Hey, it is time to take really simple lines like this  and bam, apply. Cool 1990s gradient goodness. It's kind of like 3D, but it's really just a fake. We're gonna use our blending mode skills plus  some sweet gradients. It looks cool and it's easy to do. Now that we've got our sweet blending mode  skills, let's jump in.

Alright, uh, I got a file open from exercise files. It's called 3D ish type. Okay, basically just a gray box. I've put some gradients into the  swatches for you if you want to use this. Otherwise you can make your own. Okay?

The way this works is we need, uh, to create a blend  and then get that blend to apply to a spline. Hang on there. Wait one sec. I call it a spline. I always thought it was Aline. And turns out the editors come back to me  and said, it's not a spline at all, Dan.

It's called a spine, which makes more sense. Um, there you go. So I've called it a spline all the way  through this video, but  whenever you hear the word spline, think  spine, there you go. Carry on. We've kind  of looked at those earlier in the course,  but this will probably explain it even better. So I'm gonna start with an ellipse A and I'm gonna draw one  and I'm going to duplicate it across and have two A.

I'm gonna have this to have no strokes. I'm gonna hit X to bring the stroke to the front  and hit my forward slash to get rid of it. I'll do the same for this. And I want it to have a fill. So I'm gonna bring hit X  again to bring the fill to the front. And I'm gonna say U okay.

And I'm probably just gonna use the same color. Actually let's change it so you can blend  between two gradients. Okay? What we need  to do now is get this to kind of blend across. So, uh, we use a shortcut, uh, command option B on a mac,  CTR Alt B on a pc. And we need to increase that blending.

The steps are quite cool like this. You can play around with the effect you like. Gonna go to properties. Let's go to blend options  and let's go to steps. And don't worry too much about what this is at the moment. You can, can you see the banding in there?

Okay, that is fine for the moment. Don't worry about it at this stage. We can worry about it in a second  'cause we need to apply this  and we'll have to change it anyway,  but just put in something that looks quite cool. Alright, we need a stroke, AKA, the spline  that we're gonna use, okay? I'm gonna use the uh, end key  for the pencil and double click it. Make sure my smoothing is right up.

I'm gonna turn, keep selected off in this case just  so I can draw multiple stuff. And let's just draw a squiggle. Oh, that didn't go well. I delete that and draw another squiggle. I don't like that squiggle either. Wait there.

Alright, giving up. That's a good enough squiggle. Um, so what you'll notice is mine has no stroke, no fill. It doesn't really matter. I'll add a stroke here,  um, just so you can see it. Okay?

And what we're gonna do is we're  gonna attach this to this. That's the magic. So let's select both of them. We're gonna go to object, we're gonna go to Blend  and we're gonna go to this one that says, ah,  replace the spline. And what we did is we replaced that spline at the top  with this spline. There we go.

And even that looks quite cool. I don't know, there's something, there's something hypnotic  about it and what we can do, you know, let's,  I'm gonna shrink mine down and have a version of it  'cause I quite like the pearly version  of it. Okay? But this  One here, what we can do, go  to blend options and we can crank it up. Now you can go up to a maximum of a thousand. Your poor machine might not like a thousand.

I'm gonna try 500 and it looks good enough. I'm gonna leave it at 500. Uh, you might go up to a thousand  but you know your machine, if it's uh, if it's temperamental  and very old then you might need  to just keep it at a low number. Just know that your machine might be freaking out  a little bit at this stage. It looks cool, huh? I love ingredients blend  to other ingredients following curvy lines.

Oh, it's hypnotic. Alright. That's the basics of it. The one thing I did forget to do is that you notice  that blend at the top there, I wanna reuse that it's gone,  it yanked it from down here and add it to this. Okay? So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna copy  these, just go copy.

I'm gonna go undo, undo, undo, undo, undo till it's back. And then I'm going to delete that and go paste. Okay? So I've kind of come back to this. What you wanna do is just have a few versions of this. I want it to be thinner 'cause mine was too thick.

So I'm gonna go you, I'm gonna make a couple  of duplicates, okay? Command D, CTRL, D-N-O-P-C. 'cause they, they just get pulled out and added. So you need some kinda leftover ones. Awesome. I love that.

Alright, let's do the kind  of text thing like you saw at the beginning. Now I should go and grab my uh, like tablet  and start drawing this, but  I'm gonna try and do it with my mouse. I'm gonna try and draw my own name. Okay, let's give this go  and I'm gonna start drawing with a  stroke so you can actually see it. That's my very busy d Now you can do this all in one go. I like to do it in little bits  'cause you can do, oh is that a good end, bad end?

I was gonna do for this video. Um, so I like to do you,  you can try and do it all one big fluid go. Okay? I like to have it in separate bits just  'cause it looks kind of cool having, uh,  you'll see it when we make it. I like to be able to control it  and maybe the letters a little bit more,  but one big fluid go would be good  as well except for that A you wait there. Alright, that's kind of bitter ish.

