Ai Distortion

92

Technique

Illustrator 10 or later

Envelope distortion in Illustrator Distortion effects can take the perfect lines of your vector illustration and give them a more organic or hand-sculpted appearance, says Sam Hampton-Smith Add variety to your artwork with chunky, delicate or flowing organic shapes. Push and pull artwork into a pre-defined shape, or force text into a wave. Illustrator has advanced meshbased envelope distortion functions that are often overlooked, but are hugely powerful tools. Once you understand how the distortion works, a whole new range of visual effects becomes available to you. Illustrator offers you the flexibility of three different approaches to distortion nirvana: warp, mesh and object. We’re going to briefly look at all three in this tutorial. The really clever part of this functionality is that all the distortion is entirely non-destructive. So you can always get back to your original artwork, giving you freedom to experiment without risking your hard work.

Sam HamptonSmith Sam runs a graphic design studio in Scotland. He also teaches graphics students at HNC and HND level, writes and illustrates for magazines, and especially enjoys exploring typography. Find out more at www.hamptonsmith.com.

On the disc The Illustrator file Sam worked on can be found in Disc Contents\ Resources\envelope. Time needed 30-60 minutes

Skills Understand envelope distortion Use the three distortion methods Create a 3D effect

01

We’re going to turn a piece of very basic artwork into something special with some simple distortion techniques. To start with, create rectangles filled with colour. Here I’ve placed four rectangles in a row and coloured each to create a Brazilian colour scheme. Group all the rectangles with Cmd/Ctrl+G, then make three duplicates using Copy and Paste.

02

Illustrator offers three methods for applying envelope distortion. The first will be familiar if you use Photoshop. Select one set of rectangles and choose Object>Envelope Distort>MakeWithWarp. Using the dialog, you can select from a range of distortion envelopes and adjust them with the sliders. I’ve chosen Twist with a horizontal bend of 63%.

Computer Arts August 2008

ART151.tut_6 92

12/6/08 13:28:51

93

03

This approach differs from applying Warp through Effect>Warp because you can edit the mesh points to alter the effect. Select the Mesh tool (press U) and click anywhere within your twisted artwork, adding a mesh point to the envelope. Select this point and move it a little with the Mesh tool or Direct Selection tool. As you move the nodal point, the artwork distorts.

04

Sometimes it’s easier to have a straight grid. Select your second set of rectangles and choose Object>Envelope Distort>MakeWithMesh. This time you’ll be given a dialog that asks you to enter the number of rows and columns for the mesh. Accept the default four rows and four columns, and click OK.

06

The third and final way to add an envelope distortion is by creating the envelope from another shape. Using the Pen tool (shortcut P), draw a shape with many sides. Don’t worry about the stroke or fill colour. Here I’ve created an object with ten sides and no concave angles. With your new object highlighted, select Object>Arrange>BringToFront.

08

Using the Direct Selection tool you can now select individual mesh intersection points, and move them around to distort the artwork inside the envelope. You also have control over the Bézier handles for each node just like a regular path. Again, you can use the Mesh tool to add points, but here I’ve selected and moved the points generated in Step 4.

07

Select your third set of rectangles, and the object you created in Step 6, and choose Object>EnvelopeDistort> MakeWithTopObject. The artwork within the envelope adjusts to the contours of your envelope shape. This technique can be used to create chunky 3D-style artwork with simple fills that show contours, or organic flowing shapes.

09

Here I have drawn a shape with a black fill over the right-hand side of the envelope-distorted artwork. I’ve set the shape to 50% opacity, and used a blending mode of Multiply. This creates the illusion of shadow, giving the design a sense of depth and weight. You can develop this further with additional panels of solid black and white set to Multiply or Screen, and at a reduced opacity.

05

You can alter the envelope options by selecting the object and choosing Object>EnvelopeDistort> EnvelopeOptions. This enables you to set the fidelity (how accurate Illustrator is when distorting), whether or not patterns and gradients should also be distorted, and the raster settings. The higher the fidelity the cleaner the results, but performance will be slower.

10

If you need to export to EPS format, or to software that can’t render envelope distortion correctly, you may want to expand the envelope distortion to ensure the artwork appears as it should – use Object>EnvelopeDistort> Expand. However, this commits your design to the distortion, so only take this step if you’re sure you won’t want to return to your original graphic.

Computer Arts August 2008

ART151.tut_6 93

12/6/08 13:28:58