Chapter 3: Doing Everyday Things with Illustrator 59 Using the “Hard” Stuff Have you ever looked at an illustration, and scratched your head and thought, “How did they do that?” Here’s a secret: Chances are that it wasn’t that hard. A slew of features in Illustrator let you do really cool things with little difficulty. The only catch is that you must walk before you can run. In Illustrator, this means being able to create simple shapes, color them, and move them in front of or behind one another (which I cover in Chapters 4, 5, and 6, respectively). After you have those. | Chapter 3 Doing Everyday Things with Illustrator 59 Using the Hard Stuff Have you ever looked at an illustration and scratched your head and thought How did they do that Here s a secret Chances are that it wasn t that hard. A slew of features in Illustrator let you do really cool things with little difficulty. The only catch is that you must walk before you can run. In Illustrator this means being able to create simple shapes color them and move them in front of or behind one another which I cover in Chapters 4 5 and 6 respectively . After you have those skills down you re ready to move on to the fun stuff. You ll be amazed at the things you can do with a simple command or two. Transparency When you draw a shape in Illustrator that s filled with a solid color or a gradient the shape covers up any objects beneath it. As I mention in the preceding section you can move the object behind other objects in the document by selecting it with a Selection tool and choosing Object Arrange1 Send to Back. However you can t see through that shape to the objects behind it. Transparency breaks those rules by enabling you to fade away an object from 0 completely transparent to 100 completely opaque or any degree in between to reveal the objects hidden beneath it. Figure 3-8 shows this basic transparency at work with a partially transparent logo appearing in front of a city image. Figure 3-8 The Moolaville logo is set to be partially transparent. 60 Part I Driving People Crazy Illustrator s Bum Rap Use transparency to see through one part of a shape more than another part or to blend the colors of a shape with the colors beneath it in strange and interesting ways. Thumb through Chapter 10 for more on transparency. Blends In the 1990s morphing was all the rage in movies and TV shows. Morphing combines averages two images together in a series of steps so that the first image appears to magically turn into the second. In Illustrator you can use a similar technique blending to transform
