Ever since I read N.Design Studio’s tutorial on how to make abstract lines easily in Illustrator, I’ve been playing around with Illustrator’s Blend Tool to see what I could use it for other than abstract lines. I wanted to show you some of the (really easy) possibilities of this tool, so I put together a small tutorial and I’m going to show you a lot of examples of the kinds of shapes and effects that the blend tool is capable of.
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April 14, 2007 | Posted in
Rants |
It’s that time again. I thought I’d let you peer into my head for a post, so I sat down with a notepad, a pen and a 12 pack of Bud Light. After some deep thought, I came up with this list of signs that you might be a hardcore designer. A lot of these signs can overlap other professions too. From my experience, the following list contains mostly truths, mixed in with a little humor.
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It’s really a lot easier than you would expect. This tutorial was requested by many of my readers after I posted this Free set of 35 Abstract Illustrator Brushes. The possibilities are endless as far as brush making goes in illustrator, but I wanted to get you started in the right direction and let you take it from here. (The purpose is to tease you, so you want to try it on your own!)
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In my opinion, one of the most underused features of Illustrator is the creation of custom brushes. You can literally make ANY shape into an Illustrator brush to get all kinds of cool effects. I put together a set of 35 abstract brushes for you to play with. The example below was made only with the brushes I provided in the set, and I only used 3 shapes: Mostly circles, a couple starbursts, and a spiral or two. Every bitt of detail in the example is created from the brush strokes alone, on different sized shapes/stroke sizes. (I also played around with blending modes of certain shapes. Download the source file below.)
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I was playing around with some butterflies this weekend and I have another set of freebies for you. Once again, I haven’t actually had the chance to use these for real, so I think I will just have to start making some designs on my own as case studies to practice. After all, that’s one of the reasons I started BittBox, so I can enjoy designing, without having a client that needs it. Anyway, here are the butterfly vectors I’ve been playing with, maybe you can find a use for them.
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