Hello. It is class project time  and if you are not doing the class  projects, don't skip this video. There's some good learnings at the end. That's why this one's a bit long. Okay? I'm gonna deliver the class project first, okay?

And then I will go in and show you like,  'cause I'm gonna set this task,  especially if you're using Text Vector. I feel like we're at a point now  where I can show you all the kind of works and quirks  and bugs and things you might run into, at least the ones  that I run into, especially making this tutorial. And I'm like, I'm gonna share that with everybody so  that you are kind of better equipped now with some  of these more advanced tutorials. So stick around for that. First up, let's look at the class project. And basically you've been asked to make, uh,  stamp style using the techniques we learned  in the last video, okay?

'cause you're making this graphic for, it's gonna go on kind  of recycled paper bags used in your store. Experiment with a bit of text and graphic. Make sure you outline the text,  otherwise it doesn't really work. Kind of does, but you can't do the smooth option. Okay? And yeah, use those techniques  and when you're finished, mock it up on a bit  of either textured paper on a paper bag like we did in this  last video here, okay?

There. Just make it look cool. Save an image of your mockup  and share it with me in the assignments and in social media. So that's the class project  where you might run into problems is  like making the graphic. Okay, you can draw it, that's fine. I want to show you what I,  what problems I ran into when I'm using the text vector.

It creates quite a messy  document or at least a messy graphic. So I'm gonna show you, I'm gonna duplicate this. So I've got two of them. I'm gonna  show you where I'm run into problems. So the first thing I wanted was, is I wanted to quite align. You know, I wanted this kind of like really simple  lines and this doesn't have it.

It's quite, you know, like there's no like layers and lines. What I ended up doing is ungrouping it a million times. So ungroup, ungroup, ungroup, okay? And with this selected, I kind of shrunk it down  and this line appeared for me. I'm like perfect line done. But let's say that we want these um, down the bottom here  to have like a hole in the middle  and a line around the outside.

I'm like, okay, um, I'm gonna add a stroke to it. I'm gonna make sure the stroke is on the  outside stuff we've all done already. I just wanna, I guess, show you where some  of their quirkiness appears. How big is the stroke? Yeah, it looks good. I should be doing to all of them.

But anyway, just imagine I'm doing it for all of them. So I've got this. What I want to do is, um,  with this effect, this graphic style, it really wants  to do it to the fill, not the stroke. So I'm gonna have to turn that liner on the  outside into a fill. That's where we can go to object. We can go to expand appearance, ungroup it  and I can grab the middle chunk and delete the middle part.

There's a few other ways of doing that. You can go to, I'm gonna undo go to object and go to path  and you can go to outline stroke. Okay? So you end up in a similar position  and ungroup it again. And I can work my way around. I should have done it to all of them.

Okay? And you know, it's a way of kind of like adding strokes  where there might not have been any. Remember earlier as well, we did  that technique where we selected it all. Uh, we grouped it and then put a  stroke around the outside of the group. Okay? That might be a way of getting that kind of effect.

And remember the stroke goes, where is it under the content? So it's a liner on the outside. I don't want that for the moment, but there you go. Those are the things that I'm considering when I'm making  This kind of like simple graphic. Next thing I wanna do is get rid of the colors. So I, with it all selected, I'm gonna go shift M for the,  what's it called, the shape builder tool.

And I'm going to both cause some problems and clean it up. So let's look at cleaning it up. So hold down the option Canac  or can pc, I'm gonna get rid of these lumps  and I'm gonna click  and drag without holding it down to add some stuff  that's weirdly grouped it with a no fill,  no stroke, dunno why. Um, so let's go to that one  and let's look at some of the pro. I'm gonna cut that bit out. Do I want that to be black?

Sure. And let's have a look at what happens to these guys. Look, if I ungroup it now and I go you  and you're like, how did I get double of those? It's because there was like that really pink solid center  and we kind of sliced it out. Okay? Which sliced out everything  but left a kind of a gap underneath these.

Okay? So I, I'm gonna show you what I do. I go through and go shift, click, grab them all. Sometimes they're weirdly grouped. You go to ungroup, lots of the um, what do you call it? Uh, text effectors.

Once I've grabbed them all,  I can't use the select same 'cause they're all different colors. But I watch this, I kind of drag them  off and go, did I get everything? Did I get everything okay? And I did in that case. So I'm going to cut them. So they're all gone.

I'm gonna select on this group and get rid of these. Oh, there's even more versions of it  dragging across them, doing it the long way. There we go. So those are all gone. And then I'm gonna hit my paste in front, okay. To put them back where I need to be  and I'm gonna make sure they all have the same fill.

Now this effect  that we just did won't work very well when you've got a  white fill or anything not dark. A lot of the effects need the graphic itself to be dark. Now the other problem I ran into is compound shapes. So compound shapes we've used a few times. Okay? That's when this gap is cut into the  back and that can cause problems.

Like if I select this and I go to my graphic styles  and apply this and you're like, that didn't work. Okay, why didn't it work? That's a very good point. Uh, let's fill it with black. Okay, so it actually, it did work in this time. There you go.

That might be actually my solution is just  converting them all to being black. Okay? What I found was, is that I was releasing um,  the compound puffs, okay? And then using the shape builder to cut the holes out. Okay? And that kinda was my workaround,  but it looks like it might just needed  to be all a solid black color.

Try both. Okay? Try releasing the compound  path and then cutting it out. I have run into problems in other things when I'm using the  text uh, vector where there might be a compound path instead  of a group inside of a compound path. So sometimes just kind of like either breaking it apart  or releasing it and then just remaking it can fix it up. Cool.

All right, so we're kind of there. Um, the cool thing about it is that remember  'cause it's a graphic style, we  can get the appearance panel. We can go through and say actually uh,  I wanna play with the blue a bit more. And because they're all applying, you can get a,  get a better sense of where it's gonna end up. It didn't have to simplify mine  before I added my graphic style. I can go to an object and I can go to expand appearance,  realize there's lots of different shapes.

Who knows? This is a good use case. You're like now what do I do  With all of these? You can  live trace them all. If you could pause this now  and you get like why,  what didn't he do in that little setup? What did Dan say in the beginning  of the last video to do first?

Otherwise it causes problems. I can pretend I did this on purpose. So we could go through and live, trace these all  and expand them all and that'll work. It's because I should have grouped them first. Okay, good work on you for remembering. So I'm gonna undo, undo and undo and undo and do okay  and make sure that these aren't individual parts.

Select group, then go through to the same thing. Add stamp effect object, expand appearance. Go to live Trace. Now that it's all one image, it is so much easier. There you go. Expand it and we're done.

Why is it so hard Dan Just sometimes is,  especially when you're working with graphics  that maybe you didn't create  or some of the text vector stuff where it just comes messy. Alright, I hope you found that helpful. It was kind of like a big add-on to the uh, class project,  but it's those types of problem solving that will make you,  you know, a really good illustrator  user and a really good designer. Alright my friend, uh, time to go do your class project  and I look forward to seeing what we do. So make sure you share it in the class projects. Make sure you share it on social media  and let me know if you did run into any other  problems and how you solved it.

'cause there's bound to be somebody else who gets kind  of a little bit lost as well. You can help them out. Alright, that is it. I'll see you in the next video.