- [Instructor] In this movie,
I'll show you how to work with dynamic symbols.
Now to take advantage of this feature,
you need to be using the most recent version
of Illustrator CC 2015 or later.
And what dynamic symbols allow you to do
is change the color of your instances
independently of the original symbol definition
while still maintaining a link between the two.
Alright, so I'm going to demonstrate how this works
on the sun shape right here.
But I want to create multiple suns.
So I'm going to go ahead and select this guy
by clicking on it with the black arrow tool.
And then I'll go up to the replace option
up here in the control panel,
click on it, and then scroll up
until I see the butterflies right there.
And right next door to butterfly two is sun one.
So I'll go ahead and click on it
to replace one instance with another,
and it's a little bit smaller by the way,
than this guy over here on the right,
and so I'm going to switch to the scale tool,
and I'll press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac,
to bring up the scale dialog box.
And I'll change the uniform value to 111.11%.
And then I'll click okay.
Alright, now let's say I want to change the color
of one or both of the suns.
Well, currently I'm working with a static symbol,
and you can tell that's the case
because of the words symbol, and then in parentheses static,
over here on the far left side of the control panel.
And static symbols by the way
are the same as the symbols we've had forever
inside Illustrator, and what that means is,
if you want to change the color of the sun,
you need to change the color
of the original symbol definition.
Now as you may recall, these symbols are way smaller
than we're seeing right here,
and just to avoid a little bit of confusion,
I'm going to create a new window into this document
by going up to the window menu
and choosing the new window command.
Or if you loaded d keys, you have a shortcut
of control-shift-alt-N here on a PC,
or command-shift-option-N on the Mac.
Alright, now I'll bring up the symbols panel,
which is identified by this clover leaf icon.
I'll find sun one next to the butterflies,
and I'll double click on it.
And as you can see, it is very tiny indeed.
And so I'm going to zoom on in here.
And then I'll press the V key
to switch to the black arrow tool,
and I'll click on the rays to select them.
And I'll just change them, let's say,
to the shade of orange right here.
Doesn't really matter.
Any old change is going to do the trick.
After which point I'll update this symbol
by pressing the escape key.
And you can see here in this symbols panel
that the icon is updated.
The reason we're not seeing it
is because we're so far zoomed in,
which is why I took that moment to create a new view
into the document, so I can easily restore
the old view here.
And notice that both of the suns have updated.
Well, what if you want to change the color
of one sun independently of the other?
Well, one way to work is to select an instance, like so,
and then go up to the window menu
and choose the appearance command
to bring up the appearance panel,
and notice we can see the word symbol here.
I'm going to drop down to the add new fill icon,
in the bottom left corner of the panel, and click on it.
Notice this new fill is overriding the old one.
And I'll change it, let's say, to the shade of red,
just so we can see a difference.
Now the problem is that I don't have a ton of control.
I can't for example color the rays in the sun
independently of each other.
But I can do exactly that if I were working
with a dynamic symbol.
And so I'm going to get rid of that new fill
because it'll mess things up
by pressing control Z, or command Z on the Mac,
a couple of times, and then I'll bring back my symbols panel
and rather than double clicking
on this guy this time around,
you just want to click on the dialog box icon
down here at the bottom of the panel,
and just change the symbol type to dynamic symbol.
So you could do that any old time you like.
After which point I'll click okay to accept that change,
and for the moment, just so I can better see what I'm doing,
I'll hide the symbols panel,
and now I'll click on this left hand symbol over here,
and I'll go ahead and zoom in on it as well.
And now what you want to do
is switch to the white arrow tool,
which of course you can get by pressing the A key.
And then notice if I click on a symbol to select it,
that it's telling me that it's a dynamic symbol,
over here on the far left side of the control panel.
Now I should be able to click on the outline
in order to select the rays,
but feature's a little flaky at times.
If it doesn't work, what you need to do
is just click off the symbol
and click on its outline once again,
at which point you should see a thick outline like so,
and that's going to allow you
to switch to a different fill if you like,
and so I could go over here to the stroke panel,
and change the weight value to one, let's say,
so that I have a one point stroke.
And notice it traces around the outside
as well as the inside edge of the rays,
because after all this is a compound path.
And then if you want
to independently color the central shape,
then you can click on its outline with the white arrow tool,
and change it to, let's say purple.
Alright, now the great thing is that's not going
to affect the other symbol at all.
And so I'll just go ahead and click in those rays
with the white arrow tool once again to select them.
