In PART ONE of Easy Vector Textures, we covered a quick and easy way to create vector textures using the Live Trace Tool in Illustrator. Here in PART TWO, we are going to put some of those quick and easy textures to use as we create a simple Urban Grunge scene.

Before we can begin our urban scene, we’ll need to go grab some texture images to use. The images I will be using are shown below and include images of bricks, corrigated metal, some rusty drips and a few different grungy papers.

Open Illustrator and start with a rectangular artboard.

Let’s begin by creating a brick wall that will serve as our backdrop. Place the image of bricks onto the artboard (File > Place), select the image and make a Live Trace (Object > Live Trace > Make and Expand). Select the white portions (Select > Same > Fill Color) and fill with a reddish brick color, and fill the black portions with a much darker shade of that brick color. ( For more information on these steps, refer back to PART ONE.

Now let’s create some grungy pipes to run up the side of our wall. First, Place and Live Trace your rusty drips image, but this time open the Trace Options window (Object > Live Trace > Trace Options) and select the Grayscale mode. The Trace Options window is shown below. When you have the settings as you want them, hit the Trace burron. Select bits and pieces of your grayscale trace and delete, so that we will be able to see our pipe through the texture.

Once you have your rust drips texture to your liking, we’ll need to create our pipe. Make a long vertical rectangle and give it a gray/white gradient like below. Then place the texture on top of the rectangle, select both the shape and the texture, and Group them together (Object > Group).

Next, let’s use our corrugated metal photo to create the effect of some shadows thrown by buildings against our brick wall. Place and Live Trace the image, again using the Grayscale mode to give added depth. Hopefully, the trace of your image will provide a texture with notable hills and valleys, like the one I am using which can be seen below. Delete the lower portions of the texture and then select the upper most portion and fill it with white. I have filled it with black in the example below just so you can see the general shape we are going for.

We are now ready to begin compiling our urban scene. Position the brick textured object in the back center. Now take your grungy pipe and place it vertically on top of the brick wall to either side. You may want to duplicate your pipe, resize the duplicate to be noticeably thinner, and place it a few clicks over from the first pipe. Now take your shadow object (which in reality will be the negative space of our shadows) and place it along the top edge of the brick wall, making sure that your hills and valleys are pointing down. Select the shadow shadow shape and give it Transparency of 20%. Your scene should look something like this:

Our brick wall looks empty, so let’s make some signs/posters to slap on there like you would see in the city. Start by creating some distressed sheets of paper using the Pen Tool. Make sure to give them some bent corners and tears along the edges. Then put some writing/design on the papers – personal ads, music posters, event announcements, whatever.

Now we need to grunge up our posters, so grab some images of distressed or stained paper. Place and Live Trace the images, as we have done all the others. I am tracing these in Grayscale Mode, as well. Select the areas of the traces that you want to overlay onto your posters and delete the rest. Play with the transparency of the paper textures, so that we are still able to see the design behind, even if faintly.

Next, simply overlay your paper textures on top of your posters.

And place them on our wall.

Now let’s take one final step to really drive it home.  We are going use the brick texture we created at the very beginning, to bring the textured feeling and depth forward and pull things together.  First, select only the dark red portion of the brick texture, copy it (Edit > Copy) and paste it in front (Edit > Paste in Front).

Next, bring the pasted texture to the front (Object > Arrange > Bring to Front) and change the fill color to black.

Knock back the transparency of this new top object to 10%.

And there it is.  An Urban Grunge Scene – made quick and easy by creating our own vector textures using Illustrator’s Live Trace Tool.  

Recently I saw a great tutorial on how to use Illustrator to make a seamless pattern. Rather than write our own, here is the link to the tutorial I got from Shutterstock:

http://www.shutterstock.com/newsletter/100/article3.html

This is a typography tutorial for beginner level users of Illustrator. I am using Illustrator CS2.

First, type the text that you want to stylize onto your artboard. Because I am feeling in a superhero kind of mood today, I decided I would play with the word SUPERMAN. In order to make things easier down the road, set the fill color to anything besides black.

I want to style my text to appear strong and fast (like Superman), as if I am standing still and it is flying by me. So, in sticking with our mood, I am going to play with my text a little before applying the 3D effect. This step is not necessary to create your 3D text, but it will give it even more perspective.

Go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Warp (shown below). The Warp Options dialogue box below shows the settings I used to get my desired look. If you are going for a different look with your text, play around a little. (If you check the Preview box along the right you can click around from Warp to Warp and change your settings while seeing a preview of them without committing to them.)

Here is what my text looks like with the above Warp applied.

Once you have applied the desired Warp, it is time to apply the 3D effects to the text. Go to Effects > 3D > Extrude & Bevel. Listed below are the settings I am using for my text.

Here is what my text looks like with the above 3D Effect applied.

In order to edit and tweak the 3D text, we will need to Expand and Ungroup. First, go to Object > Expand Appearance.

Once the text has been expanded, go to Object > Ungroup to separate the pieces so that we can edit them individually. Note: You may have to repeat the Ungroup steps a few times before all the groups have been separated.

Select the “front face” of each letter and apply a new fill color/effect using your Color Palette. I chose a linear gradient and used colors that create the look of a reflective surface.

Here is my final 3D SUPERMAN text.

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BONUS TUTORIAL!
The Reverse Effect ~ Let’s go over how to reverse the look of our 3D text, while reviewing some other basic tips and tricks.What we want to do is select all of the gradient “fronts” and make them blue and select the blue drop effect and apply the gradient.The first thing we want to do is save our gradient to the Gradient tab in the Color Palette so that we do not have to build it again when reapplying it to another shape. Select any of the “fronts” so that the gradient is showing as the current selection Fill in your Toolbox as shown below. Next select the Gradient tab in your Color Palette, also shown below. Now simply drag the Fill from you Toolbox into the Gradient Palette.To make our lives easier, we can put the fronts and the drag effect each on its own layer. For a review on how to do this, see my tutorial called “Shortcut to Moving an Object to a New Layer”Now that we have each group on a different layer, we can easily select only the part of the text that we want to work on. First, click on the little circle to the right of the drop effect layer in the Layers Palette to select the entire layer.Now click on the new gradient swatch you just placed in the Gradient Palette.

Next, select the fronts layer by clicking the little circle and change the fill to blue or whatever color you were using.

Now you have a reverse version of the 3D text we created above.

There are all kinds of fun ways to spice up your text. Once you’re done, you’ve got a great looking graphic for promotional items, postcards, or even your website.  MAKE IT MORE THAN WORDS…MAKE IT ART!