So what we need is at least 1, 2, 3 up here. So if you've got 10 different bits,  you're gonna need 10 different lines up here. And what I'm gonna do is pick some different gradients. So I'm gonna say now it's kinda locked up. Remember I can go inside of it, I can grab this end  and go, all right, I'm gonna pick this other color. Ooh, interesting.

And grab maybe this one as well and go, ah, what am I doing? Okay, Dan's applying the, can you see I applied there. Um, I added, I was like, oh that looks weird. Oh well I actually applied the uh, gradient to the stroke. It's not what I want. Okay, so I'm gonna hit X on the stroke  and I'm going to hit X to toggle to the fill.

And I'm gonna say that one there. Okay? And actually I had them both selected. Come on Dan, go inside you, you, you all right? We all get lost sometimes. So I'm gonna go inside this one.

Let's do one more. I'm gonna say you, the fills gonna be  that and now on this end it's going  to be, I don't know that one. Alright, that'll do. So I've got some gradients to work with. Okay? If you do need them for something else,  maybe duplicate them.

And I'm gonna say you blending mode, you,  we normally call you a path,  but some reason you're a spline now. Okay, let's go to object blend and replace. Nope, not reverse it. We're  Gonna go to object blend and replace uh, the spline. We're gonna go to Blend, actually I'm gonna do them all  and then go and um, do them all one. But go and change the steps.

Alright, this one with this one object blend. Let's go down to replace spline. Uh, I'll jump to when I'm done. All right, that's really cool. I like the little dots, but I'm gonna select them all  and realize you can't do it all in one go. You gotta do blending options individually.

Good to know. I'm gonna crank it up to a thousand  'cause my machine can hack it. Um, I'll jump to the end. All right, so I think a thousand is  as many as you can put in there. What we'll do now is let's look at a couple  little things to go a little bit further. So, um, you'll notice that where I started,  my drawing is kind of out front with it selected.

We looked at this earlier. Um,  but let's go again, let's go to object  and let's go to blend. Remember we can go and say reverse front and back. You see, that's kind of more how I want it to go. Like that goes down first and this goes over the top  and do it for all of these. Alright, that's kind of more what I wanted.

I like the colors for like nineties Miami. That's what I'm thinking. Um,  so the other thing we can do is at the moment we've got a  similar shape beginning and end  and we using a circle,  what we can do is we can actually use any old shapes. We could use a square, a triangle. We've used circles and you don't have to stick to the size  of the circle, they don't have to be the same any each end. So I've double click it to go inside and I can grab this  and make it a lot bigger.

Okay? And can you see it's gonna start at that small one  and move its way around. Same with the spline. Okay, I can go to, sometimes it's easier  to work in outline mode. So remember command y, control Y,  and you can start going okay, it's a little bit,  the computer freaks out less. Okay?

When you're in this view, so you might say,  I'm gonna go nice and big here  and this spine here I want to be curved. I'm gonna grab my direct selection tool, grab you  and go, okay,  commander, control Y, look at that. I need to come back out. Double click the background. Come on. There's not much of an in now,  but there is something lovely about the blends here.

You can also miss with a gradient still, you don't have  to kind of commit to it at the beginning. So if I select on this, I've got my white arrow,  I've clicked on this last circle, I can edit the gradient  and I can say let's add a new swatch,  which is just underneath it. Okay? I'm gonna double click this one  and I'm gonna say you, oh, I'm impressed with myself. Okay, so you can edit this again,  your machine might be having problems. That's okay.

Let's look at this last one  and maybe grab the direct selection  to actually gonna grab the pen  and I'm gonna say let's add another few anchor points  so it's no longer a circle,  but I can grab it with my direct selection tool  and I can mess around with it  and it will do funny things to the shape. Okay? So it's now more of a star going thing you see? Ooh, interesting. Alright. Uh, other things you might want to do is with it selected,  actually I'm gonna have a duplicate of this  because I want this one just in case.

Come on. Machine is that if you do like it's,  it's an active effect, okay? Blending and it's a little bit tricky on computers. So what you can do is you can expand it, you can go to  Object and go to expand  and we're gonna go to, okay, now it looks pretty dense  and it is, but it is less stressful on your machine  for some reason that is a whole lot less  stressful than the active one. So my advice is that when you are finished doing the cool  blending thing is to expand it,  have a duplicate it somewhere else like over here. But the thing that you're gonna go and put in your print  document or print with a printer blending mode,  the actual active blending mode can cause problems.

There you go. Expand it. Alright, that is it. I love making, I call it 2.5 D, not quite 3D,  it's just a trick with a gradient but visual trick. That looks really cool. I think this gradient screams 1980s,  9 0 2 1 0 1.

That's what I feel like. Anyway, uh, that's it. I will see you in the next video.