Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

Step 14 documents just one of many ways to use the path-of-the-blend

to adjust the appearance of a trail or other shape-morphing effect. Here

are a few other tricks to try out: Using the white arrow tool, drag ei-

ther endpoint in the path-of-the-blend to change the location of one

blended path or the other. If you need more control, use the pen tool

to add or subtract anchor points along the path-of-the-blend. With

the white arrow tool, you can also drag a control handle to adjust the

speed of the blend. Dragging a short control handle results in a fast

blend; dragging a long control handle results in a slow one. Stay tuned:

I explain how to use control handles for this very purpose in Lesson 8.

Making the Most of Clipping Masks

In the last exercise, I showed you how to create blends that don’t re-

quire masks. In this exercise, I demonstrate uses for masks that may

or may not involve blends. (And the blends that you will encounter

are anything but conventional.) Topics include restoring the fi ll and

stroke of a mask, creating compound masks, and nesting one mask

inside another. This is masking at its best.

1.

Open a fi le with paths to be masked. If you’re happy

with the fi le that you saved in Step 16 of the preceding

exercise, open it. If not, open my fi le, Shooting star.ai

found in the Lesson 07 folder.

Figure 7-24 .

219

Making the Most of Clipping Masks

2.

Lock and unlock the requisite layers. Choose

Object→Unlock All to unlock the blended paths on the

Shoot Star layer. In the Layers panel, twirl the Shoot Star

layer closed (if it’s open) and click in the second column

to the left of that layer to lock it. Then scroll to the top of

the panel, and click the icon to the left of the Ball layer

to unlock it so you can modify the ball attached to the

robot’s feet without harming the rest of the illustration.

3.

Twirl open the Ball layer. Click the  in front of the Ball

layer to reveal its four groups—Tacks, Front Thing, Edges,

and Back Things—along with the ball outline, called

Ball. This last layer needs to crop the elements above it.

In Lesson 6, we achieved this effect using the Crop Path-

fi nder operation. This time, we’ll employ masking, which

is slightly more complex but several times more fl exible.

4.

Mask the Edges inside the Ball. Zoom in on the ball

below the robot’s feet. In the Layers panel, drag the

Ball path above the Edges group. (As you may recall,

Illustrator requires that the mask be stacked in front

of the objects it will contain.) Meatball both the Ball

and Edges objects in the Layers panel. And then choose

Object→Clipping Mask→Make or press Ctrl+7 (-7). As

shown in Figure 7-25, the white fi ll and the black stroke

of the Ball path disappear. It’s not that a clipping mask

can’t have fi ll and stroke attributes; it can. It’s just that

Illustrator strangely chooses to dispose of them as a mat-

ter of course. Our job now is to reinstate them.

5.

Restore the fi ll and stroke of the Ball. With the circular

Ball outline selected, press the I key to select the eyedrop-

per tool. Then click the top-left “plate” of the ball—the

one that includes a white fi ll and a black stroke—to copy

the fi ll and stroke to the ball itself, as demonstrated in

Figure 7-26.

6. Move the right plate to the back. The plate along the

right side of the ball should be in back of the others. Un-

fortunately, now that it’s housed inside a clipping mask,

it’s diffi cult to select it in the document window. Better

to exploit Illustrator’s group isolation mode:

• Press the V key to get the black arrow tool.

•

Double-click along the outline of the outer ball to iso-

late the clipping mask from the rest of the illustration.

Figure 7-25 .

Figure 7-26 .

220

Lesson 7: Blends, Masks, and Gradient Mesh