Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We're now on Page 25, the subject of the Spiral tool, and you can create some interesting
effects here.
Well, I'm going to select my Spiral tool, you can see what I've been playing.
Previously we had the Polygon tool selected, so that's what you'll see and in fact what
I'll do is I'll actually bring the fly-out all the way over here, so that I can access
it quite regularly, and in our next lesson we're going to look at the Graph Paper tool.
So, the Spiral tool is right at the end here, so I'll quickly select that.
Now the Spiral tool is different than the Polygon tool.
With the Polygon tool, we simply could create our object, then come back up here and make
adjustments.
So as you can see I'm adjusting but nothing happens.
So this is different.
I'll delete that.
You have to make your adjustments first and then you draw, okay, so little bit of a difference
there.
Well there are a couple of options.
First of all, we have Symmetrical Spiral and then when we Logarithmic.
When you turn Logarithmic on, this guy will become available.
Let's start out with the stock standard Symmetrical Spiral.
I'll put in a value of say 30, hit Enter.
Now click and drag, finger on Ctrl and Shift as we've learnt and you can see we've got
a perfect spiral.
And so each circle is the exact same distance away from the previous and so on.
So you can create some nice effects doing that, shapes doing that.
You can always squash it up and do different things with it, however it is that you might
want to design.
Now for smaller spirals type in 10, hit Enter, click and drag and there we go.
Now we learnt again, when were we using the Polygon tool that if we select the Shape tool
that the nodes we can see, we can of course use those to reshape, but there is a difference.
With the Polygon tool we had really special effects by adjusting those nodes.
With the spiral shapes all we can really do is what we called node editing, so I can actually
reshape by using these swing arms, move the node into different position and I can kind
of begin to reshape.
Well, we're going to learn about node editing much further on, so I don't really want to
do that right now, but I just little quickly show out to you and of course you can feel
free to play with that.
I want to grab the end there and do this and straighten that a little bit and that way
it kind of looks like a reel that's being rolled up of cable or something like that.
Okay, let's delete that.
Back to my Spiral tool, let's move on to the next type of spiral which is the Logarithmic
Spiral.
So I'll select this.
Now with this slider, I'm going to slide it right down to say a value of 10, I've got
10 spirals, so click and drag finger on Shift and Ctrl again.
As you can see if you look closely the distance between each spiral is slowly increasing,
it's not really obvious there, however, if we increase this to say 30, finger on Ctrl
and Shift.
Now you can begin to see the spirals getting further and further apart.
If we lower the number of spirals to say 8 and then increase right up, Ctrl and Shift,
and that almost looks like a snail shell as you can see.
Well you can create what I've called down the bottom here Time Tunnel effect by using
this.
If I put in a value of say 20, hit Enter and we'll go with, say I type in a value of 60,
and click and drag.
But this time rather I'm putting my finger on Ctrl, in fact, let the spirals are little
too far apart, let me just readjust that, we'll come back to say 40.
Now I'm going to click and drag and this time kind of try to create a plane if you like,
so we're looking across the top of it.
Right-click, give it another color, say a dark blue or even a dark green, tap the Spacebar,
select my Time Tunnel word.
Of course, those two grouped together, so I'm going to Ungroup them.
That was a bit unprofessional really, I'll put that there and I'm going to sit that on
top.
Now notice the green line is going over to the top of the Time Tunnel, it's an interesting
look, but Shift+Page Up of course brings my words to the top.
So I pop that there and I begin to reshape it depending on the shape.
You'll notice how it kind of looks different every time you reshape it; more circular,
is more tunnelish, and so you get a different kind of effect.
So you do really get some interesting effects, let's have a lot more circles.
So if I go up to say 30, I'll lower this down just a little bit more, click in the middle,
finger on Shift and Ctrl this time and right-click again for the green.
Spacebar for my Pick tool, select Time Tunnel, Shift+Page Up into the top and I think you've
got the idea.
So what you'll do is go ahead and play with that, see what you come up with, have some
fun, and then we're going to place a spiral on our business card in the next lesson.