I know that Adobe Illustrator can be a bit daunting for people who aren’t really advanced users of the program, but you would be amazed by how easy you can create cool effects or backgrounds. In this short tutorial I show you how to create a cool looking background only in 5 steps.
Step 1 – Create Lines
Create lines using random widths and harmonious suitable colors. If you get stuck on finding the right colors, check out Adobe’s Kuler and start experimenting.
Step 2 – Convert Strokes to Fills
Select all lines and convert them to fills. Go to the Object menu, select Path > Outline Stroke. Select the Rectangle tool and draw 1 big rectangle on top the lines. Give the rectangle a suitable color. With the rectangle still selected, go to the Object menu, select Arrange > Send to Back.
Step 3 – Convert to Mesh
Select all objects by pressing the command key (for Mac users), control key (for Windows users) + the “a” key. Go to the Object menu and select the Envelope Distort > Make with Mesh option. Enter 2 rows and 2 columns. Check the preview box to see what happens and click the OK button.
Step 4 – Play Around with The Mesh Points
Play around with the points of the mesh using the Direct Selection tool (the white arrow in the Toolbox). Click on the top right point of the mesh. Once you’re starting to drag hold down the shift key and move the point upwards.
Now start dragging the bezier handles on the mesh to achieve the effect as shown in the above picture. Of course you can try out all kind of different effects here.
The Final Result
This is an example of how the final result can look. You can try out all kinds of different shapes dragging the handles of the mesh points. This is just one of the many results you can get. So next time you haven’t got inspiration for a background of a header, a banner or whatever, just experiment with a few basic shapes such as lines and try out the ‘Envelope Distort’ options in Illustrator or the ‘Make with Mesh’ option and experiment, you’ll be amazed by the unexpected creative results.
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08/12/2006
Very cool tip! Thanks for sharing it.
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08/12/2006
Wow, that’s a really neat effect.
I’ve always been fond of veerle’s illustrator tutorials, very simple, straight forward and easy to follow. She’s kind of the illustrator master in my eyes; always instantly adopting all new features of the program and showing how they can be put to use.
I’ll definitely try this myself!
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08/12/2006
pretty nice example, thx Veerle
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08/12/2006
Ah, Illustrator. If more people knew you could make this sort of stuff this easily, and your interface weren’t rooted in 2001, people would love you as much as Photoshop. This is great stuff, Veerle; how’s about some more tips and tricks for making mathemetically-correct curves and stuff? I wrote up my experiments in trying to create such things in Photoshop but I’m sure it’s probably a lot easier in Illustrator.
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08/12/2006
Great tip — thanks for sharing!
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08/12/2006
Another effective yet disarmingly simple tip from Veerle! Illustrator temptress!
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10/12/2006
Sweet! Another amazing simple lil tip from Veerle :).
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27/12/2006
Great tip, I allways do things like that the hard way, and in this case this is a huge time saver and makes this much easier. I really do need to get to know the mesh tool better!
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