Cat likes to browse the intertubes for inspiration. For all those people who sit slack-jawed in front of the TV, there are plenty of others enjoying a virtual life google-eyed in front of their monitors, learning how to knit organs, cowering at videos of evil chihuahuas (that’s four minutes of your life you won’t get back), and writing about how to make a groovy spiral in Illustrator.
An oft-used but, nonetheless, excellent design element is the sunburst. After too long spent making unsatisfactory Photoshop sunburst brushes, Cat stumbled across this tutorial. Skip past the happy octopus to the excellent sunburst. With just a little modification, this technique can be used to create a really groovy spiral. Carry out steps 17 and 18 and, when you have your sunburst, select all of the spokes and, in Pathfinder click on ‘Add to shape area’ and ‘Expand’.
Your sunburst is now a single object.
With the sunburst selected, go to the ‘Effects’ menu and choose ‘Twist’ from the ‘Distort and Transform’ submenu. Try typing in different amounts for the angle for different results. Cool!
If you really wanna knock yourself out, go back to steps 19 and 20 in the VectorTuts tutorial to add a nice gradient/fade effect.
Awesomeness!
Photoshop Rocks!!!My sunburst was outta this world!!!!!!!!!
Great – makes me dizzy 😛
I’ve switched to Photoshop for web work but I guess it has the same kind of features if not a built in “effects” setting.
Keep them coming!
Yep, that should be pretty straight forward in Word Art.
It’ll be in the post soon!