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

822 Filling in the gaps in a repeating pattern

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

822 Filling in the gaps in a repeating pattern

Welcome to Deke's Techniques. Remember last week? This in Illustrator, egads it's awful. A monkey, a monkey with a typewriter could have created this. Wouldn't it be so much better if it looked like this instead? Of course this would require an entire room full of monkeys Here, let me show you at least the beginning of exactly how it works. All right so here we are inside Illustrator looking at that pattern from last week. Once again, anywhere where you see white slivers indicates a region of transparency. We want to fill in that transparency so that we have perfect tessellation, which is why I've created this diagram that focuses on the central tile. And so notice what we're going to do here. We're going to bring the yellow arrow into the negative space next to the purple arrow, we're going to bring the green one into the negative space next to the red arrow, we're going to bring blue into orange, purple into yellow and so forth so that we have interconnecting objects, and the form that these wedges are going to take is these hair extensions right here. So notice this blue guy's hair goes into the orange guy's teeth and so forth. All right, I'll go ahead and switch over to my document in progress and we're going to focus our attention on the blue arrow, which neighbors the orange arrow as you can see and notice that the tip of the orange arrow is aligned with the tip of the green one. And with that in mind, I'm going to turn off the pattern layer, then I'm going to click on a new arrows layer to select it and I'm going to make a copy of it by dragging it and dropping it onto the little page icon, and now we have a copy of that layer albeit turned off, so I'm going to go ahead and turn it back on and then I'll double click on an empty region of this copied layer in order to bring up the layer options dialogue box and I'll call this layer grinners, after those grinning guys we saw just a moment ago, and I'll change its color to gold and then I'll click okay. All right, now what we want to do is grab that orange arrow right there and we want to duplicate it and so make sure, by the way, that your smart guides are turned on, here under the view menu, and then, with the bounding box turned off, by the way, very important, drag this bottom most anchor point until it snaps into alignment with the tip of the green arrow, then press and hold the alt key or the option key on the mac and release in order to create a copy of that shape. Now, it's not going to be part of the actual pattern tile, we're just using it for reference, so I'm going to move it to an independent layer by dropping down to the little page icon at the bottom of the layers panel and alt or option clicking on it, to force a display of the layer options dialogue box and then, I'm going to call this guy complement because it's a complementary shape and I'll go ahead and change its color to grass green and then I'll click okay. And now, I want to move this guy to that layer and so you can see this little orange square on the right side of the layers panel, that represents the selection, and so I'll drag it and drop it up to the complement layer and you can see by the thumbnail, that it is now relegated to that layer, but I can make that even more obvious if I turn that layer off for a moment, so it goes away and then it comes back. All right, now we need to create that hair, extending into the negative space so we're going to extend the blue shape first and then the orange shape, so I'll go ahead an click on the blue shape to select it and then, I'll switch to my pen tool, which you can get by pressing the p key. Now we need to add a total of three points and so notice if I hover my pen tool cursor over that selected segment, I'll see a little plus sign, that shows me that if I click, I'll add an anchor point. Then I'll click there to add another one and click here to add a third, so it doesn't matter exactly where you put 'em, just put 'em any old place in this region. And then switch to the white arrow tool, the one that illustrator calls the direct selection tool with the side of the orange arrow and then release. All right, now we need to do pretty much the same thing for the orange arrow, just in reverse, and so go ahead and click on it to select it and then switch to the pen tool once again, and go ahead and create three points just by clicking along this segment, then press the a key to switch back to the white arrow tool, go ahead and drag this guy until it snaps into alignment like so, drag this one until it snaps into alignment at this point and now this should be even easier. just grab this guy and drag him til he snaps into this location right here. And get it right, by the way. You want to make sure that you are definitely snapping into alignment so that you get perfect tesselation. All right now I'm going to go ahead and turn that complement layer off for the moment and I'm going to create a blend between these two line segments right here. So I'll click on this guy to select it, and I'll shift click on this one, once again armed with the white arrow tool, and then you want to press control c here on a pc, that's command c on a mac, that's going to copy those segments, and then press control f, or command f on the mac to paste them in front so that we have two independent segments like so. All right now we want to blend between them by going up to the object menu, choosing blend and choosing make, where you've got that keyboard shortcut of control alt b or command option b on a mac. This is quite obviously wrong, and the reason things are going haywire is that the two paths go in opposite directions, so we're blending from this anchor point right here to this one over here and from this top right guy to the bottom left guy. That's not what we want, so click off the path outline to de-select him, and then click on this guy, by itself, and go up to the object menu, choose path, and choose this very useful command, reverse path direction and that's going to make everything look much better. All right now we want to change the number of steps in the blend and you can do that by going to the object menu, choosing blend and then choosing blend options, which is going to bring up this dialogue box right here, turn on the preview check box and take the number of specified steps down by pressing the down arrow key and in the end, I decided things looked pretty great at four steps, at which point I'll go ahead and click okay to accept that change. All right, now press the v as in Victor key to switch back to the black arrow tool, and then go ahead and click on that path outline once again to select the entire blend. And now you want to turn your complement layer back on and you want to go ahead and create a copy of that blend on that layer by pressing the alt key or the option key on the mac and dragging this tiny orange square upward like so and because I have the alt or option key down, I'm seeing a plus sign next to my cursor, which shows me that I'm going to duplicate that blend. All right now we want to rotate it 180 degrees and you can do that using the rotate tool, so go ahead and grab that tool, which you can get by pressing the r key, and alt or option click right about here, in order to set the origin point and change the angle value to 180 degrees like so and then just go ahead and click okay, and you can see sure enough, we have a copy of the blend. Now press the v key to switch back the black arrow tool and go ahead and drag this point until it snaps into alignment at this location here, and you'll know you have a snap because you're seeing a white arrowhead instead of a black one. a white arrowhead instead of a black one. All right, so looking for the white arrowhead, All right, so looking for the white arrowhead, I can see it, I'll go ahead and release, I can see it, I'll go ahead and release, and I end up with this effect right here. and I end up with this effect right here. And you can't really tell it yet, And you can't really tell it yet, but that is going to fill in our gaps but that is going to fill in our gaps so that we can achieve this final so that we can achieve this final perfectly tessellating version of the pattern. perfectly tessellating version of the pattern. Okay, so to recap, we took this with all of its gaps Okay, so to recap, we took this with all of its gaps and we extended the blue arrow's hair and we extended the blue arrow's hair into the orange arrow's face, into the orange arrow's face, but that's just the beginning, but that's just the beginning, which is why, if you're a member of LinkedIn Learning, which is why, if you're a member of LinkedIn Learning, I have two, count them, two follow up movies, I have two, count them, two follow up movies, in which we add these cartoon teeth and triangular eyes. in which we add these cartoon teeth and triangular eyes. If you're looking forward to next week, If you're looking forward to next week, we're going to add these windows, I'm going to show 'em to you too we're going to add these windows, I'm going to show 'em to you too to the whole happy house motif to the whole happy house motif and then we're going to achieve what some call nirvana, and then we're going to achieve what some call nirvana, what I call perfect tessellation. what I call perfect tessellation. Deke's Techniques each and every week, keep watching. Deke's Techniques each and every week, keep watching.

Contents