Closed (sort of)
TEOM as you know it has been closed. I will keep it up for reference but it no longer will receive tutorial updates.
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Thanks for the support throughout all these years :)
Illustrator CS2
Spirals
When I was a child I had a toy, a spirograph, that I absolutely loved. And it wasn’t like the ones that we have today, which look very much like rulers, no, it was a blue box where you could insert innumerous shapes (these were orange) and there was also a holder for the paper and the pen. Cool huh? =)
Anyway, after a few years it broke and about 2 years ago I got myself one of the ruler-like ones. Not as fun and with such a limited amount of shapes… And no place around here sells extra shapes.
But while the new toys aren’t as great as I would like them to be, Illustrator sure can create some beautiful and unlimited-shaped spirals. And the effect responsible for this is… Transform!
One quick example.
1. Create an ellipse (width = 50px, height = 500px). Don’t bother with the fill and stroke colors yet.
2. Go to Effect » Distort & Transform » Transform.
» Settings: scale = 100, move = 0, angle = 15, copies = 15, reflect X & reflect Y = checked.
3. Go to Object » Expand Appearance.
4. Right-click on the spiral and choose Ungroup.
5. Now select all the shapes (if they aren’t select yet) and set the fill and stroke colors.
6. Open the Transparency palette and set the blend mode to Multiply and the Opacity to 15.
Now don’t think this is as far as it can go. Turn the Preview on and start changing all the settings and you’ll see how much you can do with a simple ellipse and, why not, any other shape you wish.
Object Effects · Jul 22, 2005 ·