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In Print
Illustrator CS Most Wanted Techniques And Effects
The Swanky Text FX tutorial, along with many others, are featured in the new book from Friends of Ed "Illustrator CS Most Wanted: Techniques and Effects". Written by Matt Kloskowski and technical edited by Michael Hamm of ergodraw.com, you'll find a ton of useful tips, information and techniques to bring your work in Illustrator to the next level.
12 | Making Stars
Lock the SWIRLS layer, turn on the RINGS layer (if not already) and turn on and unlock the SPACE layer. We're nearing the end but let's add some stars to the cold vacuum of space.
You could open the Celestial Stars and Sky brush library and use those available to populate the layer but why not make your own?
In the toolbox, set the fill to white and the stroke to none. Select the Ellipse Tool and click on the artboard. Enter a value of 35 for both width and height in the dialog that appears. Click OK. It's possible transparency settings from earlier are affecting the circle so be sure to set the blending mode to Normal and the opacity to 100%.
Choose Effect > Distort & Transform > Pucker & Bloat. Enter a value of -85 in the box and click OK. Mmm... twinkling star.
Open the Brushes palette (Window > Brushes) and drag the star onto it. Select New Scatter Brush in the dialog that appears and click OK. Give your brush a meaningful name and then adjust the settings and values to those shown below. When done, click OK.
Delete the original star on the artboard and press Shift + X. This will toggle the fill and stroke color settings in the toolbox. The fill should be set to none and the stroke should be white.
13 | Adding Nightlife
Use the Pencil Tool to draw a random path all over the space background. If the Pucker & Bloat effect shows up on the path, click the Reduce to Basic Appearance command on the Appearance palette.
In the Brushes palette, click the star brush you made. Instant celestial goodness!
The last tweak to make to the space scene is to knock the planet off its axis. Lock the SPACE layer and unlock the other 3 layers. Select all of the objects (Ctrl/Cmd + A) and use either the Rotate Tool or the bounding box around the objects to rotate your world.
Put your spacesuit on, catch the next rocket out of here and pay a visit to your planet. Take plenty of pictures cause like we're gonna' believe you really went there!
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