Hi everyone. In this video we're gonna look at something called the  freeform gradient. I love it so much. Uh, why do I love it so much? Is look at this fin here. Look at all the colors and stuff going on.

I love it. Can you check out what's happening? There's all these little  dots that are influencing the gradient rather than a  linear or radio one. We've got freeform gradients. Maybe you're not as excited,  but I'm gonna show you, show it  to you anyway, maybe you will. Uh, let's jump in and learn freeform  gradients in illustrator.

Alright, uh, to get started,  open up the file called gradient freeform. Okay? And I am going  to select on the first little flipper and zoom in. Okay? And we are going to go to the properties panel  and I'm gonna apply a gradient. I'm just gonna start with anything.

I'm gonna go to my little swatches panel  and say, oh, there's no gradients in there. I've cleared it out. That does happen. I went and made it nice and tidy for you guys. Then how do you apply a gradient? We're gonna do it with a gradient tool.

Go to a window. Let's go to gradient  and we're gonna say, you my friend is going  to be a linear gradient. Nope, we want a radio gradient. Nope. We are learning the freeform gradient. You're like, oh, what does it do At the moment, by default,  your two little dots will appear in random positions.

I don't know why. Just they appear wherever they appear. What they are is it's kind  of like a linear gradient right now look  and kind of move it around and it's  kind of connecting these two. Um, where it gets really powerful  is when you add a third one. Actually let's color these first. So  let's double click the centers.

I'm gonna go to swatches. You can use your color mixer  beyond HSB if you want, or any other color. And pick from down here. Okay? I've got some color swatches that I want to use, okay. That I've baked in here for you.

Um, go to swatches. I'm gonna go for this first one. Gotta go down here. Double click this one, go to the second color  and I'm gonna add my third one. This is where the magic happens and you just click anyway. Watch this.

If I wave my,  I'm still on my gradient tool, okay? That's important. Okay? And I'm just gonna click once  and it's gonna add a gradient. What color it ends up being is kind of a mystery. Double click it and I'm gonna add this third color.

Oh, look at what we've got. Now we've got this kind of like weird dynamic  where we've got what's called a freeform gradient. I love it. I'm gonna stick that one there. I'm gonna stick that one there. How many can  you add loads of them?

I'm gonna add maybe two more there. And I'm gonna make sure you are this darker one  and double click this one. There's the darker one. Can, can you see? You can do, you can kind of track that line there  and have all these different colors going on. Does it excite me?

Why does it excite me so much? I don't know. I really like it. And when you get 'em close  together, they kind of start fighting it out. I'm gonna click off in the background. Can you see it  does interesting gradient things.

So the other thing to note about it is whether it's selected  a G for the gradient tool is there is, um,  the thing you can do is see this little extent, like  how much influence does this have? Does it have a teeny bit or lot? A teeny bit? A lot. Can you see? It's kind of pushing against this one.

And if you crank that one up as well,  you end up these really kind of like distinctive lines  that you can play around with or kind of freak it out with. Uh, I'm gonna lower mine down, okay? But you get the idea. You can click and drag 'em around to remove them. Just click one and hit delete on  your keyboard and it goes away. Hey, I want you to be bigger.

And there you go. Um, I'm going to,  you can't do freeform gradients across multiple objects. Okay? Just doesn't like  It at the moment. Give  a, yeah, I can't make it work. So maybe if somebody does let me know in the  comments, but there you go.

Uh, I'm gonna work my way around this document now  and do a bit more of it. But that is the, um, basics of it. I'm gonna do this one here. I'm gonna go  to add gradient, freeform gradient. And I did this one. Normally, I kind of hit this first one  linear and then move along.

I dunno why this one here has just added one dot. Okay, which is not very exciting. So I'm gonna add another dot, double click it  and go to this one. I'll change this one up here to the green  and maybe this one over here. Can you see what you can do? Like I clicked that.

Where did that color come from? See this color over here? No idea where that color. It's kind of I guess a mix of these two. Oh man. Where did that one come from?

Magic. Uh, double click it. It can be a little quirky. Um, I guess is what I'm gonna say. Um, that sometimes you need to be quite deliberate  and say, okay, I want this to be the darker color here  and down here I'm gonna use a blue,  but instead of the swatches, I'm gonna just make it darker. So I'm gonna go to my color picker.

And because it's a pre-made swatch,  it only gives me the ability to make it lighter and darker. You can switch to HSB or RGB  and I'm just gonna darker mine down. Cool. I love the freeform grad. It's amazing what you can do with it. I'm gonna mess with mine a little bit more, uh,  the one you saw at the beginning.

Alright, I'll see you in the next video.