Hello everyone this is Chris from Spoon Graphics.
Welcome back to another video tutorial.
This time we're going to play around with Illustrator to create some retro style geometric
lines, then compose them into a cool abstract poster design.
So, the design we'll be creating features a series of flowing striped lines that interweave
and loop around each other to form an intriguing composition, which kinda reminds me of a crazy
scalextic track!
We'll use the power of Illustrator Art Brushes to create the effect, then we'll switch over
to Photoshop to add some finishing touches to texture and distress the design to give
that awesome aged look.
Open Adobe Illustrator and create a new document.
Because Illustrator is vector based the actual document size doesn't matter too much when
you're just creating art, so I like to go to Window > Hide Artboards to give me a large
work area.
Select the rectangle tool and draw a long, thin rectangle on the artboard.
Make sure this shape has a black fill, but no stroke.
Turn on Smart Guides by pressing CMD+U, then ALT and drag a duplicate of the rectangle
so it butts up against the original.
Hold down the shortcut CMD+D to form a series of aligned rectangles.
Activate the Select tool, then hold the Shift key while clicking every alternative rectangle.
Give these shapes a white fill to create a striped pattern.
If your stripes end with a white rectangle, delete it so there's a black rectangle at
each end.
Drag a selection around all these rectangle shapes, then under the Brushes panel, click
the New Brush Icon.
Select the New Art Brush option then hit OK.
In the brush settings, make sure the direction option runs along the flow of the striped
pattern, then press OK to create the brush.
Select the Line tool and draw a short line on the artboard while holding Shift to keep
it straight.
Make sure this path has no fill, then click the new brush from the Brushes panel to apply
the striped effect.
Try lengthening the line with the selection tool.
If your stripes get larger instead of just getting longer, you might need to configure
your Illustrator settings.
Go to Illustrator > Preferences > General, then uncheck the Scale Strokes and Effects
setting.
The striped pattern will now remain the same size regardless of the path length.
Grab the Ellipse tool and hold Shift to draw a circle.
Select our brush to apply the striped pattern.
Duplicate this circle a couple of times by holding ALT while dragging the shape.
Activate the Direct Selection tool and delete a single point from the first circle.
This will leave a half circle.
On the next circle, delete two points to form a quarter-circle.
This time on the final circle, select the Scissors tool from under the Eraser tool menu,
then clip the path between two of the points.
Select and delete this point using the Direct Selection tool to form a three quarter circle.
We can now start building a design using these ready made components.
Hold the ALT key and drag out a copy of the three quarter circle.
Next, make a copy of a line segment and use the Smart Guides to accurately line up the
end points so the pattern flows continuously.
Drag out another three quarter circle, but this time rotate it so the start and end points
finish in different directions.
Align it to the end of the last piece.
Use another line tool to continue the flow of the pattern, this time rotating it by 90
degrees.
Remember to hold the Shift key to restrict the angles.
To adjust the layering of the elements, use the shortcuts CMD+[ or right click and under
the arrange menu, select Send Backward.
This allows you to loop and weave the path as it flows around the artboard.
Continue extending the design with additional pieces, creating interesting compositions
as it expands in size.
But keep in mind the rough proportions of your final poster size.
The two open end pieces can be finished by either extending them so they'll be cropped
off the edge of the poster, or loop them back underneath an existing path.
Once the lines pattern is complete, we'll switch over to Photoshop to add some finishing
touches.
We could add texturing in Illustrator, but Photoshop is much more powerful when it comes
to creating aged effects.
Find an old paper texture and paste it into a Photoshop poster document.
Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate to take out the colour.
Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels and alter the contrast of the texture by dragging the
shadows slider inwards.
Next, bring out the details of the paper texture by going to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen.
Copy the line pattern from Illustrator and paste it into the Photoshop document.
Scale it to size to fit the canvas before applying the changes.
Open up one of my Dust and Scratches textures, select all and copy it to the clipboard.
Add a layer mask to the lines layer, then ALT click on the layer mask thumbnail in the
layers panel to enter into the mask editing mode.
Paste in the dust and scratches texture, then press CMD+I to invert it to black on white.
Press CMD+L to open up the Levels adjustment and darken the blacks by moving the Shadows
slider inwards.
Click anywhere to exit out of the layer mask editing mode to see the distressed texturing
applied to the lines artwork.
Create a new layer, then select a large soft brush.
Randomly dab a few spots of white across the artboard, then reduce the opacity of these
spots to around 30% just to add some subtle changes in tone.
Subtle effects like this aren't very noticeable, but if you turn the layer off, you can see
how much of a difference they actually make.
So there we have our finished retro style geometric lines artwork.
Illustrator's brush tool and vector editing abilities made it easy to build up the composition,
then Photoshop did a great job of adding those extra details to distress and age the design.
Don't forget to stop by at my Spoon Graphics website if you want to see more tutorials
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