Howdy campers. In this video we are going  to look at layers in Illustrator, okay? And what we're gonna do is we're gonna end up looking like  this, where we've got one layer with all our kind  of artwork, okay? And one layer with the background layer. And the cool thing about the background layer is  that it's kinda locked, okay? So there's a locking icon here, so we can't move it around.

So let's go and do that now. Okay? So first thing I want to do is I'm not gonna use the white  of the background here, okay? That's a pure white from Illustrator. What I want to do is actually, I wanna put it in a, kind  of like a my off white that I've been using here. Okay?

So I'm gonna grab the rectangle tool  and you can't update the art board color, okay? So we've gotta actually manually draw a box  and give it that fill. Okay? Then I'm gonna use my black arrow, right? Click it, arrange center back,  and just make sure it's got no stroker on the outside. I'm just using this gray here.

Okay? So that's gonna be my background color. You could stick it behind everything just  to make sure it covers everything, okay? But, um, yeah, so there's no way  of recoloring this art board. So what I wanna do now is play with the layers,  because I find it really hard now to start kind  of moving things and I accidentally grab the background  and, okay, so it's easier. 'cause I never want these things to move.

So I want to get these guys to stick  where they are and not move. And the easiest way to do it is  to stick them on their own layer. Okay? And lock that layer. Okay? So in your layers panel, go to window, go to layers.

Ready layers, you are okay. You by default, given one layer, it's really common  to be working in illustrator and only ever have one layer. Don't sweat it. If you've only got one,  you'll know from Photoshop  you'll end up with hundreds of layers. But an illustrator, if you only end up with just the one,  that's not bad, okay? There's nothing wrong with that.

We are though  going to make a new layer. It's this little turned up page here, okay? We're gonna double click it and call up background. Okay? And there's nothing on the background. You can kind of see that little  thumbnail there has nothing on it.

So what I wanna do is select  everything that I want to move there. And because I'm dragging a box around all of this,  it's grabbed my green box, the black box, the image  behind it, and this gray box all together in  one big go, which is awesome. And what we wanna do is drag them to this background layer. Okay? And the easiest way is, see this little.here? Okay?

This little square click and drag it. That moves everything that I had  selected to my background layer. Cool. Now I'm gonna lock it. Now the locking icon is just, you're meant to randomly know  that that's the locking hole. Okay?

Click on that. Okay? And it will lock that layer and they can't be  moved now, okay? The only problem is it's in the, it's above. Okay? You can kind of see the background's above my layer one.

Let's double click layer one. And let's call this one artwork or outward. Come on Dan. Okay. And just drag this guy. Click hold.

Drag, drag, drag, drag, drag. So he's underneath now. Okay. I shouldn't be, I can click on artwork. So that's my active layer. My background layer now is, okay, uns selectable.

So I can go and select all of these guys, move 'em  around without selecting the background. I guess that's the point of using the layers here. The other nice thing about it is you can turn  that layer off, see the eyeball,  you can turn all your background, um, layer on  and off just by clicking the little eyeball there. Alright my friends. That is how  to use layers in Illustrator onto the next video.