Vector Diary » Tips & Tricks

Illustrator Tip #33: Opacity Mask

Tony Soh — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:00:25 +0000

Illustrator opacity mask are great to create transparency on shapes. The idea is simple. You will have a mask that is black to white and the areas that are black will be masked out. Next you just have to apply the opacity mask to your object. Let’s see how you can use opacity mask to create soft transparency edges in this tutorial.

1. First create the shape that you want to apply the opacity mask. In this case, I have created a radial glow effect. For it to work it has to be a single shape. A group of paths will not work with opacity mask. So let’s combine that all into one shape by using the Pathfinder > Add to Shape Area.

2. Next we draw a circle that will cover our shape. Apply a white to black radial gradient. Make sure the gradient is in RGB and not CMYK or else the opacity mask will not work properly. The black areas will be masked and the white areas will show through.

3. Select both the gradient and your shape (Make sure the gradient is about your shape). Go to Transparency > Make Opacity Mask.

4. There you have it. The edges now have a soft transparency gradient. You can now place it over any background and the edges will show through.

Illustrator Tip #30: Sticky Post Note

Tony Soh — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 12:00:56 +0000

This quick Illustrator tutorial will show you how to create a nice vector sticky post note using Illustrator. It is actually a very useful design element where you can use for magazines, brochures and even website. Add your custom message on the sticky post to get more eyeballs on your design. Let’s see how it is done in Illustrator.

1. First use the Pen tool to draw the shape of the sticky post note.

2. Fill it with a nice linear gradient. Make a gradient like the following with a highlight in the middle of the gradient slider. Adjust the 2 diamond sliders at the top to be close to the middle gradient stop. Now apply the gradeint to the sticky post note. Click and draw the gradient from bottom right to top left to set the gradient in 45 degrees.

3. Draw a rectangle and rotate it like below. Give a light brown color and set its transparency option as Multiply. It will give a see through illusion just like a real plastic tape.

4. Let’s move on to draw the shadow. Use the pen tool to draw the following shadow shape.

Finally, apply a Feather of 14px to the black shadow to make the edges soft. Our sticky post vector note is completed! Now you just need to add you custom message on the sticky post note.

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Illustrator Tip #29: Graphic Styles

Tony Soh — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:34:15 +0000

Graphic styles in Illustrator help you apply appearance effects on any objects. You can create a graphics style and apply it to multiple objects. This helps you to work faster in Illustrator and save time on creating the same effects. Let’s find out how to create your own custom graphic styles in Illustrator!

1. First create a text and go Type > Create Outlines. Next, go to Effect > Warp > Wave and set the Bend to 73%.

2. Next, we will add a drop shadow to it. Select the text and go to Effect > Warp > Drop Shadow and set the following settings.

3. Go to Appearance palette and click Add New Fill. Select a turquoise blue for it as shown below.

4. Use the same method to add 2 new stroke layers in the Appearance. Set one to 5pt and the top layer to 2pt to achieve the effect like what I have done.

5. Finally, drag our appearance style in the Graphic Styles to create it.

6. Type a new text and select our new aqua effect. Your text effect will immediately take effect. That’s it. Now you can use the aqua graphic style on any shape. No need to go through the process of repeating creating styles for each object in Illustrator.

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Illustrator Tip #28: Draw a Realistic Vector Fire

Tony Soh — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 03:00:39 +0000

Want to learn how to create a realistic vector fire in Illustrator? This tip will blow you off by showing you how simple it is to make a cool burning fire using Blends. With this tip, you can create your vector fire and bring it into Photoshop to make it even more realistic by using the Smudge tool. So let’s get started on drawing the vector fire.

1. We will start off by drawing 4 layers of flames. You can use the Pencil tool or Pen tool to draw it. The outer layer will be the most detailed and the inner layers will be simplified. Apply different tones to it, with a dark orange brown for the outer layer and bright yellow in the middle.

2. After your layers of flames are created. Select it all and select Object > Blend > Make. That’s it you fire is created. You can tweak the individual layers of flames to make it look even realistic. Your vector flame is now completed.

Illustrator Tip #27: Draw a Laurel Wreath Vector

Tony Soh — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:22:02 +0000

This tutorial will show you how to create a beautiful vector laurel wreath easily in Adobe Illustrator using the Illustrator brush. You will learn techniques on using Transform tool to give it a unique and random touch to the leaves. So let’s get started.

