- So here I am looking at the original photograph
in Photoshop, and as you can see here,
these hot metal letters aren't nearly as perfect
as they are inside of our illustration so far.
And while I don't want to get photorealistic,
I did think it would be fun to add some distress
such as this chipped corner on the side of the E.
There's this dent in the bottom of the G.
We have another chipped corner on the N.
We've these striation patterns here on the bottom of the I,
and these vertical lines on the bottom of the D.
All right, so I'll switch back over to Illustrator,
and just so that we can actually see through our blocks
to the tracing template in the background,
I'll go up to the View menu and choose Outline
or you can press ctrl + y or cmd + y on a Mac.
And now I'm going to zoom in on the G for starters here
because it's one of the simplest things to add.
And then I'll go ahead and select the Pan Tool,
which I can get by pressing the "p" key,
and I'll just go ahead and click four times
to make a kind of haphazard diamond shape
right at this location here.
And then, with that shape selected,
I'll confirm that its fill is set to all values at 77
which is exactly what I want.
All right, now I'm going to zoom in on the N
and I'm going to create a kind of triangle over here
by clicking at this location, then I'll click up here.
I don't want to go too far down, so I'll click
let's say right about there,
and then I'll finish my triangle like so.
And now I'll change its fill, which is active here
in the Swatches panel, to this dark shade of gray
where all values are 51.
And I'll press ctrl + y or cmd + y on a Mac,
just to confirm that's the effect I'm looking for.
Obviously, it's not where it ought to be,
so I'm going to need to zoom out here a little bit.
And I'll press the "v" key to get my black arrow
tool and I'll go ahead and partially marquee
these three shapes right here,
and then I'll right click on any one of them,
choose a range, and then choose Send to Back
in order to move the N in back of the G, like so.
All right, now I'm going to go over here
to what I believe is the E,
and I can find that out for sure
by pressing ctrl + y or cmd + y again
in order to switch back to the outline mode
so that I can see the tracing template in the background.
And I'm going to draw another triangle just l like so
right here, a pretty long one, let's say,
all the way up to this location right there and then over.
The problem is now I need to modify those perspective
rectangles that make up the block.
And currently, this triangle's going to get in the way.
So what I'm going to do so that I can snap to it,
is press the "v" key once again to switch
to the black arrow tool,
click on that path to select it,
right click on it and choose Arrange
and then chooses Send to Back.
And then I'll click right here at the bottom of the triangle
to add a point to this forward paths
so we're not affecting the triangle.
And then I'll press the "a" key to switch
to the wide arrow tool.
I'll go ahead and select that point
and I'll drag it over while pressing the shift key
until it snaps into alignment with the edge
of that rectangle right there.
Then, I'll go ahead and click on this corner point
right there to select some portion of this upper path
and then I'll press the "p" key once again
to get my Pen Tool, and then I'll click here
but, if I do, look at my cursor.
You can see that it has an asterisk
which means I'm going to start a new path outline.
And the reason that I'm not adding a point to this
selected path is because it's not in front.
So I'll just go ahead and move my cursor over a little bit
so it has a plus sign next to it and I'll click right there.
And then I'll press the "a" key to switch back to the wide
arrow tool and I'll drag this selected point until it snaps
into alignment, and then I'll drag this guy up until
it snaps into alignment as well.
And now, if I press ctrl + y or cmd + y on a Mac,
you can see we have a problem
not seeing the entire triangle,
and that's because I sent it to back.
So I'm going to click inside the triangle to select
the entire thing with the wide arrow,
and then I'll right click on the path, choose a range,
and choose Bring to Front in order to move it
all the way to the front of the stack.
And can you see we have a little bit of a problem here?
Notice that our strokes aren't lining up,
and so I'm going to click on the word Stroke
up here in the Control Panel,
and I'm going to switch the corner to the Bevel Join
which is going to give us a better match.
We still have a kind of microscopic problem there,
but I'm not worried about it.
And so now I'll press the escape key to dismiss that panel,
and I'll go ahead and fill the shape with medium gray
which is one where all values are 128
in order to produce this effect here.
All right, now I'll go ahead and zoom out some
just so I can take any artwork
and see what I've come up with.
I'll go ahead and click off the path to deselect it.
All right, now let's add those patterns to the bottoms
of the D and the I.
And so I'm going to zoom back in to the D here,
and I'm going to click on this edge in order to select it
independently of the rest of the shape.
So if you click inside a filled shape,
you'll select the entire thing,
but if you click just right on the stroke,
you'll select just that segment.
