- [Instructor] In this movie,
we're going to use gradient mesh to cast a shadow
underneath the car.
So I'll go ahead and switch over
to this nearly finished version of the artwork,
and I'll lock the meshes layer,
and twirl it closed if necessary.
And then I'll drop down to the shadows layer
and turn it on.
And twirl it open as well.
And you can see that we have an ellipse
that's filled with a radial gradient.
I'm going to go ahead and click on it to select it.
And I want you to notice.
I'll switch to the gradient panel here.
And I want you to see that we have just two color stops.
One's black, at a location of 70%.
And the other is also black,
but it's set to an opacity of 0%.
So this is not a black to white gradient.
This is a black to transparent gradient.
All right, so I'll copy it by pressing Ctrl + C
or Command + C on the Mac.
And then I'll paste it in front by pressing Ctrl + F
or Command + F on the Mac.
Now, I'll go ahead and turn off the original object
to protect it.
And then I'll go up to the object menu
and choose expand.
And I'll select the fill checkbox.
That's all we got.
And I'll make sure that gradient mesh is active.
After which point, I'll click OK.
And it's like, what in the world just happened
to our gradient?
Well, part of the problem is that we have a group.
So, I'll go up to the object menu and choose ungroup.
And then the other part of the problem is that we have
this clipping group right here.
You can see that it's selected
on the far left side of the control panel.
We don't need that at all because
if you go ahead and target
this guy below the clipping mask,
you'll see that it's already a big, huge,
by the way, ellipse.
And so, to address this problem,
I'm going to grab this guy.
I'll just click on it here in the layers panel
and I'll drag it out of the clipping group,
at which point we'll be able to see it.
And then I'll target that clipping group
and I'll press the Backspace key
or the Delete key on the Mac
because as I say, we don't need it.
All right, now I'll target that mesh object,
and I'm going to drag it down
so it's more or less centered underneath the car.
All right, now you don't need to worry
about this big outer ellipse.
You can just let that go.
And then you may notice,
if you press the A key to switch to the white arrow tool,
if you marquee,
what you may recall are two overlapping points,
that they are set to an opacity of 0%.
And then if I marquee these two guys right there,
they're set to an opacity of 100%.
So we just need to get rid of some of these extra lines
and move some points around.
And so, I'm going to do that
by switching to the mesh tool,
which you can get by pressing the U key,
and then I'll Alt + click on this line to get rid of it
as well as this one, and this one.
On the Mac, that would be three Option clicks.
So you're just left with this single radius line.
All right, now with this entire object selected,
let's go ahead and change the fill
up here in the swatches panel
to this guy right here,
all values equal 102,
so that we have a kind of medium gray.
All right, now I'll press the A key
to switch to my white arrow tool.
And I'll marquee these two points right there.
And I'll drag 'em around a little bit.
And you kind of want to drag them
at the right angles
so that you don't open up a fissure like so.
Just be careful in your drags.
And if necessary, you can press Ctrl + H
or Command + H on a Mac in order to check your work.
All right, now I'll press Ctrl + H,
or Command + H again,
to bring back my selection edges.
Now I want to make this outside ellipse bigger.
And one way to do that is to use the scale tool.
Another way is to add some points.
And you can add points to one of these rings
using the add anchor point tool.
And that's going to allow you to add points
that you can actually use.
And by the way,
you can get to that tool by pressing the plus key.
And then, I'll go ahead and click
right about there, let's say,
to add a point.
And then I'll press the A key to switch back
to my white arrow tool.
I'll click on that point to select it,
and then I'll just drag it out like so
in order to extend the size of this ellipse.
And then I'll press the plus key
to once again select that add anchor point tool.
I'll click right there to add another point.
I'll press the A key and then click on that point
to select it,
and I'll drag it out like so to make it that much bigger.
All right, now let's go ahead and marquee
these two points right there,
and drag them out a little bit in front of the car like so.
But, perhaps a little bit down as well.
We want the car to look like
it's projecting the shadow downward.
