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 mesh-
based 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 Hampton- On the disc Skills

Smith The Illustrator file Understand
Sam runs a Sam worked on can envelope
graphic design be found in distortion
studio in Scotland. Disc Contents\ Use the three 01 We’re going to turn a piece of 02 Illustrator offers three
He also teaches Resources\envelope. distortion very basic artwork into something methods for applying envelope
graphics students at methods special with some simple distortion distortion. The first will be familiar if you
HNC and HND level, Time needed Create a
writes and illustrates 30-60 minutes 3D effect
techniques. To start with, create use Photoshop. Select one set of
for magazines, and rectangles filled with colour. Here I’ve rectangles and choose Object>Envelope
especially enjoys placed four rectangles in a row and Distort>MakeWithWarp. Using the
exploring typography. coloured each to create a Brazilian dialog, you can select from a range of
Find out more at colour scheme. Group all the rectangles distortion envelopes and adjust them
www.hampton- with Cmd/Ctrl+G, then make three with the sliders. I’ve chosen Twist with
smith.com.
duplicates using Copy and Paste. 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 04 Sometimes it’s easier to have

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.
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.
05 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.

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.
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 You can alter the envelope 10 If you need to export to EPS

08 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.
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.
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