How's it going everyone, Chris from Spoon Graphics here back with another video tutorial
for Adobe Illustrator.
Today we're going to have some fun creating a gooey slime effect with some custom type.
You could apply this to your own hand lettering pieces, but I'm going to be using a ready
made font, which I'll be customising with the vector drip shapes.
Once the outline is complete, we'll then add some bright colours to make the ooze radioactive,
then use a simple trick with the brush tool to draw some highlights.
So open up Adobe Illustrator and create a new document.
Begin by typing out your wording using a bold cursive font with nice fat curves.
I'm using a premium typeface named No Seven.
This particular font has lots of alternate characters that can be used to completely
customise the appearance.
I liked one of the stylistic S glyphs, but flipped the other way up.
To do this, the text element has to be Outlined, then Ungrouped the break the letters apart
in order to manipulate the size, rotation and position of that one character.
Once you have your text in place, go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make With Warp.
Choose Arc at 15% to give it a subtle bend, then rotate it slightly.
Now we're ready to customise the type with gooey drips.
Double click the Pencil tool to edit its settings.
Max out the Fidelity slider to Smooth, then make sure Fill New Pencil Strokes is checked,
along with Keep Selected and Edit Selected Paths.
Zoom right in tot he first letter and draw the outline of a drip.
This process is a little easier with a Pen Tablet, but the smoothing corrects any mistakes
you might make.
Since we have the Keep Selected and Edit Selected Paths settings checked, you can re-draw over
any outlines that don't look right to try again.
If you find the Pencil tool a bit awkward, here's a couple of other techniques you might
want to try.
First is the Pen tool, so rather than freehand draw the outline you click and drag the bezier
handles to create those smooth curves.
Alternatively, you could just roughly draw the outline using straight lines and corners,
then go to Effects > Stylize > Round Corners.
Bump up the radius until those angles are converted to smooth lines.
Whichever method you choose, draw a variety of drip lengths and shapes all over the letters.
In some areas you can even add gooey stringy bits between two parts of the letter shape.
Try adding some double drips too, they help fill out some space.
Don't worry about them blending in to the letters perfectly just yet, we'll carefully
blend them next.
Once you have all your drips in place, head back to the first letter and zoom in.
Turn on Smart Guides from under the view menu, which will help you to snap to the existing
path lines.
Use the Pen tool to draw little shapes that smooth off any angles in the outline by adding
a bezier curve to bridge the gap.
The rest of the path can be really rough, it won't be visible being black on black.
Once all the drips have been blended in.
A few simple ellipses can be a great finishing touch to add some extra drips on the end of
the droopy bits.
Draw a selection across all the artwork and make a copy if you want to preserve an editable
version, otherwise click the Unite button in the Pathfinder panel to merge everything
into one outline.
Now you can change the fill to represent whatever kind of sticky substance you want your text
to be made from, whether it's slime, snot, chocolate sauce, or whatever viscous fluid
you fancy.
Too add some depth to the effect add an Inner Glow from the Effects> Stylize menu.
Change the settings to white with the Overlay mode so the same glow effect will still work
if you change the base fill colour, then reduce the opacity to 50% and set the Blur to 10px.
To add some little highlight lines, we first need a little tool to use.
Draw a small circle somewhere on the artboard, then use the Direct Select tool to drag each
side point outwards while holding the shift key.
Change the fill to White, then click the New Brush icon in the Brushes panel and select
Art Brush.
Alter the Colorization dropdown to Tints if you want the option to change the brush colour,
then hit OK.
You can delete that temporary shape we used to create the brush.
Set up the Appearance options as a white stroke with no fill, then use the Pen tool to draw
a series of short, curved lines that follow the outline of the text.
Create them in places where a little specular highlight would appear.
Click any of the lines with the Magic Wand tool to automatically select them all, then
apply the brush we just created.
The sizing might need to be adjusted by altering the Stroke weight, then change the blending
mode to Soft Light.
Go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur and enter 2px to give the highlights a softer appearance.
Draw a large rectangle across the entire type design, filled with a colour of your choice
that complements your type, then right click and select Arrange > Send to Back to use it
as a background.
The final result is a gloopy slime effect that can be used to create custom type for
logos or lettering pieces.
If you enjoyed this tutorial or learnt anything new, be sure to subscribe to the Spoon Graphics
YouTube Channel to stick around for all my upcoming videos.
Visit my website at Spoon.Graphics if you fancy getting your sticky fingers on some
free design resources, otherwise thank you very much for watching and I;ll see you int
he next one.