahead and twirl open this message layer.
It's going to be located way down here at the bottom.
So you might go ahead and name this guy Gradient
if you want to
just so that you remember what it is.
And then I'll turn it off so I don't mess it up.
And now I'll make sure the copied artwork is selected
and I'll go up to the Object menu
and choose the Expand command.
And that's going to bring up the Expand panel.
You don't need to expand the stroke
so you can turn that off.
Go ahead and make sure fill is turned on
and Expand Gradient To is set to Gradient Mesh,
and then click OK.
That's going to result in a group,
as we're seeing over here on the far left side
of the control panel,
which you want to ungroup by going to the Object menu
and choosing the Ungroup command,
or you can just press Control + Shift + G,
Command + Shift + G on the Mac.
And that's going to give us a couple of extra path outlines,
one for the outside of the car
and one for the window.
We don't need either of them,
so press the Backspace key
or the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of them.
And then go ahead and twirl open
this clipping group right here
and select the top object,
which is the clipping mask,
and let's go ahead and give it a stroke of black.
We want a one point line weight,
so that's great.
Notice that we've got two gradient meshes going on
inside this clipping mask.
One is the one we want.
Notice it's nice and wide.
And the other is the one we don't want.
Not really sure why it's here,
but we really don't want it.
So press the Backspace key
or the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of it.
And then go ahead and target this guy,
which is the actual mesh object.
So to answer the big question here,
if you want to put a gradient mesh into a compound path,
you have to start with a gradient
and then expand it.
All right, now press the A key
in order to switch to the white arrow tool,
and what I want to do is take these guys right here
and skew them.
And so I'm going to select each one of these mesh points
by Shift + clicking on them.
Notice these guys right here.
I'll go ahead and Shift + click on all of them.
And then I'll switch to the shear tool
and I'll go ahead
and Alt or Option + click right about there,
and I'll make sure the preview checkbox is on,
and then I'll increase that shear angle value.
Problem is right now I'm shearing along the horizontal axis.
I want a vertical axis.
And so I'll go ahead and select vertical.
A shear angle of seven degrees is too much,
so I'll go ahead and reduce that value to, let's say,
five degrees in order to produce this effect here
so that we're exactly matching the angle
of this portion of the car,
and then I'll click OK.
All right, now I want to move these points in a little bit,
so I'll press the A key
to switch back to my white arrow tool,
and I'll click and Shift + click on these guys, like so,
and then I'll just drag along the line.
I want to make sure
that I'm not messing up its angle too much.
And then I'll Shift + click on this one to turn it off,
and I'll drag these guys farther in, like so.
And again, I'm just trying to eyeball things.
And I'll go ahead and grab this guy
and drag him in, as well.
And we want to make sure that our control handles
aren't getting too close together,
and so I'll just go ahead
and drag one of them.
Unfortunately I ended up selecting that rocket panel,
and so I'm going to lock the panel object here,
and I'm actually going to meatball this guy,
the actual mesh object,
and then I'll go up to the Object menu,
choose Lock,
and choose All Artwork Above,
just so that these other objects don't get in my way.
All right, now I'll select this guy again,
and I'll back off the control handles a little bit,
like so.
I just don't want them to cross,
'cuz that's going to mess things up later.
And now I'll drag this guy back, like so,
and drag this one in, as well,
and then I'll do the same for this segment,
although it's not really as severely effective.
All right, now I want to do something similar
for these five rows right here,
and so I'll go ahead and click on this guy
and Shift + click on each one of these.
I accidentally ended up selecting the clipping path,
so I'm going to lock it, as well,
and see if that helps.
And I'll Shift + click on this guy,
and I'm just going to go ahead
and drag these guys, like so,
this time around,
so that I have a little extra wiggle room
where the gradient mesh is concerned.
In other words,
I want the mesh to be bigger then the clipping mask.
And now I'll click
and Shift + click on each one of these guys,
like so,
and I will drag them up a little bit, as well.
And what I'm trying to do is match the angle
of this seam line right here.
And if we really want to simulate a little bit of perspective,
you probably want to select those two points.
Problem is marqueeing doesn't seem to work for this,
and so I'll just go ahead and meatball the mesh again
and click this guy and Shift + click this one,
and I'll just nudge those points up
by pressing the up arrow key a few times
so that we get an angle
that's somewhere in between that of the rows above
and those of the rows below.
And then I'll just go ahead
and select this point right there,
and I'll Shift + click on this one,
and I want to give myself a little more room above the hood.
And then this guy I want to drag down, like so.
Just moving him down by himself.
And then I'm going to drag this control handle up
so that I'm more or less matching the contour
of the hood of the car.
And that's enough to get us started,
so I'll just click off the car to deselect it
and I'll press Control + zero or Command + zero on the Mac
to center my zoom.
All right, so that more or less takes care
of all the rows that we're going to need,
but as you can see here,
we're also going to need a bunch of columns,
and I'm going to show you how to make those in the next movie.