- [Instructor] Here's how we can create
some interesting color blends within letter shapes.
Start by right clicking on your type and choosing
Create Outlines.
Now so that I can see the outline of the letter form,
I will press shift X which will exchange
my fill and my stroke.
With my Direct Selection tool, I'll de-select first of all
and then come and select the two end points.
Select the first one, hold down the shift key
and select the second.
It doesn't necessarily look like they are selected
but they are, I'll then come and choose Copy
and then Paste in Front.
Now to isolate these on a separate layer,
I'll come to the layers panel,
create a new layer and move that selection to the new layer.
If I hide layer one,
you can see that's what we now have on layer two.
Okay, let's hide layer two, come back to our letter form
on layer one, where I'm now going to delete
those path segments simply by swiping over them
with the Direct Selection tool and pressing Delete.
I have a group, tells me up here at top left,
I need to ungroup that.
I now have a compound path, I need to Release that.
Now from the Object menu,
I can choose Blend, Make,
double click on the Blend tool, I'm creating a blend
of specified steps in this case, just one step.
I will now come to the Object menu and Expand the result.
Come to my Direct Selection tool,
hold down the option or alt key,
and select the interior path.
And now move that selection to layer two.
On hide layer one and show layer two.
So this is what we have.
Let's select these two segments
and increase their stroke weight.
I'm going to use six points.
Let's change their color.
I'm going to have one be red
and the other one yellow.
Then I'll select them both
and we'll make a blend between them.
So that's Object, Blend, Make.
It's using the same settings as before,
it's creating a blend of a single step.
That's obviously not going to work here.
So I'll double click on the Blend tool,
and increase the number of steps.
Now I'm going to actually use the maximum number
which is 1000.
Currently the blend is just slicing through the shape.
So we need to use the S shape as the spine for the blend
so that the blend moves along that shape.
I'll select everything, Object menu, Blend, Replace Spine.
Now, if the blend pinches in the middle,
then with the Direct Selection tool, I say if
because it will vary depending on the font
that you're using,
select your starting stroke
or select one of your two strokes,
come to the Object menu, Path and choose
Reverse Path Direction.
Now, when I zoom in we can see
that there's a jaggedness there,
I'm at the maximum number of steps
between which I can blend.
There's nowhere I can go there except I do have this option.
Let's select both of those segments that go
to make up the blend,
and then come to the stroke panel.
And what we want is a round cap.
Now, when I apply a round cap and we zoom in,
we see that we have a smooth result.