Now currently, we're not really properly accounting
for the shape of the car.
So I'm going to click off the point for a moment
and then click on the segment right here
in order to gain access to this control handle.
And I'll drag this control handle way out.
And you can see that it has this kind of crazy effect
on that interior shape right there.
If I want better control,
then I need to press the plus key
in order to select the add anchor point tool.
And then I'll go ahead and add an anchor point
right about there, let's say.
And I'll press and hold the Ctrl key,
or the Command key on a Mac,
to regain temporary access to my white arrow tool.
And I'll click on that point to select it,
and then I'll drag it up like so,
so it takes up more room underneath the car.
And now I need to add a few more points for the tires.
So I'll click right there,
and click right there as well,
with my add anchor point tool.
So I've gone ahead
and released the Ctrl or Command key by now.
And I'll add another point at this location.
And now I'll Ctrl + click on it,
that's a Command + click on a Mac,
and move it down.
I still have my Ctrl or Command key down.
And so I'm going to drag this point to this location,
and I'll drag this guy down
to approximately here, let's say.
And I'll go ahead and drag my control handles around
so that I have a better looking effect.
I might tuck this guy up just a little bit.
And then I'll release the Ctrl key,
or the Command key on the Mac,
to return to my add anchor point tool.
I'll click there to add a point,
and I'll click here to add a point as well.
And then I'll Ctrl + click.
You don't want to Ctrl + drag.
You want to Ctrl + click first,
that's a Command + click on a Mac,
in order to select the point
and then Ctrl + drag it to a different location.
And I'll go ahead and Ctrl + drag this guy as well.
Then I'll take this mesh point down a little bit.
Actually, I might as well take it down quite a bit,
and reduce the length of this control handle.
All right, I'll press Ctrl + Shift + A,
or Command + Shift + A on a Mac,
to deselect the object.
And you can see that we have pretty decent looking effect
at this point.
But I want to darken things up further.
So I'm going to throw another shadow at the car.
One that I'm just going to draw with the pen tool.
And so I'll grab the pen tool,
which of course,
any child knows you can get by pressing the P key.
And then I'll just click in order to create
a freeform polygon, as I'm doing right here.
So I'm just going to stay tight to the bottom of the car
and then take it up.
Doesn't really matter what I do underneath the car.
So I'll just do this kind of number.
And then click underneath this tire right here.
And I'll go ahead and complete the shape like so.
That's not exactly what I want I don't think.
So I'll press the A key to switch to the white arrow tool.
And I'll drag this point down a little bit.
And I think I'll drag these two points out
so that they're still visible underneath the car like so.
Then I'll drag this guy up a little bit.
Now naturally, I don't want a white shadow.
That doesn't make any sense.
So I'll press the V key to switch to the black arrow tool.
And I'll click somewhere on this path outline to select it.
And then I'll go ahead and change the fill color to black.
And I'll go up to the effect menu,
choose blur,
and choose Gaussian blur.
And I came up with a radius value of 30 pixels,
which when I turn on the preview checkbox,
produces this effect here.
After which point, I'll go ahead and click OK.
And then I'll press Ctrl + Shift + A,
or Command + Shift + A on a Mac,
in order to deselect my artwork.
And if you like, you can modify the points a little more,
as I ultimately did,
in order to create this final,
I think slightly better looking version of the artwork.
And so I'll just go ahead and press the F key
a couple of times
in order to switch to the full screen mode.
And I'll go ahead and change the zoom value down here
to let's say 130%.
Now at this point,
you can probably see a few artifacts on screen.
I'm seeing some gash lines
down here near the bottom of the car,
and this weird pattern along the door.
But again, if you were to export this artwork
by going up to the file menu,
choosing export,
and then choosing export as,
after which point you could select
the tiff format, for example.
But I've done that in advance.
And I even have that file open inside of Photoshop.
And you can see that it looks absolutely pixel perfect.
And those are a bunch of different ways
that you can take advantage of the powerful,
if demanding gradient mesh function
here inside Illustrator.