follow along with me today and learn some handy skills for making a 3d fir in
Adobe Illustrator now you're going to learn about swatches for gradient use
blend techniques and other skills within today's tutorial so let's get right into
it now we first need to make a swatch collection so we can easily apply our
chosen colors to a gradient so go ahead and press M for the rectangle tool and
then hold down shift and click and drag to make a square like so now apply your
first color as you see fit and then hold down the alt option key and click and
drag to duplicate that shape right down below now double click the color
palettes and adjust the color of the second shape using the slider now you
can generate as many colors as you wish for your gradients but I'm going to
shoot for 5 colors for my design in total now when you've chosen your color
palettes we're going to go ahead and make the swatches with a 3d fur design
so if enough the swatches window and then create a new folder like so so now
it's just a case of selecting each square and then dragging the color into
the swatch group folder
when you've actually got your SWAT selection ready let's now head into the
actual 3d fuzzy fur design that you clicked on this tutorial for now we want
to make a circle with a stroke outline so make sure there is no color fill in
the color palate and then press L of the ellipse tool hold down shift and click
and drag as we did with the square earlier now press C on your keyboard
which is going to access the scissors tool and then click once at the very top
here and then give a second click somewhere else along the vector path
now press V for the selection tool and click the small section that we cut out
and then press backspace on your keyboard to remove and delete it now
we're going to leave this cut out circle design right here for now but again
using the ellipse tool make a circle with a fill color but then add a
gradient fill by clicking the gradient fill option in the color palettes now
the gradient window should open up and to add a new color node simply click on
the slider and to remove them just click and drag them below and I have five
nodes for my five color gradient and add your gradients simply double-click the
node and then locate your swatch group here so go ahead and add each of the
gradient colors to each node for your 3d fur design now we actually need two
circles and that's simply done by again holding down the alt/option key and then
clicking and dragging below so now we need to press W on your keyboard or you
can just click the blend tool here but with the blend tool selected hold down
shift and click both of your circles this will make a blend and you probably
doesn't look like mine but to adjust a blend hold down the alt option key and
click somewhere along the blend we're going to be using the specified
distance option and I'm personally using 1.2 so do choose something close to that
measurement for your design so we're close to the finishing line for the 3d
fur design and now we want to select the blend and our circular shape and then
head up to objects blend and then replace a spine now you most likely need
to adjust the ends of your vector path so press a for the direct selection tool
click once on the circular path and then press V for the selection tool you can
now rotate and change the scale of the circle as you see fit and I personally
really like making one end really tiny and the other end rather large
so we're nearly ready to add the final finishing touches to a 3d fur in
Illustrator I will give design selected heading to effect distort and transform
and then Ruffin do you make sure to click the preview box so you can see
your changes in real time now I'd like to increase the detail slider quite a
lot and then the size slider is something you can I want to experiment
with depending on the size of your design we're not finished yet there guys
and I do have a couple more tips to show you that you will want to take notice of
so once you have your design it's wise to come into the object window and
expand the appearance now this is done because we want to scale the design to
different sizes and still keep the effects the same and they will remain in
proportion now the last effects that you want to add to the 3d fur that is really
gonna set it off and complete the design is to add a shadow below your design so
open up the gradient window and make sure you have only two color nodes as
what is making use of the radial gradient option now select the same
color for both nodes and try to choose a dark gray or an almost black in color
but for the outer node and make sure to use 10% of the opacity now go ahead and
press L for the ellipse tool and make an oval shape below like so and finally add
a Gaussian blur effect in the effects panel
now if your blurr looks very glitchy and pixelated you're going to want to
increase the document raster effects new rules right here now by default they're
probably set to 36 but I increase them to 300 you can see more videos just like
this one link down below or you can click one on screen right here and if
you want to keep learning essential skills as a graphic designer
remember to subscribe to my channel for weekly graphic design content we're now
headed into 2020 so I hope you are having a very positive start to this new
year and a new decades and I will see you back very soon for more graphic
design content I remember guys designing future today
peace