From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

695 Turning regular hexagons into organic cells

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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695 Turning regular hexagons into organic cells

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- [Instructor] In this movie, we'll take our very regular pattern of hexagonal cells and we'll transform it and layer it in order to create this much more organic effect here. Alright, so the first step is to switch to the black arrow tool, up here at the top of the tool box, which you can get by pressing the "V" key. Then, go ahead and select the rectangle that contains our pattern so far and go up to the Effect menu, choose "Distort and Transform," and choose the "Transform" command. And then, I decided to take both the Horizontal and Vertical Scale values up to 110%, and I set the Angle value to 30 degrees. It's just what I came up with. And notice now, if I turn on the "Preview" checkbox, that that goes ahead and slightly enlarges the pattern and rotates it, as well. Now, by default, you may end up rotating the rectangle and leaving the pattern untouched, in which case, you want to turn off the Transform Objects checkbox and that's going to turn on the Transform Patterns checkbox so that you don't end up rotating the rectangle, but you do transform the panel. Now, we're still getting hexagons because if I were to change the Angle value to zero degrees, then we're going to have upright hexagons, that is, the two sides are going to be vertical, whereas if I take that value up to 30 degrees, like so, then I make the top and bottom edges horizontal. However, I'm going to get a pretty interesting effect if I increase the number of copies by pressing the "Up Arrow" key, and so notice with just one copy, I get this really interesting interaction and that is the function of the "Lighten Blend" mode which we assigned in the previous movie. Now, the higher you set this copy's value, the more cool stuff that you're going to get out of this effect. And so, for example, once I take it up to something, like seven copies, we're creating almost a kind of spiral there in the center. Now, the colors are a little too garish, and so I'm going to click "Ok" in order to apply that effect and then I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose "Assign Profile," and I'm going to set the profile here not to Adobe RGB, but rather to this guy, sRGB IEC61966-2.1. But the really important thing is that you're seeing sRGB. And then, go ahead and click "Ok" in order to apply that change, and you'll notice that the colors settle down quite nicely. Alright, now while this looks pretty darn cool, it is going to slow Illustrator down in future steps. And so, even though I hate to do it, I hate to get rid of some of these little nodules here and there, I'm going to reduce the number of copies by going up to the Window menu and choosing the "Appearance" command to bring up the Appearance panel, and then I'll click on the word "Transform" to revisit that Transform Effect dialog box and I'll turn on the Preview checkbox and I'll take the Copies value down to four. It should work out nicely. At which point, I'll click "Ok" to accept that change. Alright, now we need to create a couple of pattern variations and I'm going to do that by switching back to the Layers panel, turning off the Patterns layer, and turning back on the Circles layer right there. And I need to regain access to that value, that is, the vertical distance between this row of circles right here and the row of circles two down. And so, with my Smart Guides turned on, I'll go ahead and drag this circle right here by its center point until it snaps into alignment, which I'm seeing happen right here. Notice the word "Intersect" tells me that I've got a snap. At which point, I'll press the "Alt" key, or the "Option" key on a Mac, to create a duplicate of that row, just so I don't have a hole, and then I'll release my mouse button. Alright, now with the black arrow tool, the one Illustrator calls the Selection tool still active, I'll press the "Enter" key, or the "Return" key on a Mac to bring up the Move Dialog box. I'll tab down to that Vertical value and I'll press "Ctrl+C" or "Command+C" on a Mac to copy it. And then, I'll click "Cancel." Just need to copy that value. And I'll press the "Backspace" key, or the "Delete" key on a Mac, to get rid of that extra row. Alright, now I'll press "Ctrl+0" or "Command+0" on a Mac to zoom out and I'm going to select every other row starting here. So, I'll click on this guy, Shift-Click on this one, and I'm selecting entire rows because they're grouped together. So, you want to select four rows in all. Then, with your Gradient panel up on screen, and if you're not seeing it, you can choose the "Gradient" command from the Window menu, you want to make a copy of this first color stop by "Alt" or "Option" dragging it pretty much to any old location you'd like, and then change the Location value to 50%. And next, go up to the Swatches panel and grab the white swatch and drag it and drop it onto the very first color stop, at which point, you'll get this brighter gradient right here. Now, anytime I create a gradient, I like to save it as a swatch. So, I'll click on the little Page icon at the bottom of the Swatches panel and I'll call this guy "Bright Red" and click "Ok." Alright, now we want to turn this into a seamlessly repeating pattern. And so, I'll press "Ctrl+A" or "Command+A" on a Mac to select all the circles and then I'll go up the Object menu, choose "Pattern," and choose "Make." And if you see this alert message, either click "Ok" or you can select "Don't Show Again," if you'd like. And next, I'll go ahead and set the Width value once again, just as I did in the previous movie, to 200 points and I'll tab to the Height value and press "Ctrl+V" or "Command+V" on a Mac to paste in that value I copied from the Move dialog box which is 173.205. Then, I'll press the "Tab" key in order to accept that change. And if your pattern is dimmed like so, just go ahead and turn off "Dim Copies Too" so that you can see how things are repeating absolutely seamlessly. Alright, now I'll name this guy "Bright Cells" this time around, press the "Enter" key or the "Return" key on a Mac to