And then I'll change the fill
which is active here in the swatches panel
to let's say blue.
Doesn't really matter.
And I'll select the central shape.
And I'll change it to this dark shade of orange.
Alright, so I'm going to zoom out here,
so that we can see both the suns at the same time.
And so clearly, they are different from each other,
and they're a little bit different
than the original symbol definition as well.
Now let's see what happens
if you once again edit the symbol.
I'll go ahead and switch over to the second window here.
And I will bring up the symbols panel,
and I'll double click on the sun one symbol,
in order to open it up.
And because we're still zoomed in
I can see it nice and large.
Now I'm going to press the V key
to switch back to my black arrow tool,
and I'm going to change the colors of the rays back to black.
Because at this point it doesn't matter what the colors are.
And apparently, I went ahead and changed the stroke,
which is not what I want, so I'll switch back
to the fill here in the swatches panel,
and change it back to black.
And then I'll select the central circle
and let's change it into a face.
By selecting the scale tool,
and I'll go ahead and press the enter key
or the return key on a Mac
to bring up the scale dialog box
and I'll change the uniform value to 70% and click copy.
And because it's a black shape on another black shape,
we're not really seeing it,
so I'll change its fill to white.
And then I'll create another copy
by pressing the enter key or the return key on the Mac
and I'll tab down to the horizontal value,
and set it to 120%,
and then I'll set the vertical value to 60%,
and I'll once again click the copy button.
Alright, now I'll press the V key
to switch to my black arrow tool.
I'll shift click on that second circle right there,
and I'll go up to the window menu,
and choose the pathfinder command,
to bring up the pathfinder panel,
and I'll click minus front
in order to subtract that front shape.
As you can see on the far left side of the control handle
we end up with a group,
so I'll press control-shift-G,
or command-shift-G on the Mac, to ungroup those paths.
Then I'll shift click on this guy to deselect it,
and I'll delete the top shape.
And that way we're left with a smile.
Alright, now I'm going to zoom in a little more
and I'm going to select the ellipse tool
from the shape tool flyout menu,
and I'll go ahead and draw an eye right about there,
let's say, and then I'll select the reflect tool,
which you can get by pressing the O key,
and I'll alter option click,
right there on that center point,
and I want to set the axis to vertical,
after which I'll click copy to create that eye.
And now I'll switch back to the black arrow tool,
and I'll shift click on the first eye
as well as the smile, and I'll fuse them together
by going up to the object menu,
choosing compound path, and choosing make.
Alright, now, I'll press the escape key
in order to save my changes,
and you can see if I bring back the symbols panel,
sure enough, this tiny little thumbnail
is showing us that we have a face.
And to see what that looks like
I'll switch back to my first window,
and here's what we've got.
Now somehow my stroke has gone completely nuts,
but you can see that this guy over here
on the right hand side looks absolutely great.
And they both are sporting faces.
Alright, so I'm going to take care of that stroke problem
by pressing the A key to switch to my white arrow tool.
And then I'll click on the rays to select them.
And there's my culprit,
my line weight here in the stroke panel
has leapt up to eight points, dunno why,
but I can easily remedy the problem
by selecting the stroke here in the swatches panel
and changing it to none.
Alright, now I'm going to switch back to the fill
so that I can click inside the mouth,
and as you can see right here,
that ends up selecting the mouth and the eyes.
And I'll change them to blue, let's say,
just so we can see a difference.
And I'll go ahead and change the mouth
and eyes for this guy to yellow.
Alright, but let's say you don't want people
to be able to do that.
You want the mouth and eyes to create holes
in the circular faces.
In that case, you'll switch back
to that second window once again,
double click on sun one, in order to visit the symbol.
I'll press the V key to switch back to my black arrow tool.
I'll click in the mouth and eyes to select them,
and I'll shift click on the inner circle to select it.
And then, I'll return to the object menu,
choose compound path, and choose make.
And while that doesn't look any different,
the eyes and mouth have now been turned into holes,
and you can see that's the case
if you drag the shape around.
But I don't want to dislocate it
so I'll go ahead and undo that move,
and I'll press the escape key in order to update the symbol,
and now I'll switch back to the other window,
and you can see that the interior of the suns
have changed from fillable shapes to holes.
And that, friends, is how you take advantage
of the newest development
where symbols are concerned, dynamic symbols,
here inside the most recent version
of Illustrator CC 2015 and later.