I'm watching your videos about photoshop and illustrator and I can say that I became more confident and proficient. Thank you so much!

would appreciate more beginner tutorials. Thanks

I'm not sure you are still looking for an answer on how to get the gradient effect with live type, but I do have a solution. It is using the appearance panel. In this case, you will have to make sure that group the 'R' and 'X' and ensure that you are working on the group level in the appearance panel (not the contents layer). Apply your gradient fill here. The trick to getting this to work right is to change the hole of the 'R' to a guide because as a shape it will just be included in the gradient. Once you have converted it to a guide use the same text wrap function* as before and voila you have your live type with a seamless gradient. Just make sure that the guide being used in the text wrap is nested within the group you are applying the gradient to (or group it with the 'R') so that when you move the group it moves with it. *Note: you will have to edit the text wrap options to have an offset of 0.1pt as 0 doesn't work.

For the gradient issue, you can go to the appearance menu, click the box on the upper right corner and hit "add new fill". While your type is still selected, go to the gradient panel and edit the colors from there. This will keep the text live.

Thanks!!!

Great!

awsome

Hi Dan! I'm following along with you in here and I'm with you at 8:24 and I noticed the counter for the R in yours as well as mine no longer seems to be responsive to the text wrap. Is that something that is fixable? Or did I maybe miss a step? Thanks for all the help so far, your tutorials are excellent!

the 3rd type was really interesting...

How do I release compound path with out right hand clicking?

hey, is the area type tool limited to a particular version of illustrator , as i can not find it on mine.

anyone know why I use the tape area tool and it makes the whole letter transparent

You could just turn the entire text block into transparency mask and not worry about expanding it nor making it into a compound shape to give it a uniform gradient... (-;