1. Let’s begin by drawing 3 leaves with different tones. Rotate it 90 degrees anti-clockwise and draw a rectangle and send it to the back. The width of the rectangle should be half of the size of the leaves boundaries and the height can be the same. Place the rectangle in the middle and set the color and stroke to none (very important step!). This rectangle will act as the tiling boundaries for the brush pattern.

2. Select your leaves with the rectangle and open up your Brushes panel. Click the New icon below of the Brushes panel to create a new brush. Select New Pattern Brush when prompted for brush type to create. Leave the rest of the settings at default will do. Your laurel wreath brush is now created.

3. Draw a 8 shape using the pen tool and remember to close your path. Select the 8 shape and apply the laurel wreath brush pattern we just created.

4. The above vector laurel wreath I created looks too neat and I wanted to have a more rugged and natural laurel wreath. Let’s see how to do this with Transform Each. Go to Object > Expand Appearance to expand the brush. By deafault all the shapes are grouped after expanding so go to Object > Ungroup to ungroup the shapes. Select all the shapes and go to Object > Transform > Transform Each. Enter the settings below and and tick Random and Preview to see how it looks. Play with the settings to tweak your laurel wreath until you are satisfied.

5. Finally, I used Direct Selection Tool to select some of the leaves and gave it a different tone to make the colors looks more rich and beautiful. I selected most of the leaves in the middle as you can’t see the shape of the middle leaves when it overlaps with the next group of leaves. Applying a different tone really helps to solve this problem.

I hoped you have learnt a lot in this tutorial. Find out how your can create a similar seamless leaf pattern which you can use for wallpaper in this premium tutorial.

Illustrator Tip #26: Gradients in Illustrator

Tony Soh — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:05:01 +0000

Gradients are the most basic tool to create realistic colors and objects in Illustrator. This quick Illustrator tips will cover all the little things you need to know to master the gradient tool. Let’s find out what you can do with gradient tool.

Linear Gradient

This is a standard linear gradient from pink to red. To achieve this, open up your gradient palette from Window > Gradient. Select the Gradient Tool and drag from left to right on the rectangle. You can change the color on the gradient stops by clicking the gradient stop and adjust the colors from your Color Palette (Window > Color)

To adjust the gradient change, you can click the little black diamond on the gradient slider and move it.

To add a new color stop to the gradient, simply click below the gradient slider and a new gradient stop will appear. Click the gradient stop once to select it and adjust the color using the Color palette. You will now have a different color for the middle gradient.

To adjust the gradient, we click and drag to adjust the direction of the gradient.

Radial Gradient

Apply a radial gradient is simple. Select Radial for type under the gradient palette. Adjust the slider and you will be able to create a realistic ball shading.

Adjusting Radial Gradient

We can create a nice shadow using radial gradient and squashing it. Create a radial gradient as shown from black to white outside.

Use the selection tool to select it and adjust its height to squash the gradient. Place the radial gradient below the ball to make it as a shadow. Now we have a very nice shadow using the above gradient trick.

I hope that after this basic gradient tutorial, you will be able to grasp how the gradient tool actually works and have fun with it.

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Illustrator Tip #25: How to Create a Halftone Effect

Tony Soh — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:00:45 +0000

Halftone is a very nice effect you can use to create pop art or grunge work. In this quick illustrator trick, I will show you how to create a nice vector halftone effect easily. You can also import gray scale photos and apply the halftone effect to your artwork. But for this tutorial, I will just show you how to create a simple halftone text effect.

1. Type your text using a thick font. In this case, I chose to use Rockwell Extra Bold. After that go to Object > Expand to expand the text.

2. Make sure you set the document color mode to CMYK. Go to File > Document Color Mode > CMYK to change it to CMYK. Apply a gradient from white to black. Make the black is pure black (C:0% M:0%, Y:%0,K:100%). Apply the black to white gradient on the text.

3. Now is the interesting part. Go to Effect > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Set the Max Radius to 5 and see the effect. The Max Radius determines the size of the halftone circles. So try with different Max Radius to experiment with the effect.

4. The artwork is still in bitmap form. We will need to convert it to vector. Select it and go to Object > Expand. Next go to Object > Live Trace > Make and set the following values for Live Trace. Live Trace will convert it to vector.

5. The traced artwork now contains black and white paths. We just need the text, so let’s proceed to delete the white background. Use Direct Selection Tool to select the white path and go to Select > Same > Fill Color. Press delete.

6. We are now left with the black path, you can now fill it with gradient and change it to any color your like. Below is what I have done. Hope you find this halftone tutorial useful.