And now I want you to shift + click on this segment
right there, and now press ctrl + c or cmd + c on a Mac
and press ctrl + f or cmd + f on a Mac
in order to paste those two lines in front.
And now I'm going to go up to the Control Panel
and change the fill to none or I could have just pressed
the "/" key.
Now I want to create a bunch of steps between
these two extremes here.
And I'm going to do that using that blend function
that you get to by going up to the Object menu,
choosing Blend, and then choose Make.
And that ends up producing not the effect I am looking for
but it's easily resolved.
I'm just going to go ahead and click off this path
that line and then drag this point up here,
drag this other one down here.
The problem is that the two paths were drawn
in a different order, and so by just reversing the position
of the points, I changed that order
and now I want to select this entire blended object.
And the easiest way to do that for now is to switch
back to the black arrow tool by pressing the "v" key,
and then I'll click on this line to select it
and the other line as well as the steps in between.
And then I'll go up to the Object menu,
choose Blend, and choose Blend Options.
And I'll turn on the Preview checkbox,
change Spacing, the Specified Steps,
and then just click in that value
and press the up arrow key until I like what I see
which happens at 18 steps, so that's 18 steps in between
the two extremes.
At which point, I'll click OK, and then I'll go up
to this Opacity value in the Control Panel,
and I'll change it to 50% and I'll press the enter key
or the return key on a Mac.
All right, that takes care of that edge.
Now, let's address the front edge of the I.
At least I think that's what I'm looking at.
Just to confirm, I'll press ctrl + y or cmd + y on a Mac
so that I can see that tracing template.
And sure enough, there's the I right there.
All right, so I'll press ctrl + y or cmd + y again
and now I'll press the "a" key to switch back
to the wide arrow tool.
I'll click on this top edge right there to select it,
and I'll press ctrl + c, ctrl + f,
that's cmd + c, cmd + f on a Mac.
All right, now we want to make a copy of this line
and it'll all make sense in just a moment.
But we're going to make a copy of this line
by dragging it down while pressing the shift key
and the you want to press and hold
the alt key or the opt key on a Mac
and drop it into place so that we have a copy.
All right, now I'm going to click on this right point
right there to select it independently of the left one,
and I'll go ahead and drag it down to,
I figure, right about here.
I'm trying to bring it down to the midway point here.
And now I'll go ahead and press ctrl + f or cmd + f on a Mac
to paste another copy of this line.
And I'll drag it down to right about here, I figure,
and then I'll click on that right-hand point
and drag it all the way down
so it snaps into alignment with that corner.
And I might go ahead and move this guy up a little bit
while pressing the shift key.
I'm just trying to get regular intervals going here.
And now we want to make one more copy of this line,
and I'm going to do that by grabbing this anchor point
and dragging it to right about there
and then pressing the alt key or the opt key on a Mac
to make a copy of that point which goes ahead
and copies the neighboring segment as well.
In other words, we've copied the entire line.
So now I'll go ahead and drag this guy down
and you can see that it's snapping into alignment.
All right, now switch to the black arrow tool
by pressing the "v" key, and then go ahead
and click and shift + click on each one of these lines.
Do not select the big rectangle.
We do not want that.
Then, go back to the Object menu, choose Blend,
and choose Make, and that will make this crazy blend
right here, which is not quite what we want.
So return to the Object menu, choose Blend,
and choose Blend Options.
Go ahead and change the Spacing to Specified Steps,
turn on the Preview checkbox, and then click on that value
and press the up arrow key until you like what you see
which for me happens at five.
And now I'll click OK to accept that change.
And now you want to press the "a" key
to switch back to the wide arrow tool.
And click on this point.
In my case you can see that the lines aren't quite spread
the way they need to be.
And now I'll just press the down arrow key,
press and hold that down arrow key,
until things start looking better.
And you can see that the blend is updating on the fly.
And it appears that this point needs to come down as well.
And so I just want you to see that update I'm talking about.
Notice if I drag the point to a new location,
all the steps adjust on the fly.
Very, very cool feature.
Very old feature as well inside Illustrator.
And so I'm going to go ahead and press the down arrow key
to move that point down, and actually I moved it back up
a little bit as well.
And now I'll select this point right here
and press the left arrow key to move it to the left
until we have this effect.
At which point, I'll press the "v" key to switch back
to the black arrow tool,
click on any one of these lines to select the entire blend,
and again change the Opacity value
up there in the Control Panel to 50%
and then click off the paths to deselect them,
and then zoom out so that we can take in the entire effect.
And that's how you draw a few distressed marks
just for the sake of a little bit of realism
using a combination of the Pen Tool and the Blend function
here inside Illustrator.