accept that change, and then either click the "Done" button up here in the top left area of the screen, or you can just press the "Esc" key to create that new pattern which will show up here in the Swatches panel. Alright, now turn off the Circles layer, turn back on the Patterns layer, select that rectangle and copy it by pressing "Ctrl+C" or "Command+C" on a Mac and paste it in front. And I am now regretting the fact that I copied it because that got rid of that darn value I copied so I'll have to go back and get it once again. But in any event, I've pasted and copied the rectangle and now I can modify it by first changing its fill up here in the Control panel to "Bright Cells," like so. So now, we have some brighter cells to work with. And I also want to change the Dynamic Transform effect by, once again, returning to the Appearance panel which I've set next door to the Layers panel right here. And then I'll click on "Transform," which is going to bring up my previous transform settings because they were copied along with that rectangle. I'm going to set both the Horizontal and the Vertical values to 100% this time around and I'll set the Angle value to half of what it is now, so I'll just enter "/2" after the value, which will get me 15 degrees. And I do want to transform the patterns. I do not want to transform the object itself. I do not want any copies, so I'll set the Copies value to 0, and then I'll turn on the Preview checkbox, at which point, we end up with this interesting effect right here. And you can see that the cells are continually changing shape because of that "Lighten Screen" mode. At which point, I'll click "Ok" to accept that change. Alright, now we want to create yet another gradient by returning to the Layers panel, turning off the Patterns layer, turning on the Circles layer, and then I'll just go ahead and select one of these bright rows right here. And here inside the Gradient panel, I'll double-click on the first color stop, the one that's currently white, and you want to switch from Swatches over here on the left side of this pop-up panel to Color and you want to make sure that you're seeing your RGB color values, at which point, go ahead and select the Green value and take it down to 170, and take the Blue value down to 170 as well so that we have a very bright shade of red, which is a little darker, however, than white. Alright, so I'll go ahead and accept that change. And then I'll create a new swatch by clicking on the little Page icon at the bottom of the Swatches panel, and I'll call this guy "Medium Red," let's say, and I'll click "Ok." And now I need to change these other rows, so I'll click on this one 'cause I did not change it just now, and then I'll go up here to the right side of the Control panel and I'll click on this icon, "Select Similar Objects," to select the other two rows, like so. And, as you can see, my fill is active here in the Swatches panel. So, I'll just select that last swatch, Medium Red, in order to change the gradient that's assigned to those circles. Alright, now we need to regain that Vertical value, the one that we're using to determine the height of the pattern tile. And so, I'm just going to go ahead and drag this guy right here by its center point up like so until it snaps into alignment. At which point, I'll press and hold the "Alt" key, or the "Option" key on a Mac, in order to create a copy of those paths. And then I'll press the "Enter" key, or the "Return" key on a Mac, to bring up the Move dialog box. Notice that my Vertical value is negative because I moved the rows up, but my Distance value right here is positive. So, I'll just tab down to the Distance value, press "Ctrl+C" or "Command+C" on a Mac to copy it and click the "Cancel" button, and then press the "Backspace" key, or the "Delete" key on a Mac, to get rid of those duplicated rows. Now, I'll press "Ctrl+A" or "Command+A" on a Mac to select all the circles, and we're going to define one more pattern by going up to the Object menu, choosing "Pattern" and choosing "Make." Then, I'll click "Ok" in response to that alert message. I will change the Width value to 200 points. I will tab to the Height value and press "Ctrl+V" or "Command+V" on a Mac to paste that value I just copied. And I'll tab my way to the Name value and I'll call this guy "Medium Cells," and then I'll press the "Enter" key, or the "Return" key on a Mac to accept the name, and I'll press the "Esc" key in order to create that new pattern. Alright, now you want to go ahead and turn off the Circles layer, because otherwise we're going to create an interaction with it since everything's set to the Light mode. Then, turn on the Patterns layer, go ahead and select that top rectangle, press "Ctrl+C" or "Command+C" on a Mac to copy it, press "Ctrl+F or "Command+F" on a Mac to paste it in front, select that very first swatch up here in the Control panel, and set it to Medium Cells this time around. Initially, it's not going to look any different and that's because those brighter cells in the background are showing through thanks to the fact that everything's set to the "Lighten Blend" mode, but that's going to change when we switch back over to the Appearance panel and click on the word "Transform" to bring up the Transform Effect dialog box. And I just went ahead and set the Angle value to something arbitrary in the opposite direction, so -10. At which point, I'll turn on the Preview checkbox and because the Transform Patterns checkbox is turned on and Transform Objects is turned off, we are rotating the pattern as opposed to the rectangle and notice I can see the slightly darker highlights right here. And then, I decided that I wanted to change the Scale values, as well. So, I'll take the Horizontal value and the Vertical value down to 80% to produce this effect here, which is absolutely, entirely random, even though we're actually working with regular hex patterns. Alright, now click "Ok" to accept that change. I'll press "Ctrl+Shift+A" or "Command+Shift+A" on a Mac to deselect my artwork. Now, 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 zoom on in. And that's how you blend a total of three regular hex patterns to create what appears to be an absolutely random assembly of organic cells here inside Illustrator.

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