Special thanks to Ainsley Bevis from BloomWebDesign.net for sending in this great Adobe Illustrator tutorial! She covers a number of good techniques good for beginner to intermediate Illustrator users, and some of the tricks are sheer genious!
Ainsley writes . . .
Learn how to create a Christmas or Birthday inspired Gift Box in Illustrator using shapes, colour gradients and 3D options.
1. Getting started : Create a new document that's 600×600 pixels. Using the Rectangle Tool draw 2 shapes like below for the cover and box. (Enlarge)
2. Extrude the 3D Shape :
With the 2 shapes selected go into
Effect > 3D > Extrude & Bevel.
Put in these settings (Open the 3D dialog)
3. Expand Appearance, Ungroup :
If the cover is slightly off move it in place. Next select the 2 box layers and go to
Object > Expand Appearance, then go to
Object > Ungroup (Shift+CTRL+G),
you'll need to do this several times to ungroup the shape.
NEXT: we'll dissect the box and add gradients to begin colorizing our creations ...
... continues on the next page!
